September 20, 2026
For Prime Minister Mark Carney, the past week has been a period of diplomatic triumph on behalf of Canada. Carney's visit to Europe culminated in an offer of 'associate' member status with the European Union from EU Commission Chair Ursula Von der Leyen. Although the meaning of such status is undefined, these events seemed to give substance to the Prime Minister's efforts to build alliances and partnerships beyond the increasingly unreliable and unpredictable United States of President Trump.
The situation on the domestic economic and environmental fronts seems headed into more complicated and controversial territory. In its efforts to expand Canada's economic relationships, the government hosted an 'investment summit' intended to draw international capital to Canada. The summit featured a prospectus that has been summarized as a mix of 167 "Legit Projects, Major Landmines, Epic Head-Scratchers," and "carbon bombs."
But the message underlying the summit was clear - that Canada was 'open for business,' offering stability and regulatory 'certainty' around federal approvals for any projects that participants might choose to invest in. The meaning of that certainty has became more clear in statements by the Prime Minister and other ministers in the days leading up to the reconvening of Parliament this week.
The government has been indicating its intention to introduce new legislation, following on from the June 2025's Bill C-5 - the Building Canada Act, to further 'streamline' the approvals process for projects, promising "one project, one review, one year 'one-process" approvals. Bill C-5 permits the cabinet to designate projects to be of "national interest" and to then exempt them the requirements from a range of environmental, energy-related and other legislation.
For emphasis the legislation includes an extraordinary provision stating that "Every determination and finding that has to be made and every opinion that has to be formed in order for an authorization to be granted in respect of a national interest project is deemed to be made or formed, as the case may be, in favour of permitting the project to be carried out in whole or in part."(Part II s.6(1)), The effective result of this provision would be that even when federal officials or agencies find that a potential project may do serious harm to the environment, or pose risks or dangers to the health and safety of Canadians, it is to be approved anyway.
The government now appears to be contemplating further legislation to extend the C-5 model to all proposed projects, not just those designated as being of national interest. In effect, the government seems to be prepared to declare that there are no rules with respect to the environment, health, safety, or anything else within the federal jurisdiction that cannot be modified or completely set aside in or order to attract 'investment' to Canada, and facilitate rapid project approvals.
The government is already engaged in a de facto repeal of the 2019 federal Impact Assessment Act, dealing with the review of projects that may have major environmental impacts. That process has been taking place through a combination of a series of outright exemptions, most recently in relation to fossil fuel related infrastructures and projects, potential Bill C-5 national interest designations, and federal-provincial agreements either deferring to provincial assessment processes, or substituting them for federal processes altogether. In the result, Canada seems to be on track, for the first time in more than half a century, to have no meaningful impact assessment process for federally initiated, sponsored or regulated projects.
The roots of the federal strategy seem to lie in a nostalgia for an earlier, mythical age of prosperity, economic development and 'abundance' facilitated to by the absence of rules related to the environment, and public health and safety, concerns like climate change, or inconvenient obstructions like Indigenous Peoples seeking to defend their rights and interests. Indeed, glowing comparisons are being drawn between Prime Minister Carney and post-war Minister of Industry C.D. Howe.
The reality is that the economic challenges facing Canada now are far more complex than those of the immediate post-war period. And it is important to recall that the regulatory regimes that the government proposes to dismantle, evolved precisely in response to the environmental, health and safety consequences of wartime and the immediate post-war boom in extractive and industrial activities.
There was never a 'golden age' of a regulatory state - business interests have always fought attempts to limit their ability to externalize risks and costs, passing them onto taxpayers and future generations. Such rules that did emerge, usually after lengthy political struggles, arrived the wake of 'dead' lakes and rivers, poisoned communities, legacies of waste and contamination that will require 'perpetual' management, resource endowments destroyed by unsustainable extraction, disasters and public health crises of multiple forms, and most recently the impacts of a changing climate.
Impact assessments and other regulatory requirements emerged to prevent the repetition of such mistakes, and ensure that projects that were ill-conceived, had the potential to cause serious harm, promoted serious serious social and political conflicts with affected communities or were outright dangerous, did not proceed without some sort of meaningful review.
Perhaps sensitive to public concerns over its direction, and the findings of its own report, highlighting the accelerating consequences of a changing climate for Canada, the government has launched a new round of advertisements emphasizes wind turbines, natural landscapes, and sustainability. In reality it is has become painfully clear that Canada's commitments to reducing GHG emissions are abandoned, and that sustainability will be sacrificed in its primary resource staples extraction and export focused economic strategy.
This is a backwards looking strategy, that seems poorly positioned to respond to the economic, environmental and political challenges of a disrupted world. Canada has found itself pushed into a position of geopolitical leadership by behaviour of the Trump administration. That means that what Canada does, not only on questions of geopolitical security, but also on global challenges like climate change and sustainability, matter more than ever.
The Carney government has achieved remarkable successes in building and strengthening new and existing alliances for Canada on the Global Stage. But leading a race to the bottom in terms of domestic economic policy will only deepen the already disastrous legacy of the Trump administration for democratic governance, the rule of law, and global security and sustainability. The world needs Canada to show leadership at home and abroad, in precisely the opposite direction.