The federal government will table a bill outlining the criteria for determining which projects are in the national interest and fast track them accordingly, the Canadian Press reported last week.
“The point is to build the certainty, the stability and the ambition that builders need to catalyse enormous investment — investment to make Canada into an energy superpower,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said at a news conference following his meeting with provincial and territorial leaders on June 2 in Saskatoon.
No decisions have been announced on what projects will be prioritized, but Carney named some options, including the Pathways Alliance carbon capture and storage project in Alberta’s oilsands, Ontario’s Ring of Fire mining projects and an all-weather road (the Grays Bay Road and Port) which would connect southern Canada to the Arctic coast.
Every group, party and politician has their own vision of what a nation-building project is, or what makes a project “in the national interest.”
NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice pointed out that the Liberals evoked the “national interest” to justify the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, despite the concerns of Indigenous rights holders and the risk to coastal communities, marine life and the environment.
“This pipeline has cost Canadians $34 billion — and counting. How can that possibly be in the national interest?” said Boulerice, the NDP’s environment and climate change critic, in an emailed statement to Canada’s National Observer. “We must not repeat such a costly and harmful mistake.”
Boulerice said “upholding the rights of Indigenous Peoples is integral to the national interest” and his party “stands firmly” for free, prior and informed consent and the full implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Rachel Doran, executive director of Clean Energy Canada, wouldn’t comment on specific projects on the table, but said projects that are aligned with net-zero emissions tend to meet the priorities Carney set out in his mandate letter.
To Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, what makes a project in the “national interest” is obvious: a clean, national electricity grid.
“That's a true nation-building project,” May said. “It integrates our connectivity, it ramps up climate action. It does require cooperation. It means taking down the barriers that exist between provinces and their willingness to wheel renewable electricity from one province into another.”
She said not only would greater integration help get provinces and territories off fossil fuels and reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, it would also give Canadians access to the cheapest energy and a lower cost of living.
“A nation-building project is one that you don't regret 20 or 30 years later because you've guessed the wrong way and you condemned a future generation to an unlivable world,” May said in a phone interview with Canada’s National Observer.
The federal government’s criteria will be revealed when the legislation is tabled, but former clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick said there’s no sense trying to “over-define or over-specify” the term, because what’s in the “national interest” is subjective and “it'll end up being whatever governments agree to.”
Projects such as port expansion, for example, have a very straightforward argument for being in the national interest because of the ripple effects on goods, trade and jobs, he said. Similar arguments can be made for energy projects, like an east-west electricity grid, Wernick added.
“Stephen Harper felt that Keystone XL was in the national interest,” Wernick said. The controversial pipeline was ultimately scrapped in 2021 after former US President Joe Biden revoked a permit needed for it to go forward.
Another example is the Gordie Howe Bridge in Windsor, Ontario.
“It was deemed to be so important to the economy of Ontario that the Canadian government decided to pay for the entire bridge,” Wernick said, noting the importance of the auto trade between Canada and the US was a key reason.
“In the national interest” was also the language used to describe the Trans Canada Highway and the St Lawrence Seaway when they were built, he added.
“I'm sure good old John A Macdonald said ‘national interest’ in talking about the [Canadian Pacific Railway],” Wernick said.
Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
Comments
Good choices.
Remind me why Canada needs to be a superpower in fossil fuels.
Remind me why Canada needs to be super-emitter of greenhouse gases and fossil fuel pollutants.
Remind me why we need to devastate our backyard.
None of this makes sense.
Alberta Premier Smith is talking up a "grand bargain" between Ottawa and Alberta.
In return for taxpayer-funded carbon capture (CCS) in the oilsands, the O&G industry gets new pipeline(s).
I hope The Observer will put their best journalist on this story.
Deconstruct Smith's "grand bargain".
Well said.
The named projects ignore food security and human security (health, education, basic income), to name a few aspects that are missing, including the care economy.
So far, it seems that we are doubling down on neoliberalism, when what we need to do is break free.
Which companies will own the mines in the Ring of Fire? Will the prospective pipeline be owned by Canada for Canadians? or, as usual, will profits go off shore.
I see no imagination in the new government's idea of nation building.
Very disappointing.
You can probably excuse an economist who donned a political hat for the first time of caving even part of the way to the clarion call of appeasement. But you certainly cannot excuse a politician with decades as a climate-aware economist for putting taxpayers at risk with oil and gas expansion that has a financial foundation of mud and absolutely no grounding in climate science.