In November, Re.Climate unveiled its 2025 media analysis report. The findings made it impossible to ignore growing worries about Canada’s faltering climate action and the way national news outlets are portraying those shifts.
Read the report here.
Missed the webinar? Watch the recording here.
View the webinar presentation here.
The fall federal budget made clear that, in a moment of economic uncertainty and rising costs, Canada would cancel or pause a number of climate policies, including the EV mandate, the Two Billion Trees program and the Canada Greener Homes Grant.
National media has been relatively limited on what this means for Canada’s climate commitments, investment in renewable energy or our global reputation in a world rapidly adopting clean technology.
This observable gap naturally led our annual media scan to focus on coverage of climate policy rollbacks in Canadian national outlets. It also urged us to step back and examine the broader media system to identify challenges and opportunities for journalists and communicators to strengthen climate coverage and public engagement.
The webinar featured report authors and researchers Dr. Ghadah Alrasheed and Chris Hatch, alongside Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) President Brent Jolly and Dr. Hanna Morris at the University of Toronto’s School of Environment.
Read the Report
The old media model continues to crumble
Traditional media—think television, radio and newspapers that Canadians have relied on for decades—continue to play a crucial role in news gathering and verification. That is, actually doing the work of interviewing sources, going to scenes of events and reading government reports.
The dissemination of information, however, has changed radically.
“What emerged from our review [of reports on Canadian media state in 2025] is that we are working with a multi-layered system, which has implications for climate communicators and how we work and communicate,” said Dr. Ghadah Alrasheed.
More and more, people are getting their news online, for free. This has made it much harder for local news outlets to make ends meet.
As a result, local news continues its precipitous decline, with 2.5 million Canadians living with only one or no local news outlet. This poses a problem for both democracy—people are less able to make informed decisions about voting in local elections—and for information dissemination in emergencies.
Independent publications have made an effort to fill the local gap, but they, too, have limitations. Outlets like The Tyee and The Narwhal have smaller initial audiences and tend to hold particular political biases—though this is not to suggest that legacy media outlets are somehow unbiased.
In a fragmented and increasingly decontextualized media environment, it might seem strange for Re.Climate to continue its focus on national media outlets that still tend to hold to “traditional” media formats.
Yet Canadian legacy media remain trusted by a majority of their users, far more so than social media platforms.
“These sources are still credible for millions of Canadians, and research actually shows that people who spend more time on traditional media are better protected against misinformation,” said Alrasheed.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t gaps in coverage. This has been particularly acute when national media covered climate policy stories.
Coverage without context
When looking at how climate policy stories are covered across five main national outlets, our researchers found that, over and over again, climate policy was covered as a purely political or economic story; climate change was conspicuously absent from the conversation.
“This is quite odd, actually, when you think about it,” said Chris Hatch. “We’re talking about policies without mentioning the problem they’re trying to solve. It’s as if the media was covering housing policies without mentioning the need for more housing, the cost of housing, cost of rent, that kind of thing.”
Darkening narratives around solutions
When it comes to climate solutions, stories are more skeptical now than in previous years, questioning the economics of policies that, for example, provide funds for homeowners to buy clean technology or enable companies to scale up renewables.
Nature conservation and its relationship to climate change and climate adaptation are rarely covered.
“We hear a lot about the cost of a climate solution, but not much about the cost of climate inaction, the opportunities and returns that come from new renewable projects and local climate solutions. So we need to bring these pieces back into the conversations,” added Hatch.
CAJ President Brent Jolly speculated that the sense that climate change is a complex issue, and the quick turnaround times expected of daily reporting, can lead journalists to default assumptions and frames.
“My friends are climate correspondents, they’re not on a daily deadline. Their work takes an exceptional amount of time and resources, and that in and of itself, probably results in more stories just covering what Mark Carney or Pierre Poilievre or Danielle Smith said, and then turning that around for the next day’s paper.”
