On October 30, leaders from Canada and the European Union gathered in Montreal and agreed to study exporting liquefied natural gas to Europe. That same day, the head of a US$23-billion project to ship Western Canadian gas from Quebec’s North Shore was on a ferry crossing the St. Lawrence River.

“Europe needs gas. If it doesn’t come from the East Coast, it will come from the West,” Yves Crits, chief executive of Kino Aski LNG, told The Narwhal in what he said was his first media interview. West Coast liquefied natural gas, or LNG, bound for Europe will cross the congested Panama Canal, he noted, unless it can find a shorter route through Quebec.

Crits was returning from Baie-Comeau, about 400 kilometres downriver from Quebec City, where he had been meeting with local communities about the proposal and the pipeline that would be connected to it. “We’re in the information phase,” he said. “We want to develop the project with the community.”

But Kino Aski’s planning seems to be further along than that. A presentation the company prepared for the federal government months ago, obtained by The Narwhal, already mapped three possible pipeline routes: through Atikamekw territory, farther north toward Cree lands or along the path of GNL Québec’s defunct pipeline proposal. The presentation also proposed launching environmental studies and the regulatory process by mid-October, a target that has come and gone.

When The Narwhal asked about the pipeline routes in the presentation, Crits said they were rough corridors drawn without accounting for environmental constraints. A new route developed more recently does, he said — though he noted it did not yet take into account the input of Indigenous communities and will be adjusted through further talks.

The project would pipe mostly fracked gas from Western Canada through roughly 1,000 kilometres of new pipeline to Baie-Comeau, where floating facilities would liquefy up to 15 million tonnes a year. That would make it one of the largest LNG export projects in the country, larger than B.C.’s Ksi Lisims LNG (12 million tonnes a year), Cedar LNG (about three million) and Woodfibre LNG (about two million). Kino Aski is pitching itself as “low carbon,” saying it plans to build wind turbines across the province to sell energy to Hydro-Québec, which it says would offset its energy use. No regulatory process has begun for Kino Aski LNG.

Yet Ottawa is already pitching the project to investors. A federal prospectus prepared for the Canada Investment Summit, hosted by Prime Minister Mark Carney in Toronto in September, promoted Kino Aski’s “ultra-low-emission LNG” and invited investors to take an equity stake.

In response to The Narwhal’s questions, Natural Resources Canada said inclusion in summit materials “does not constitute government approval, endorsement or a determination regarding a project’s viability.”

Still, that doesn’t sit well with Lucien Wabanonik, Chief of the Anishnabe Nation of Lac Simon, whose territory lies along one of the proposed pipeline routes. “It’s a mistake to sell something without having the consent or approval of our communities or our neighbours,” he said in an interview conducted in French.

Every nation along pipeline route has been invited to be a founding shareholder: energy executive

The Baie-Comeau LNG project first surfaced as a secretive proposal from Norwegian company Marinvest Energy, which had a non-disclosure agreement with Ottawa, as The Narwhal reported in March. Crits said Marinvest then approached the Atikamekw Nation, the territorial government for three Atikamekw nations: Wemotaci, Opticiwan and the most populous, Manawan, where Crits, a Belgian energy executive, has worked with the community for about a decade. Relaunched in August and marketed as “First Nations-led,” the project is now majority-controlled by the Atikamekw Nation Council, with Marinvest as a minority partner.

Two Marinvest executives, Greg Cano and Harald Vartdal, remain on the board of the joint venture, Kino Aski LNG Inc., according to Quebec’s business registry. But Crits indicated the Norwegian company’s stake will be diluted in upcoming fundraising rounds. “The Marinvest project is dead,” he said. “We’re going with an Indigenous philosophy.” So far, the Atikamekw Nation has been an eager partner. The nation responded to a request from The Narwhal but was not able to make someone available for an interview before publication time.

“Kino Aski LNG represents a unique opportunity to demonstrate that our communities can be leading economic partners while protecting our lands, our values and our future,” Atikamekw Grand Chief Constant Awashish said in an August statement. Awashish was reelected in September with 70 per cent voter support.

But other nations along the route in Quebec say the Atikamekw Nation doesn’t speak for them. Asked whether Atikamekw’s endorsement changed his view, Wabanonik answered: “Not at all. The objective is still the protection of our land.”

In an October statement, the Innu First Nations of Essipit, Mashteuiatsh and Pessamit said, in French, that they had neither consented to the project nor given Kino Aski a mandate to “speak on their behalf,” and called for a pause. Essipit did not respond to a request for an interview by publication time. Crits said Kino Aski has met with Innu leaders several times, and that they “are not against the project” but want more information.

The Innu have been here before. In 2015, Mashteuiatsh, Essipit and Pessamit signed a collaboration agreement with GNL Québec, which proposed a similar terminal in the Saguenay region. In 2021, the nations walked away, citing their opposition to fracked gas —  fracking uses large volumes of water and is known to cause earthquakes and significant emissions — and the company’s failure to show its LNG would replace dirtier fuels. Quebec and Ottawa rejected the project in 2021 and 2022, citing emissions, impacts on Innu communities and risks to belugas. Lac Simon was opposed then, too. “At the time, the community was completely against this kind of project because of its impact on the land, the water, the air and the climate,” Chief Wabanonik said in an interview.

Crits rejects the comparison to the GNL Québec terminal, saying communities have been involved from the beginning this time and that, unlike the Saguenay site, Baie-Comeau lies east of the belugas’ main summer range. But LNG carriers are among the largest ships on the ocean, and 15 million tonnes of LNG a year would mean hundreds of tanker trips through waters used by other whales.

The CEO said Kino Aski is offering the Innu nations a stake — and that every nation along the proposed route has been invited to become a founding shareholder. That would mean benefits agreements, jobs and contracts, modelled on Western Canadian projects such as the Haisla Nation’s Cedar LNG. The company’s presentation to Ottawa calls this offer “economic reconciliation” and estimates the project would pay $8 billion in dividends to its shareholders over its first 10 to 12 years of operation.

But that model depends on the neighbouring nations saying yes. Wabanonik called the offer “the carrot at the end of the stick.” 

“It’s not the financial aspect that interests us,” he said. At a recent community assembly, families whose lands lie along the route called the project unacceptable, Chief Wabanonik said.

Kino Aski is ‘a major project for Canada’: CEO

Despite the scale of the proposal running through its territory, Lac Simon learned of the project through the news and had to approach the developer for information, Wabanonik said. That’s not what Ottawa says should come first. Indigenous Peoples need “good information” early and should help co-develop projects, Rob Van Walleghem, general counsel and vice-president of Indigenous affairs at the Major Projects office, told members of Parliament on the House of Commons environment committee on Oct. 27. When asked about Lac Simon learning about Kino Aski through the news, the CEO said Kino Aski did not communicate earlier because it did not have much to say, and noted the Atikamek election kept the nation busy.

Natural Resources Canada’s spokesperson Miriam Galipeau said Kino Aski has not entered any federal review process or been referred to the Major Projects Office, and that Indigenous consultation would be part of any federal review. Crits said the project is by nature “a major project for Canada,” for Quebec and for Indigenous communities in the East, and that the company intends to seek referral to the office “at some point.”

Once the route is set, Crits said, “it will be up to the communities to make their decisions.” Asked whether Kino Aski would proceed without approval from every nation whose territory could be affected, he didn’t answer. But nothing in federal law guarantees First Nations that final say. In 2025, the Carney government passed the Building Canada Act, which paves the way to fast-track projects deemed in “the national interest,” a concept that has yet to be defined. It requires affected Indigenous communities to be consulted — but not that they consent. Bill C-39, now before Parliament, would go further, letting Ottawa designate entire “regions of national interest” and consolidating Indigenous consultation.

The question of consent also runs through the Atikamekw nation, where some members have asked whether Wemotaci, Opitciwan and Manawan were consulted before the Grand Chief endorsed the project. Along with the territorial government, each community has its own band council and Christian Awashish, a former Chief of Opitciwan (no relation to the Grand Chief), said in August the pipeline “will not happen.” Awashish did not respond to a request for an interview by publication time. In an August Facebook post, he called for more transparency, arguing the territorial council can’t commit community lands — in Opitciwan’s case, he wrote, only the band holds constitutionally recognized Aboriginal Title.

Corporate records reviewed by The Narwhal show Kino Aski Inc. is controlled through a sovereign fund the territorial council created in March, with the three band council chiefs on its board. Kino Aski Inc.’s own board has just two members: Constant Awashish and Yves Crits.

Kino Aski hopes to capitalize on changing geopolitics and its ‘low carbon’ approach

As it pushes the Baie-Comeau project under the new structure, Kino Aski is banking on a shift in public opinion. In 2021, the Quebec government rejected another LNG project, GNL Québec, after widespread opposition. But in December 2025, 67 per cent of Quebec respondents said they supported Marinvest’s LNG project, according to an Ipsos poll commissioned by the Montreal Economic Institute. The think tank, which receives part of its funding from the oil and gas industry, concluded that social acceptability is now there.

“The geopolitical context has completely changed,” Crits said. Kino Aski’s presentation to Ottawa argues that Europe will need new suppliers: Norway’s production is expected to decline, and Russian gas is to be banned by the end of 2027. The new Canada-EU commitment to studying LNG exports pledges to consider both sides’ climate goals, which could make Europe’s long-term appetite uncertain: the European Union’s top diplomat told The Narwhal in February that Europe will “give priority to clean energy sources,” amid a global LNG glut.

Kino Aski markets its LNG as “low carbon,” and its presentation to Ottawa set a goal of carbon neutrality. Up to a third as much energy as is exported is used to prepare gas for shipping: first, compressing gas through a pipeline, then chilling it to -162 C and liquefying it, according to the document. In the United States and Qatar, that energy usually comes from burning gas, which is largely made up of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Kino Aski would use Hydro-Québec power instead, offset by new wind farms. But its carbon-neutral claims cover only processing, not methane escaping from tankers — or the emissions from burning the gas in Europe.

For Wabanonik, those larger impacts are exactly the problem. Lac Simon’s concerns go beyond its own territory, to the cumulative effects of development on land, water, air and the climate, he said. “It’s false to believe that only First Nations will live with these impacts,” he said. “It’s society in general.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer. Yet it imported about 500,000 barrels of crude a day in 2025, three-quarters of it from the U.S., according to the Canada Energy Regulator. And much of the western Canadian oil that reaches Ontario and Quebec travels through pipelines that cross the U.S. before coming back north. As diesel prices have skyrocketed, politicians across the spectrum have pointed to a solution they say is simple: build more Canadian refineries.

Case in point: in September, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pushed Prime Minister Mark Carney to invest in new refineries, saying, “Canadian workers should be turning Canadian oil into Canadian fuel.” In July, Ontario Minister of Energy and Mines Stephen Lecce said Canada needs to “expand domestic refinery capacity.” Departing B.C. premier David Eby said in January that if governments have “tens of billions of dollars to spend,” they should spend it on a refinery rather than a pipeline.

Why now? “Energy security” has become a powerful political argument as the trade war with Washington has made relying on the U.S. feel riskier, and war in Iran and attacks on Russian refineries squeeze global diesel supplies. As Poilievre put it, “the current diesel price crisis will … expose our overreliance on the U.S. to refine our own oil.”

But despite current geopolitics, the idea isn’t new. “It’s like the seasons,” said Pierre-Olivier Pineau, an energy economist at HEC Montréal who has watched refinery fervour come and go for years.

The idea returns just as, in Pineau’s words, “there has never been a better time in human history to run a refinery,” profit-wise. Imperial Oil’s refining division, for example, earned $787 million in the second quarter of 2026, more than double a year earlier. The industry, meanwhile, has been busy bending the ear of the federal government. The Canadian Fuels Association, a lobby group for refineries, reported 51 communications with federal officials in the first nine months of 2026 — more than in any full calendar year since at least 2021. Most of those contacts came in the spring, when diesel prices soared.

In the face of all that, seemingly simple solutions can look like a silver bullet. The thing is, everyone The Narwhal interviewed, from the refiners’ lobby group to its critics, agreed on one thing: Canada isn’t short of refineries. 

