CANADA’S INFRASTRUCTURE SELECTION CRITERIA – Deciphering the RHETORIC

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

On June 6, 2025 the Mark Carney government introduced into Parliament Bill C-5, An Act to enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act. The Building Canada Act is intended to accelerate the review and approval of “nation-building projects”. The Prime Minister has stated that his government will do everything to pass the legislation before Parliament rises for the summer, now scheduled for June 20, 2025.

Section 6 of the Act lists the factors, or criteria, that the Governor in Council may consider in deciding whether to designate a project as one to be accelerated. The Act makes clear that the Governor in Council, while considering the selection of “nation-building” projects, may “consider any factor that the Governor in Council considers relevant”. In addition, it is to be guided by the extent to which the project will:

• Strengthen Canada’s autonomy, resilience, and security;
• Provide economic or other benefits to Canada;
• Have a high likelihood of successful execution;
• Advance the interests of indigenous peoples; and
• Contribute to clean growth and to meeting Canada’s objectives with respect to climate change.

The wording of the Act thus leaves one confused as to how the Minister responsible (unnamed in the Act) and Cabinet will use the stated criteria. I offer here some comments on whether the criteria of “national interest” can be usefully applied.

Autonomy is the right or condition of self-government. In Canada’s case, that right and condition is already assured. The criterium is meaningless as a standard against which to select infrastructure options.

Resilience means the capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties. While the criterium is potentially useful and applicable, there are relatively few infrastructure projects that can accurately be described as improving resilience.

Security is generally understood as the state of being free from danger, harm, or threat. It can refer to various aspects, including personal safety, protection of property, information, and even financial stability.  There are today two significant threats to Canada’s energy security. The first is the possibility that the State of Michigan, driven by exaggerated environmentalist claims that the Enbridge Line 5 poses serious risks of catastrophic oil spills, might succeed in shutting down the pipeline. If this happened, it could deprive Ontario and parts of Quebec with critically-needed crude oil and refined products supplies. The infrastructure solution to that would be a new pipeline from Alberta to Ontario north of the Great Lakes. The second security threat is that the increased reliance on wind and solar energy (i.e. interruptible electricity generation sources) will unduly increase electricity costs and blackout risks. The infrastructure solutions to this range from the construction of extraordinarily expensive (and potentially fire-prone) bulk electricity storage to more affordable reliance on new natural gas generation plants to provide backup supplies. Investing billions of dollars on pipeline infrastructure to reduce or eliminate Canada’s oil imports would make a negligible impact on energy security.

Provide Economic or Other Benefits to Canada

There are few, if any, projects that would properly be described as not meeting this criterium.

Have a High Likelihood of Successful Execution

The new federal agency reportedly will assess this. If the approach resembles that used today under the Impact Assessment Act, there probably will be at least two stages, one at which approval in principle will be given and one in which the project will enter the “fast track/subsidy” stage. It is not clear how this will work in practice. The criterium is reasonable but judging it may be more subjective than people expect.

Advance the Interests of Indigenous People

The criteria can mean almost anything. One can expect that indigenous groups will lobby hard to amend the Bill to more closely resemble the more restrictive criterium as stated by First Ministers.

Contribute to clean growth and to meeting Canada’s objectives with respect to climate change

Similarly, “meeting Canada’s objectives with respect to climate change” is a vague and ambiguous criterium. Canada’s objectives can be stated as meeting a series of arbitrary targets for emissions reductions. As none of these has ever been met in the past, the public can rightly view this as a statement of aspirations that will never be met and that does not, in any practical way, reduce Canada’s options. Alternatively, Canada’s objectives with respect to climate change may be viewed as absolutely requiring the attainment of Net-Zero emissions by 2050 at any cost. Applying the latter definition to the selection of infrastructure projects to be facilitated in Canada would automatically rule out all hydrocarbons exploration, development, processing, and transportation projects. The one exception would be the projects that Prime Minister Carney has dubiously categorized as “decarbonized oil and gas”. This, one assumes, includes oil and gas for which the carbon dioxide produced in their production has been offset by expensive carbon dioxide capture and underground storage projects and/or by the purchase of carbon credits.

In my view, the criteria, or “factors”, that the federal government plans to use in selecting “projects of national importance” are neither objective nor disciplined; they are often ambiguous, and they leave the door wide open to choices that are mostly political.