​Possible by Design responded to the public consultation on the draft 2026–2029 FSDS.

 

The submission identifies a structural gap in the draft strategy: Canada's legally binding net-zero target rests on a regulatory architecture in which approximately 31% of national emissions face no federal requirement to decline at all, and approximately 69% are regulated but with no requirement to reach zero. To close that gap, the submission proposes a Universal Ramp to Regulate All Emissions:  every source on a published, predictable, multi-decade trajectory to fully decarbonized by 2050, with permanent carbon dioxide removal as the universally available backstop.

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Three further mechanisms - Climate Footprint Labels, Abatement Pathway Standards, and Geo Zero Product Certification - complete the system, making the net-zero target not only arithmetically achievable but also visible to consumers, available to every sector, and rewarding for first movers.

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The submission also urges the FSDS to make a commitment its current draft does not: to recognize intergenerational fairness as a dimension of the "no one is left behind" principle. Climate harm falls disproportionately on Canadians not yet born and Canadians who are currently young - the people with the largest stake in this planning cycle and the least voice in it. Climate anxiety in Canadian youth is now a documented, growing burden with a structural cause that policy can directly address. Mechanisms that restore agency - by giving people something visible to see, choose, and ask for - are direct interventions in that reality. The four mechanisms proposed are, among other things, such mechanisms.​​