Here’s what you need to know.

What exactly is a refinery, and what does it produce?

A refinery is an industrial plant that turns crude oil into products people can use. In Canada, more than 80 per cent of what refineries produce is gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, according to a 2024 analysis by oil market analyst Rory Johnston.

The rest includes heating oil, asphalt, propane and the base oils used to make lubricants for engines. Refineries are different from Alberta’s upgraders, which turn thick bitumen from the oilsands into lighter “synthetic” crude that refineries can then process.

How many refineries does Canada have?

Canada has 16 oil refineries, including two that make asphalt. They have room to process about two million barrels of crude a day. In 2025, Canadian refineries ran, on average, at 90 per cent of that capacity, according to the Canada Energy Regulator.

That’s enough for the country’s needs. “The Canadian market is essentially in balance,” said Carol Montreuil, vice-president for Eastern Canada at the Canadian Fuels Association. Pineau, a frequent critic of the industry, agrees. So does Ottawa. “Canada does not need more refining capacity to meet current domestic needs,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement to The Narwhal. In 2025, Canada exported a net 200,000 barrels a day of refined products, it added.

The real issue is that Canadian refineries don’t process much of the oil this country is best known for: thick, heavy bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands. Heavy crude is only about a quarter of what Canadian refineries process, according to Johnston’s 2024 analysis.

For that reason, most of Canada’s heavy oil goes south, via pipelines, to refineries in the U.S. Midwest and Gulf Coast that can handle heavy crude.

How do refineries affect the people next door?

Refineries support more than 18,000 jobs in Canada, according to the industry. For their neighbours, they can be both a paycheque and a burden.

Near Edmonton, the Imperial and Suncor refineries release benzene and sulphur dioxide, among other pollutants. Limited monitoring makes it hard to pin down how much of the region’s air pollution they are responsible for, The Narwhal has reported.

Sarnia, Ont., is home to Chemical Valley, a cluster of roughly 60 industrial facilities, including three oil refineries. Residents of neighbouring Aamjiwnaang First Nation are exposed to about 30 times more benzene than people in Toronto and Ottawa. Sarnia would be the destination if Ontario and Alberta are able to make Northern Shield happen: that proposed pipeline would carry Alberta crude north of the Great Lakes.

And when the industry leaves, the impact isn’t over. Montréal-Est was a hub of refining activity by companies such as Imperial Oil, which opened the island of Montreal’s first refinery in 1916, and Shell, which closed its last in 2010. Decades after most refineries closed in the 1980s, the area has about 270 hectares of industrial brownfields, roughly the size of 330 football fields, awaiting cleanup and redevelopment.

What are the arguments in favour of a new Canadian refinery?

Gasoline and diesel prices are high, but experts say a new Canadian refinery wouldn’t necessarily ease prices at the pump. Even Montreuil concedes that local refineries offer consumers limited protection from price spikes, since fuel prices are set on global markets.

For Montreuil, it’s more about fuel supply security, which the industry has also raised in recent months, according to the federal lobbyist registry.

Canada’s refineries ensure the country has enough fuel, and without them, we’d be rationing fuel right now, according to Montreuil, who pointed to recent examples around the world. Indonesia and Russia both rationed fuel this year. While some argue refining more oil at home would mean independence from an increasingly unpredictable neighbour, Montreuil and Johnston say that isn’t our only exposure.

Another vulnerability is pipelines that carry Canadian oil back and forth across the border, such as Enbridge’s Line 5. Political skirmishes with Michigan over that pipeline are one reason Ontario Premier Doug Ford is pushing the Northern Shield Energy Corridor. Much of Atlantic Canada relies on crude, much of it American, delivered by tanker to the country’s largest refinery, Irving’s in Saint John. No pipeline exists to bring Alberta oil to the Atlantic provinces, meaning a U.S. export restriction would leave them scrambling for other fuel sources.

Heather Exner-Pirot, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said federal clean fuel rules are another weakness, because in order to meet emissions reduction targets, suppliers blend in biofuels largely imported from the U.S. “We are artificially making ourselves dependent on an American product,” she said. She argues the rules should be redesigned, and they’ve been a constant topic in the industry’s communications with federal officials, according to the lobbyists registry.

Carney’s government announced tweaks to the clean fuel rules last week, saying it would “make it easier and cheaper for companies to comply.” Transportation is one of Canadian households’ biggest costs, according to Statistics Canada, but Pineau thinks that addressing that by scrapping clean fuel rules would “chain Canadians even more tightly to an extremely expensive way of life,” one built around the car.

On its own, experts say, a new refinery fixes none of that.

How much would it cost to build a new refinery, and who would pay?

Companies are not lining up to build a refinery in Canada, and Ottawa isn’t offering to pay for one. In a statement, the Prime Minister’s Office said the government supports “additional refining capacity where supported by market conditions.”

A large new refinery would cost $10 to $15 billion, take at least five years to build and need 20 to 25 years to pay off, according to Montreuil and Exner-Pirot. Alberta’s last attempt, the Sturgeon refinery near Edmonton, saw its original projected cost double to about $10 billion, with much of the risk carried by taxpayers, though high diesel prices have since improved its profitability.

A new refinery would also struggle to compete on a global market. India’s newest are so big that two of them could supply all of Canada, from gasoline to jet fuel and more, Montreuil said.

With the domestic market already balanced, the purpose of a new plant would mostly be exports. But there is no real export route for refined products to Europe, Ian Sanderson, a senior oil and gas analyst at the Pembina Institute, said in an interview, adding the biggest markets are in Asia and “have substantial refinery capacity to refine Canadian [crude] at a lower price.”

There’s also the issue of decreased global demand for fossil fuels. Global demand for refined oil products could peak as early as 2027, according to the International Energy Agency. “It really is an act of faith,” Montreuil said, to bet that export markets will still want Canadian fuel by 2030 or 2035.

Sanderson points to the coal phase-out in Alberta, which hit mining towns very hard. The lesson, he said, is to “get ahead of the transition” and support oil workers into new jobs.

So far, though, Canadians aren’t using less fuel.

What part of Canada faces the highest risk when it comes to U.S. energy threats?

The most immediate risk is to Ontario, whose refineries run mostly on western crude carried by Line 5 through Wisconsin and Michigan.

Michigan’s governor has tried for years to shut it down over environmental concerns. In late August, the line was offline for more than two weeks after being struck by a truck at a work site in Wisconsin. The episode offered a glimpse of the crisis Canada would face if the Americans shut Line 5 down for good, Montreuil said.

Northern Shield would carry Alberta crude to Sarnia north of the Great Lakes, bypassing Line 5. It wouldn’t add any refining capacity, though: “Same refinery, same oil, just a different route to get it there,” Exner-Pirot said. The open question is how much this new pipeline would cost, and who would pay.

Quebec has more options, but not more independence. The Valero refinery in Lévis gets its oil by tanker through the St. Lawrence River, though much of what Quebec imports comes from the U.S. And Suncor’s Montreal-East refinery gets much of its western crude through Line 9, which runs from Sarnia, so it too depends on oil that crosses the U.S. to reach Sarnia.

What would make Canada’s fuel supply more secure?

Without building a new refinery, there are other ways to shore up supply.

Canada is the only G7 country without a strategic petroleum reserve. Despite being a member of the International Energy Agency, we’re formally exempt from its mandate to hold emergency oil stocks equivalent to at least 90 days of the previous year’s net imports because we produce more oil than we import.

Consequently, when the G7 agreed in early October to release 100 million barrels of oil from emergency stocks to lower prices at the pump, Ottawa’s contribution was to stagger maintenance at its refineries so as not to affect supply. Poilievre has proposed a reserve of refined fuels, though someone would have to pay to fill and maintain it.

Another option is to expand what already exists. Adding 10 to 20 per cent to an existing refinery may be more realistic than building a new one, Montreuil said.

But “the solution isn’t necessarily to cut taxes or to produce more,” Pineau said, noting that new oil and gas infrastructure would run counter to Canada’s climate targets. Unlike past oil shocks, “there are a lot of options to move away from oil,” Sanderson added.

Whichever path Canada takes, the big decisions will largely belong to companies, as HF Sinclair showed this summer by announcing it will stop making base oils in Mississauga, Ont., at Canada’s only such plant. Base oils, used to make motor oil, were already at the centre of a global shortage.

While politicians may bring up building new refineries as an easy solution to a very complicated problem, right now at least, even the industry itself isn’t pushing for it.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

There was a brief, telling moment when Prime Minister Mark Carney was onstage at a Calgary Chamber of Commerce event last year, following the announcement of a memorandum of understanding with the Alberta government for a new “private sector constructed and financed pipeline” to the West Coast. 

Deborah Yedlin, the CEO of the chamber, mentioned the agreement’s stipulation: the project needed a private proponent rather than public funding. Then she said the project required “derisking.”“Are you saying there’s no room for the government to derisk something for a period of time in order to attract private capital that’s needed for a project like that?” she asked Carney. In other words, how far was Carney willing to go to protect industry from losses?Carney listed off moves his government was making, including regulatory clarity, tax incentives and loan guarantees to move the project forward. And then he said: “In essence, the Asian pipeline will be a private sector project …”

That one word, essence, bore considerable weight. 

So too did the timing of the Oct. 1 announcement that the pipeline — now known as Pacific Link — would be the first project of national interest listed under the federal government’s sweeping Building Canada Act. It comes just over two weeks before Alberta holds a referendum on whether to hold an independence referendum, as well as a slew of questions aimed mostly at immigrants. 

From the beginning, the pipeline plan was a political one, based on a calculus that can be hard to understand outside of Alberta, where decades of government and industry messaging has succeeded in tightly weaving oil and gas into the province’s culture. 

Never has that narrative been pushed harder than by the United Conservative Party government, first under former premier Jason Kenney and now amplified even more under Premier Danielle Smith. 

Having directly linked the future of the country with deregulation for the oil and gas sector, Smith now faces the headwinds of that rhetoric in the form of a burgeoning separatist movement. It’s one she has aided to protect herself from an influential secessionist base in her party. 

It’s a situation Carney has recognized and attempted to shape, acquiescing to Alberta’s demands in an effort to shore up a united front as threats from the United States grow more stark. 

The prime minister might have promised Canadians a “private sector constructed and financed pipeline” in last fall’s memorandum. But it was clear from the beginning he was willing to pay a premium to achieve peace. 

How Alberta’s politics of wealth and alienation fuelled the Pacific Link promise

After their first meeting in March of last year, Smith threatened Carney with an “unprecedented national unity crisis” if he did not respond to a list of demands almost entirely focused on boosting the oil and gas sector. 

It was part and parcel of a wider campaign to link Alberta’s political and economic fortunes more tightly with fossil fuels, including moves to designate emissions data as critical infrastructure to prevent the federal government from accessing it and put up regulatory and economic hurdles to block renewable energy development. 

Smith’s actions are part of a long history of resentment that stretches back as far as the creation of the province, when the federal government denied Alberta control over its natural resources, a move that was later reversed. 

There’s an entire mythology of eastern Canadian domination built up around the National Energy Program introduced by Pierre Elliot Trudeau in the early 1980s, which still resonates with separatists and mainstream conservatives alike. In this century, the climate actions of his son Justin Trudeau inflamed a new sense of subjugation in the oil patch. 

Those resentments and mythologies have been curated by successive Alberta governments as an easy way to rally Albertans to their cause and help cover up internal failures, particularly when it comes to budget crashes. And now it has reached a fever pitch. 

Carney, a veteran of Brexit and big brain amidst big brain money makers, recognized the weight of Smith’s threat and an especially restless Alberta, particularly as the geopolitical landscape shifted under his feet. He wasted no time in wooing her, and her province. 

He has proven willing to deregulate and slash emissions programs and targets to help industry. Now, he’s opening the federal government’s hefty purse to buy peace. The pipeline will cost billions, without any promise that price will be enough to please Smith’s government and the powers it has unleashed. 

