Understanding Climate Denial and Delayism in Canada

The report documents a sophisticated ecosystem of climate disinformation in Canada, where denial and delayism are used to delegitimise scientific consensus and policy. It identifies regional vulnerabilities, particularly in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and highlights how climate narratives are often blended with anti-feminist, anti-2SLGBTQIA+, and anti-immigrant tropes. The analysis details the roles of domestic media, influencers, and transnational linkages in amplifying claims that climate policy is an authoritarian tool of global elites.

• Climate denial and delayist narratives in Canada are not uniformly distributed; provinces with high fossil fuel reliance and history of tension with federal regulation, specifically Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, show greater receptivity to these narratives.
• Adversarial actors target specific demographics to foster distrust, including middle and working class voters through economic fear, groups with low trust in state institutions, and those angered by COVID-19 measures via claims of "climate lockdowns" or "15-minute" cities.
• The Canadian climate denial ecosystem relies on a hybrid of domestic media (such as Rebel News and True North), online influencers who bridge fringe content to mainstream audiences, and fringe platforms like Telegram and Substack.
• Climate denial narratives frequently employ pseudoscience to claim that CO2 is benign or beneficial, arguing it is "plant food" or a driver of economic development to justify continued fossil fuel use.
• Conspiracy theories frame climate change as a manufactured crisis used by global elites—including the World Economic Forum (WEF), the UN, and figures like Bill Gates—to impose a "New World Order," population control, or a surveillance state.
• Extreme weather events in Canada, particularly wildfires, are reframed by adversarial narratives as orchestrated disasters caused by geoengineering, directed energy weapons, or government arson rather than ecological drivers.
• Climate policies are depicted as "economic suicide" and authoritarian overreach, with narratives claiming that net-zero targets and carbon pricing are tools of "Ottawa elites" to undermine national sovereignty.
• Climate activists are subjected to targeted hostility, being branded as "cultists," "eco-terrorists," or "grifters," with specific gendered and identity-based attacks used to delegitimise figures like Greta Thunberg.
• Climate disinformation often intersects with "eco-nativism," where immigration is reframed as a primary driver of greenhouse gas emissions to justify restricting newcomers.
• There is a significant transnational flow of disinformation, with Canadian actors adapting US-based conspiratorial frames such as "climate lockdowns" and "global elite control" for a domestic context.

APA

Global Disinformation Index (n.d.). Understanding Climate Denial and Delayism in Canada. https://www.disinformationindex.org/files/GDI_Canada_Climate_Change_August2025.pdf

Chicago

Global Disinformation Index. Understanding Climate Denial and Delayism in Canada. n.d. https://www.disinformationindex.org/files/GDI_Canada_Climate_Change_August2025.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Global Disinformation Index |title=Understanding Climate Denial and Delayism in Canada |url=https://www.disinformationindex.org/files/GDI_Canada_Climate_Change_August2025.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{globaldisinformationindexndunderstanding, author = {{Global Disinformation Index}}, title = {{Understanding Climate Denial and Delayism in Canada}}, institution = {Global Disinformation Index}, url = {https://www.disinformationindex.org/files/GDI_Canada_Climate_Change_August2025.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }