Despite Prime Minister Mark Carney’s assurances that regulatory processes for resource development will be speeded up, there have been few concrete signs of acceleration or simplification.
There has been only one announcement related to the 15 projects assigned to Ottawa’s Major Projects Office (MPO) for fast-tracking: That’s a $2.3-billion Port of Montreal container terminal at Contrecoeur, 40 km northeast of Montreal.
The word came from Prime Minister Mark Carney who said the terminal will get $1.16 billion in financing through the Canada Infrastructure Bank. (And Quebec last year promised $130 million in financial assistance for the project.)
Carney presented the news as evidence of his government’s new fast-track approach to project approvals. But cynics noted that the announcement came from him as his Liberal Party of Canada began a three-day national convention at Montreal — and not from the MPO.
Slow progress on the fast track
Another small step forward recently is the Canada-Alberta agreement that allows Canada to rely on Alberta’s environmental and regulatory system for projects primarily within provincial jurisdiction.
For projects where both federal and provincial assessments are required, Alberta and Canada say they will work together to avoid duplication by coordinating permitting and by jointly reviewing project conditions.
But the heat is still being turned up on the federal government for real regulatory improvement, with calls by, among others, CEO François Poirier of TC Energy.
Poirier says we need major changes to Canada’s regulatory approach, and he says Canada is driving investment away by slowing down big energy projects.
“Capital goes where it is welcome. And for too long, it hasn’t felt welcome here.”
Poirier pointed to the US and Mexico as examples of jurisdictions moving quicker on large infrastructure. He noted that TC Energy’s second natural-gas pipeline from Texas to Mexico went from permitting to in-service in under three years after approval in 2025.
“We began construction eight months after filing permits and reached in-service in under three years for a 700-kilometre subsea pipeline.”
And, he added: “I can assure you that no corners were cut from an environmental standpoint.”
The call for concurrent reviews
Poirier said the Major Projects Office job of accelerating assessments for resource projects is “a step in the right direction,” but said it does not go far enough.
“If we want Canada to compete — and win … we need to act differently, starting now.”
In a Public Policy Forum podcast Poirier added: “When you look at the review process, as it was designed a few years ago, there are a lot of things that happen in serial fashion that could be done concurrently. So you don’t have to skip any steps. There are many steps that we could do at the same time and just improve the timelines.”
And the small-c conservative think-tank of the Fraser Institute is again pushing Ottawa to reduce the red tape of regulatory processes.
The institute said in a newspaper column: “Regulatory uncertainty remains a project killer in Canada.”
It added: “Undue red tape has been a longstanding problem in Canada’s mining and natural resource industries. In fact, according to the Fraser Institute’s latest survey of senior oil and gas company executives in Canada and the United States, 68 per cent of respondents were deterred by uncertainty around environmental regulations in Canada and 54 per were deterred by regulatory duplication and inconsistencies in Canada. . . .
“While Canada has an opportunity to leverage its abundant resources for the benefit of Canadians and others around the world, Ottawa’s onerous, costly and unpredictable policies are in the way.”
The red tape barrier to an energy superpower
Also from the Fraser Institute: “Canada is well positioned to help boost global supply and contribute to global energy security, but it’s unable to secure the investment needed to expand its energy industry. . . . So, how can Canada attract investment and become, in the words of Prime Minister Carney, an energy “superpower’? Simply put, remove bad policy.”
Meanwhile, the federal government says Canada is acting with “speed, scale and purpose” to get minerals from deposit to market.
Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson announced more than $3.6 billion in federal moves aimed at accelerating critical-minerals development,
While Ottawa thus talks of speeding up mining projects and exporting critical minerals, we have seen Canadian mining projects in practice take as long as 14 years to get from proposal to execution. Ottawa’s red tape contributes to such delays.
The gap between political promises and execution
As billed by Prime Minister Carney, the Major Projects Office was set up in 2025 “to get nation-building projects built faster.”
In Carney’s words: “The MPO will accelerate projects by creating a single set of conditions, thereby reducing the approval timeline for projects of national interest to a maximum of two years.”
The MPO reports it has 15 projects on its desk — one of which has already been in the regulatory process for two years. But, as we have pointed out, it has issued not one progress report.
We’re with TC Energy’s François Poirier: It’s time, and beyond time, to reduce the red tape and speed up the regulatory system.
Don MacLachlan is a writer for Resource Works, a non-partisan organization that champions responsible resource development in British Columbia and Canada. Reach him via [email protected]
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