Pacific Link pipeline promise is rushing to meet a very specific moment

Pacific Link is moving fast, because it’s meant to meet this specific moment: oil prices are high, Alberta separation is occupying vital political real estate, and a trade war with the U.S. is both threatening Canadian well-being and galvanizing political will for big risks and fast action. 

In this rush, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that many important details still aren’t finalized — such as the route, financing and oilsands companies meeting requirements for a massive carbon capture and storage project.

All of this makes meeting this specific moment difficult, to say the least. It will be years before the pipeline is online. 

There are also serious questions about investing billions of taxpayer dollars into a project for a sector facing possible reductions in demand and a global shift away from the uncertainty of oil markets. Not to mention concerns over the impacts of increased emissions and the reduced ambitions for carbon capture. 

Despite this announcement, the referendum will still take place. The provincial government is spending millions to tell Albertans to send Ottawa a message and stand up for a more sovereign province. Its list of demands remains, even if Smith is playing nice with Carney for the time being.

The willingness of the Alberta government to act in good faith is also questionable. Only days after it signed last fall’s memorandum with the federal government, it went ahead with changes which undermined its industrial carbon price that it promised to strengthen in the agreement. 

That’s the same memorandum containing the broken promise of a “private sector constructed and financed pipeline.” It all suggests Donald Trump isn’t the only Western leader who signs agreements in pencil. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has introduced legislation to expand its “national interest” regime meant to speed up major projects, overhaul federal environmental scrutiny of industrial activity and consolidate Indigenous consultations.

In doing so, the government is largely moving ahead with sweeping proposals it made in May, and making them permanent, despite spending the summer hearing from a public concerned about exactly this: that the Liberals’ plan could sideline scientific expertise and concentrate political power.

Transport Minister and Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon introduced Bill C-39, the Building Canada Strong Act, in Parliament on Sept. 21. The nearly 250-page omnibus bill will entrench new powers to bypass normal government approval processes for projects like pipelines, highways and nuclear facilities, by removing a five-year time limit that was built into last year’s Building Canada Act.

The Building Canada Act first introduced a special designation to allow projects to skirt regular rules if the government deems them in the “national interest,” coming in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats to annex Canada. 

Asked by reporters on Wednesday to justify why the government was making its temporary powers permanent, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Canadians “understand what we’re facing is unprecedented in Canada’s history.” 

“We need to make sure that we have the proper tools in the toolbox to favour economic security in our country,” he said.

The government claims the bill will “bring greater speed, certainty and predictability to infrastructure project reviews” while maintaining “strong environmental safeguards” and upholding Indigenous Rights. 

One of the key changes in the bill is to force all projects subject to federal reviews through a one-year timeframe for approval or rejection, compressing the time to examine things like environmental impacts into a matter of months.

“If you’re going to say no — decide it within a year,” is how Carney put it on Tuesday, addressing criticism of the bill on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

But this shortened timeline is one of many proposals Canadians have been cautioning Ottawa against since it was first made last May, warning that such fast-tracking could create conditions incompatible with the time and space necessary to properly assess big projects. 

The government received more than 26,000 emails and over 40 written submissions on its spring proposals from provinces, territories, Indigenous groups, industry representatives, environmental organizations, academics and think-tanks, according to a summary report published earlier this month.

While much of the feedback was broadly supportive of the effort to speed up approval of major projects and cut down on inefficient government processes, there was also “widespread agreement that reform should not come at the expense of environmental protection or Indigenous Rights,” the report noted.

In particular, Canadians expressed a “recurring concern” around the concentration of decision-making authority in a single minister, or in a small group of powerful people. 

“Many cautioned that increased ministerial or Cabinet discretion could weaken accountability, increase politicization, reduce predictability, and diminish the role of independent scientific, technical, environmental, and Indigenous expertise,” the report stated.

Meanwhile, Indigenous groups worried the changes could undermine reconciliation and limit their ability to assert their constitutional rights within their territories, warning of potential lawsuits.

After tabling its bill, the government received praise from business groups for taking steps to attract investment and boost the economy. 

Business Council of Canada president and CEO Goldy Hyder urged Parliament to “pass the legislation quickly to safeguard the interests of Canadians and rebuild the country’s reputation as a reliable trading partner.” The Western Business Coalition welcomed the one-year timeline for reviews, among other changes.

The changes also come after months of intense lobbying from the oil and gas industry to “simplify” project reviews and commit to much shorter deadlines for approvals.

Starting in 2025, oil and gas executives and lobby groups launched a public campaign pressuring Carney to “unwind the past decade” of environmental and energy policy, complaining that the current system was “impeding” fossil fuel growth.

The bill also follows regulatory changes Carney’s government made early in September to remove certain oilsands facilities and fossil fuel power plants from federal assessments.

Other groups have expressed dismay that the government was moving ahead despite public concerns of overreach. 

The environmental advocacy group Centre québécois du droit de l’environnement said a one-year timeline is “incompatible with the assessment of complex, large-scale projects” that often involve big risks to watersheds, wildlife habitat and communities. 

Such projects generally require long-term studies and analysis of cumulative impacts — not to mention meaningful public input and Indigenous consultations.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak warned Carney against “abusing” his powers to speed the bill through Parliament without adequate debate and consultations. 

The national chief said the government should be open to incorporating amendments to the bill offered by First Nations leaders.

So what else is in Bill C-39? Here’s what you need to know.

Moving pipeline and nuclear reviews away from an environment agency

The legislation takes federal reviews of pipelines, nuclear facilities and power lines out of the hands of the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, a federal body that reports to the environment minister and is meant to ensure project designs protect Indigenous Rights and the environment.

Instead, pipeline projects will be reviewed by the Canada Energy Regulator, an agency of the Crown that reports to the energy minister and oversees construction and operation of certain pipelines and power lines.

For nuclear projects, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which also reports to the energy minister, will carry out assessments.

The government said “diverse stakeholders” had expressed support for the move and that environmental, health and Indigenous considerations would continue to be “addressed with rigour.”

Yet making the energy regulator the sole assessor of pipeline projects was one proposal where the public, through “advocacy campaigns distributed through civic engagement platforms and petitions,” had “consistently emphasized concern,” according to the feedback report.

Indigenous representatives also asked the government to hold the energy and nuclear regulators “to the same standard” as the Impact Assessment Agency.

They asked that Indigenous Peoples be involved in updating the laws that govern these agencies, so they’re consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which is meant to uphold their “free, prior and informed consent.” 

In 2021 Canada passed a law to embed that declaration at the federal level.

Taking ‘national interest’ projects a step further

Another idea that elicited major unease from the public was the creation of federal “economic zones” where certain projects could be “pre-approved.” 

Carney’s new legislation rebrands these as “regions of national interest.” Once designated, certain projects inside the region would benefit from the ability to bypass normal approval processes, just like “national interest” projects.

The type of “regions” the government is considering are wide-reaching: a telecommunications network, an industrial area or an “energy production” area are all in play, it said. The region doesn’t even have to be currently used — it could be picked for “future development needs.” 

The first step would be to conduct a regional assessment through the Impact Assessment Agency, which the government said would measure the “cumulative effects of current and foreseeable activities in the area” and involve Indigenous consultations over things like impacts, boundaries and “culturally sensitive areas.”

Then a federal minister will recommend whether to list the region as in the “national interest.” If it does, projects will be “considered pre-approved” and be given a list of conditions.

Kerrie Blaise, founder and lawyer at the nonprofit Legal Advocates for Nature’s Defence, warned in a statement that the Ring of Fire mining and development region on Treaty 9 territory in northern Ontario could be designated as a “region of national interest.”

A group made up of representatives from 15 First Nations and the Impact Assessment Agency are in the midst of a regional assessment of development in the Ring of Fire area.

“Effectively ‘pre-approving’ mining projects within the Hudson-James Bay Lowlands — where the Ring of Fire is proposed — risks irreparable harm to pristine rivers, globally significant carbon stores, refuges for wildlife and species at risk and the Indigenous Peoples who call this region home,” Blaise said.

The regional designation follows a similar process for designating individual projects in the “national interest” that was established in last year’s Building Canada Act.

That process allows the government to automatically grant all federal approvals at the same time, following consultations.

Since passing the law, the government has moved to formally designate four projects as in the “national interest” — a new oil pipeline to the west coast, a nuclear waste depot in Ignace, Ont., the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 in Vancouver and the Mackenzie Valley Highway in the Northwest Territories. 

Many more projects are being considered for the designation by the Major Projects Office, a body run out of the central government agency that supports the prime minister and Cabinet.

A streamlined impact assessment process and the option of earlier project starts

Currently, the Impact Assessment Agency produces a project review to be considered by the environment minister, who then issues a decision on whether it should move forward. 

Other ministers who oversee departments with expertise in different fields, such as fisheries, still have to issue permits for the project after that decision is made, as part of separate processes, which the government says has made the overall project approval process take five years or more.

The new bill would empower the environment minister to issue a decision statement that comes with all required permits issued concurrently from different departments — and all of this happening within a year. 

As well, the environment minister can authorize some work to begin on a project before its Impact Assessment Agency review is completed, if this is deemed in the public interest.

Consolidating Indigenous consultations, making climate one consideration among many

The bill mentions “climate” five times, but vaguely: it’s one of many considerations officials must weigh when deciding on projects like pipelines, power lines or regions of “national interest.” 

The project’s effects on the government’s climate change commitments are among them, but there are no specific dealbreakers, such as an amount of heat-trapping emissions that might trigger a rejection, for example.

Others include “the interests and concerns of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada,” Indigenous Knowledge, scientific information, environmental effects, safety and security, health, social and economic effects, “the existence of actual or potential markets” for pipelines and their “economic feasibility,” and the financial resources of the applicant.

The bill also moves to centralize federal consultations with Indigenous groups by establishing a new “Crown Consultation Hub” within the Impact Assessment Agency, though the energy and nuclear regulators will still oversee their own.

Changes to transportation, navigable waters and fisheries laws

The bill would create a new “National Trade Corridors Council” that would monitor the movement of goods and provide advice to the transport minister on “disruptions.” 

It gives the transport minister new powers to authorize exemptions to the Canadian Navigable Waters Act for dumping materials into waterways. Materials that are currently banned from dumping include sawdust, wood scraps and waste.

As well, some companies would be allowed to harm fish and fish habitat by paying a fee to an environmental damages fund to “offset” it.

The bill also allows the labour minister to end a work stoppage if the government believes that to be in the “national interest.” Labour leaders say that infringes upon Canadians’ right to strike.

Greenpeace Canada dubbed Bill C-39 the “Bulldoze Nature Bill.” 

In a statement, nature and biodiversity campaigner Salomé Sané said, “Carney’s government is locking us into a short-sighted strategy in which decisions about workers’ health and rights, living ecosystems — from rivers, forests to grasslands and communities — are subordinated to a logic of speed and profit, not care and protection.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• As polls suggest a majority of Canadians support building new pipelines, the Alberta government is proposing a new pipeline to the West Coast to help boost production in the oilsands.
• The terms of the pipeline proposal name Alberta and the Canadian government together as majority owners, suggesting taxpayers will foot much of the construction bill.
• Pipelines are very expensive to build. A recent analysis of the federal government’s Trans Mountain pipeline, which is already operational, showed that the pipeline’s revenues aren’t high enough to cover its construction and debt costs, making it a money-loser for taxpayers.

Pipelines, pipelines, pipelines. No matter how you feel about them, it’s hard to escape news of them lately. 

In July, the Alberta government announced it is formally proposing another pipeline to the West Coast. On the weekend, the federal government took another step towards designating the pipeline as a project in the national interest, meaning environmental assessments and other parts of the approval process could be fast-tracked.

Recent polling shows the majority of Canadians — 63 per cent according to the Angus Reid Institute in July — support that new pipeline from Alberta to B.C.

Why? Mostly for economic reasons. A majority told pollsters they were convinced by the argument that Canada needs to diversify its oil markets away from the U.S., while half said oil is just generally important to the economy. Forty-five per cent said the project would create jobs. 

The economic forecast, though, isn’t quite that simple. There’s still the question of who’s going to pay for it. A poll commissioned by the Pembina Institute and conducted by Probe Research in April found a majority of Albertans — 61 per cent — say they don’t want to spend taxpayer money on a new pipeline.

