Mark Carney/X

By Robert J. Johnston

25 November 2025

Prime Minister Mark Carney has made the accelerated development of major natural resources and infrastructure projects a core part of his government’s economic growth agenda. Since September, a number of nation-building projects have been referred to the Major Projects Office and key “transformative strategies” have been adopted for development.

Projects of national interest are eligible for a fast-track assessment scheduled to take no longer than two years. This process establishing the Major Projects Office and the accelerated/streamlined review process was the result of Bill C-5, the “Building Canada Act” passed in June 2025.

The Major Projects Office itself has a mandate that reads, in part, to “focus on resolving policy challenges, structuring financing, and reducing risks for projects, to fast-track decisions and movement to ensure projects remain competitive from development to operation.”

The major projects policy seeks to accomplish several objectives at once. This is evident in the wide range of criteria that the government has laid out, which range from national security to Indigenous economic development to climate change mitigation.

The burden the projects and their proponents must carry is high — not just economic growth, but also other national interests including reducing dependence on the US, supporting national unity and de-escalating regional tensions, expanding next generation technologies in defence and energy, all while ensuring regional fairness and Indigenous participation.

The actual definition of “national interest” in the Carney policy as such remains a bit murky — allowing for flexibility in project selection but potentially risking a dilution of efforts and effectiveness.

The projects referred to the Major Projects Office so far reflect this broad range of objectives. They include infrastructure, renewable power generation, mining, and liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Some projects are highly bankable with strong, deep-pocketed proponents, such as the LNG Canada II project or the Red Chris copper mine project. Others, such as the Alto Quebec City-Toronto high speed rail line or the Wind West Atlantic Energy offshore wind project are more complex and less advanced, and their referral as “transformational strategies” to the Major Projects Office provides momentum and a vote of confidence from Ottawa.

Other projects support Arctic sovereignty, Indigenous economic development, critical minerals tied to national defence and reduced dependence on China, and in the case of the Ontario small modular reactor, potentially transformational technology.

Project assessment and permitting are only one half of the major projects agenda that is emerging under the Carney government. Access to capital is another challenge for major project development that the Carney government is looking to address.

It is worth flagging that Canada’s major projects policies are developing under the shadow of Donald Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ agenda in the United States.

One school of thought holds that the government needs to just “get out of the way” as there are large pools of private capital just waiting on the sidelines for Canada to make up for lost time by leveraging the new, less prohibitive regulatory environment.

While there is clearly some truth in this, not all projects will be equally attractive to investors. The reality is more about the availability of sub-pools of capital willing to take on a range of risks and timelines in exchange for a commensurate rate of return.

Government regulatory efficiency solves part of the problem, but public-sector capital will also need to step in in cases where risks are too high for private investment (competing in a Chinese-dominated minerals market) or where public sector capital is a catalyst for “first loss” provisions to make subsequent private sector investments less risky.

The 2026 federal budget announced earlier this month both increases the amount of capital available for such investments through programs such as the Canada Growth Fund and Canada Infrastructure Bank. The budget also creates greater alignment between these programs and the Major Projects Office.

It is worth flagging that Canada’s major projects policies are developing under the shadow of Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda in the United States, including the formation of a National Energy Dominance Council, which represents some parallels with the Canadian Major Projects Office.

However, the US version exists within a framework of energy emergency executive orders linked to the need to expand US electricity supply to meet the needs of data centers.

The Trump program is both more muscular and focused than the parallel effort in Canada but lacks legislative underpinning and is vulnerable to having its actions reversed by courts or a future presidential administration.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for the Carney major projects program is that it must confront skepticism from market participants cynical about past regulatory reform efforts on the one hand while managing pressure from those asking for deeper, transformational reform of the Impact Assessment Act put into place under the Trudeau government on the other.

Repeal or deeper reform of the Impact Assessment Act could deliver greater efficiency and predictability, particularly for the projects that don’t make the cut for national interest. Such efforts would likely come at the expense of urgency and speed and focus on getting “big things built, quickly.”

Overall, the major projects list shows great potential in its diversity and breadth of projects – particularly if an expected agreement on a West Coast oil pipeline and parallel commitments to enhanced industrial carbon pricing and large-scale carbon capture is struck between the Prime Minister and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

At the same time, the real work for most of the projects is still to come. Our potential emergence as both a conventional energy and low-carbon energy superpower is yet to be determined.

Robert (‘RJ’) Johnston is Director, Energy and Natural Resources at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy. Previously, RJ was Senior Director of Research at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. He also served as the founder of the Eurasia Group’s Energy, Climate, and Resources practice and was the firm’s CEO from 2013 to 2018. RJ is an independent advisor to the First Nations Climate Initiative and serves as a counselor for the Canada-US Trade Council.