Analysis: Carney's National Projects Bill Can Still Build the Canada We Want

Canada Standard

4 hours ago

During the two-week scramble from the introduction of the Carney government's Building Canada Act (Bill C-5) to its adoption June 20, a parade of expert opinion-from fields as varied as climate, energy, Indigenous rights, environmental assessment, health, and economic development-laid out clear expectations for the Canada the new prime minister should want to build.
And it isn't a country that sidelines Indigenous or other community voices, guts hard-won environmental protections, or pushes the regulatory standards that protect our health and well-being down to the lowest common denominator.
So far, the lion's share of the discussion and speculation around the new government's plans has focused on the pipelines in all directions that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been demanding, and on an economically and technically tenuous carbon capture and storage hub in northern Alberta for which the oil sands industry has spent years demanding massive taxpayer subsidies.
But even some of the biggest pipeline backers are now facing up to at least one of the two biggest obstacles a project would face-the lack of any private sector proponent to get it built, and the strong likelihood that a new pipeline would lose money and ultimately fail financially as the global economy shifts away from fossil fuels. Prime Minister Mark Carney himself warned of that latter risk while he was serving as governor of the Bank of England.
Now, Smith is deploying her government's resources in the hunt for a private sector pipeline builder. British Columbia Premier David Eby declared over the weekend that he wouldn't oppose a new pipeline to his province's environmentally fragile north coast as long as it was backed by private dollars, not public subsidies. There's been no indication so far that Ottawa would funnel taxpayers' dollars into a new pipeline project, and that same reticence might partly explain why negotiations around the Pathways hub have been lagging.
So far, pretty much every move the Carney government has made has been calculated to protect Canada from the threat of annexation by a rampaging dictator in the White House. What isn't clear is whether the PM and his advisors have been hearing or heeding the advice they're receiving on the qualities of a nation worth building.
A day before the House of Commons adopted Bill C-5, with support from the opposition Conservative Party, the Calgary-based Pembina Institute proposed electricity, transportation, a national transit plan, housing and retrofits, a Sustainable Jobs Action Plan, and commitment to Indigenous leadership as the "concrete nation-building focus areas government should advance in this critical time". Pembina said the legislation should be "considered a short-term solution", with a three-year window before the government revisits its approval process in favour of a "thoughtful, strategic, and equitable" approach.
"We support urgently advancing nation-building projects to deliver solutions for Canadians," wrote Executive Director Chris Severson-Baker. But "to qualify for fast-tracking, projects should have a very low risk of becoming stranded assets, catalyze the most private capital, provide the best outcomes for Canadians, and have the most mitigatable environmental and social impacts."
In an opinion piece for The Hill Times on behalf of 10 national environmental organizations, Sandra Schwartz, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, said the new law "is walking backwards into the future if it aims to support an outdated and expensive fossil fuel industry while moving in the direction of more climatic and environmental breakdown. This would leave us open to repeating the grave mistakes of the past, ecological and human disasters such as DDT, leaded gasoline, mercury-poisoned rivers, fisheries collapses, the Sydney tar ponds, numerous mine disasters, and more climate-harming methane and carbon dioxide emissions."
She suggested a menu of nation-building projects that includes:
A modernized, clean east-west electricity grid;
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High-speed rail, beginning with corridors in Alberta and Ontario, built in partnership with Indigenous nations;
Expanding public transit services to rural and remote communities;'
Building "new, energy-efficient homes on a massive scale using durable low-carbon building materials made in Canada, and investing in heat pump manufacturing or assembly plants" to create thousands of new jobs.
"Turning Canada into a renewable energy superpower-not a petrostate-means investing in the solar, wind, geothermal, and storage projects that communities want, located in places that avoid sensitive ecosystems and species and respect the ecological limits of ecosystems already strained by past industrialization" Schwartz wrote. "It means nature-based climate solutions like restoring wetlands, forests, agricultural lands, and peatlands that protect biodiversity while absorbing and trapping carbon."
These are the kinds of projects Canadians want their tax dollars to support," she added: "bold, transformative, and forward-looking."
Ottawa Climate Action Fund Executive Director Cherise Burda pointed to local, distributed energy projects like battery energy storage systems (BESS) as the kind of low-carbon investment opportunities that will deliver the resilience and energy security the country needs. "Federal and provincial governments are laser focused on protecting Canada's sovereignty by positioning the country as an energy superpower," Burda wrote. "And there is no better, quicker, or more affordable way to deliver on that promise than with local projects that supply clean power, maximize energy efficiency, employ local workers, and meet the community's energy needs from the ground up."
[Disclosure: The Energy Mix Publisher Mitchell Beer is a strategic advisor to the Ottawa Climate Action Fund.]
Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, argued that investing in First Nations infrastructure would generate $635 billion in economic output, add $308.9 billion to Canada's GDP, and create 330,000 jobs per year over seven years. Far more important than the dollar figures, "every person in Canada deserves clean water to drink, reliable infrastructure to support their families, and a strong foundation to build a future," Woodhouse Nepinak wrote for the Globe and Mail. "Yet for far too many First Nations, these basic needs remain out of reach owing to generations of underinvestment."
The Pembina Institute's call for a three-year review of the Building Canada Act reflects the reaction from veteran environmental assessment lawyers who are aghast at the protections that are being set aside to enable the projects the federal government might want to fast-track.
Carney and provincial premiers like Ontario's Doug Ford "seem to think that environmental assessment laws governing new pipelines, mines, nuclear power plants, ports, power dams, and transmission lines are no longer needed," wrote Stephen Hazell, a retired environmental lawyer and consultant to several national environmental groups, who else serves on the Energy Mix board of directors, in a scathing opinion piece days after Bill C-5 was introduced.
