Someone with a big name who is respected in the West.

Someone who understands the business community, investment flows and corporate decision-making.

Someone who can talk to both the Liberals and Conservatives eye-to-eye.

Someone who can thread the needle on climate change and economic growth, while winning over the confidence of the oilpatch.

That’s who Justin Trudeau needs to help smooth things over with Alberta and Saskatchewan, while also giving his supporters confidence that he will stick to the climate-change commitments he made during the election campaign.

Here’s an idea for who that person should be: Mark Carney. Or, if he’s too entrenched in Brexit to take on Wexit, someone a lot like him.

Carney, the Alberta-raised governor of the Bank of England and a former governor of the Bank of Canada, is leading the global conversation on how to come to economic grips with climate change.

Even before he left for the U.K., he was a key thinker behind some of the federal government’s internal carbon modelling, which started well over a decade ago. In Britain, he has pushed corporations to disclose their exposure to climate risk, and that’s now on the way to becoming regulated.

Among his central banking peers, he has aggressively advocated for corporations to come to terms with the financial and economic risks of a warming climate, warning that failure to act will cause financial collapse.

At the United Nations climate summit this fall, as 16-year-old Greta Thunberg captured the attention of the world with her “how dare you” rebuke to world leaders, Carney was giving his own central-banker version of that speech.

He called out companies, financial markets, central banks and governments, telling them if they have any hope of keeping the catastrophic consequences of climate change at bay, they need to take decisive action now. It’s time, he said, for mandatory disclosure, strategic investment, incorporating the effects of climate change into their economic forecasting, and legislating the path to net-zero emissions.

“A new, sustainable financial system is being built. It is funding the initiatives and innovations of the private sector. It has the potential to amplify the effectiveness of the climate policies of your governments and it could accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy. But the task is large, the window of opportunity is short, and the risks are existential,” Carney told the summit.

“And like virtually everything else in the response to climate change, the development of this new sustainable finance is not moving fast enough for the world to reach net zero.”

Philosophically, parts of Canada are with him. In practical terms, we are not even close — and could use a big Carney-esque push.

During the election campaign, the Liberals promised to put Canada on track to having the equivalent of no greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, saying they would legislate the steps toward net zero.

Some of Alberta’s large energy companies are disclosing their climate risks and are moving aggressively to reducing their carbon intensity. The financial sector sees lots of potential there, with prospects to amplify that disclosure by using it as a marketing feature for Canada’s energy sector.

The CEO of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce made the case in Calgary last week. Victor Dodig highlighted the need — and opportunity — for the energy sector to move simultaneously towards embracing renewable energy and reducing its carbon footprint, while also capitalizing on growing demand for fossil fuels.

“We have the potential to help sustainably fuel the world — if we invest in making our established industry as efficient, responsible and modern as possible,” Dodig said. “At the same time, we understand that the world is changing. New forms of energy are being developed and adapted. The door is open to a leadership role in this new industry. It’s Canada’s to claim.”

But in practice, we are limping along. The Liberal promise for net-zero emissions was made without a plan. Financial disclosure is not systematic or universal. And even with all our financial ingenuity, energy innovation and good intentions, the measures being taken by the public and private sector don’t add up to being nearly enough.

Meanwhile, Alberta is beyond angry with its job losses, low investment, slow progress on pipeline expansion and a federal government many feel doesn’t give them a fair deal.

It’s fallen to former Liberal cabinet minister Anne McLellan to advise Trudeau on how the post-election Liberals can hope to pull all this together coherently, but that’s only a first step in what will be a long haul that will require a lot of diplomacy and proactive thinking.

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The premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan have made their demands known, and there is probably enough common ground to be found in their list to foster a compromise with Ottawa.

But that would be a temporary peace, and it won’t deal with the underlying incompatibility between rising energy production and the ever-tighter climate requirements.

Trudeau has a difficult job ahead. He could use some help.

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