Energy
Supreme Court ruling on federal environmental law a step toward brighter industrial future

From the MacDonald Laurier Institute
By Heather Exner-Pirot
Now we need to build: to meet net-zero goals, to supply our allies with energy and critical minerals, to compete with the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, to bolster our anemic economy – take your pick
In a strong rebuke to the federal government, the Supreme Court on Friday issued its long-awaited opinion on the constitutionality of the Impact Assessment Act (IAA). In a 5 to 2 decision, the majority found that the Liberal government’s regulations for major projects such as oil and gas operations and mines violate provincial jurisdiction.
The decision will have lasting impact. It is a piece of cautiously optimistic news for the industry, paving the way for realizing its greatest desire: to move away from concurrent and competing federal and provincial processes for project approval, toward a more efficient principle of one project, one assessment.
There will be immediate impacts, too. It’s hard to see how the Liberal government’s proposed clean electricity regulations and oil and gas emissions cap, which is contentious on similar grounds, can now be seen as constitutional.
In the wake of the decision on Friday, the federal government promised to amend the act. The decision provides good reason for the government to start looking at its other environmental regulations through the same lens.
The IAA, which became law in 2019 after contentious Senate hearings and months of public protests, is unpopular for wholly legitimate reasons. It duplicated and often competed with provincial processes for approving natural resources projects, adding time, money, confusion and risk for companies.
It also politicized the regulatory process, allowing the federal minister of environment and climate change to designate just about any resource project in the country for assessment, and then effectively veto it too. The results, if unchecked: a quiet quitting of investors and proponents who then move their capital to greener, more predictable pastures.
Even before the Supreme Court opinion on the IAA came out, the Liberals had promised to reform it. Friday’s decision gives the government additional impetus to do it properly.
The opportunity in those forthcoming amendments is not for the federal government to take bad, unconstitutional regulatory legislation and turn it into bad, constitutional legislation. The times demand much more. The act reflected an outdated way of thinking that saw the environment and Indigenous peoples as inherently needing to be protected from the provinces and the resource sector. But the world has changed.
Now we need to build: to meet net-zero goals, to supply our allies with energy and critical minerals, to compete with the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, to bolster our anemic economy – take your pick. Where we once applied sticks to major energy and resource projects, we now need to offer carrots. This needs to be reflected in the amendments to the IAA.
In the Liberal government’s news conference responding to the opinion, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson expressed hope that this would be the last time the federal and provincial governments settled their differences in court, saying “Canada works best when Canadians work together.”
Let’s all hope that happens.
A large and critical part of Canada’s economy has found itself in the crosshairs of jurisdictional infighting. It has created polarization and uncertainty, and investors and proponents of projects abhor it. Our country needs and deserves a functional regulatory process – one that doesn’t just prevent bad projects, but advances good ones, too. The Supreme Court’s decision is an opening to create one.
Heather Exner-Pirot is director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
2025 Federal Election
Mark Carney Wants You to Forget He Clearly Opposes the Development and Export of Canada’s Natural Resources

From Energy Now
At COP26, Mark Carney also said that he thinks “we have both far far too many fossil fuels in the world” and “as much as half of oil reserves, proven oil reserves need to stay in the ground” climate goals.
Mark Carney claims that he supports Canada’s oil and gas industry and wants to see Canada export more of our natural resources. But Carney is yet again lying.
If Carney was sincere, he would immediately commit to the full repeal of the Liberals’ C-69, the ‘No More Pipelines’ Act, C-48, the West Coast Tanker Ban, and the production cap. Instead he doubled down on capping Canadian energy production.
But it’s not just that, Mark Carney has a clear history of opposing Canadian energy and infrastructure projects in favour of his radical anti-energy ideology and his goal of shutting down Canadian energy production.
However, while deliberately fighting against Canadian energy, this high flying hypocrite was having his company, Brookfield Asset Management, invest in some of the largest global pipeline projects in Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.
When asked by Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre at an Industry Committee meeting, if he supported Justin Trudeau’s decision to veto the Northern Gateway pipeline, Mark Carney said “given both environmental and commercial reasons … I think it’s the right decision.”
Then, just six months later at COP26, Mark Carney also said that he thinks “we have both far far too many fossil fuels in the world” and “as much as half of oil reserves, proven oil reserves need to stay in the ground” climate goals.
If this wasn’t enough Mark Carney has now teamed up with Trudeau’s radical anti-energy ministers to finish off Canada’s energy sector, a goal that he has outlined while attending a World Economic Forum event in Davos.
Starting with the radical, self-proclaimed socialist, Steven Guilbeault, who’s history of anti-energy and infrastructure policies is all too familiar to Canadians.
Mark Carney has enabled Steven Guilbeault to do even more damage by promoting him to his Quebec Lieutenant, giving him three new ministerial responsibilities so he can continue his climate crusade against Canadian energy and infrastructure projects.
Canadians remember when Guilbeault said that “I disagree with the [Trans Mountain] pipeline” and that “Canada shouldn’t be investing in new infrastructure for fossil fuels.”
They also remember when he proudly proclaimed that “Our government has made the decision to stop investing in new road infrastructure.” All from a minister who shamed Canadians for owning cars.
Then there is the pipeline hating Jonathan Wilkinson, who Carney appointed as Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources. Recently, Wilkinson wrote a scathing letter to Canada’s energy leaders for their opposition to the Carney-Trudeau Liberals production cap on Canadian oil and gas.
Despite Canadian industries being subject to unjustified tariffs from the United States, Jonathan Wilkinson recently told reporters that “Everybody’s sort of running around saying, ‘Oh my God, we need a new pipeline, we need a new pipeline.’ The question is, well, why do we need a new pipeline?”
Finally, there is Carney’s new Minister of Environment and Climate Change Terry Duguid. Duguid has doubled down on Mark Carney’s climate radicalism by stating that “a Mark Carney government will maintain the cap on emissions from the production of oil and gas”.
From 2015 to 2021 Carney-Trudeau environmental and anti-industry policies have cancelled over $176 billion in Canadian energy projects, with many more being cancelled afterwards. That means $176 billion worth of jobs and powerful paycheques have been blocked from Canadians so Mark Carney and his Ministers can impose their radical net zero ideology.
2025 Federal Election
Canada’s pipeline builders ready to get to work

