Carney pledges faster project reviews to make Canada 'energy superpower'

A re-elected Liberal government would slash years off the review process for major resource projects to help make Canada an "energy superpower" in clean energy and oil and gas, Liberal Leader Mark Carney promised Wednesday.

The front-running Conservatives and Liberals are now both promising new federal offices focused on fast-tracking approvals to develop natural resources and strengthen Canada's industrial economy and foreign trade opportunities amid the turbulence caused by U.S. tariff policy.

"We can't build Canada into an energy superpower if we can't actually get the shovels into the ground," Carney said at an ironworkers' union office in Calgary. "To put it plainly, we need to get going."

The Liberal leader's rhetoric echoes that of former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, who pitched Canada as an "emerging energy superpower" in 2006, as the oilsands rapidly expanded.

Carney pledged to create a Major Federal Project Office mandated to make decisions on projects within two years, rather than five, and to consolidate various governmental processes into a "single window."

The promise by the party's new leader follows last year's plans by the Liberal government under Justin Trudeau to take no more than five years to evaluate all federally designated projects.

Earlier this week, Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives promised a Rapid Resource Project Office to handle regulatory reviews across all government agencies and departments, with faster wait times than the Liberals are touting: a one-year maximum, with a target of six months.

Many Canadians are justifiably re-examining their priorities when it comes to the speed of resource development and reviews in the face of Donald Trump's threats to Canadian sovereignty and the economy, said Martin Olszynski, the chair in energy, resources and sustainability at the University of Calgary's law school.

But he expressed concern that corners may get cut or standards trampled if the government expedites reviews too aggressively.

"It's hard to see how we're going to do this work at this speed," said Olszynski, who previously represented an environmental group in court to express support for the Liberal government's Impact Assessment Act.

Carney, who became Liberal leader exactly one month ago, also confirmed he'll keep that controversial law, which the Alberta government and petroleum sector have derided as the "no pipelines act." Poilievre pledged to repeal it and other Trudeau-era policies, to fulfil the requests of several major oil and gas CEOs who inked an open letter before the campaign began.

But Carney did say that under the assessment act revisions made last year, he'll urge supportive premiers and Indigenous governments to ink co-operation agreements with Ottawa by this fall, to allow provincial or territorial assessments to "substitute" for federal reviews. Currently, only British Columbia has a substitution deal.

"It's a real approach that maintains the Impact Assessment Act while making it work better, rather than stopping projects in their tracks by throwing out the whole act, starting from scratch, and then spending the next decade in court," the Liberal leader said.

That promise would not likely change the process for major oil and natural gas pipelines, as projects that cross provincial boundaries have always been subject to federal approval.

After meeting with premiers as prime minister last month, Carney promised to create "energy corridors" for various types of projects deemed to be in the national interest, although he hasn't explicitly promised to allow additional oil pipelines like the country-spanning Energy East project that was shelved in 2017.

The Liberal leader stressed that any new approvals process wouldn't compromise Indigenous rights and environmental standards.

"We want to dominate the market for conventional energy, and in order to do that in the long term it needs to be low carbon," he said.

For the critical minerals sector that's vital to producing electric vehicle batteries and other non-emitting technologies, Carney also pledged a "first and last mile fund" that will help build roads and other links to new resource mines. No dollar figure was attached to this newly proposed fund.

Poilievre has urged voters not to trust Carney's campaign offerings after years of policies under Trudeau that he says delayed energy projects and hampered investment.

"It's the same Liberal ministers, same Liberal MPs, same Liberal policies and it will have the same Liberal results," Poilievre said at his energy policy announcement in northern British Columbia on Monday.

"The Liberal war on Canada's resource economy has been devastating."