It’s increasingly clear: many Canadians say they do want a new pipeline, but they don’t want to pay for it. Companies aren’t exactly lining up to build new pipelines by themselves either. That raises a question: why?

So what are the economics of a pipeline in Canada? Do they make money? Here’s what you need to know.

How much do pipelines cost to build?

No one is going to build a pipeline on a shoestring. These are multibillion-dollar projects, often crossing multiple provinces. Even expanding an existing pipeline, or building along an existing pipeline route is a huge endeavour involving tens of thousands of people working on the project.

Take the Trans Mountain Expansion project, as an example. That increased the capacity of an existing pipeline, built in the 1950s, from Alberta to the West Coast. That expansion project ultimately cost taxpayers $34 billion — notably, that’s almost $30 billion more than initial estimates. 

The latest pipeline idea making headlines was proposed by the Alberta government, with an estimated cost pegged at between $35.2 billion and $43.7 billion. That proposal was brought forward alongside the federally owned Trans Mountain Corporation, which will lead the project, and Pembina Pipeline Corporation (which is not connected to the Pembina Institute that held the poll). 

Under the proposed partnership, Trans Mountain and the Government of Alberta — through the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission — would hold a majority interest. 

So who would actually own it? Well … taxpayers, in a way.

How much have taxpayers spent building pipelines in the past?

It varies. Canadian taxpayers have been on the hook for billions since the Government of Canada purchased the Trans Mountain pipeline in 2018.

And maybe that’s okay. Some would argue that pipelines are infrastructure, much like highways or railways. Others disagree that billions of dollars of public money should be put toward increasing oil and gas infrastructure.

Nonetheless, it continues to happen. TC Energy’s cancelled Keystone XL expansion was backstopped by Alberta taxpayers to the tune of $1.5 billion in 2021.

And it’s happening again. Alberta’s government has already contributed a little more than $18 million to its latest pipeline plan, saying the money went to early planning work “including preliminary engineering, cost estimates, economic modelling, early Indigenous engagement with communities and development of the proposal for federal consideration.”

The Alberta government calls it a “myth” that it will pay for the entirety of the pipeline, saying, “Now that this preliminary work is done, we will work alongside Trans Mountain and Pembina Pipeline to move this project ahead.” But Pembina Pipeline currently has only a 10 per cent stake in the project.

So, in the end, it appears if the West Coast pipeline project moves ahead, it will be governments — and taxpayers — who foot much of the bill.

“I am quite comfortable that this is a good investment for Canadian taxpayers,” federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson told CBC in July.

How does a pipeline operator make money?

Whether pipelines are owned by companies or governments (and taxpayers like you), they charge fees for companies to move their products. The fees paid to use pipelines by companies such as oil producers are called tolls or tariffs. 

The Canada Energy Regulator oversees pipeline tolls, saying it ensures “they are just and reasonable.”

According to the regulator, tolls “cover the company’s cost of service, including a fair and reasonable return to pipeline investors.” Rates vary based on many factors: whether there’s a long-term commitment to shipping, how far, what the product is and how much of it.

The Trans Mountain expansion ended up costing so much that the tolls it charges customers to move oil are higher than expected. Still, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, only $15.4 billion of the $34-billion cost of the pipeline is covered by the tolls it charges.

Does running a pipeline actually make money?

Let’s look at Trans Mountain Corporation as an example — that pipeline we all own together. 

The company says it is now profitable. It reported its net income for 2025 was $556 million — up from $5 million the year before.

It’s what Minister Hodgson described to CBC as “generating oodles of cash.” 

But that claim has raised some eyebrows. And untangling it is complicated. 

The Trans Mountain Corporation is a wholly owned entity of another company, Canada TMP Finance Ltd., which is itself a subsidiary of Canada Development Investment Corporation, the entity which holds the Government of Canada’s investment in Trans Mountain. Still following? 

Let’s do it in the opposite direction. The Government of Canada owns a Crown corporation. That corporation has a subsidiary, which then in turn owns Trans Mountain Corporation. Hopefully that helps.

The debt of the expansion, and the interest on that debt, isn’t paid off. But Hodgson can claim the pipeline is profitable because of the confusing corporate structure of which Crown corporation holds its construction debt and pays the interest, and which takes in the tariffs, according to a report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

The author of the report described Trans Mountain’s profit claims to The Tyee as a “misrepresentation of finances.”

Trans Mountain Corporation did not respond to questions from The Narwhal by publication time.

But a company’s balance books aren’t the only way of looking at it. Industry advocates argue pipelines generate money in other ways too, including tax and royalty revenues and making oil prices more competitive.

For example, a 2024 report from a group created for Alberta credit unions argued the Trans Mountain expansion project resulted in a significant increase in access to markets for Alberta oil and that access significantly narrowed the price difference between a type of Western Canadian oil called Western Canadian Select and a type sold out of Texas called West Texas Intermediate. The report estimated this had already increased revenues by about $10 billion in the first six months the pipeline expansion launched.

There’s little doubt that producing and exporting oil and gas makes money for Canada — and especially for oil and gas companies themselves. But many have argued a fuller accounting would include the significant costs of the health risks, environmental degradation and other damage that comes from increasing carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.

What are the costs of carbon pollution from increasing oil production?

Fossil fuel production is driving climate change and the consequences are being felt today. Life is more expensive, cities have dirtier air from wildfires, deadly heat waves and other extreme weather are more common, First Nations are disproportionately threatened with disasters and Canadians are more at risk of poverty, heart disease, cancer and premature death.

As The Narwhal has reported, it’s possible, at least broadly speaking, to compare the economic output of fossil fuels with health costs. The federal energy regulator, for example, has reported the total value of crude oil exports from Canada was $138 billion in 2024. A Health Canada report that same year found the total cost of health impacts attributable to air pollution in 2018 was $146 billion. The cost of many foods produced here is also rising as farming becomes less predictable. 

Estimates vary, but the short answer is climate change is expensive. A 2022 report from Queen’s University projected trillions of dollars in losses in Canada due to climate change this century, with the greatest contributor to that change being the burning of fossil fuels.

Does Alberta produce enough oil to fill a new pipeline?

Trans Mountain is currently “Canada’s only pipeline system transporting oil products to the West Coast.” The company says its 1,200-kilometre pipeline network has room for 890,000 barrels of petroleum products to be shipped each and every day. 

The new pipeline proposed by the Alberta government would be capable of transporting one million barrels of crude oil per day from the Edmonton area to the West Coast.

If it goes ahead, that would significantly increase the network of pipelines leading from Alberta.

There are already several other pipeline systems in use — leading to other locations in the U.S. and eastern Canada — and according to the Alberta Energy Regulator, all of them together could carry 5.4 million barrels per day. 

Currently, Alberta produces an average of more than four million barrels of oil per day. That suggests Alberta’s oil production stands to increase substantially if a new pipeline is going to be filled each and every day. 

Meanwhile the International Energy Agency has predicted global demand for oil from combustible fossil fuels may peak as early as 2027 — raising questions about the long-term outlook for expanded oilsands production.

— With files from Drew Anderson and Carl Meyer

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• Alberta’s plan to build a pipeline to B.C.’s south coast includes a new terminal capable of servicing supertankers sailing into the Salish Sea.
• If the project goes ahead, very large crude carriers (VLCCs) capable of carrying up to 2.2 million barrels of oil could be loading up at Roberts Bank in the Fraser River estuary.
• A major expansion of the Roberts Bank superport is already in the works with potentially catastrophic impacts on local endangered species.

At the mouth of B.C.’s largest river, industrial development has encroached on important ecosystems for decades. Now, Canada’s plans to boost shipping infrastructure and create a new terminal for oil tankers could increase stress on endangered species and critical habitat.

The Fraser River is truly vast. Its tributaries carry water from nearly one-quarter of B.C., and its delta — the area where the river’s waters mingle with the Salish Sea — stretches from the Vancouver neighbourhood of Point Grey to the American settlement of Point Roberts.

In between, there are mudflats, sandy beaches, eelgrass beds and salt marshes that provide critical habitat for young salmon, migrating birds and countless other species.

“These are really productive environments for fish, for shellfish, for mammals, for birds,” Misty MacDuffee, a salmon biologist and director of Raincoast Conservation Foundation’s wild salmon program, says. 

Freshwater from the Fraser pushes all the way out to the Gulf Islands and the tidal flow from the Salish Sea can make its way all the way to Mission, MacDuffee told The Narwhal. That mingling of freshwater and saltwater creates crucial habitat for young salmon as they make the transition from river living to ocean swimming.“We’ve got all five species of salmon going into the Fraser. It’s Canada’s most productive salmon system — our largest Chinook producer — and it’s really important for the rearing and the migrations of adult and juvenile salmon.”This region has long been subject to development, from canneries and agriculture, to airports and port infrastructure. But now the pressure is ramping up. 

The pipeline pivot to Roberts Bank

On July 2, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced federal support for $10 billion in infrastructure upgrades at the Roberts Bank superport as part of a memorandum of understanding with B.C. 

In the agreement, the federal government also pledged to preserve the ban on oil tankers transiting the waters near B.C.’s North Coast. Keeping the tanker ban in place “without alteration, suspension or narrowing of scope,” as the agreement states, removed the port at Prince Rupert as an option for the terminus of Alberta’s proposed pipeline. Prince Rupert is Canada’s deepest natural harbour, capable of accommodating very large crude carriers (VLCCs), huge tanker ships capable of carrying up to 2.2 million barrels of oil — three times as much as the largest oil tankers currently servicing the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Later the same day, Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced plans for a new West Coast pipeline (funded primarily by state-owned pipeline company Trans Mountain), which would follow the same route as the current Trans Mountain pipeline with one key difference: it would detour further south to end at Roberts Bank, instead of in Burnaby. 

Alberta’s submission to the federal Major Projects Office includes a two-berth terminal able to serve very large crude carriers. These ships are 330 metres long — that’s more than three World Cup soccer pitches laid end to end — and have a fully loaded draft of 20 metres. To reach water deep enough for these massive vessels to float in, the terminal’s causeway and jetty would extend about five kilometres out into the Strait of Georgia.

If the project goes ahead, it would be the first time that oil tankers of this size have ever docked in B.C. The largest tankers that can fit beneath the Second Narrows bridge to service Westridge Marine Terminal — the current terminus of the Trans Mountain pipeline — are Aframax tankers, which have a maximum capacity of 800,000 barrels of oil. Currently, even those tankers can only be filled to about 80 per cent, so the port authority has applied to dredge Burrard Inlet to make room for larger loads (a plan the Tsleil–Waututh Nation is fighting). 

On land, the proposed oil terminal would take up 260 hectares — nearly two-thirds the size of Stanley Park. About half of that space would be covered with 15 storage tanks capable of holding 6.5 million barrels.Roberts Bank’s location — hemmed by wetlands, Tsawwassen First Nation treaty lands, parcels in the Agricultural Land Reserve and residential neighbourhoods — raises questions about whether there is enough room for Alberta’s proposal. The Major Projects Office did not respond when asked whether any assessments about fitting the proposed tanker terminal in that location have been completed.A question about whether the oil tanker terminal could be built in conjunction with the proposed port expansion or would have to wait until Roberts Bank Terminal 2 is complete also went unanswered.

The Fraser River estuary has lost 85 per cent of its salmon habitat to the effects of development and there are already plans to double the size of the terminal.

MacDuffee described the estuary as an “incredible natural asset” that has economic and environmental value.

“It supports these vibrant ecosystems that people are travelling from all over the world to visit, to see the Salish Sea, to see whales, to see birds, to see these migrations, to see these special places and here we are moving to take this incredible asset and turn it into an industrial sacrifice zone.”

Tanker terminal piles risk on top of risk

Roberts Bank Terminal 2, as the $3.5-billion planned port expansion is known, would increase the port’s container capacity by 50 per cent. The 2020 federal assessment of Roberts Bank Terminal 2 concluded the expansion’s impact on wetland function, Chinook and chum salmon and southern resident killer whales “is high in magnitude, permanent and irreversible.” In 2023, the federal cabinet concluded the public interest in the port expansion superseded those impacts and approved the project, subject to nearly 400 conditions.

