Ottawa tabling bill to skirt impact assessment law for ‘national interest’ projects

Prime Minister Mark Carney arrives to Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, May 28, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

OTTAWA — The federal government is developing a “national interest” bill to fast-track nation-building projects with a streamlined regulatory approval process as a substitute for reviews under the Impact Assessment Act.

A briefing document obtained by The Canadian Press indicates the legislation would lay out the criteria to decide if a project is in the national interest. Once that’s decided, a single federal minister would be named to oversee a review process laying out how the project can be built.

The document, dated May 23, was prepared for consultations between the Privy Council Office, or PCO, and provinces, territories, and Indigenous partners on the government’s major projects strategy.

PCO officials met with those partners as recently as Wednesday night to go over the proposal. It’s expected to be a topic of conversation at the upcoming first ministers meeting in Saskatoon on June 2.

Prime Minister Mark Carney campaigned on a promise to push big projects forward swiftly as Canada seeks to decouple its economy from an increasingly unpredictable and unreliable United States and turn itself into an energy superpower.

He announced the plan after meeting with Canada’s premiers two days before the election was called before making it the keystone of his election platform.

“We are going to build, baby, build,” Carney said in his victory speech after Canadians elected his Liberal party to a fourth consecutive mandate on April 28.

The document, identified as a “background” paper on “National Interest Legislation,” says U.S. tariffs and “other trade-distorting policies have put Canada’s economic future at risk.”

It then outlines the steps the government is planning to hasten the approval process for a “small number” of major projects.

Part of the plan involves drafting criteria to decide whether a project is in the national interest.

Those criteria could include “whether a project will make an exceptional contribution to Canada’s prosperity, advances economic security, defence security and national autonomy through improved movement of goods, services and people,” the document says.

“Projects should strengthen access of Canadian resource, goods and services to a diverse group of reliable trade partners,” it says.

Projects would also be assessed against Indigenous and provincial and territorial interests and on their “clean growth potential,” according to the document.

“Once a project is determined to be in the national interest, federal reviews will shift from ‘whether’ to build these projects to ‘how’ to best advance them,” the document reads.

“It will streamline multiple decision points for federal approval and minimize the risk of not securing project approval following extensive project work.”

The aim, according to the document, is to build more flexibility into the regulatory process and allow the government to decide that all federal regulatory requirements have been satisfied through a regulatory order. A designated minister would also have the power to impose conditions on those projects.

“The order would effectively substitute the determination for ‘downstream’ decisions about whether the project can proceed, including decisions under the Impact Assessment Act,” the document says.

That would effectively circumvent C-69, the Impact Assessment Act. Conservative critics have claimed it has prevented projects from being built.

The document says the intent is to “send a clear signal early that will build investor confidence” and get projects built faster.

The proposed legislation would not cover decisions made by arm’s length authorities or regulators, federal-provincial entities or treaty-based processes in the North, the document says. It also commits to upholding Canada’s obligations under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The document also indicates the government may have further plans for speeding up major projects — it refers to “broader reform” required to get all projects down to a two-year decision timeline.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 29, 2025

Nick Murray, The Canadian Press