The scientific consensus, articulated most clearly by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has long underlined the urgent need for strong and binding policies to drive the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. However, more than 25 years since the Kyoto Protocol established the foundation for international climate cooperation, decisive government action remains fragmented and insufficient. The persistence of the policy gap between existing national commitments and what science demands is starkly documented by the analysis of Climate Action Tracker.
A critical barrier to stronger climate policy is corporate lobbying. InfluenceMap’s LobbyMap platform quantitatively tracks how companies and their associations shape climate regulation worldwide. It has persistently highlighted the significant and persistent obstacle to science-aligned climate policymaking caused by intensive and strategic lobbying from the fossil fuel value chain.
Industry associations play a central role in the corporate climate policy landscape, exerting significant influence by consolidating business voices within sectors or regions to advance specific advocacy agendas.
InfluenceMap’s analysis of more than 330 associations worldwide shows that many continue to engage with policymakers in ways that undermine climate progress. This stands in marked contrast to LobbyMap’s findings on individual companies, which indicate that—outside the fossil fuel sector—corporate support for science-based climate policy has grown rapidly over the past five years.
Of particular concern are cross-sector groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce (LobbyMap grade E), BusinessEurope (D-), the Japan Business Federation (C-), and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce (D-), which claim to represent the entire business community in their respective regions. InfluenceMap’s research shows this is not the case: on climate policy, these groups consistently advocate for the interests of a narrow set of their most regressive members—primarily those in the fossil fuel value chain. The UK’s Confederation of British Industry (B-) is a rare example of a cross-sector group that appears broadly aligned with, and in some cases more ambitious than, many of its members on climate policy.
Canadian climate policy is at an important crossroads. South of the border, the US administration is dismantling climate policy in line with fossil fuel industry demands, empowering anti-climate voices in Canada too. Many of the Canadian policies which contribute to the previous federal government’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan, including the Output-Based Pricing System for industry, Clean Electricity Regulations, and Methane Regulations for Upstream Oil and Gas are facing serious opposition, while the Oil and Gas Emissions Cap and Electric Vehicle Availability Standard have already been repealed. The new Carney government’s “Climate Competitiveness Strategy,” launched in the recent federal budget, sends mixed signals on climate ambition, ranging from a commitment to strengthen industrial carbon pricing through to promoting continued oil and gas development. In this uncertain environment, the balance of supportive and oppositional corporate engagement will play a decisive role in shaping Canada’s climate policy future.
InfluenceMap’s Canada platform can be accessed here, and currently includes climate policy engagement profiles for 48 companies and 9 industry associations. Of the 48 companies assessed, 34 operate in the Energy (15 companies), Utilities (9) or Metals & Mining (10) sectors. Overall findings include:
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce (“the Chamber”) is a cross-sector industry association which represents over 200,000 businesses through more than 400 regional chambers of commerce and boards of trade. InfluenceMap finds that the Chamber is highly active on climate and energy policy in Canada–see the group’s regularly updated profile on LobbyMap. The Chamber is the only non-oil and gas entity (company or industry association) on LobbyMap’s Canada platform which is “strategically engaged” (with an InfluenceMap Engagement Intensity score over 25%). As such, the group has a unique position in representing the climate policy interests of Canadian companies outside the fossil fuel value chain.
However, InfluenceMap finds that the Chamber’s climate policy engagement is broadly misaligned with policy pathways for limiting global warming in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. While the Chamber has often been supportive of the need for climate action and regulation in general, its engagement with specific Canadian climate policies has been much less positive, per the image below.
While the Chamber claims to be “the national voice of business” in Canada, InfluenceMap finds that the organization is significantly more negative in its climate policy engagement than many of its corporate members (see image at top of briefing). Canadian companies such as CPKC (Organization Score1 64%), CN (62%), Teck Resources (60%) and Air Canada (58%)—whose Vice President, Government & Community Relations is on the Chamber’s board—demonstrate direct climate policy engagement which is substantially more positive than the Chamber (42%). Many international companies operating in Canada are also members of the Chamber and appear misaligned with the group’s negative climate policy advocacy, including Apple (Organization Score 81%), Schneider Electric (76%), AstraZeneca (75%) and 3M (72%), whose Vice President, Global Public Policy and Communications currently chairs the Chamber.