In 2025, the Vancouver Port Authority submitted Roberts Bank Terminal 2 to the Major Projects Office, hoping to see it designated a “nation-building project” and fast-tracked for final approvals. That designation would mean streamlined regulatory processes and assessments.

Alberta’s proposal will also be evaluated by the Major Projects Office. The office did not respond to a question about whether the tanker terminal will be assessed to determine the potential cumulative effects of the project on the Fraser River estuary and Salish Sea.

The proposal to add another terminal and introduce oil supertankers to the Fraser estuary is raising concerns amongst B.C. environmentalists.

“This is supercharging the impact in case of an accident,” Anna Barford, Stand.earth’s oceans campaigner, said. “If we have a spill, if there is a critical problem, if one of these ships loses power and runs aground, we’re looking at incredible devastation in an area that is wildly biodiverse … at the mouth of a very important salmon-bearing river.”

The logistics of bringing such large vessels into the crowded waters of the Salish Sea is also a concern, Barford added.For MacDuffee, the tanker terminal proposal flies in the face of the federal government’s acknowledgement of the Fraser estuary’s importance. With more than $2 million in federal funds, Raincoast has been working to restore salmon habitat degraded by marine infrastructure.

“We’re allowing the flow of water — of nutrients, of sediment, of fish, of everything — back onto Sturgeon Bank, trying to restore the function of this estuary and the opportunity for rearing salmon,” MacDuffee told The Narwhal.

Port expansion poses significant risk to endangered species and critical habitat

Even without adding an oil tanker terminal to the mix, Roberts Bank Terminal 2’s impact on endangered species could be catastrophic, Barford said. 

“We’re looking at increased underwater noise, which we know is very difficult for fish and for creatures like southern resident killer whales that use echolocation to find their food.” 

More than 100 species in the Fraser River estuary are at risk of local extinction by 2045, a 2022 study found. At-risk species include the southern resident orca, whose population was just 74 individuals as of last year’s census. 

Many migrating bird species, including the western sandpiper, could also be negatively impacted by the terminal expansion. During their annual migration from Peru to Alaska, western sandpipers stop in the Fraser estuary, where they fuel up on biofilm, communities of microorganisms that flourish on the estuary’s mudflats. Losing access to this crucial food source would be a significant blow to western sandpipers and the many other migratory bird species.

“Roberts Bank is critical habitat,” Barford said. “Just because it looks muddy … doesn’t mean that it isn’t a paradise for endangered and migratory species.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Table of contents

• Step 1: Begin in a time of crisis
• Step 2: Get to know the region’s permafrost — and assume ‘the ground is going to move’
• Step 3: Prepare to build a pipeline above-ground — or chill the oil
• Step 4: Expect cost overruns, especially as the climate changes
• Step 5: Monitor in perpetuity. Adapt to a warming climate

“This is no picnic,” warned a somewhat cryptic job poster on the walls of an Edmonton pipeline construction firm in summer 1942.

“Men hired for this job will be required to work and live under the most extreme conditions imaginable. … Men will have to fight swamps, rivers, ice and cold. Mosquitos, flies and gnats will not only be annoying but will cause bodily harm. If you are not prepared to work under these and similar conditions — do not apply.”

The job was a secretive government project in the wilderness of the Canadian North. In less than two years, a team of 30,000 would enlist to lay a four-inch-wide steel pipe from a recently discovered oilfield near Norman Wells, N.W.T., to Whitehorse, Yukon.

The “stupendous” and “unusual” construction project, as it would be called in the years after its completion, was the first attempt to build a pipeline in the North American Arctic. 

It would ultimately lay the foundation for many decades of oil exploration in the North.

Today, a fragmented trade relationship with the United States and an oil crisis driven by a new conflict in the Middle East have bolstered Canadian politicians’ calls for new oil and gas infrastructure.

As investors hesitate to back the east-west pipeline proposals that face opposition from Indigenous communities and environmental advocates, a decades-old idea to build a link to the Port of Churchill on the shores of Hudson Bay has picked up steam.

While not all of northern Manitoba is as ice-laden as the Northwest Territories or Alaska, any pipeline from Alberta’s oilfields to Manitoba’s northern coast would need to cross the Canadian Shield, the tundra and permafrost. These ecosystems are changing rapidly as the planet warms; more than half of existing infrastructure in the Arctic is projected to incur damages by mid-century as a result of climate change. 

If Manitoba, the federal government and industry players are serious in their pursuit of pumping oil and gas through the Port of Churchill, they will need to build on the legacies — and lessons — of northern pipelines that have come before.

Step 1: Begin in a time of crisis

The first time a pipeline was strung across the hard, icy wilderness of the North American Arctic, the world was at war. 

It was the spring of 1942, just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. War Department (as it was called then, too) was concerned its Arctic bases were exposed to attacks by Japanese forces. 

Behind closed doors, the U.S. government devised a plan to shore up its Arctic security with two daring infrastructure projects: a highway slicing through the ice from Dawson Creek, B.C., to Delta Junction, Alaska, and a pipeline feeding crude from the untapped Norman Wells oilfield in the Northwest Territories across the Mackenzie Mountains and on to a refinery in Whitehorse.

This secret wartime pipeline, built by the Imperial Oil Company, would be called Canol — short for Canadian oil. 

“At the time Canol was begun, our situation was not a happy one. … The sea lanes to Alaska might be blocked, and with a shortage of freighters and tankers it was imperative that an overland route to Alaska be opened up and given an assured fuel supply,” Richard Finnie, a historian and filmmaker who produced a documentary about the pipeline, said in a 1947 article in the Canadian Geographical Journal.

“All that was done, and with amazing speed.” 

It took just 22 months to lay the 1,000-kilometre pipeline; it would take just nine months to abandon it. By 1947 the war was over and the oil link was no longer needed. Canol was dismantled, its steel repurposed. 

But its short-lived presence made a permanent mark on the North.

Before Canol, Finnie said, there were no airports, no roads longer than 15 kilometres, and certainly no oil infrastructure. The project proved to governments, business and engineers that the harsh northern terrain, with its unyielding granite and ice, could be tamped down with concrete and steel. 

In the decades since, two more major pipelines have been built in the northern reaches of the continent: Enbridge’s Line 21, from Norman Wells to northwest Alberta, and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System that cuts the length of the northernmost American state.

The Trans-Alaska pipeline, a four-foot-wide, 1,200-kilometre-long pipe that zigzags through Alaska’s mountain valleys from an oilfield at Prudhoe Bay to a marine terminal at Valdez, was also built in just two years. It had previously been stalled for several years due to legal and environmental challenges, but was ultimately approved when the 1973 Arab-Israeli war thrust America into an oil crisis.

Now, a new oil crisis is renewing old interests.

Amid what the International Energy Agency called “the largest supply disruption in history,” Canada has agreed to contribute 23 million barrels to global emergency oil supply. Despite being the world’s fifth-largest producer of both crude oil and natural gas, pundits and politicians argue a lack of pipelines is stymying the country’s export capacity.

“We must build new pipelines west, east, north and south — without delay and without hesitation — to supply Asian, European and American markets with safe, reliable and responsibly produced energy products,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith wrote in an op-ed for the Financial Post this month. 

Manitoba’s Port of Churchill is now being heralded as a potential trade hub allowing the country’s resources more rapid access to eastern markets. Momentum is building in support of an energy corridor that could carry oil, natural gas, potash or hydrogen from the Prairies to Hudson Bay. 

In January, Premier Wab Kinew announced multiple energy companies are interested in backing the proposal, while a November agreement with the federal government pledges to simplify regulatory approvals for a port expansion.

In the 2026 budget, the NDP announced a further $10 million to “keep building the momentum on this project and attract even more private sector interest in a potential energy corridor.”

Under these political conditions — and with significant investments from either the private or public sector — pipelines can be built quickly. 

“There’s just an idea that we don’t do enough in the Arctic,” Heather Exner-Pirot, director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said in a late February interview. Canadians periodically worry the country does not have enough presence in the Arctic, or is under-utilizing its resources, she added. 

Those fears are “based on a very superficial understanding” of the Arctic, she said. But coupled with a desire to diversify exports and opposition to an east-west pipeline through B.C. to the Pacific Ocean, they have made the prospect of a new northern pipeline more enticing.

But in reality, she said, building in the North — over Manitoba’s muskeg and permafrost — is an expensive and dangerous logistical challenge.

[Back to top]

Step 2: Get to know the region’s permafrost — and assume ‘the ground is going to move’

When Canol was first proposed, scientists knew so little about building infrastructure in the Arctic, they had yet to come up with a term for its characteristic, perennially frozen ground. It was Stanford University professor Siemon Muller who first coined the term permafrost after being sent to investigate where the Alaska Highway and Canol pipeline would be built.

In simplest terms, permafrost is a term for ground that remains frozen year-round, though it is formally defined as “earth materials that remain below 0 C for two or more consecutive years.”

Permafrost is typically described as either continuous (appearing over more than 80 per cent of the ground), discontinuous (covering between 30 and 80 per cent) or sporadic (less than 30 per cent). Almost half of Canada’s land area is underlain with permafrost, predominantly across the Territories. 

While the top layer of soil, called the active layer, thaws briefly in the summer, the permafrost below remains at a relatively stable freezing temperature. Gravelly, rocky soil is often considered “ice-poor,” and is able to maintain its stability even when the ice thaws. Finer soil tends to create “ice-rich” permafrost, where frozen moisture is necessary to the structural integrity of the surface. 

Understanding these nuances is a prerequisite to designing any pipeline infrastructure in the North, University of Alaska Fairbanks geophysicist Vladimir Romanovsky said in an interview. 

“If it’s present, the second very important question is: how much ice is in that permafrost?”

Romanovsky has been working with permafrost since the mid-’70s — right around the time the Trans-Alaska pipeline was built. Understanding of permafrost was still limited then, but would grow as engineers planned a route across the Arctic. 

In January 1969, representatives from some of North America’s largest oil and gas producers and mining operations met at the University of Calgary for the third Canadian conference on permafrost, where a session was dedicated to discussing the challenges of building pipelines over the frozen ground. 

By this point, scientists understood the permafrost “is in a very delicate state of thermal equilibrium with its environment, and any disturbance will cause thawing and degradation,” T. A. Harwood, chairman of the National Research Council’s permafrost subcommittee, said in a presentation. This is further complicated by the discontinuous nature of much of Canada’s permafrost layer, he added, which makes the ice “patchy and unpredictable.” 

Understanding the ice content helps engineers assess how the permafrost will change under the temperature stresses created by a pipeline, Romanovsky said. Oil pipelines are usually transporting a heated product, while gas pipelines are often chilled. 

“Both of them impact the environment in terms of permafrost. The heated oil pipeline will thaw permafrost if it’s placed into the ground; the chilled gas may actually create new permafrost,” he said.

When permafrost thaws, a layer of water forms under the ice, which can cause the ground to shift — a phenomenon called subsidence. The problem is exacerbated on slopes, where the soil can become oversaturated and form landslides. Newly frozen areas can swell or heave, posing infrastructure risks. 

“Permafrost, generally, is not just frozen dirt. It’s a highly sensitive, temperature-dependent foundation,” Alireza Bayat, professor of civil engineering and director of the Canadian Underground Infrastructure Innovation Centre at the University of Alberta, said in an interview.

As the active layer thaws and freezes, the changing grounds can cause pipes to either sink into the soil or be pushed up out of the ground, Bayat said.

“Essentially you’re assuming the ground is going to move. How can we build or design a pipe that’s able to handle that?”

To make a pipeline work in the discontinuous permafrost seen in northern Manitoba, Romanovsky said scientists and engineers will need to consider the extent of the ice layer and calculate the degree of cooling needed to keep the frost stable through the pipeline’s lifespan. Extra margin should be built in to account for climate change, he said, which is rapidly warming the Arctic.

