The two solitudes of Steven Guilbeault

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Alberta Premier Danielle Smith asked Justin Trudeau to fire him. Ontario’s Doug Ford ridiculed him. Pierre Poilievre’s federal Conservatives see him as a gaffe-prone target of opportunity.

But some of his colleagues in the Liberal cabinet think that a lot of their Quebec seats depend on his reputation.

When it comes to Steven Guilbeault, there are two solitudes.

The Environment Minister has been mocked as a bike-riding zealot in English Canada, where his moment of prepolitics fame came from donning an orange jumpsuit in 2001 to scale the CN Tower with a fellow Greenpeace activist and hang a banner that read “Canada and Bush Climate Killers.”

But in Quebec, he was an established public figure for years before his entry into party politics in 2019, an activist who co-founded the organization Equiterre but also a ubiquitous commentator on environmental issues. Of course, he had – and has – critics in Quebec, too, but he was a known commodity.

Where Ms. Smith and others portrayed him as a wild radical pushing the Liberal agenda to extremes, commentators in Quebec have more often asked how far he’ll bend environmentalist principles to fit electoralist Liberal politics.

It’s sometimes hard to imagine that those two personas can be wrapped around one politician. For Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals, he is both political asset and liability.

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That will intensify this year. Mr. Guilbeault will be at the centre of the fight over carbon-price increases that Mr. Poilievre has made his chief target. Two other big battles, over a cap on emissions from oil and gas and proposed Clean Electricity Regulations, will come to a head.

Mr. Guilbeault said in an interview he understands that all those policies might seem like radical, upsetting change to some, but the environmental impacts of climate change require it. “The status quo will lead to things that are far worse than the remedy.”

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Mr. Guilbeault has become the personification of that debate – although it’s hard to identify major policy differences with predecessor Jonathan Wilkinson, the current Natural Resources Minister, who is often cast as more moderate.

“I think I am the perfect target for the political base of Danielle Smith, [Saskatchewan Premier] Scott Moe, and even Mr. Ford,” he said. “Almost a caricature,” he added.

Mr. Guilbeault, in truth, has given cartoonists some material to work with. As Heritage Minister, he fumbled over the details of his own internet regulation bill. And Mr. Ford wasn’t alone in ridiculing Mr. Guilbeault in February when he said Ottawa would not fund “new road infrastructure.”

“Are we going to be riding on horseback or bicycles or whatever?” Mr. Ford said in a radio interview.

Mr. Guilbeault spent days trying to push that comment back in the tube, sputtering that he never meant there’d be no money at all for roads, and that he was specifically talking about the “third link” proposal to build a new tunnel or bridge to Quebec City.

But it’s also true that Mr. Guilbeault had been saying the same thing in Quebec for years, as Ottawa rebuffed the province’s demand for federal money for the third link, without an uproar over plans to abandon roads.

Still, Mr. Guilbeault really isn’t going to be a fan of building new highways. He believes in regulation some consider a stifling intrusion. He answers critics who argue that Ottawa’s electric-vehicle mandates will interfere with consumer choice by noting sales have shot up – and defending intervention. “The free market doesn’t work in environmental matters,” he said.

For opponents, he is a brightly lit target and, for the Liberals, a political asset in key areas among green-conscious voters, especially in Quebec.

When the Liberal cabinet split in 2022 over the approval of Equinor’s massive Bay du Nord offshore oil project, one cabinet minister was warned by a colleague not to make it too ugly an internecine fight because Liberal seats in Quebec were riding on Mr. Guilbeault’s reputation – and they couldn’t afford to lose him.

When the project – since suspended – was approved, Mr. Guilbeault went home that evening to his Gatineau condo, depressed. He said he was cheered that night by an environmentalist friend who had criticized the Bay du Nord decision, but still praised his record.

“I certainly didn’t go into politics to approve oil platforms,” Mr. Guilbeault said. “That being said, I knew going into politics that I would not win all my battles.”