It doesn’t help that, in general, there’s a lot of news happening in the world right now. Tariffs are making everyday life more expensive for Canadians, and our southern neighbour is also in the midst of a climate policy backlash, all of which makes it hard to know if people even care about climate change anymore.
“I think the consequences of assuming that people have lost that interest are sort of inaccurate,” said Dr. Hanna Morris.
“The way to get around that is really expanding who you talk to, instead of it just being elite narratives, which are easier to access, and really trying to talk to those 89 per cent of people who are consistently saying they care and want to do something about climate change.”
Key Takeaways
1. Provide the missing context
When it comes to public perceptions of climate change and its worsening impacts, much of it comes down to reporters and communicators reminding people where the problem comes from: burning fossil fuels.
“We need to help folks build a picture of the problem,” said Hatch. “This is not about ‘emissions,’ this is about burning fossil fuels. Our whole energy debate right now is about expanding oil and gas pipelines. So we need to make that linkage really clear. What we’re talking about here is worsening climate change.”
It’s not just the bad context that’s missing. Globally, clean energy is being deployed at an increasingly fast pace. For example, according to the European Investment Bank, EU countries invested close to €110 billion in renewable energy generation in 2023, investing 10 times as much in renewable energy as in fossil fuels.
There are also positive health benefits to transitioning away from fossil fuels; our air would be cleaner, and we could turn the tide on devastating climate impacts like floods and fires, both of which can lead to adverse health effects, never mind their toll on mental health.
2. Support meaningful coverage
Do you have great local stories that aren’t getting covered? Brent Jolly has advice on how climate communicators can reach out to journalists.
From Brent:
- If you are looking to talk to a journalist about a very specific story that’s on your mind (e.g. the intricacies of energy transition or the economics of pipeline expansion), the best first step is to find out which reporters regularly cover the kind of subject matter that interests you.
- Be persistent. If a journalist doesn’t get back to you right away, it doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in what you have to say or share.
- Lastly, always try to communicate clearly when working with journalists. It’s always important to explain to reporters your ideas in plain language and answer what this all means. Avoid jargon and refrain from sending lengthy scientific or other studies without context.
3. Be authentic
There has long been debate about how much climate communicators should focus on hope versus fear when talking about climate change. Chris Hatch offered a way to cut through the debate: focus on what matters to you.
“Social media has so much traction because people feel like they’re hearing from a real person. So the most important thing in your communication is that level of authenticity. And if what freaks you out is the fact that we’re past the tipping point for the world’s coral reefs, or if it’s excitement about clean energy, the main point is to find what’s authentic to you, because that’s what’s going to resonate with an audience.”
4. Don’t assume people don’t care
We’ve seen time and time again that while Canadians do see the cost of living as an urgent, top priority, that doesn’t mean they aren’t still concerned about climate change. People are capable of worrying about more than one thing, but if the media isn’t talking about it, it’s easy for people to assume they shouldn’t be either.
“Trust that people are capable of caring about more than just economics,” said Morris. “I think a key takeaway is really thinking about people as more complex and multi-dimensional, talking to them, including their narratives in your stories, and not assuming what they think.”
5. Think about the life of your stories beyond traditional media
News stories aren’t just digested once and then discarded. Stories that come from traditional media often find their way onto social media via news-fluencers, in Reddit channels and deep-dive YouTube videos. That’s why it’s important to think about the content you’re producing as a climate communicator and how it will be picked up by traditional media and consumed online.
“We need to look at the media infrastructure now and engage with all of it,” said Alrasheed. “Think about what is going to happen after your story gets published. How is it going to be recycled? How is it going to be reused, reshared? What’s going to be your role in doing this?”
Read the Media Analysis report for more
Our 2025 media analysis report, Climate Change and Policy Rollbacks in Canada’s National Media, is full of rich insights and recommendations for how climate communicators can respond in a moment of climate backtracking. Stay tuned for new research in 2026 that explores how communicators can shift the darkening tone on climate action to more positive narratives that focus on building the future we want.
Watch the Webinar Recording
Follow along with the webinar presentation here.