"Trust us, they say. Give us and the other politicians in our cabinets unfettered discretion to decide in secret which projects are in the national interest, where free-fire special economic zones should be established, and which corporations we should accept as trusted partners in exploiting Canada's natural wealth."
In testimony to the Senate June 17, Associate Professor Martin Olszynski, chair in energy, resources, and sustainability at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law, called the law a "radical departure" and a "staggering power" that even negates the ability of the court system to oversee cabinet decisions.
"Like my colleagues here and most Canadians, I support the advancement of projects in the national interest and, further, would support a law that accelerates their review and enhances regulatory certainty while also upholding rigorous standards of environmental protection," Olszynski said.
"As drafted, however, the Building Canada Act won't accomplish these important goals. First, it goes beyond accelerating processes towards negating existing environmental protections. Second, it circumvents the normal checks and balances that are the hallmarks of functioning democracies. Finally, all of this actually invites uncertainty and delay in the project review process."
A day earlier, West Coast Environmental Law rebranded Bill C-5 as the Anti-Democracy, Nation-Dividing Act. "By sidelining scientific rigour and public oversight of those projects, it could put Canadians at risk while failing to address the immediate needs of Canadians whose employment and cost of living have been impacted by Trump's tariffs," wrote WCEL staff lawyer Anna Johnston, previously one of the key outside legal analysts working on the current federal Impact Assessment Act .
"Bill C-5 throws the precautionary principle and informed, democratic decision-making out the window," Johnston warned. "Particularly if used to fast-track fossil fuel projects, as some premiers have advocated, it would turn Canada's back on the urgency of the climate and nature crises, and the reality of escalating human and financial costs of climate change impacts we all face."
World Wildlife Fund Canada said the government needn't "tear down nature" in the name of building Canada. "From critical minerals mines and oil and gas pipelines to habitat-fragmenting highways and Arctic deep-water ports," WWF said in a release, the federal initiative "risks damaging the nature that is at the core of Canada's economy and identity-threatening the wealth of the nation it is supposed to defend."
The release cited the Canadian Environmental Protection Act , the Fisheries Act , the Species at Risk Act , and the Migratory Birds Convention Act as examples of legislation that could be overridden for projects deemed to be in the national interest, at a time when Canada is already falling behind on its international commitments to biodiversity.
"We understand the need to build infrastructure and support economic growth, particularly considering uncertain geopolitical times. But nature must be part of that future, not a casualty of it. Our wetlands, forests, and grasslands are not obstacles-they are assets," WWF said. "They store carbon, filter water, and act as natural firebreaks. Undermining the laws that protect them risks repeating the mistakes of the past, when unchecked development led to widespread habitat loss, degraded water systems, and long-term costs to both people and wildlife."
On The Hill Times, David Wallis, reforestation policy manager at Nature Canada, warned that the "long-standing Canadian tradition of greenwashing our logging practices" could undercut overseas demand for at least one of the major commodities the government will want to continue exporting as it strives to diversify the country's trading relationships. "It would be a mistake to assume that our allies don't notice what's happening in our forests," Wallis said.
And veteran public health columnist Andre Picard called for a broader definition of nation-building investments that boost Canada's prosperity and economic resilience, while advancing Indigenous interests and meeting climate objectives.
"Let's hope...that this isn't all about pipelines, power plants and other bricks-and-mortar infrastructure projects. Because there's something missing in the selection criteria: Values," he wrote for the Globe. "The most impactful nation-building projects are not things, but ideas-programs that focus on bettering the health of people, both physically and financially."
Picard cited Medicare, Non-Insured Health Benefits for Indigenous peoples, and an international campaign to eradicate HIV/AIDS as areas where Canada can and should lead. "What better nation-building project could there be than bolstering programs that are not only uniquely Canadian but distinguish us clearly from Americans?" Picard asked. "The other component of 'nation building', especially in these patriotic times, should be building pride, not just physical stuff. What makes Canadians most proud is their values-fairness, kindness, generosity, humility." And as Trump's America "slashes its contributions to global health initiatives in an orgy of self-centredness, there is tremendous opportunity for Canada to step up."
Meanwhile, at least one oilpatch observer is questioning whether the Building Canada Act will deliver the results that Smith and fossil industry are looking for. Carney got to push "his cherished Bill C-5" through the House before the summer break, with support from Smith and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, giving the government the power to accelerate its hand-picked nation-building projects, writes Calgary Herald columnist Rick Bell.
"But a big question remains. Did Alberta Premier Danielle Smith get what she wanted? Did Alberta get what it wanted? Unlike Carney, both Smith and Alberta will have to wait for the big win, if there is one."
Bell recounts asking Carney whether a bitumen pipeline to Prince Rupert, B.C. will be one of the first projects Ottawa considers, after Smith lent her support to Bill C-5. "Well, that's a very good question," Carney replied. "It depends. To be perfectly honest, that's the only answer."
The PM referred to a list of possible projects, including transmission lines, oil and gas pipelines, an energy corridor in Nunavut, and projects in Saskatchewan and Manitoba that support critical mineral development. He gave no timeline for selecting the first round of projects, but laid out some of the criteria: "It has to be in the national interest...There has to be some probability they can actually move forward...We have to have the agreement of the Indigenous peoples," and "they also have to be consistent with our climate goals in Canada."
All of which means the current moment of cross-party harmony could be short-lived if Carney doesn't go along with some of the fossil industry's more outlandish demands, like repealing the Impact Assessment Act and eliminating the 2035 target for phasing out sales of new internal combustion vehicles.
"If the kind words from the Carney government ring hollow because there are no [fossil infrastructure] projects in Alberta being fast-tracked, we are right back to Square 1," Devin Dreeshen, Alberta's minister of transportation and economic corridors, told Bell
Source: The Energy Mix