It’s been about six months since Canada repealed the federal Carbon Tax for consumers.
The move was framed as a necessary relief measure—meant to ease growing cost-of-living pressures—but it marked something deeper: a failure of climate policy to integrate with the systems people actually live in. The tax aimed to price pollution, but it did so in a landscape where many Canadians had no viable, affordable alternatives. It assumed behavioural change without enabling it. And in doing so, it lost public support.
That same story played out in another area of climate policy: building retrofits.
Launched in 2021, the Canada Greener Homes Grant was designed to help homeowners upgrade their houses—installing heat pumps, solar panels, insulation, and more. The demand was massive. More than 500,000 homes were retrofitted. It created jobs, cut emissions, and reduced energy bills.
And then it was cancelled.
Officially, the program ended because it had “worked too well.” Demand outpaced the budget. But success should lead to scaling, not shutdown.
What really happened is this: the retrofit ecosystem wasn’t ready to innovate on the opportunity. There weren’t enough trained professionals. Homeowners were backlogged. The upgrades leaned heavily toward heat pumps and solar panels—while foundational work like indoor air quality was often skipped. Some heat pumps were improperly sized. Others were installed into homes that still hemorrhaged heat.
This is a pattern we see again and again. Even a broken system will eventually settle into a kind of equilibrium. And when you fix one part of that system without addressing the rest, the system pushes back.
Picture a rusted old car that barely runs. You replace the fuel pump. Suddenly the pressure’s too high for the old gaskets. The car stalls out. Did you fix the car—or kill it?
In our effort to fix the retrofit system, we destabilized it. And when it faltered, we didn’t reinforce it—we retreated. The workforce we trained is scattering. The businesses we supported are slowing down. Momentum is gone.
The same dynamic played out with the Carbon Tax. Many households—especially those relying on oil heating—saw costs rise but had no affordable path to transition. No trusted advice. No meaningful incentives. They were penalized for pollution they had no power to stop.
In my ideal version of that story, people would have had the support they needed to decarbonize. The system would have met them halfway. But that new equilibrium—where policy meets reality—was never reached.
Here’s what I’ve learned: systems don’t like being changed in pieces. They like to hold together. If you want real transformation, you have to move the whole thing at once. Not just financial tools, but trust. Not just incentives, but education. Not just technologies, but timelines that work for people.
We still have 11 million homes left to retrofit by 2050. If we want to succeed, we can’t treat bold policy as a short-term intervention. We have to build the systems that make it last.
Because climate action isn’t just about new ideas—it’s about making sure the old ones don’t fall apart when we touch them.
Arman Mottaghi is the CEO of Properate.
