Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said his government would establish a new office to speed up regulatory approvals, enabling the swift authorization of 10 resource projects that have faced delays for years.
Poilievre made the announcement during an April 7 press conference in Terrace, B.C., saying a Tory government would establish a Rapid Resource Project Office to deal with all regulatory approvals, so that businesses would not need to “waste time navigating through dozens of different agencies at three different levels of government.”
Each project would have just one application and one environmental review, and wait times would be reduced to one year maximum with a target of six months, he said, noting that he would “rapidly approve,” 10 “trapped” projects such as the LNG Canada Phase 2, a liquefied natural gas project in northern B.C., which would double liquid natural gas output from 14 million to 28 million tonnes.
“We will get rid of the double process right now where you have to do the exact same environmental review three different times for three different levels of government,” Poilievre said. “We’ll merge them together; one and done.”
Poilievre said he would also approve the Suncor Base Mine Extension in Alberta to increase bitumen production, the Sorel-Tracy Port Terminal in Quebec, the Rock 1 Uranium Mine in Saskatchewan, as well as three projects in Ontario, two projects in Quebec, and one in Newfoundland.
Poilievre noted that under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, during the 2008 Great Recession, the government requested one-page applications and a single environment review for municipal infrastructure projects.
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“We completed 23,500 projects from concept to completion in under two years, and the environment commissioner could not find a single problem with any of them affecting our ecology,” Poilievre said.
Poilievre noted that in 2022, Germany built an LNG import terminal in 178 days—from approval to construction, to reduce its dependence on Russian gas.
“We’re in a parallel universe here, where it takes 14 to 15 years to go through the bureaucracy,” Poilievre said. “In the rest of the world, things are getting done in months, not years, and that’s what we’re going to have to do.”
Approval for Projects
Poilievre has said the rapid approval of major projects would be a priority for his government and has made several related announcements on the campaign trail in recent weeks.
On March 20, he said “Canada Shovel Ready Zones,” would be used to pre-approve permits for major construction and energy projects like LNG plants, power stations, hydro dams, and mines.
The government would identify locations that are appropriate for these projects, and assessments on the impacts to the environment and local populations would be conducted beforehand, he said. An example of this, Poilievre added, includes an LNG project in the Saguenay region in Quebec that was cancelled after being blocked by federal and provincial governments.
Poilievre also made an announcement on March 31 about a pre-approved national energy corridor to allow businesses to build “pipelines, transmission lines, rail lines, and countless other kinds of infrastructure” needed to lessen Canada’s dependence on the United States.
Liberal Leader Mark Carney has pledged to develop a national trade and economic corridor through a “First Mile Fund” that would build transportation networks connecting energy extraction sites to rail lines and roads. He has also floated creating a “One Window” approval process that would streamline approvals for large-scale infrastructure processes.
The Conservatives have also said they would remove the federal emissions cap on the oil and gas sector. Carney has said he would maintain it.
Carney told reporters April 7 that Canada needs to both develop conventional oil resources and have a cap on emissions to allow for a transition to cleaner energy forms.
“We need to get those emissions down,” Carney said at a press conference in Victoria, B.C. “We can get those emissions down with Canadian technology.” He said carbon capture storage projects such as the Pathways Project could be used to accomplish that goal.