From the Canadian Energy Centre
“We’re focusing on the opportunity that Canada has, perhaps even the obligation”
It was not a call he wanted to make.
In October 2017, Kevin O’Donnell, then chief financial officer of Nisku, Alta.-based Banister Pipelines, got final word that the $16-billion Energy East pipeline was cancelled.
It was his job to pass the news down the line to reach workers who were already in the field.
“We had a crew that was working along the current TC Energy line that was ready for conversion up in Thunder Bay,” said O’Donnell, who is now executive director of the Mississauga, Ont.-based Pipe Line Contractors Association of Canada (PLCAC).
“I took the call, and they said abandon right now. Button up and abandon right now.
“It was truly surreal. It’s tough to tell your foreman, who then tells their lead hands and then you inform the unions that those three or four or five million man-hours that you expected are not going to come to fruition,” he said.

Workers guide a piece of pipe along the Trans Mountain expansion route. Photograph courtesy Trans Mountain Corporation
“They’ve got to find lesser-paying jobs where they’re not honing their craft in the pipeline sector. You’re not making the money; you’re not getting the health and dental coverage that you were getting before.”
O’Donnell estimates that PLCAC represents about 500,000 workers across Canada through the unions it works with.
With the recent completion of the Trans Mountain expansion and Coastal GasLink pipelines – and no big projects like them coming on the books – many are once again out of a job, he said.
It’s frustrating given that this could be what he called a “golden age” for building major energy infrastructure in Canada.
Together, more than 62,000 people were hired to build the Trans Mountain expansion and Coastal GasLink projects, according to company reports.
O’Donnell is particularly interested in a project like Energy East, which would link oil produced in Alberta to consumers in Eastern and Atlantic Canada, then international markets in the offshore beyond.
“I think Energy East or something similar has to happen for millions of reasons,” he said.
“The world’s demanding it. We’ve got the craft [workers], we’ve got the iron ore and we’ve got the steel. We’re talking about a nation where the workers in every province could benefit. They’re ready to build it.”

The “Golden Weld” marked mechanical completion of construction of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project on April 11, 2024. Photo courtesy Trans Mountain Corporation
That eagerness is shared by the Progressive Contractors Association of Canada (PCA), which represents about 170 construction and maintenance employers across the country.
The PCA’s newly launched “Let’s Get Building” advocacy campaign urges all parties in the Canadian federal election run to focus on getting major projects built.
“We’re focusing on the opportunity that Canada has, perhaps even the obligation,” said PCA chief executive Paul de Jong.
“Most of the companies are quite busy irrespective of the pipeline issue right now. But looking at the long term, there’s predictability and long-term strategy that they see missing.”
Top of mind is Ottawa’s Impact Assessment Act (IAA), he said, the federal law that assesses major national projects like pipelines and highways.
In 2023, the Supreme Court of Canada found that the IAA broke the rules of the Canadian constitution.
The court found unconstitutional components including federal overreach into the decision of whether a project requires an impact assessment and whether a project gets final approval to proceed.
Ottawa amended the act in the spring of 2024, but Alberta’s government found the changes didn’t fix the issues and in November launched a new legal challenge against it.
“We’d like to see the next federal administration substantially revisit the Impact Assessment Act,” de Jong said.
“The sooner these nation-building projects get underway, the sooner Canadians reap the rewards through new trading partnerships, good jobs and a more stable economy.”
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