Building for Tomorrow
Issue #3 | October 2025

Canada is about to enter a new era of nation-building. As Ottawa promises to “build, baby, build,” the provinces line up behind new trade corridors and the private sector awaits new business opportunities. The stakes for Canada’s economic future are high.

Rail lines, airports, ports, roads and pipelines are essential contributors to national prosperity. However, not all infrastructure is created equal and the “how” of project approvals deserves just as much attention as the “what.”

The Building for Tomorrow series tracks, analyzes, explains and critiques the policies, projects and politics shaping Canada’s trade-enabling infrastructure.

The intersection of pipelines and politics

Alberta wasted no time throwing the Major Projects Office (MPO) a curveball, announcing on Oct. 1 its intention to submit a proposal to build a bitumen pipeline from Alberta to B.C.’s northern coast. The province will fund the development of the proposal, with technical support from three major pipeline companies (Enbridge, South Bow and Trans Mountain).

The proposed pipeline submission immediately highlights a few key issues and uncertainties facing the MPO and the wider Building Canada agenda. The pipeline will only be viable if the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, which prohibits oil tankers carrying more than 12,500 metric tonnes of crude from traversing B.C.’s north coast, is repealed. It also theoretically requires agreement from both the Province of British Columbia and numerous First Nations, which may be difficult to come by.

How do political considerations factor into major project approvals?

Relationships between Alberta and the federal government in recent years have been, at times, prickly.

During the Trudeau era, federal policies such as the carbon tax and oil tanker moratorium drew the ire of many Albertans, and electoral math led to many Albertans feeling disenfranchised. Tensions appear to have softened since the election of the Carney government, with Danielle Smith expressing optimism about future Alberta-Ottawa relations, but they could easily ratchet up again.

The outcome of the pipeline proposal may very well set the tone for relations between Alberta and Ottawa until the next federal election.

Is any of this relevant to the Major Projects Office (MPO)? In theory, it shouldn’t be. The MPO’s mandate is to advance major, nation-building, executable projects and to streamline the federal regulatory process to accelerate timelines. No small feat. Their review of projects concerns not whether a project should be built, but how it can be built: from a technical, not a political, standpoint.

In practice, however, the politics seem hard to ignore. In a case like this, can the MPO truly act independently of the prevailing federal will?

Whose job is it to broker agreements on major projects?

According to the MPO website, projects go through the following process:

  1. Projects are submitted.
  2. The MPO conducts an initial assessment of a project’s contribution to national interest factors.
  3. The MPO ensures consultations with Indigenous Peoples, as well as provinces/territories and federal ministers.
  4. The Minister recommends that the project be listed on Schedule 1.
  5. A 30-day notice is posted in the Canada Gazette.
  6. Provinces and territories give written consent to list if a project falls within an area of their exclusive jurisdiction.
  7. The project is added to Schedule 1, granting it up-front federal approvals.

Within this framework, it is the MPO’s job to “ensure consultation.” It is not inherently clear whether this means the MPO champions projects or merely facilitates dialogue between proponents and impacted jurisdictions.

In the case of Alberta’s pending proposal, however, it is difficult to imagine any negotiation between Alberta, B.C. and impacted Indigenous communities that is not spearheaded directly by the federal government. Premier Smith seems to agree, as she has stated that she considers the decision to build the pipeline to sit solely with the Prime Minister.

It is also unclear what level of agreement will be sought regarding major projects that overlap multiple jurisdictions. Under bullet 5, provinces are asked to provide written consent only if a project falls “exclusively” under their jurisdiction. However, Carney has also said that the federal government will not “impose a project on a province” and that “we need consensus.”

If consensus is the name of the game, then the federal government will need to put in a lot of legwork into the pipeline project.

Can the MPO recommend legal changes that are in the national interest?

It seems unlikely that the MPO would reject projects, such as the proposed pipeline, out of hand because they are not feasible under current law, but it also seems unlikely that the MPO will want to recommend legal reform to make a project viable.

One possible scenario is that the MPO will recommend projects for approval only if the necessary laws are changed, without weighing in on whether the laws should be changed.

Streamlining and managing

While the MPO’s mandate is framed around technical assessment, projects of this scale inevitably intersect with broader political and jurisdictional realities. The office’s success will depend not only on how effectively it streamlines processes, but on how deftly it manages the boundaries between policy, politics, and execution.

Each month, Building for Tomorrow explores new developments in trade-enabling infrastructure in Canada, such as the rationale behind national projects, negotiations and agreements between different Canadian jurisdictions and developments in approval processes and policy.

Building for Tomorrow is written by Ryan Workman. If you have any developments you’d like to see featured or topics that you think should be covered, please send them to .

Further reading