Ottawa’s Commitment to 30 percent Indigenous Stake in Trans Mountain Pipeline Still Awaiting Confirmation.
Indigenous leaders in Western Canada have been waiting for months for confirmation that the federal government will indeed enable Indigenous Peoples to get a 30 percent share in the Trans Mountain oil pipeline system.
That Ottawa has such a share in mind has been confirmed by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. She says Ottawa is looking at possibly offering a loan guarantee to First Nations.
“They wanted to get the Indigenous partners to own 30 per cent. . . . It’s going to be a great source of income for the Indigenous partners.”
With the pipeline system’s capacity set to almost triple through the expansion project known as TMX, the federal government first announced in 2019, its intention to explore the possibility of the economic participation of 129 affected Indigenous Peoples.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland sent Indigenous leaders a letter last August outlining a plan to sell a stake in the pipeline system to eligible communities through a special-purpose vehicle. It said they would not have to risk any of their own money to participate.
But since then Indigenous groups have been awaiting further word from federal authorities on how and when the equity promise will be kept.
All Ottawa has said publicly is this on May 1: “The federal government will launch a divestment process in due course.”
Two key groups have aired proposals for acquiring equity in the oil pipeline:
The Western Indigenous Pipeline Group was formed in 2018 “ to acquire a major stake in Trans Mountain for the benefit of Indigenous communities who live along the pipeline.” It’s been working behind the scenes, and, with Pembina Pipelines Corporation, developed in 2021 the Chinook Pathways operating partnership.
“Chinook Pathways is finance ready. There are no capital contributions required for Indigenous communities. We will structure the transaction so that participating communities will make zero financial contribution.”
Project Reconciliation, also founded in 2018, proposed a ”framework” that would give ownership of the pipeline system to 129 Indigenous Peoples.
“We are poised to facilitate Indigenous ownership of up to 100 percent, fostering economic autonomy and environmental responsibility.”
And: “A portion of revenue generated (portion directed by each Indigenous community) will be used to establish the Indigenous Sovereign Wealth Fund, supporting investment in infrastructure, clean energy projects and renewable technologies.”
A third group, the Alberta-based Iron Coalition, announced interest in TMX in 2019, but apparently dropped out in 2020.
In Alberta, the pipeline system spans the territories of Treaty 6, Treaty 8, and the Métis Nation of Alberta (Zone 4). In British Columbia, the system crosses numerous traditional territories and 15 First Nation reserves.
Commentator Joseph Quesnel writes: “According to Trans Mountain, there have been 73,000 points of contact with Indigenous communities throughout Alberta and British Columbia as the expansion was developed and constructed. . . .
“Beyond formal Indigenous engagement, the project proponent conducted numerous environmental and engineering field studies. These included studies drawing on deep Indigenous input, such as traditional ecological knowledge studies, traditional land use studies, and traditional marine land use studies.”
And Alberta’s Canadian Energy Centre reported: “In addition to $4.9 billion in contracts with Indigenous businesses during construction, the project leaves behind more than $650 million in benefit agreements and $1.2 billion in skills training with Indigenous communities.”
Not all First Nations have been happy with the expansion project.
In 2018, the federal appeal court ruled that Ottawa had failed to consider the concerns of several nations that challenged the project. In 2019, the project was re-approved by Ottawa, and again several nations (including the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh) appealed. That appeal was dismissed in 2020. The nations then went to the Supreme Court of Canada, but it declined to hear the case.
Private company Kinder Morgan originally proposed the expansion project, but when it threatened to back out in 2018, the federal government stepped in and bought the existing pipeline, and the expansion project, for $4.5-billion. Ottawa said it was “a necessary and serious investment in the national interest.”
Ottawa at that time estimated that the total cost of the expansion project would come in around $7.4 billion. But cost overruns have since driven the final price to some $34 billion.
On the other hand, Ernst & Young found that between 2024 and 2043, the expanded Trans Mountain system will pay $3.7 billion in wages, generate $9.2 billion in GDP, and pay $2.8 billion in government taxes.
The TMX expansion twinned the 1953 Trans Mountain pipeline from near Edmonton to Burnaby (1,150 km) and increased the system’s capacity to 890,000 barrels a day from 300,000 barrels a day.
The original pipeline will carry refined products, synthetic crude oils, and light crude oils with the capability for heavy crude oils. The new pipeline will primarily carry heavier oils but can also transport lighter oils.
And the Alberta Energy Regulator says it expects oilsands production to grow by more than 17 per cent by 2033 (increasing to four million barrels a day from 3.4 million in 2023). And it expects global oil prices will continue to rise.
