On November 20, 2025 ORCIE sent a letter to Steven Guilbeault, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change at the release of the draft Oil and Gas Sector Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cap Regulations. We recognized its importance as the first emissions regulation of Canada’s oil and gas sector. Faith groups and environmental organizations, like ORCIE, have long campaigned for these regulations and we welcome this plan to limit the emissions from the largest contributor to the current climate emergency.
ORCIE as an organization and as part of the CAN-Rac coalition have made submissions to the Consultation: Proposed Oil and Gas Sector Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cap Regulations. Individuals are invited to do the same, participation is open until January 8th, 2024. Consultation: Proposed Oil and Gas Sector Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cap Regulations – Canada.ca
ORCIE’s letter and submission includes these notes:
• Faith groups have long supported regulating pollution, and we appreciate the hard work needed to protect Canadians from worsening climate impacts.
• We are pleased to see the emissions cap regulations are shifting the responsibility for addressing pollution back onto industry. Let’s ensure the regulations have zero compliance flexibility, offsets, and loopholes.
• We cannot allow the oil and gas industry to continue to produce pollution and cancel out efforts made by other parts of the economy.
• We need to ramp up the ambition, with rules that take effect sooner than the proposed 2030 timeline and align these regulations with Canada’s climate commitment of a 40-45 per cent emissions reduction by 2030.
• ORCIE calls for a 60% reduction of GHG emissions below 2005 levels by 2030, because of the urgent need for fossil fuel companies to cut production and emissions.
• We want Canada to remain a leader amongst nations, putting binding limits on oil and gas pollution, and demonstrating how the Paris Agreement’s five-year cycle of increasingly ambitious climate action or, ratcheting up, actually works.
• Canada can show its increased ambition nationally by finalizing these regulations and implementing them immediately, ahead of the federal budget and the 2025 election.
