Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cross-country tour promoting the government’s “Major Projects Office” (MPO) framework has begun to sound like a familiar script: big numbers, big promises, and bigger timelines. On Nov. 10, he again emphasized that Ottawa is preparing to unveil the second round of projects to move through this new fast-track system. But as impressive as the list may look on paper, Canada’s real problem isn’t the lack of projects it’s the lack of speed, clarity, and political courage to actually get them built.
Carney stressed that the MPO’s list is a “living list,” not a one-off announcement. Fair enough. But New Brunswick’s absence from the first round of five projects rightly raised eyebrows, and it’s clear the government is now scrambling to reassure regions that felt overlooked. Announcing the next round on Nov. 13 may help with optics, but it doesn’t solve the underlying regulatory drag that industry leaders have been shouting about for years.
The first batch of projects LNG Canada Phase Two, the Darlington SMR project, the Contrecœur container terminal expansion, and expansions to copper and gold mines in B.C. and Saskatchewan are all significant. But critics are correct in noting that many of these projects were already well into the approval process. In other words, the MPO isn’t exactly speeding anything up yet; it’s simply inheriting files already near the finish line.
The government’s “strategies for projects” list is even more telling. Whether it’s critical minerals in the Ring of Fire, the Arctic economic corridor, new rail corridors, or the Wind West Atlantic Energy strategy, Ottawa is essentially saying: we like these ideas, but come back when they’re more developed. It’s consulting, not committing.
Meanwhile, Budget 2025 touts the potential for $150 billion in total capital investment from future project waves. That’s a big number, but private capital is not Canada’s problem investor confidence is. And confidence doesn’t come from PowerPoints or press conferences. It comes from clear rules, predictable timelines, and political decisions that don’t change with each election cycle.
No wonder Canada’s top energy CEOs felt compelled to write an open letter this spring. They weren’t vague: repeal the Impact Assessment Act, reconsider the tanker ban, set hard six-month approval deadlines, and scrap the emissions cap and industrial carbon tax. Their argument wasn’t about ideology; it was about feasibility. If Canada wants jobs, investment, and revenue from an energy sector that already punches above its weight globally, then it must stop kneecapping the very industry it claims to support.
Carney’s response that Canada must become an “energy superpower” across hydro, nuclear, oil and gas, and renewables is aspirational. But aspiration without reform is just rhetoric. The new productivity super-deduction may help nudge companies toward capital investment, but it doesn’t address the regulatory maze that keeps projects stuck for years.
Even more striking is what Carney highlighted as progress: Canada exporting LNG to Asia for the first time in June, and plans to ship 50 million tons of oil there by 2030. This is good news, but it happened despite regulatory barriers, not because of them. If anything, it underscores how much more Canada could accomplish with a sane, streamlined federal framework.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s criticism that Carney’s answer to too much bureaucracy is to create more bureaucracy hits a nerve. Canadians have seen this pattern before: when in doubt, Ottawa builds another office.
The Alberta government, for its part, is trying to make the MPO work for them by pushing a new pipeline proposal into the system. But even that feels like an act of optimism rather than confidence. If Ottawa won’t fix its regulatory bottlenecks directly, provinces and industry will try to find workarounds.
Canada doesn’t need more lists, strategies, or announcements. It needs decisive action: shorter timelines, clearer rules, and fewer political hurdles for projects that create jobs, reduce emissions, and expand our energy reach. Until then, the MPO risks becoming just another well-branded waiting room.
If Ottawa wants to prove this office is more than a public-relations exercise, the next set of projects needs to move faster and with far fewer caveats. The country’s economic future depends on it.
