Originally posted 2025.09.16
Last updated 2025.11.03

Nothing creates long-term problems quite like short-term thinking. ~ Svyatoslav Biryulin

Canada's Projects in the National Interest - Econogics commentary

This began in August 2025 in the wake of the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) Advisory Notification on the liability of states (countries) for damages caused by their GHG emissions. Note: NOT the liability of the corporations generating those emissions for profit; the liability of the COUNTRIES where the emissions originated.

This mean the costs will be incurred by taxpayers, not the corporations that received payments while producing the harmful emissions. This legal conclusion arrived at the same time as Canadian media were reporting Canadian fossil fuel companies were actively lobbying the federal government in closed door meetings to be at the front of the line for special consideration when the national projects management team had not even been announced to the public.

When Canadian government resources (i.e. taxpayer funds) are the linchpin for any such undertakings, it is my opinion that ANY discussions should be open to all qualified contributors, and that the rules of engagement should be fair, transparent and truly in the NATIONAL interest, and not just a subset with privileged access. We need an actual definition of what constitutes a 'project in the national interest', as that is not provided in the One Canadian Economy Act, which merely "authorizes the Governor in Council to add the name of a project and a brief description of it to a schedule to that Act if the Governor in Council is of the opinion, having regard to certain factors, that the project is in the national interest".

Canadians need a workable demarcation for what is in 'national interest' beyond that Canadian taxpayers will nationally be paying the bills for regional projects for the benefit of for-profit interests, which appears to be the de facto checklist for qualifying for addition to the 'schedule' so far.

That led to me writing suggestions for an evaluation checklist which took into account the long-term national interest in light of the ICJ Advisory Notification, and requiring an explicit definition of what would be accepted as being in the national interest, that is, in the interest of Canadians broadly in the near term and taking into account the likely long-term consequences. I also offered up some sample projects that would really be in the national interest, but would likely not have a private sector proponent.

Start here: link to the first document:
Evaluation_of_Canadian_national_interest_projects_per_ICJ_Advisory_Opinion (PDF 16 pages)

Cover letter for the document above (PDF 2 pages)

Both the above were submitted to the Privy Council Office, and also sent to the Major Projects Office after its existence was revealed.

As of October 22, 2025, no projects have been announced as being on the 'Schedule'.

My intention in the months to come is to address some of the national projects which will be announced, and also write up some topics that are unlikely to be taken up the Major Projects Office, but perhaps should be. Unfortunately, given the apparent state of the conversation the federal government is having with fossil fuel lobbyists and ignoring civil society and its own citizens, it is necessary to sweep some trash off the table to make room for rational discussion.

Clearing Some 'National Interest' Trash

My List of Worthy Projects in the National Interest for Canada (2025)

** denotes this project content is not in place yet.

Anthropogenic Methane Capture, Utilization, Storage (and destruction) (AMCUS)
Arctic Sovereignty and Security | Data Sovereignty and Security** | Domestic Supply Lines**
Energy Sovereignty and Security | Food Sovereignty and Security** | Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI)**
Housing | National Electrical Grid | National High Speed Broadband Network**
National Natural Assets Inventory | Plastic Pollution Reduction and Removal
Productive Innovation vs. Sacrifices and Austerity**
Strategic National Commodities Reserves** (with update)
Additional Reading

Anthropogenic Methane Capture, Utilization, Storage (and destruction) (AMCUS) |

Arctic Sovereignty and Security

Unlike the appearance that the Canadian major projects office can't get enough fantasy fossil fuel projects to pad its portfolio for squandering more Canadian taxpayer money, at least the residents of the Canadian Arctic haven't given up on clean development even for major projects.

Speaking of a projects portfolio, Nunavut would like a word.
(Picture of the NTI projects in the national interest posterboard 2025.10.29 - apologies for the off-angle of my photo)
The Strategy Document (from the QR code on the poster)

Going back more than a decade, I was advocating for energy efficiency (e.g., robust, energy-efficient, healthy housing and shifting off increasingly unreliable fossil fuel shipments of imported diesel fuel) and got nowhere at the time. However, now we see the northern communities are pushing for this shift themselves, for the cost savings, the resilience of their communities, the health of their residents and reducing their GHG footprint. It's great to see communities like Beaver Creek YT now reaping the benefits, and Nunavut now (still) pitching for hydro projects for Iqaluit and Kivalliq.

Data Sovereignty and Security **

This will include data centres and powering them, AI processing centres take 20 times the power and water in the same footprint as traditional data centres. That's going to be a problem. With planning and intelligence, it can also be a no-regrets opportunity.

Domestic Supply Lines (and really eliminating provincial trade barriers)

The best solution for long, fragile supply lines - like getting commodities to the Canadian Arctic - is to eliminate those supply lines by producing what is needed locally.
For food supplies, see the piece on Food Sovereignty.
For energy, shift away from refined fossil fuels like diesel, heating oil and gasoline to renewably-generated electricity backed up with local energy storage (pumped, battery, others), which greatly reduces the cost to communities and residents for electricity from diesel generators and fueling vehicles. (Yes, electric vehicles work in the cold; no fuel lines to freeze up.)

