Canada’s build promise needs a real clock

Commentary
By Stewart Muir

Something important happened in Canada last week.

On July 22, all 13 provincial and territorial premiers called on Ottawa to shorten federal permitting timelines, accelerate major-project approvals and provide more predictable investment for electricity transmission, pipelines, ports, railways and other trade and energy corridors.

They also called for better tax treatment for nationally significant projects, affordable and reliable electricity, and partnerships with Indigenous peoples.

That is a major change.

This is no longer only an Alberta argument about pipelines, a British Columbia argument about LNG or an Ontario argument about industrial power demand. Premiers from every part of the country are now saying that reliable energy, transportation corridors and faster approvals are national economic priorities.

Canada has become very good at announcing urgency. Governments create offices, sign agreements, establish timelines and promise one-project-one-review systems. Each measure sounds useful, and some will be.

But none answers the question that matters most to an investor, an Indigenous partner, a utility or a project developer.

How long does the whole thing take?

Not the formal federal review. Not one statutory phase. Not the period a minister can point to in a news release.

The real clock.

That clock begins when someone develops a serious project concept, draws a route, starts engineering work and begins the commercial and community discussions needed to move forward. It ends when construction begins.

No government in Canada routinely publishes that number.

Instead, governments publish legislated timelines that begin only after years of work have already taken place.

A federal assessment phase may carry a 180-day clock. A new process may promise a decision within one year after an application is considered complete. Those deadlines may even be met.

The problem is that the calendar keeps running outside them.

The best public measurement we have of the first projects entering the federal Impact Assessment Act process found that a phase with a legislated 180-day timeline took 332 calendar days in practice. The regulator may still have complied with the law. The project still consumed nearly twice the advertised time.

That gap tells us something important.

The permit is often the short part.

Mining projects in Canada can take roughly 27 years to move from discovery to production. Accelerating two years of a 27-year process is worthwhile. But it does not solve the other 25.

Those years include route selection, engineering, environmental baseline work, commercial agreements, financing, application preparation, Indigenous engagement, community relations and repeated redesign.

Some of that work cannot and should not be avoided.

But much of the delay comes from beginning important conversations too late, changing requirements during the process, dividing authority among too many agencies and failing to make decisions when decisions are needed.

The premiers are right to connect faster approvals, energy infrastructure and Indigenous partnership.

But their statement now creates a practical test.

Will governments identify actual projects? Will they commit actual money? Will they change tax rules? Will they publish approval dates and report whether those dates are met? Or will this become another declaration of intent that produces no bankable schedule?

One useful reform would cost almost nothing.

For every major project, governments should publish the full elapsed time from the first formal project description to a complete application, from the complete application to a decision, and from the decision to the start of construction. Put those figures beside the statutory timelines.

That would show where time is actually being spent. It would separate regulatory delay from commercial delay, political delay, proponent delay and consultation that began too late.

It would also stop governments from declaring success because one legislated clock was met while the project itself remained stalled.

Stewart Muir is the President and CEO of Resource Works Society.