InfluenceMap finds multiple examples of the Chamber publicly opposing specific climate policies which its members support, including:
The Chamber represents companies in every sector of the Canadian economy. However, on climate, the group’s policy engagement aligns closely with the interests of one sector in particular: the oil and gas industry. In the table below, InfluenceMap shows that the Chamber’s positions on specific climate policies are very similar to the positions of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the main industry association representing Canada’s oil and gas industry.
| Policy | Canadian Chamber of Commerce | Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers |
|---|---|---|
| Output-Based Pricing System | Oppose: “Repeal or substantially reform the federal carbon levy on large emitters. Allow provincial governments ... to establish regionally tailored, globally competitive carbon pricing frameworks” | Oppose: “The Federal carbon levy on large emitters is not globally cost competitive and should be repealed allowing provinces to set regulations” |
| Clean Electricity Regulations | Oppose: “the proposed Clean Electricity Regulations will ... leave a system that is expensive and unreliable compared to peer jurisdictions, hindering economic growth and investments into Canada” | Oppose: “the impacts of a proposed clean electricity regulation could affect progress on decarbonization in our sector and impact our ability to deliver energy to those that need it within Canada and beyond” |
| Methane Regulations for Upstream Oil and Gas | Oppose: “Repeal or significantly reform legislation such as … methane regulations that are impeding progress” | Oppose: “the current draft amendments ... do not represent a predictable regulatory framework” |
| Oil and Gas Emissions Cap | Oppose: “enforcing an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector would only exacerbate the financial burden on Canadians. Effective climate action requires a strong economy—something this cap fundamentally undermines” | Oppose: “The emissions cap will negatively impact Canada’s economy and trade relations. ... The cap will hurt Canadians already struggling with affordability. The emissions cap should not progress to a final regulation” |
| West Coast tanker ban | Oppose: “Repeal Bill C-48, which imposes the West Coast tanker ban, to enable responsible energy exports” | Oppose: “The Federal Impact Assessment Act and West Coast tanker ban are impeding development and need to be overhauled and repealed, respectively” |
| Impact Assessment Act | Not support: “one of several policies ... that disproportionately, or even exclusively, target Canada’s oil and gas sector, a key driver of our economy.” | Not support: “Canada needs a policy reset ... This should focus on overhauls of the existing major project approvals process” |
| Transition away from fossil fuels | Oppose: “Growing international demand for energy requires that Canada produce more oil and gas, not less” | Oppose: “Developing and diversifying the export capacity of our oil and natural gas resources will strengthen energy security and our economic sovereignty” |
Key | Red = Strongly negative | Grey = Broadly negative
In particular, the Chamber’s evolving positioning on the federal industrial carbon pricing system, the Output-Based Pricing System (OBPS), suggests increasing alignment with the oil and gas industry. The Chamber previously expressed support for the OBPS, including in April 2024 comments to a parliamentary committee and in a November 2025 press release. However, in the Chamber’s approved 2025 Policy Resolutions document published in November 2025, the group called for the OBPS to be repealed and replaced by provincial systems to improve competitiveness, mirroring fossil fuel industry demands to Prime Minister Mark Carney in September 2025.
A growing number of companies from sectors outside the fossil fuel value chain are using their influence to advocate for science-aligned climate policies, recognizing that climate policies bring investment certainty, risk reduction, and new economic opportunities for forward-looking businesses. A key part of this advocacy involves ensuring that the company’s industry associations are lobbying in line with science-based pathways to limit global warming to 1.5°C, and addressing misalignment when it exists.
To date, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has failed to represent corporate Canada as a whole on climate, consistently pushing for the weakening or elimination of emissions reduction policies in line with its fossil fuel members. However, there are multiple stakeholder groups that can play a role in challenging the Chamber’s misalignment with both many of its non-fossil fuel members and science-aligned climate policy.
1 Organization Score: A measure of how supportive or obstructive the entity’s direct policy engagement is towards Paris Agreement-aligned climate policy, with 0 being fully opposed and 100 being fully supportive.
2 Manulife is scored using InfluenceMap's "Climate Finance" methodology which assesses engagement on climate-related financial policy in addition to real economy climate policy. Scores are broadly comparable to the rest of the LobbyMap universe but use different queries, details of which are available here.
