How do regional differences in fossil fuel dependence shape media coverage of climate change in Canada?
Presented at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA), Ottawa, June 2-4, 2026. This study uses the CCF Database (266,271 articles from 20 Canadian newspapers, 1978-2024) and draws from it a regional subset of 142,974 articles from 17 regional outlets over the 2005-2023 period to examine how regional differences in fossil fuel dependence shape climate change coverage in the Canadian press, using BERT-trained classifiers.
Three regional regimes
Quebec papers frame climate action with the lowest cost framing in the country (25.9%) and the lowest share of science skepticism (4.8%). The Prairies (AB, SK, MB) sit at the opposite end, with the highest cost framing (46.5% in Saskatchewan, 41.9% in Alberta) and the highest skepticism (13.7% in SK, 13.1% in MB, 12.1% in AB).
Fossil fuel alignment
Provinces with hybrid energy economies (BC, ON, NB, NS, NL, YK) track the Prairies more closely than Quebec on cost framing and science skepticism. The pattern is stable across two decades and survives statistical tests (Kruskal-Wallis H = 3,857.7 on cost framing, p < 0.001).
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Code and data
All code, data, and methodology are open source.