Q&A with the UN’s greenwashing watchdog

By Zi-Ann Lum | 11/05/2025 06:42 AM EST

Catherine McKenna says the Paris Agreement was an incredible feat. “Now: Do the work.”

The chair of the United Nations Secretary-General's High-level Expert Group on Net-Zero Commitments, Catherine McKenna, delivers a speech during a U.N. expert panel at the COP27 climate conference at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Convention Centre, in Egypt's Red Sea resort city of the same name, on Nov. 8, 2022. Joseph Eid/AFP via Getty Images

TORONTO — Count a former Canadian environment minister among those waiting on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s climate plan.

“Climate isn’t going away,” Catherine McKenna told POLITICO Canada recently. “It’s getting worse all the time. And everyone has to deal with it.”

McKenna, an international trade and human rights lawyer, was a rookie environment minister in former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first government in 2015 when she served as Canada’s lead negotiator on the Paris Agreement.

McKenna now serves in a watchdog role as chair of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ high-level expert group on greenwashing.

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