The TMX expansion finally opened and began to fill on May 1 this year.
And, as our CEO Stewart Muir noted, there was a quick reduction of eight cents a litre in gasoline prices for Vancouver due to completion of the project.
From Trans Mountain’s Westridge Marine Terminal at Burnaby, around three million barrels of oil have been shipped to China or India since the TMX expansion opened.
But because the port of Vancouver can handle only smaller Aframax tankers, more than half the oil has first been shipped to California, where it is then transferred to much larger VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) tankers. That makes for a longer but potentially cheaper journey.
At Westridge, because of limited tanker size, cargoes are limited to about 600,000 barrels per Aframax vessel. The largest VLCCs can carry two million barrels of oil. Westridge now can handle 34 Aframax tankers per month.
Some 20 tankers loaded oil there in June, a couple fewer than TMX had hoped for.
“This first month is just shy of the 350,000-400,000 bpd (barrels a day) we expected ahead of the startup,” said shipping analyst Matt Smith. “We are still in the discovery phase, with kinks being ironed out . . . but in the grand scheme of things, this has been a solid start.”
The Dubai Angel became the first Aframax tanker to load at Westridge. It took on 550,000 barrels of Alberta crude in the last week of May, and headed for the port of Zhoushan, China.
Now the Dubai Angel is headed to Burnaby for another load, and is expected to arrive there on July 8.
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Northern Gateway ($7.9 billion), cancelled in 2016
These projects were cancelled due to regulatory challenges, environmental opposition, and shifting political decisions on both sides of the border. This left Canada without key infrastructure to support energy exports.
For years, companies have tried to build the infrastructure needed to move Canadian oil and gas across the country and to sell to global markets. Billions of dollars have been invested in projects that never materialized, stuck in regulatory limbo, weighed down by delays, or cancelled altogether.
The urgency of this issue is growing.
Last week, 14 CEOs from Canada’s largest pipeline and energy companies issued an open letter urging federal leaders from all parties to streamline regulations and establish energy corridors, warning that delays and policy uncertainty are driving away investment and weakening Canada’s position in global energy markets.
The U.S. recently imposed tariffs on Canadian energy, adding new pressure to an already lopsided trade relationship. According to the 2024-2025 Energy Fact Book from Natural Resources Canada, the U.S. accounted for 89% of Canada’s energy exports by value, totalling $177.3 billion. This leaves the economy vulnerable to shifts in American policy. Expanding access to other buyers, such as Japan, Germany, and Greece, would help stabilize and grow the economy, support jobs, and reduce reliance on a single trading partner.
At the heart of this challenge is infrastructure.
Without reliable, efficient ways to move energy, Canada’s ability to compete is limited. Our existing pipelines run north-south, primarily serving the U.S., but we lack the east-west capacity needed to supply our own country and to diversify exports. Energy corridors (pre-approved routes for major projects) would ensure critical infrastructure is built fast, helping Canada generate revenue from its own resources while lowering costs and attracting investment.
This matters for affordability and reliability.
Our research shows engaged women are paying close attention to how energy policies affect their daily lives — 85 per cent say energy costs impact their standard of living, and 77 per cent support the development and export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to help provide energy security and to generate revenue for Canada.
With increasing concern over household expenses, food prices, and economic uncertainty, energy corridors have become part of the conversation about ensuring long-term prosperity.
What are energy corridors, and why do they matter?
Energy corridors are designated routes for energy infrastructure such as pipelines, power lines, and transmission projects. With an energy corridor, environmental assessments and stakeholder consultations are completed in advance, allowing development to proceed without ongoing regulatory hurdles which can become costly and time consuming. This provides certainty for energy projects, reducing delays, lowering costs, and encouraging investment. They are also not a new concept and are applied in other parts of the world including the U.S.
In Canada, however, this isn’t happening.
Instead, each project must go through an extensive regulatory process, even if similar projects have already been approved. Energy companies spend years trying to secure approvals that don’t come to fruition in a reasonable time and as a result projects are cancelled due to sky-rocketing costs.
“Getting regulatory approval for energy transportation projects in Canada takes so long that investors are increasingly looking elsewhere,” said Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the Montreal Economic Institute. “Energy corridors could help streamline the process and bring back much-needed investment to our energy industry.”
Jackie Forrest, executive director at the ARC Energy Research Institute, pointed out that the time it takes to get projects approved is a major factor in driving investment away from Canada to other countries.
“Projects are taking five or more years to go through their regulatory review process, spending hundreds of millions if not a billion dollars to do things like environmental assessments and studies that sometimes need to be carried out over numerous seasons,” she said.
