Catherine McKenna is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Climate and Nature Solutions. She is Canada’s former Minister of Environment and Climate Change as well as Minister of Infrastructure. She is Chair of the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Expert Group on Net-Zero Commitments of Non-State Entities which released its Integrity Matters report at COP 27 in Egypt in 2022 setting out criteria for net zero commitments of business, financial institutions, cities and regions. She founded Women Leading on Climate and is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Columbia Climate School and a Visiting Professor in Practice at the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics. She is an advisor to the Climate Data Steering Committee for the Macron/Bloomberg Net Zero Data Public Utility, Singapore’s International Advisory Panel for Carbon Credits, the Taskforce on Net Zero Policy, the LSE Just Transition Finance Lab, as well as to the University of Ottawa’s Information Integrity Lab. She also advises many private sector boards. She is a frequent speaker on climate action, net zero leadership and women empowerment.
As Canada’s former Minister of Environment and Climate Change she was a lead negotiator of the Paris Agreement (Article 6 on carbon markets). She successfully negotiated Canada’s first comprehensive climate change plan including a coal phase out and a price on carbon across Canada — a policy successfully upheld at the Supreme Court. She brought in Canada’s new Impact Assessment Act for the review of major projects, led efforts to ban single use plastics, and doubled the amount of nature protected in Canada in partnership with Indigenous Peoples. Internationally she helped establish the Powering Past Coal Coalition, the Ministerial on Climate Action and the Nature Champions Summit, and was Co-Chair of the World Bank’s Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition.
As Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, she led Canada’s historic investments in public transit and green infrastructure, leveraged private sector investment in sustainable infrastructure through the Canada Infrastructure Bank, and launched Canada’s first National Infrastructure Assessment to drive to net-zero emissions by 2050.
Prior to entering politics, Catherine practiced corporate, trade and anti-trust law at leading firms in Canada and Indonesia, worked as lead negotiator on the Timor Sea Treaty with the UN Peacekeeping Mission to East Timor and founded Canadian Lawyers Abroad (now Level Justice). She studied at the University of Toronto, the Landon School of Economics and McGill Law School and is called to the Bars of New York and Ontario. Catherine was named Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d’Honneur by the French government in recognition of her contribution to the landmark Paris Agreement and an Honourary Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society for her public service and commitment to environmental conservation. She is a mother to three children and is an avid open water swimmer.