[Back to top]

Step 3: Prepare to build a pipeline above-ground — or chill the oil

After finding a major oilfield at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in the 1960s, oil and gas executives were consumed with “the problem of deciding on the best means of transporting this oil to market.” 

In his presentation, Harwood suggested a couple possible routes: either straight across the permafrost to Alaska’s south shore, or through the Mackenzie River Valley. The latter seemed the more sensible option to Harwood, given the pipe could either link up with existing infrastructure in Alberta or be carried on to the Port of Churchill — which was being used for seasonal grain shipments at the time — where “it appears reasonably certain that it would be possible to ship oil … to any continental port throughout the year.”

The decision would ultimately be made to run the pipeline across Alaska, allowing easier access to western markets and fewer regulatory challenges. 

But the question of how to lay a pipeline carrying either hot, liquid oil or pressurized, cold gas was still unanswered. 

At that point “no one [had] actually constructed a pipeline in the North and operated it,” Harwood said.

He proposed three solutions: building a road with a large crown — effectively a peak in the centre — along which a pipeline could be nestled in insulating materials, laying the pipe in a trench dug into the active layer of the permafrost or suspending the pipeline above ground. 

The original design for the Trans-Alaska pipeline was drawn up by a Texas company that planned to use the same methods it had for its southern lines, Romanovsky said: “Dig a trench, put the pipe in, cover it and everything will be good.” 

“That would be a disaster if that would have happened,” he said.

The design was reviewed by Arthur Lachenbruch, a permafrost scientist at the United States Geological Survey, who determined the proposal to bury a four-foot-wide pipe the length of the state would likely thaw the surrounding permafrost.

“Where the ice content of permafrost is not high, and other conditions are favorable, thawing by the buried pipe might cause no special problems. Under adverse local conditions, however, this thawing could have significant effects on the environment, and possibly upon the security of the pipeline,” Lachenbruch wrote in a 1970 report.

Lachenbruch’s report changed everything, Romanovsky said. 

The pipeline was already facing pushback in the courts from both environmental organizations and Indigenous Alaskans. It was the first major test of the newly passed National Environmental Policy Act, and led to lengthy environmental impact assessment hearings, where critics used Lachenbruch’s report to support their case.

Construction stalled while the pipeline owner, now called the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, was forced back to the drawing board. 

Instead of burying the line, engineers decided to suspend more than half of the 1,200-kilometre link on H-shaped support beams, a novel construction method for the time.

The 78,000 beams were each fitted with an innovative technology, called thermosyphons, designed to regulate the temperature of the permafrost.

“It’s a very smart engineering design,” Romanovsky said. 

The thermosyphons (also called thermopiles) don’t require any energy. Instead, the space-age technology consists of sealed tubes inserted several metres into the permafrost that contain a small amount of pressurized gas.

In the summer months, when the permafrost is colder than the air, the thermosyphons don’t have much work to do. But in the winter, when the temperature below ground is warmer than the atmospheric temperatures, the gas condensates into a liquid and drips to the bottom of the tube. Below ground, the liquid absorbs heat from the surrounding ice and evaporates, drawing the heat up and out to the surrounding air. 

“This convection goes on all winter long, taking heat from the ground, bringing it to the atmosphere and releasing it,” Romanovsky said.

Years after the Trans-Alaska pipeline came online, Canadian oil companies returned to the idea of laying a pipe through the Mackenzie Valley, this time connecting the oilfield at Norman Wells, N.W.T., to existing infrastructure in Zama, Alta. 

Unlike the Trans-Alaska line, Enbridge’s 869-kilometre Line 21, which came online in 1985, is the first Canadian Arctic pipeline to be buried in the permafrost.

To mitigate the risk of subsidence, the Norman Wells pipeline runs cold. The oil is chilled before entering the line to mirror the average ground temperature throughout the year, averaging between 0 C and -1 C. (Oil in the Trans-Alaska line is kept between 38 C and 63 C). 

Because clearing the ground for a pipeline right-of-way removes some of the natural insulation on the permafrost, several thaw-sensitive slopes along the route were insulated with woodchips to prevent melting. Monitoring technology was installed in strategic locations to measure ground temperature, check for pipe movement and estimate thaw depths. 

The pipeline has not been without incident. 

1,500 barrels of oil spilled after the pipe failed in 2011. Two years later, the federal pipeline regulator found 77 buried lines in the region were at risk of failure; the town of Norman Wells ranked as the community with the highest number of federally regulated pipeline incidents in 2013. In 2016, the pipe was shut down for nearly two years due to risks posed by a shifting permafrost slope.

Imperial Oil plans to “wind down” operations at the Norman Wells oilfield this fall, citing declining production.

[Back to top]

Step 4: Expect cost overruns, especially as the climate changes

Regardless of whether the pipe is to be built above or below ground, designing and constructing infrastructure able to withstand shifting permafrost is, above all, “very expensive,” Romanovsky says. 

At the earliest stages, a feasibility study estimated the Trans-Alaska pipeline would cost between US$863 million and $1.05 billion, depending on its capacity. By 1975, after re-working the design to factor in the permafrost, the budget was $6.4 billion. 

In the end, it cost more than US$8 billion —10 times the original estimate. 

Similarly, Canol came with an initial estimate of $500 million (in 2025 CAD) but in the end cost $3.2 billion. After the war, American cabinet members criticized the project as “useless and a waste of public funds.” 

These ballooning costs are often attributed to the limited permafrost expertise during initial designs; they do not account for the additional costs of maintenance and repair.

Bayat, at the University of Alberta, said Arctic pipelines require specialized materials, design characteristics and construction methods to withstand the forces caused by moving permafrost while mitigating the pipe’s risk to the environment — all of which can be costly.

The remote location can also add to the cost, as it leaves operators reliant on winter roads and other temporary infrastructure when building and maintaining the pipe.

“You will spend some money to keep it in good shape,” Romanovsky, at the University of Alaska, said of Arctic pipelines.  

For example, the company tries to survey the pipeline by helicopter every day, weather permitting.

When the Alaska project was being designed in the mid-’70s, Romƒanovsky said, engineers and geophysicists were concerned about how the pipeline could impact the permafrost, but few were aware of the long-term risks a warming climate could pose to the pipe itself.

In 2020, several supports holding the pipeline aloft began to bend as the permafrost slope they were attached to began to thaw and shift, threatening the integrity of the pipe and forcing the ownership group to replace the beams and refreeze the slope. The same year, flood damage cost the operators US$10 million to repair the pipeline, while preventative maintenance to safeguard sections against further flooding was expected to cost a further $10-15 million.

These expenses are expected to climb as warming accelerates permafrost thaw. 

A scientific review of research from the last 20 years estimates as much as 50 per cent of Arctic infrastructure — including the Trans-Alaska pipeline, and some Canadian highways — are at high risk of damage by 2050. Maintenance costs, the review estimates, could increase by more than $15 billion in that time, while unavoidable damages could cost upwards of $21 billion.

Manitoba has already felt the impacts of shifting permafrost on infrastructure. 

The Hudson Bay Railway, which runs more than 800 kilometres between The Pas and Churchill, was among the first major transportation projects built over Canadian permafrost. Since its construction in the late 1920s, it has required regular maintenance as the weight and heat of train traffic thaws the ice-rich permafrost over which it was built. The railway was out of service for 18 months after being washed out by floods in 2017.

Federal and provincial governments have spent upwards of $500 million to purchase, repair, maintain and upgrade the railway since 2018.

[Back to top]

Step 5: Monitor in perpetuity. Adapt to a warming climate

As part of the environmental agreement that greenlit the Norman Wells pipeline, Enbridge and the Canadian government collaborate on research and monitoring, which provides long-term data about the impact of pipeline infrastructure on the permafrost.

That data is among the longest permafrost monitoring records in the country. The long view of the ice helps form a picture of how permafrost is changing alongside the global climate — and trends show the ice is warming quickly, Romanovsky said.

“In places where the permafrost was warmer, it’s already started to thaw from the top down,” he said. “In the future, with further warming, it will be happening in more and more regions, and be happening faster and faster.”

A 2024 report from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme found permafrost has warmed by two to three degrees since the 1970s, as ground temperatures reach record highs. The thawing has substantial impacts on the landscape, causing erosion, slumping and pooling of water. That melting permafrost in turn releases trapped carbon dioxide, further fuelling the warming effect.

The Arctic Research Consortium of the United States warns the standard 30-year climate data engineers typically use when planning infrastructure projects has become “insufficient,” as climate change speeds up. 

“In the past, pipe design was kind of static … they were based on the fact we know how the weather is or how the ground is,” Bayat said. “Those assumptions are now more dynamic and they are changing with the climate.”

These warming trends could render existing mitigation technologies like thermosyphons ineffective, Romanovsky added.

During an engineering conference in Portugal in 2008, Edmonton-based Duane DeGeer presented on the unique considerations for Arctic pipelines, reporting the success of both the Norman Wells pipeline and the buried segments of the Trans-Alaska line had “prompted pipeline designers to consider burying Arctic pipelines wherever possible.” 

To mitigate heaving and sinking, the report referred to research on thicker, stronger, better insulated pipes, as well as controlling the temperature of materials inside, varying burial depth and soil cover and, above all, conducting long-term monitoring of soil temperatures and pipeline integrity. 

According to Bayat, more resilient materials, better temperature control methods, as well as more advanced monitoring technology, have become more accessible over time. 

Engineers now use a “strain-based design” philosophy that accounts for the inevitable ground movement caused by permafrost, and plans for pipes that can withstand those forces, he said. Construction practices have also evolved, with directional drilling (an underground tunnelling technique) replacing the traditional open-trench methods.

Major strides have been made in monitoring technology, he added, with fibre optic sensors, digital inspections and predictive analytics that “allow us to have more eyes on those pipes and be more proactive than reactive.” 

Ultimately, Bayat said, building a new pipeline in the North will come with many unknowns.

“This is not the area [where] we go and build pipes every day. … When it comes to the North, yes we have examples, but only a few, and they’re from the past,” he said. 

“These foundations are rapidly changing. What will the pace of that change be? How much further is it going to change? Those are the things that need to be taken into account.”

[Back to top]

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The marine town of Churchill, Man., cherished for its wildlife, landscapes and history, has recently taken on a new sense of national importance. Plans to expand Canada’s lone deepwater Arctic port on the shores of Hudson Bay have gained momentum — and investment — in the last year as the country looks north for solutions to an unprecedented conflict with its southern neighbours. 

Premier Wab Kinew has pitched the Port of Churchill as an answer to Canada’s trade concerns, and a means of galvanizing both provincial and national economies. Prime Minister Mark Carney has designated a plan to upgrade the port facilities as “transformative,” committing millions in federal dollars to the project and touting its merits in meetings with European trade partners. In late January, Kinew announced the province was in talks with several companies, including at least one major energy company, about investing in port expansion.

“I think a few of those companies are starting to say that they’re very serious about making an investment in Manitoba,” Kinew said in an interview earlier this month. “That would lead to infrastructure being built to do more export on Hudson Bay, which would be huge for our provincial economy.”

The Port of Churchill Plus proposal envisions a new resource corridor capable of transporting Western Canada’s natural resources, including liquefied natural gas, oil, mineral ores, potash, fertilizer and agricultural products, to Hudson Bay, where they can be shipped to international markets. 

It would likely include an upgraded northern railway, an all-season road, year-round shipping routes and a fossil fuel pipeline.

This is far from the first time the near-century-old port has garnered attention from politicians keen to see it reach its potential as an international trade hub. But where several attempts to grow the capacity of the historic grain port fizzled out, this latest proposal is gaining steam.  

Federal and provincial governments have already committed more than $500 million combined for infrastructure upgrades and preliminary research. A study to gauge industry interest in the project is underway, as is a study of the operational requirements to allow for year-round traffic in Hudson Bay. Manitoba has inked a memorandum of understanding with Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and the territories to collaborate on “nation-building infrastructure” and a west-to-east economic corridor. 

Past efforts to expand the port and diversify its trade potential were hampered by a lack of public and private investment. The remote location, difficult terrain and short ice-free shipping season make the port and associated Hudson Bay Railway particularly expensive.

