There might be no bigger climate obstacle in Trudeau’s cabinet than Critch’s opponent Seamus O’Regan. A vocal defender of Big Oil, O’Regan’s office is directly responsible for the snail’s pace roll-out of just transition legislation. He formed a secret committee with Big Oil to promote fossil fuel expansion during COVID-19, and in listening to O’Regan, he often seems more like he represents Big Oil and Big Mining than his own constituents. In stark contrast, Critch is the son of a cod fisherman with firsthand experience of a major economic transition. After the 2019 election, he wrote a piece for the CBC in which he said “we can’t pretend climate change isn’t real anymore, and we can’t sit back and not do whatever we can to stop it. That’s going to hit [Alberta] first and hardest. So we need to support you guys, while you start to transition away from the boom days of oil and into whatever kind of economy comes next.”