Carney recommends 7 major projects for approval, including in Nunavut and Yukon
PM says projects getting the green light will help Canada become an energy superpower
Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday announced seven more initiatives he’s recommending for fast-tracked approval by the government’s Major Projects Office (MPO) — including multibillion-dollar energy and natural resources proposals that Ottawa hopes will deliver a jolt to the tariff-hit economy.
Carney said this latest round of projects will help the country become more economically self-sufficient, in the face of U.S. aggression, and a powerhouse player in high-demand critical minerals.
The seven initiatives, combined with the five Carney recommended for approval in September, are worth a combined $116 billion to the economy, according to government figures.
Carney said each of the projects are “transformational” and will help Canada realize its “full potential as an energy superpower” while creating new economic and trade corridors to steer the country away from the U.S.
“Many of Canada’s strengths — based on close trade ties with the U.S. — have become our vulnerabilities,” Carney said. “With the world changing rapidly, Canada must change our economic strategy dramatically.”
The MPO, created by Carney’s government this summer, will help shepherd the projects across the finish line, said Dawn Farrell, the federal body’s president and CEO.
The MPO team will streamline the environmental assessment and approvals process, help proponents with the necessary Indigenous consultations, work to attract investor dollars to get these projects through to completion and co-ordinate labour supply, among other tasks, which will vary from project to project, Farrell said.
Here are the six projects and one concept being referred to the MPO:
- The Sisson Mine, for critical minerals, in New Brunswick.
- The Crawford Nickel project in Ontario.
- The Ksi Lisims liquefied natural gas project in British Columbia.
- An Iqaluit hydro project.
- The Nouveau Monde Graphite Phase 2 project in Quebec.
- The Northwest Critical Conservation Corridor in northwest B.C. and Yukon., which could include critical minerals and clean power transmission developments in the area.
- The North Coast Transmission Line in northwest B.C.
Looking into the projects
The transmission line in B.C. is designed to deliver low-cost, clean electricity and better telecommunications to communities along the West Coast. It also includes a possible B.C.-Yukon link, to connect that territory to the larger Canadian electricity grid.
The Canadian Infrastructure Bank will loan B.C. Hydro, the line’s proponent, some $139 million to help get the project built.
That transmission line will also be used to deliver electricity to Ksi Lisims LNG on Pearse Island, B.C., an Indigenous-led $30-billion liquified natural gas (LNG) facility.
That project, which is being co-developed by the Nisga’a Nation, will produce some 12 million tonnes of LNG per year to be shipped to clients mostly in Asia.
Ksi Lisims LNG, along with previously approved LNG Canada phase 2 expansion in Kitimat, B.C., is part of the federal government’s plan — with support from the B.C. NDP — to turbocharge LNG development given strong demand from clients overseas for the fossil fuel.
The proponents, which include the Nisga’a’s U.S.-based partner Western LNG, say the project will employ about 800 construction workers and roughly 350 personnel when operational while also contributing about $3 billion to the economy.
They also maintain the project will be cleaner than other liquefaction plants elsewhere because it will be largely powered by hydro-electricity — allowing it to be net-zero by 2030.
Still, environmentalists panned Carney’s decision to back this project. Environmental Defence called it a “harmful and unnecessary project” that has not earned the consent of some of other Indigenous peoples in the area. The David Suzuki Foundation said LNG facilities like this one “fuels the climate crisis.”
Among the other projects moving to the MPO is Canada Nickel’s Crawford Project in Timmins, Ont., a new mine that will produce some 240,000 tonnes of ore per day, integral to making batteries and steel.
The mine, which the Ontario government recommended Carney put on his list, sits on one of the largest nickel reserves in the world.
It will be cleaner than other projects like it — the projected emissions are 90 per cent below the global average — and it’s expected to create “4,000 new careers,” according to a government backgrounder.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford welcomed Ottawa’s decision to fast-track the project — the mine is still only in the early stages of the federal approvals process so the MPO could help it along — but said the federal government still needs to do more to clear the way for other development.
“It’s great that they’re doing the Crawford nickel project,” Ford said, “but let’s get out of our way on everything else. Let’s get out of our way when it comes to the Ring of Fire, make sure we have one project, one process until we don’t have duplication from the federal government.”
Farrell told reporters in Terrace, B.C., that’s exactly what the MPO hopes to achieve.
“For projects like Crawford, we’re working to come up with processes where we can run all the permitting in parallel, so that we’re not doing it sequentially,” she said.
National interest designation not yet assigned to projects
So far, none of the announced projects have received a national interest designation under Carney’s C-5 legislation, which would give it special treatment — such as exemptions from certain environmental laws — to help it move forward. Those include the Fisheries Act, the Species At Risk Act and the Impact Assessment Act.
But Canada Nickel’s CEO, Mark Selby, said just referring his mine to the MPO “puts us in the fast lane.”
“We probably won’t be designated, we’ll be just referred, and work through the permitting process, but it should put us at the front of the line to work through specific permits and issues that may come up,” he said.
Another initiative, Nouveau Monde Graphite’s Matawinie Mine, in Saint-Michel-des-Saints, Que., is a $1.8-billion graphite mine that will provide important inputs for defence applications and battery supply chains.
There’s also Northcliff Resources’ Sisson Mine in Sisson Brook, N.B., which will produce tungsten, a critical mineral essential for high-strength steel production, defence and industrial applications.
The Iqaluit Nukkiksautiit Project will be Nunavut’s first entirely Inuit-owned hydro energy project, meant to replace the territory’s reliance on 15 million litres of imported diesel each year, much of it from the U.S.
The Northwest Critical Conservation Corridor, meanwhile, is not a specific project but is nonetheless being referred to the MPO because the government wants it to explore the corridor’s potential for economic development given the huge deposits of critical minerals in the area.
Just more bureaucracy, Poilievre says
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Canada’s permitting process is “uncompetitive,” with mines and LNG plants taking years, sometimes decades, to build because of a tangle of red tape — and Carney’s stated commitment to fast-track development won’t help.
“Mark Carney’s solution? Add another bureaucracy. He’s created yet another bureaucracy, a new bureaucratic hurdle for miners and oil and gas enterprises and other resource companies to jump through in order to get anything approved,” Poilievre told reporters in Kelowna, B.C.
“And yet again, today, instead of getting things done, Mark Carney was standing up doing photo ops announcing that he’s going to approve a bunch of projects that were already going to happen,” he said.
Related stories from around the North:
Canada: Federal budget delivers $1B Arctic Infrastructure Fund, though future of some social programs unclear, CBC News
Norway: Norway, UK team up to protect subsea infrastructure against Russian hybrid attacks, The Independent Barents Observer
Russia: Putin in Arkhangelsk: Arctic industry and infrastructure on agenda, The Independent Barents Observer