The cost of missed projects
Over the past decade, multiple major energy projects in Canada have been cancelled or abandoned. Among them:
Keystone XL ($8 billion), cancelled in 2021
Energy East ($15.7 billion), cancelled in 2017
Northern Gateway ($7.9 billion), cancelled in 2016
These projects were cancelled due to regulatory challenges, environmental opposition, and shifting political decisions on both sides of the border. This left Canada without key infrastructure to support energy exports.
LNG projects have faced similar setbacks. More than a dozen LNG export proposals were once on the table, but these same issues made most of these projects not viable.
Meanwhile, the United States rapidly expanded its LNG sector, now exporting far more than Canada, capturing global markets that Canada could have served.
“Ten to 15 years ago, there were about as many LNG projects proposed in Canada as in the U.S.,” said Forrest. “We have not been able to get those projects going. The first Canadian project is just starting up now, while the Americans are already shipping out far more.”
She cited a report that shows LNG development in the U.S. has added $408 billion to GDP since 2016 and created 270,000 direct jobs.
“That’s a major economic impact,” she said. “And Canada hasn’t been able to take part in it.”
The case for energy corridors: Creating prosperity, keeping costs in check
Energy corridors could help Canada build long-term prosperity while addressing affordability, job creation, and energy reliability.
“More efficient infrastructure reduces supply chain delays, helping to lower consumer energy costs and related expenses like food and transportation,” said Wittevrongel.
Wittevrongel notes that projects that cross provincial borders face both provincial and federal impact assessments which leads to duplication of effort and delays. Reducing this overlap would shorten approval timelines and provide more certainty for investors.
“One of the ways to improve this process is having the federal government recognize provincial environmental assessments as being good enough,” she said. “There has to be a way to balance that.”
Forrest said investors have already taken note of Canada’s high project costs and long approval timelines.
“TC Energy just built a pipeline to connect the BC gas fields with the West Coast that cost about twice as much as originally expected and took a lot longer,” she said. “Meanwhile, they recently completed a $4.5-billion natural gas project in Mexico under budget and ahead of schedule. Now they’re looking at where to put their next investment.”
Forrest explained that energy corridors could help de-risk infrastructure projects by front-loading environmental and stakeholder work.
“If we just had a pre-approved corridor for things like pipelines and transmission lines to go through, where a lot of this groundwork had already been done, it would really reduce the timeline to get to construction and reduce the risk,” she said. “That would hopefully get a lot more capital spent more quickly in this country.”
The path forward
Without changes, investment will continue to flow elsewhere.
“Energy corridors can go a long way to restoring Canada’s attractiveness for energy transportation and infrastructure projects as it cuts down on the lengthy bureaucratic requirements,” said Wittevrongel.
And Forrest agrees.
“We need to pick key projects that are going to be important to the sovereignty and economic future of Canada and get them done,” Forrest said. “I don’t think we can wait for long-term legislative reform — we need to look at what the Americans are doing and do something similar here.”
Energy corridors are about ensuring Canada remains competitive, lowering costs for consumers, and creating the infrastructure needed to support long-term economic prosperity.
For engaged women, this translates into a stronger economy, lower costs, and more reliable energy for their families.
“The two areas that this will be felt for every family are in lower energy costs and also in lower grocery or food prices as transportation of these things becomes easier on rail, or exporting grain reduces the price, for instance, ” said Wittevrongel.
Whether policymakers take action remains to be seen, but with growing trade pressures and investment uncertainty, the conversation around energy corridors is needed now more than ever.
A majority of Americans say it is more important for the U.S. to establish energy independence than to fight climate change, according to new polling.
The poll from Napolitan News Service of 1,000 registered voters shows that 57% of voters say making America energy independent is more important than fighting climate change, while 39% feel the opposite and 4% are unsure.
Those surveyed also were asked: Which is more important, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change, or keeping the price of cars low enough for families to afford them?
Half of voters (50%) said keeping the price of cars low was more important to them than reducing emissions, while 43% said emissions reductions were more important than the price of buying a car.
When asked, “Which is more important, reducing greenhouse gas emissions or reducing the cost and improving the reliability of electricity and gas for American families?”, 59% said reducing the cost and increasing the reliability was more important compared to 35% who said reducing emissions was more important.
The survey was conducted online by pollster Scott Rasmussen on March 18-19. Field work was conducted by RMG Research. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points
Dan McCaleb is the executive editor of The Center Square. He welcomes your comments. Contact Dan at [email protected].