“It wasn’t seen as a priority,” Barry Prentice, professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba, says in an interview. 

But threats to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and tariffs from its largest trade partner have “stirred up the pot a bit,” he says. At the same time, new technologies and the realities of a rapidly changing northern climate have created opportunities to improve the economics of an Arctic trade route.

“The stars are kind of aligning so that Churchill again becomes a viable and maybe very attractive route,” Prentice says.

While experts are divided on whether the plans for a northern Manitoba resource corridor will come to fruition this time around, they agree the Arctic is changing — and it’s possible for Churchill to take on a more robust role in national trade.

From a ‘neglected port’ to a new vision for Churchill

When Arctic Gateway Group, a consortium of 29 First Nations, 12 local governments and corporate investors, purchased the port and the Hudson Bay Railway from its former American owners in 2018, the “neglected” infrastructure was in disrepair, president and chief executive officer Chris Avery says.

The railway washed out in 2017, cutting off communities in Manitoba and Nunavut that relied on the line for supplies and transportation. The rail line’s foundation was sinking in the muskeg, culverts were blocked, rail ties hadn’t been replaced. The port itself had rotting timber, exposed rebar and sinkholes in the wharf deck, Avery says. It had been shuttered in 2016. 

Led by Churchill Mayor Mike Spence and several northern Indigenous communities, Arctic Gateway Group thought: “Enough is enough. We need to take back control of this asset that communities are dependent on, and by the way, even the country is dependent on,” Avery explains.

The group secured government funding to repair and upgrade the existing infrastructure. Under the new ownership, port activity resumed: grain and northern supply shipments restarted in 2019 and the first critical mineral shipments in more than 20 years set sail in 2024. 

Momentum for the port swelled the following year, in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats of Canadian annexation and skyrocketing tariffs. Canadian leaders stressed a need to strengthen Arctic sovereignty and open new avenues for trade; Kinew turned to the opportunity presented by the northern port.

“The whole [situation] with Trump and the U.S. has changed a lot of our thinking about the economy,” Kinew said last spring. “We’ve got minerals, we’ve got oil and gas. We’ve got all sorts of great goods that we want to export.”

During a meeting between premiers and Carney in June to pitch nation-building projects for a first-of-its-kind Major Projects Office, Kinew said a trade corridor to Hudson Bay could include a pipeline to carry Canadian oil and gas products, hydrogen, potash or other natural resources. 

And now Port of Churchill Plus has landed on the Major Projects Office’s list of transformative strategies, announced in September. 

Avery says the consortium’s vision is to support Canada’s efforts to diversify trade, assert northern sovereignty and advance Indigenous economic reconciliation by becoming “a major port.” 

To get there, it will need four significant pieces of infrastructure.

The existing railway needs to be upgraded to class one standards, meaning it can carry rail cars with a maximum weight of almost 130,000 kilograms. While that’s only about a seven per cent increase compared to current weight limits, “our customers tell us that seven per cent makes a big difference.” 

On top of rail, Churchill will need all-season road access to allow shippers and customers easier access to the port, with the added benefit of linking several northern communities that currently rely on an increasingly unpredictable winter-road network. Churchill, 1,000 kilometres north of Winnipeg, is only accessible by rail or plane. The provincial highway network currently ends near Gillam, Man., almost 300 kilometres southwest of the port town.

The port itself will need to accommodate year-round shipping, Avery says. Right now, it’s operational for about four months per year when the ice cover on Hudson Bay is at a minimum. Due to climate impacts, that’s expected to change in the coming decades, but Churchill will need icebreakers in the meantime. 

Finally, to capitalize on “the No. 1 Canadian export, which is energy products,” Avery says Manitoba will need a way to get those products to northern tidewater. While the company acknowledges oil and gas products can be shipped by rail (the port already transports diesel and other fuels as part of its northern re-supply shipments), he says “everything is being considered, including pipelines.” 

At least two companies have proposed pipeline routes from Alberta’s oilsands to Hudson Bay.

NeeStaNan, a Manitoba and Alberta-based company with First Nations owners, has proposed a “utility corridor” to Port Nelson, Man., a site 300 kilometres southeast of Churchill, that would be capable of exporting liquefied natural gas. The company’s website says it has secured support from two Canadian natural gas producers and is exploring the feasibility of exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) via a facility at the mouth of the Nelson River. 

The other, an Alberta-based organization called Western Energy Corridor, proposes developing a link between Churchill and Western Canada that could contain “one or more combinations of a natural gas transmission system, an oil pipeline or a high-voltage electric transmission system.” The company’s website states it has mapped out a 1,560-kilometre corridor and drafted documents for initial regulatory filing.

Is a fossil fuel pipeline really feasible in the north?

Past proposals to pipe Alberta oil to Manitoba’s northern coast have failed. According to Heather Exner-Pirot, director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, that’s at least in part because: “The economics of a seasonal port are terrible.”

“The question isn’t: ‘Has a pipeline ever been built this far north?’ ” she says. “The question is: ‘Can you put this infrastructure in a seasonal port and still get a return, still attract investment and still attract shippers — does it make economic sense?’ ”

As of right now, Exner-Pirot says, the answer is no. 

What makes Churchill unique isn’t just that the port is in deep Arctic waters. Similar ports exist in Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Russia. But those are located in places with year-round access to open water, she says; Hudson Bay, by comparison, is covered in ice about seven months per year. 

Typically, these part-time ports are used for what Exner-Pirot calls destination shipping. Goods are shipped in and out of a specific location like a community or a mine over the course of a much shorter shipping season. 

“It’s more expensive, it’s logistically constrained and people can only sell … or receive their goods for a few months a year,” she says.

Exner-Pirot says there is “absolutely not” an economic case for building an oil or gas pipeline to Churchill, where the shipping season is about four or five months long.

“If you build an oil pipeline over 1,000 kilometres, you better be using it every day,” she says.

Pipelines take decades to build and cost billions; they also face significant regulatory hurdles and often staunch opposition from Indigenous communities, environmental advocates and residents. Liquefaction facilities for natural gas, which Kinew has floated as a possibility for Churchill, aren’t cheap either — a recently completed facility in Kitimat, B.C., cost $18 billion.

Opposition to pipeline development, alongside Impact Assessment legislation that empowers the federal government to review the environmental, social and economic impacts of major projects, has created conditions where “an interprovincial pipeline in Canada has borne an unacceptable political risk,” Exner-Pirot says.

“Pipelines are built every single day. We invest billions of dollars into pipelines every single year,” Exner-Pirot says. “It’s the … pipelines that have to cross either a provincial border or an international border that are the problem.”

Manitoba’s premier has already faced criticism for his recent support of new oil and gas infrastructure to Churchill. Former NDP vice-president Chris Wiebe told the Free Press the proposal was a reversal from the party’s “no new pipelines” stance during the election campaign, while Clayton Thomas-Müller, an author and environmentalist from Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, called the proposal “jarring and triggering” in The Globe and Mail.

Exner-Pirot believes funds to upgrade the Port of Churchill could be better spent on other, year-round rail and port infrastructure. The Port of Vancouver is in need of investment, she says, adding exporters in Prince Rupert, B.C., only have one class of rail line capable of carrying the heaviest loads. 

“Everyone is just begging the government to fix the West Coast port issues and they’re spending half of their political attention on Churchill,” she says. “It’s very frustrating.”

Developing a resource corridor through the tundra comes with additional costly challenges. The shifting muskeg and permafrost — increasingly unpredictable due to a rapidly changing climate — makes infrastructure more expensive to maintain. 

But University of Manitoba’s Prentice says these challenges aren’t insurmountable.

“They built an oil pipeline across Alaska, above ground, and it still functions,” he says. “I don’t think it’s something that the pipeline industry is incapable of doing again, it’s just a matter of the costs and whether you have an investor willing to do it.”

The Arctic is changing — so is Arctic shipping

For many, the most compelling argument for a more robust trade network through the Arctic is that climate change will open up shipping routes as sea ice melts.

Arctic Gateway Group is working with University of Manitoba researchers to better understand how the ice is changing and what impacts it will have on shipping. 

“The preliminary results of their study tell us that with climate change, the sea lanes can be open for six months of the year already … without any icebreakers or new types of equipment,” Avery says. “By the end of the century, or within the lifetime of our kids, the sea lanes will be open on a year-round basis for commercial shipping.”

Feiyue Wang, director of the Churchill Marine Observatory and one of the professors involved in the research, says the ice-free period in Hudson Bay gets about one day longer every year, based on observed ice cover between 1979 and 2025. That trajectory will likely accelerate in the latter half of the century, he says.

“Even at this moment, the shipping window is already much longer than the current operational window at the Port of Churchill,” Wang says.

Shipping is picking up, according to a report from Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment, an Arctic council working group. More ships passed through the Arctic polar code area in 2025 than in any of the last 12 years, with the number of unique ships increasing 40 per cent over that time.

While most were fishing vessels, nearly 200 boats carrying oil, oil products, gas or chemicals passed through the region last year — again 40 per cent more than in 2013.

Mining has prompted some of the shipping increase, the report notes. Bulk carriers, which carry cargo like mining ore, sailed 156 per cent more nautical miles in the Arctic last year than in 2013. Natural gas vessels were unheard of in Arctic waters in 2014, but as of 2025, there were 40 unique gas tankers in the North sailing more than 866,000 nautical miles combined.

But “just because the bay is ice-free, doesn’t mean it’s navigable,” Wang says.

Shipping routes through the Arctic require a continuous ice-free pathway. While much of Hudson Bay is covered by “first-year ice,” which forms in the winter and melts in the summer, multi-year ice in the high Arctic could float south and complicate pathways through the Northwest Passage. Ice conditions will likely be highly variable based on weather and climatic conditions, Wang says.

That means Canada will continue to need icebreakers to navigate the Arctic. 

More shipping increases risk of a spill. Researchers warn it could be devastating

With more tankers carrying oil and gas through the remote and extreme Arctic waters, the risk of an oil spill becomes harder to ignore. 

While part of Wang’s research has focused on understanding the changes to the shipping season as a result of climate change, he’s particularly passionate about another aspect of the marine observatory’s work: “How would you actually develop that shipping in a way that is not only economically viable, but environmentally sustainable and culturally appropriate?”

In the case of small leaks in warmer climes, the ocean is full of microorganisms that can quickly absorb oil and clean up a spill. 

“What really concerns us is if you have a moderate, or even worse, a major oil spill … how can we actually clean that up?” Wang says.

Typically, spills are recovered either by burning oil off the water, which gets rid of the majority of a spill but produces a potentially toxic smoke, or by dispersing the oil into the smallest droplets possible, which allows the contaminants to quickly flow into the “much larger volume of the ocean” and be absorbed and diluted by natural processes.

But those methods are designed for warmer oceans. “We know very little about how those will work out in a system like Hudson Bay,” Wang says.

The remote and dangerous nature of the Arctic, with its poor visibility, long hours of darkness and a maze of sea ice to navigate would likely mean a longer wait for cleanup to begin. Freezing temperatures slow the work of the ocean’s natural oil scrubbers, meaning spills would take longer to decompose. More concerning: existing cleanup plans assume an ice-free surface. If oil becomes trapped under the ice, it may be impossible to find and remove. 

“If you have an oil spill, the best time window to respond is right away,” Wang says. 

The longer oil is left to spread with the fast-moving currents, “more profound damage to the marine ecosystem” may occur.

In the case of a large spill, impacts on local ecosystems and communities could be devastating. Vegetation and animal life could be contaminated, damaging Indigenous food sources. Local fisheries and tourism industries would likely be affected too, with far-reaching economic consequences. Communities exposed to contaminants may also face human health risks.

“I’m obviously in favour of fossil fuel development, but I’m not in favour of doing it in the most expensive, most dangerous way possible,” Exner-Pirot, at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, says.

But from Wang’s perspective: “Just because there’s a risk of an oil spill does not mean we should not have increased shipping, right? Just because there’s always the risk of a car crashing does not mean that we should not drive on the highway.”

