Canada has access to all main sources of energy including oil and gas, coal, hydropower, biomass, solar, geothermal, wind, marine and nuclear. It is the world's second largest producer of uranium, third largest producer of hydro-electricity, fourth largest natural gas producer, and the fifth largest producer of crude oil. In 2023, only Russia, China, the United States and Saudi Arabia produced more total energy than Canada.

The United States is Canada's major trade market for energy products and services. Canada sent around 98% of its total energy exports to the United States in 2015, meaning that Canada is the largest supplier of energy exports to the world's largest economy by nominal GDP. Canada also exports significant amounts of uranium and coal to Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Canada is a net exporter of energy products. In 2024, Canada exported $199.1 billion of energy products and imported $57.9 billion for a net of $141.2 billion of exports

Canada has a robust energy profile with abundant and diverse resources. The energy and climate policies in Canada are interrelated. These energy and climate policies are implemented at both the federal and provincial government level. The federal government is responsible for establishing objectives for the entire country and the provincial governments are responsible for enforcing these objectives and developing the methods to achieve these goals. In 2015, the federal and provincial governments created a national agreement for cooperating in boosting the nation's energy industry while transitioning to a low-carbon economy. Provincial governments are developing their own strategies in order to reach the national goals. In 2016, Prince Edward Island Strategy became one of the first provinces to develop their own strategies in response to the federal agreement goals.

"Canada has been dependent on energy imports largely because of the great distances separating indigenous sources of supply from markets. It is therefore primarily as a result of geography, rather than geology, that questions concerning the importation, export and particularly the transportation of energy have preoccupied energy policymakers."

— François Bregha, Energy Policy. (1999)

Aspects of Canada's "unique" political and economic reality affect its federal energy strategies. Canada has "significant resources of conventional and unconventional oil, natural gas and hydroelectricity" and has become "one of the world’s largest energy producers." According to a 2015 Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI), the "design and structure" of Canadian federalism has resulted in an "unwillingness of the federal government to commit to a national vision in most resource issues for fear of risking political capital in debates with those provinces who resist cooperative resource development." Canada was one of the few OECD countries that did not have a national energy policy. The authors of the 2003 publication, Power Switch: Energy Regulatory Governance in the 21st Century, wrote that "Canada has one of the most divided and decentralized constitutional arrangements for energy among Western industrialized countries."

Since 1867, the rules of Canadian federalism ensure that "individual provinces own, market and control energy exports" of energy resources contained within their own provincial borders. The federal government has the responsibility over infrastructure between provinces, which includes pipelines.