'Clean Energy CEO' Becomes Canada's Top Bureaucrat as Carney Names Sabia Privy Council Clerk
Veteran Ottawa watchers are mostly hoping for an acceleration in Canada's clean energy transition after Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Wednesday afternoon that Michael Sabia, most recently the president and CEO of Hydro-Quebec, will head up the Privy Council Office (PCO).
Sabia's tenure as clerk of the Privy Council and secretary to cabinet will begin July 7, The Canadian Press reports. He replaces John Hannaford, who is retiring.
The Privy Council offers non-partisan policy advice to the prime minister and cabinet and is responsible for managing the broader public service. The clerk is no more and no less than the most powerful official in government.
Sabia has been at Hydro-Quebec since 2023. In a statement released by the utility Wednesday, he said he was answering Carney's call to serve as the prime minister pushes for a rapid transformation of Canada's government and economy.
"Prime Minister Carney asked me to take on this role at a time when the country is facing some unprecedented challenges," he said. "In that context, I am joining the federal government to tackle these challenges head-on."
The Globe and Mail says Carney "sought out Mr. Sabia because he needed a PCO clerk with government and business experience who can push through his agenda that includes significant nation-building projects, a revamped military, major housing initiatives, and cost-cutting expenditures for the public service."
During his time at Hydro-Quebec, Sabia "signed a massive new deal with its Newfoundland counterpart to co-develop new energy projects along the Churchill River," the Globe writes. "He also hatched a $185-billion blueprint for new energy infrastructure that aims to wean Quebec off fossil fuels."
On Monday, still in his role with Hydro-Quebec, Sabia called it a "hallelujah" moment for Canada that the United States under Donald Trump is retreating from renewable energy investment. "If they pause, we go forward," he told the Globe's Intersect/25 conference. "That's our moment-and it needs to be seized now."
With global renewable energy investment hitting record highs and far outstripping fossil fuels, he said the "'underlying signal' from global boardrooms is that capital is flowing into clean power," the Globe writes.
That kind of talk, along with Sabia's past track record, has some clean energy analysts expressing optimism about his latest assignment.
"I think it's time that [Carney] put a clean energy CEO into the role of Clerk," said Clean Energy Canada President Mark Zacharias. "Given the amount of C-suite talent the Prime Minister probably had access to, I think that's an important signal right there."
Beyond Sabia's appointment, Zacharias said it was noteworthy that Carney's five criteria for what would constitute a "nation-building" project include "clean growth potential, such as the use of clean technologies and sustainable practices." In his public statements to date, the PM "certainly appears to have a preference and an emphasis on clean energy and building a clean economy," Zacharias told The Energy Mix.
Carney and his ministers have also spent a lot of time talking about fossil fuel projects. But "when the PM looks at every economic opportunity for Canada, I think he will find which projects can be approved and built" during a single term of government. With most or any new oil and gas infrastructure 10 years away from being operational, "I think the government will be looking long and hard at those projects that can get shovels in the ground right away and even, potentially, be complete in this mandate."
There's currently no proponent for the new oil pipelines the industry and their political supporters say they want to see built, and there's been no public indication the federal government would consider the subsidies the fossil and carbon capture industries will need to support that work-without which industry execs have stubbornly refused to invest their own breathtaking profits.
"The Prime Minister is first and foremost a banker, and will be looking at risk-reward," Zacharias said. "It's legitimate to think the federal government won't be looking to underwrite a lot of those projects, but will instead clear the regulatory hurdles and let the proponents navigate the authorizations they need to get started."
In that case, "ultimately it will be up to private capital where to park itself," but oil and gas isn't where Zacharias would expect to see the smart money go. He said a list of "long-term, low-risk, reasonable-return bets" would include east-west grid interties, clean electricity generation, and completing Canada's battery and electric vehicle supply chains-partly to protect electricity prices from the future risk of U.S. tariffs.
Normand Mousseau, scientific director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montreal, said Sabia's move back to Ottawa makes it "much more likely" that a decarbonization agenda will be "defended and pushed forward. Probably very rapidly, too. I have the feeling that Sabia has a sense of urgency that is well deserved. As Carney has shied away from showing any real indication of a move on the climate file, Sabia's nomination is good news."
But Mark Winfield, co-chair of York University's Sustainable Energy Initiative, wasn't as confident. "Sabia is likely there to deliver on 'build, build, build'" and an 'all of the above' energy strategy, he wrote in an email, "given the government has had very little to say about low-carbon energy transitions, takes a very broad definition of 'clean' energy to include things like [carbon capture and storage] and nuclear, and has been talking about 'decarbonized' oil."
Whether or not Sabia's arrival in Ottawa becomes a win for Canada's energy transition, it may be Quebec's loss. Sabia's rapid, deep transformation of a mammoth provincial utility's capital plan was "remarkable coming from somebody who had no experience with the electricity sector," Mousseau told The Mix in an email. "His departure will leave a major gap for Hydro-Quebec and its capacity to move forward at the same speed. It is rare that new CEOs take over exactly a previous plan." So Sabia's departure "will likely lead to major delay and possibly transformation of the plan. I doubt very much that the government will be able to find somebody with the same drive as Sabia."
Mousseau added that Sabia spent a lot of time in Quebec listening and building trust with First Nations and "succeeded to a remarkable degree, although not everything is perfect." That observation comes at a time when Indigenous communities elsewhere are already preparing for a fight against many of the "nation-building" projects that provincial governments have put forward as priorities.
Michael Sabia started his career in the public sector and spent years at PCO, CP writes, then served as Canada's deputy finance minister through the pandemic years and the early recovery period. He chaired the board of the Canada Infrastructure Bank from April 2020 to late January 2021.
Sabia headed the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ), Canada's biggest pension fund, for more than a decade before that. He is a former CEO of Bell Canada Enterprises and former chief financial officer of Canadian National Railway.
Sabia was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 2017.
"As Canada's new government moves with focus and determination to build the strongest economy in the G7, bring down costs for Canadians, and keep communities safe, Mr. Sabia will help us deliver on this mandate and our government's disciplined focus on core priorities," Carney said in a media statement.
At a conference in February, Sabia decried what he called Canada's "ambition deficit" and said the country must eliminate regulations that impede foreign investment and find new sources of capital for major projects. Citing the "radical unpredictability" of Donald Trump's tariff war and threats of annexation, he declared: "Trump wants to break our confidence. My response: No way," the Globe recounts. "We cannot wait and let others decide the rules of the game for us."
Segments of this report were first published by The Canadian Press on June 11, 2025.
Source: The Energy Mix
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