Wang believes the technology and tools to respond to an ecological emergency can — and will — be developed. Crucially, he says, they will need to be developed in partnership with Indigenous communities who have extensive Traditional Knowledge of the marine environment. 

Ideally, he says, governments will invest in not only the technology to detect and respond to spills in the Arctic, but also in training local communities to lead response efforts. 

‘Generational opportunities’ in Churchill: Arctic Gateway Group

Wang has worked closely with Indigenous communities around Churchill and in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut for over a decade. Overwhelmingly, he says, these communities want to see developments that improve career opportunities, living conditions and access to health and education — but only if those developments put the community’s interests front and centre.

“That’s where this environmental piece, to me, is the most important one,” Wang says. “Everyone is talking about this Port of Churchill Plus project as a potential nation-building project, but if the environmental aspect and the Indigenous aspect … are not addressed properly, I don’t think this project is going to go anywhere.” 

Manitoba’s leaders are taking a similar approach. In December, Kinew announced the Port of Churchill Plus project will be led by a new Crown-Indigenous Corporation, a first-of-its-kind leadership structure that will bring government representatives and Indigenous leaders together to guide development. The corporation is expected to be formally established in March. 

During a recent visit to Churchill to meet with community members and stakeholders to discuss the future of the port, Kinew joined federal representatives to announce $250,000 to study the feasibility of a marine conservation area in Hudson Bay. 

“When we’re talking about pursuing export and import along Hudson Bay, we can’t do that without thinking about the environment,” Kinew said during the announcement.

“Instead of just trying to build up some massive export terminal and then wait … to highlight the downsides years in the future, we’re saying let’s have that conversation now.”

In a subsequent interview, Kinew said Churchill residents expressed both excitement about the port’s potential and some concern about the environmental impacts. The resource corridor he envisions could include a pipeline, a transmission line, an all-weather road and an LNG terminal, but he cautions “that’s just one potential avenue.” 

“Likely, to make a big project work in Hudson Bay, it’s going to be a mix of products. You probably have critical minerals, agricultural products, manufactured goods, northern re-supply for Nunavut all working together there,” he said.

At Arctic Gateway Group, Avery says the company is already in talks with companies that produce many of these commodities, including critical minerals like nickel and copper, potash and silica sand and agricultural products. The communities that own the port and rail “want to see a balance,” he says. 

“They want to make sure that where they live is protected, but they also want to see generational opportunities for themselves, their kids and their grandkids.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Let’s face it: there’s been a lot of talk lately about building more pipelines in Canada. So we thought we’d rewind a bit: what’s the state of Canada’s existing pipelines? Why are we in this “build, build, build” moment? And what might more pipes mean for Canada’s pledge of net-zero emissions by 2050? 

I spoke with climate investigations reporter Carl Meyer and Prairies reporter Drew Anderson for this explainer video, and dove into the dizzying data available online to try and make sense of the over 800,000 kilometres of pipes covering the country.

Want to make sure you don’t miss our latest videos? Subscribe to our channel on YouTube and follow us on TikTok. 

Thanks for watching!

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The B.C. government has just approved the Ksi Lisims liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility, which will produce up to 12 million tonnes of LNG annually by 2028. 

Ksi Lisims LNG — pronounced s’lisims, meaning “from the Nass River” in the Nisg̱a’a language — is a joint venture involving the Nisga’a Lisims Government, Canadian natural gas consortium Rockies LNG and Western LNG, a U.S.-based LNG project developer. 

Located at the north end of Pearse Island, close to the Alaska border, the facility will be the second largest LNG producer in B.C., nearly matching the 14-million-tonne production capacity of the first phase of the LNG Canada export terminal, which began shipping LNG to Asia this year. 

In their reasons for decision, posted publicly on Sept. 15, B.C. ministers of environment and energy, Tamara Davidson and Adrian Dix, said they were approving the new LNG project despite not receiving consent from nearly half of the First Nations who participated in the environmental assessment process.

“We recognize that LNG facilities, along with natural gas pipelines, electrical transmission lines … and other development in the area has deeply affected Indigenous communities and ways of life, and that Ksi Lisims LNG will contribute to the cumulative effects on ecosystems and communities in the region,” they wrote.

However, they concluded the Ksi Lisims project would “constitute economic reconciliation and an exercise of self-determination for Nisga’a Nation” and provide “direct and indirect economic opportunities for First Nations in the region and for British Columbia.”

LNG exported from Ksi Lisims will primarily be sent overseas to countries like Japan and South Korea, where the gas will be burned to produce heat and electricity.

In approving the project, the ministers noted Ksi Lisims will be bound to 23 conditions, including a greenhouse gas emissions plan in line with B.C.’s net-zero policy. However, they noted the project is expected to have “significant adverse effects on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the use of natural gas-fired power barges used to electrify the project prior to connection to the BC Hydro electrical grid.” It is unclear how or when the project would be electrified.

Western LNG and the Nisga’a government also own Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT), an 800-kilometre natural gas pipeline that will cross more than 1,000 waterways on its route to supply Ksi Lisims LNG. The pipeline was greenlit by the province’s environmental assessment office in June, paving the way for construction to continue this summer, more than a decade after the project was first proposed. 

“Ksi Lisims LNG represents a transformational opportunity for all participating B.C. nations, and it will be developed in line with our nation’s high environmental standards,” Eva Clayton, president of the Nisga’a government said in a statement. “This is what reconciliation looks like: a modern Treaty Nation once on the sidelines of our economy, now leading a project that will help write the next chapter of a stronger, more resilient Canada.”

Some First Nations consulted on Ksi Lisims LNG did not give consent

For the Nisg̱a’a, Ksi Lisims is a development opportunity that will benefit Nisga’a communities, the province and the Canadian economy, but other First Nations oppose the project. 

The Lax Kw’alaams band, for example, says the LNG facility would negatively affect its traditional territory and has expressed concerns about the project’s potential impact on B.C.’s ability to meet its climate targets. Lax Kw’alaams is southwest of the newly approved LNG facility and tankers filled with the liquefied gas will pass by the village regularly.

The environmental assessment office announced earlier this month that it had concluded dispute resolution processes initiated by Lax Kw’alaams and the Metlakatla First Nation as part of Ksi Lisims’ environmental assessment — despite failing to address the First Nations’ concerns about the project’s potential impacts on their communities.

The project also faced a legal challenge filed by the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs in October 2024. The chiefs submitted an application for judicial review to the B.C. Supreme Court, alleging B.C.’s environmental assessment office failed in its duty to consult and is negligent in its obligations to protect fish species when it concluded the project does not pose a threat to Nass River salmon populations.

“This project threatens our food security and government has denied Gitanyow a role in decision making,” Simogyet (Hereditary Chief) Malii Glen Williams said in a statement at the time.

The challenge was rejected by the court in early September. 

Naxginkw Tara Marsden, Wilp Sustainability director with the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs, said the approval puts B.C. on a dangerous path. 

“It’s hard to believe that we’re moving ahead in B.C. with climate-destroying LNG projects in the midst of a climate crisis,” Naxginkw said in a statement provided to The Narwhal. “Greenlighting LNG projects is part of a trend in the wrong direction.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

While Canada continues to wrestle with an existential threat posed by the guy in charge of the country next door (I’m talking President Donald Trump, not Elon Musk, but swap the names as you see fit), it’s not the only game in town. 

In Alberta, as the premier tries to fend off allegations of a potentially explosive corruption scandal, the province is pumping out news releases on everything from irrigation repairs (maybe good?) to funding for energy conservation and emissions reductions (devil’s in the details). There’s also a new Alberta Energy Regulator CEO who has a lot of experience regulating working in the industry. 

Oh, and hunting. There’s always hunting. Why is there always hunting? Because there’s always hunting. 

Let’s dive in, shall we?

From regulated to regulator

Is industry capable of self-regulation? What about industry insiders running semi-independent regulators? It’s an ongoing question across industries, but it’s particularly acute in Alberta’s oil patch. Knowledge of the industry is one thing, but the Alberta Energy Regulator isn’t mucking around with nuance, however, appointing a long-time oil and gas executive to lead the organization. (Six of the seven directors on the regulator’s board, which made the appointment, just happen to also be oil and gas insiders.)

On Thursday, the regulator said Rob Morgan would take the reins starting on Feb. 18, replacing Laurie Pushor. Pushor said last August that he wouldn’t renew his contract.

Morgan helped build Strathcona Resources into the fifth-largest oil producer in the country during his seven-year term as chief executive. He retired in October. 

According to The Globe and Mail, Morgan doesn’t have a plan to tackle the ever-present problem of inactive wells that will cost at least tens of billions of dollars to clean up, but he’ll chat with staff and stakeholders.

According to the energy regulator he will soon lead, Morgan’s former company has 513 inactive wells — 31 per cent of all its wells that haven’t been capped and sealed or reclaimed. 

Makes sense he hasn’t considered the issue. 

Trump makes our oil pump

I’m working on this on Valentine’s Day, so you’ll forgive me if my mind is full of romantic visions. Beavers and geese embracing one another across a frozen tundra, inflamed by nationalistic fervor to create an unholy Canadian beast that shall seek its vengeance upon those without our natural wealth. 

Regardless, the cross-provincial love fest continues to heat up in the face of an existential threat from the guy who is purportedly leading the United States at the moment (I think it’s actually Elon Musk’s small child, named X Æ A-Xii, but we can debate that later). 

Even old frenemies Alberta and Quebec have been hit by Cupid’s arrow. Quebec Premier François Legault told Politico he spoke with the Alberta premier on Feb. 12 about pipelines while the two joined their provincial and territorial colleagues for a big old peer-pressure session at the White House that didn’t go so great.Legault said that although Quebeckers are pro-environment, the, uh, environment has changed with Trump (or X Æ A-Xii) in charge. 

“What I said is we need social acceptability. We didn’t have it the last time we had a project but it may change in the future because people are very unhappy about Mr. Trump and they see that if we want to get this oil and gas out of Canada, you have to go through Quebec to export to Europe,” he said. 

I think we should call the new Canadian beast the Beagoose. Maybe Goover. I’m open to suggestions, but I think I’ve set the bar pretty high. 

Whatever it’s called, it will hiss. No debate. 

Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink

The Alberta government, which is absolutely not trying to draw attention away from allegations of a more than half-billion-dollar corruption scandal with plenty of funding announcements, announced it was continuing with a program it had already announced and allocated funding for in the last budget. 

Irrigation can seem like a fairly harmless enterprise that only helps bring water to crops, but the practice is under increased scrutiny in the midst of a multi-year drought, with irrigation being the biggest water user.

That said, there are some elements of the plan that could help conserve water by preventing evaporation, replacing open channels with buried pipelines. 

I guess the government just wanted you to know it’s still spending that money it’s spending, for some reason. 

The government also announced the latest round of energy efficiency projects that will be partially funded through its industrial carbon tax.

Unlike a previous announcement, which focused on helping oil and gas companies improve drilling, this one appears focused on efficiency and emissions, which to the government means using drones to plant trees and “developing concentrated milk products” that can be transported more easily.I don’t know, man. I don’t make the news, I just report it. 

Did you think we wouldn’t mention hunting? 

Last week felt weird, mostly just because the minister of forestry and parks, Todd Loewen, didn’t have an event promoting hunting.

It looked like the despair might continue this week, but fortunately I have a keen news sense and clicked on the news release entitled “Utah auction set to support conservation work in Alberta.”

You see, the conservation work is the work done by hunting organizations that are funded by hunting fees. 

Loewen has been hyping this auction with the zeal of man with a giant clock around his neck, so this is the culmination of a lot of work. He’ll be in Salt Lake City from Feb. 13 to 17 to attend the Western Hunting and Conservation Expo, which includes an auction of special licences to hunt elk, mule deer, moose, pronghorn, cougar, whitetail deer and turkey.

According to the province, these types of licences raised more than $1.2 million. A recent auction of a bighorn sheep licence went for a record $400,000. 

By the time the mounted head of the sheep crosses over the border, it should cost the hunter approximately $9 trillion due to a cascading avalanche of tariffs, counter-tariffs and thin-skinned recriminations.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.