Would it surprise you to learn that, for over a generation, one of the main ways the federal Liberals have been promoting their radical green agenda has been through a clever scheme that bypasses the legitimate authority of provincial governments? A scheme that uses a national lobby-type organization to do a total end-run around the provinces, which have full jurisdiction over municipalities in Canada? A scheme also designed to completely elude the sort of public scrutiny that is expected of governments when dolling out billions of dollars, often to their friends and allies? This scheme has been ruthlessly, efficiently, and ingeniously executed by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM). And, while not technically considered “money-laundering,” it is certainly designed to obscure accountability and further the Liberal anti-hydrocarbon, pro-Net Zero agenda – even during off-years when the Liberals are not in power.
Over the years, municipalities – particularly the large cities – across Canada have banded together to lobby the federal government for money, even though the federal government has no jurisdiction over or responsibility for Canadian municipalities. Their lobby group is FCM, which has been operating in different forms and under different names for over a century.
For decades, FCM has not only operated as a lobby organization but has become the principal delivery mechanism for successive (Liberal) federal governments to promote and execute the Liberal anti-growth “climate agenda” at the municipal level. Ottawa’s employment of FCM serves to enable a total lack of transparency and accountability, to distribute of billions of federal tax dollars (all in the cause of propagandizing the Liberals green ideology), and to implement its radical green agenda.
And it can all be traced back to the Rio “Earth Summit.”
Remember the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)? It was the UN “treaty” that started the climate madness that has been threatening much of the Canadian economy since it was first signed in 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the UN Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the “Earth Summit.” The goal of the Rio Earth Summit was the “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [i.e. human-caused] interference with the climate system.” The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Paris Accord of 2015 were built on the ideological and political foundations of the Rio Earth Summit.
In the build-up to the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, in September of 1990, the World Congress of Local Governments for a Sustainable Future was held at the UN in New York City. There, representatives of 200 municipalities established the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), now called Local Governments for Sustainability. From its beginning, this group was committed to a climate alarmist agenda.
In 1993, working with FCM from its Toronto global headquarters, ICLEI expanded its reach and launched the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) campaign. For over three decades, the FCM/ICLEI partnership has directed municipalities, through the Partners in Climate Protection (PCP) program, in creating local climate plans and designing climate policies, by providing guidelines, templates, and advice.
The ICLEI/FCM program was one of the earliest municipal-level climate programs in Canada. Once the green left had established the infrastructure of ICLEI, then matched it with the long-established FCM, they were in position to act as a front for a green-friendly government. Enter the newly elected (1993) Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, which had its own green agenda. His Liberal government signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and went about looking for ways to meet the associated targets. FCM’s claim that municipalities were responsible for over 50% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (mainly through transportation, buildings, and waste) must have resonated with a federal government that wanted to look like it was actively working to meet its Kyoto goals.
As the Kyoto Protocol was heating up politically, FCM/ICLEI received a huge cash infusion in 2000 from the Chretien government to manage the new Green Municipal Fund. This new program was administered from the start by FCM with an initial endowment of $125 million to create a perpetual fund for municipal green innovation. In its dying days, five years later, the Paul Martin Liberal government made an additional contribution of $550 million.
By contrast, FCM did not receive federal funds from the Harper-led Conservative government. The FCM Green Municipal Fund continued to operate using its Liberal-era funding but did not receive any more money to administer programs, environmental or otherwise. The Conservative government did not outsource its work to FCM, choosing instead to work directly with municipalities and provinces with a $735 million Green Infrastructure Program. Ideological, practical, and political considerations (like the 2008-9 financial crisis) changed the slant of these green programs to focus on economic stimulus and job creation as well as environmental mitigation and adaptation.
These FCM Green Municipal Fund dry years came to an end with the end of the Harper government in 2015. In the Trudeau years that followed (2015-2025), the green-focused, Paris Accord-addicted Liberals flooded FCM with additional hundreds of millions of dollars – like the $1 billion committed in the 2019 Liberal budget and the additional $530 million which the Trudeau government gave FCM for the Local Leadership for Climate Adaptation (LLCA) in 2024.
The billions funnelled through ICLEI and FCM serve to reinforce the growing economic malaise felt by Canadians everywhere, raise the cost of living and do little to address serious municipal matters – like housing shortages and rising property taxes. Canadians struggling to make ends meet deserve to know about this scheme, perpetrated on them by federal Liberal governments, that promotes their own costly and radical Net Zero green agenda through municipalities, bypassing legitimate provincial authority, and using federal taxpayer dollars – all with the assistance of a powerful, well-funded intermediary.
Next up: With so much money flowing their way, what has the FCM done with this largesse? How have they spent the money?