OTTAWA—A new report shows Canada’s export credit agency provides far greater backing to oil and gas companies than to makers of clean technology, a trend the authors contend undermines the country’s commitment to fight climate change under the Paris Agreement.

Released Thursday and sponsored by a host of environmental groups, the report from the research and advocacy organization Oil Change International casts light on how Export Development Canada facilitated $62 billion in financial support for Canadian oil and gas companies from 2012 to 2017. That’s 12 times more support than the $5 billion the agency facilitated for clean technologies during that time, the report says, citing the agency’s own data.

The focus on oil and gas carried over from the Conservative era when the Liberals took power under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in November 2015, the report shows. The export development agency facilitated $20.9 billion in support of oil and gas during the last two years of the Harper Conservative mandate, and then facilitated $22.4 billion under the first two years of Liberal governance, according to the report’s findings.

Patrick DeRochie, climate and energy program director with the organization Environmental Defence, pointed out that under the 2015 Paris Agreement, Canada committed to make financial flows consistent with a pathway to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Under that agreement, Canada pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 30 per cent below their 2005 level by 2030 — a target that government projections say the country is currently on track to miss.

“We think this is wholly inconsistent with both Canada’s climate commitments domestically and under the Paris Agreement, and I think it’s out of step with a general trend in international finance away from fossil fuels,” said DeRochie, who helped produce the report.

Export Development Canada is a self-financed Crown corporation that was created in 1944. The agency gives out loans and provides insurance and other financial services worth roughly $100 billion each year to support hundreds of Canadian exporters and companies making foreign investments. The agency takes applications from companies that want its services, but also proactively finds firms to work with. As it is mandated to do every 10 years, Ottawa is currently reviewing the agency’s practices, while the EDC is also holding its own internal review of its environmental and social risk management policies.

The report notes that the World Bank Group has committed to end financing for oil-and-gas exploration and extraction after 2019, while large international banks like BNP Paribas, ING, and JPMorgan Chase have moved to restrict financing of certain fossil fuel industry activities.

Environmental groups and the federal NDP have similarly called on the Trudeau government to stop subsidizing Canada’s fossil-fuel industries. In 2015, the International Institute for Sustainable Development tallied the government’s various tax breaks, credits and grants for oil and gas producers at $3.3 billion per year, on average.

The Liberals have pledged to do away with all “inefficient” fossil-fuel subsidies by 2025, but critics have demanded more action and clarity as the government moves toward that commitment. In June, during a meeting in Argentina, then-natural resources minister Jim Carr announced both countries would kick-start peer reviews to make sure they’re on track to phase out these subsidies.

“It is going to require a massive shift of financing away from fossil fuels,” DeRochie said, noting that the Liberal government has moved to curb emissions by imposing a price on carbon emissions across the country and phase out coal-fired energy by 2030.

“The climate leadership that this government has shown, it’s not being reflected by its export credit agency,” he said.

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