If the Sarnia petrochemical complex needs crude oil after Enbridge Line 5 (a time-bomb waiting to leak in the Straits of Mackinac) is shut down, Line 9 from Montreal can be reversed and provide imported oil via tankers on the St. Lawrence Seaway, as is done for refineries in Quebec and New Brunswick. This was done before from 1999 to 2015. The Enbridge Mainline from Edmonton can continue to export crude to the Lakehead System in the U.S.

There is already a Canadian natural gas pipeline route (TC Energy) north of Lake Superior which does not pass south of the Canadian border to supply Ontario and western Quebec.

Supply lines to Canada's North for heavy materials may require supplements to the existing annual 'sealifts' and barging up the Mackenzie River. Rail is challenging across the tundra and muskeg, especially as the permafrost continues to melt. Ice roads are becoming less reliable as the freezing season is getting shorter. Current air travel is too expensive for bulk goods like construction materials. Solutions exist, but they will require the courage to innovate to implement them.

Energy Sovereignty

A lot of Ontario's natural gas currently comes from the United States (though there is an existing TC Energy pipeline which runs west to east north of the Great Lakes). With the current U.S. regime in power, if they felt that this fossil methane supply was a pressure point for Ontario, they will undoubtedly threaten to turn it off, just as Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatened to cut off electricity transmission from Ontario to the U.S.

This is largely an Ontario problem. Quebec and points east make almost no use of U.S. natural gas.

Canada from Manitoba west and primarily along the southern population ribbon is pretty well served from within Canada in terms of fossil fuels reserves, refining and distribution of refined products.

Central and Atlantic Canada aren't heavily endowed with land-based petroleum resources, and coal is generally too expensive to be competitive. There is refining capacity in Quebec and New Brunswick, which processes imported crude oil.

Those areas of Canada which are not currently endowed with a substantial and reliable energy supply should be looking to implement local production of electricity from renewable resources, backed up by energy storage (pumped, battery, etc.). This activity should be coupled with shifting to electric-powered solutions for transportation, space heating (heat pumps), domestic hot water (heat pumps), supplemented with other conservation and energy efficiency measures (LED lighting retrofits, induction stoves, convection ovens, enhanced insulation and weather heating, passive solar design, etc.). Not only do these shifts reduce operating costs - usually as a cost-effective investment - but will also reduce pollution of air, water and soil and reduce GHG emissions.

Food Sovereignty **

Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) **

Housing

Housing affordability has been a hot topic in Canada for pretty much a decade now, muted a bit by COVID-19, but back in the headlines again now. It's big and complicated, and impacted by general state of the economy, population growth, speculative land development practices and new home sales weighting high margin cosmetics over basic, robust construction practice.

RESTCo has done considerable research and work on creating energy efficient, healthy, affordable, robust housing which is designed to be adaptable to climate change consequences like permafrost melt, sea level rise and shoreline erosion, so why not start there for an overview?

National Electrical Grid - or something like that**

As I'm a fan of 'electrify everything', you would think that I would be forecasting a huge need for investment in a national electrical grid, like heating buildings and water with heat pumps and shifting away from gasoline and diesel vehicles to electric vehicles as advances in battery technology make long haul driving completely feasible in the current crop of EVs from bikes to cars, light trucks, transport trucks and ships.

However, that's not what I'm proposing here. In fact, I think we're never going to see a contiguous undertaking of any significant additional trans-national capacity because of forces already in play and the most likely outcomes. The investment in expanding the capacity of the current interprovincial connections beyond those already being built probably isn't worthwhile any more.

Renewable energy - notably photovoltaics and wind power - continues to fall in price while fossil fuel powered electrical generation continues to get more expensive and much of what we have is reaching end-of-life and in need of replacement or refurbishment. Nuclear fission based on uranium is not renewable, and in Canada, is in worse shape than fossil fuel in terms of aging infrastructure. As a result, amart new electrical generation is likely to be based on solar and wind energy, which is highly distributed.

As a result, the electricity production can easily be installed close to where it is needed, not required to be next to a river (hydro dams) or large bodies of water (for cooling nuclear reactors which produce massive amounts of waste heat), or beside pipelines or rail lines to receive fuel constantly. Removing dependency on fuel supply lines is actually a huge advantage in terms of reliability. (Trumpeters of a supposed surge in demand from 'AI data centres', take note.)

This transition will be enabled and hastened by the continuing drop in costs of energy storage, including stationary batteries, pumped storage, financial incentives for load-shifting and opportunity storage. Local stationary storage will also reduce the need for long-distance transmission of electricity, and reduce loading on the existing long-haul infrastructure at peak demand periods.

The glorious thing about battery cells, solar panels and small wind generators is that they are implicitly modular, and therefore scalable via paralleling. Key here is that they are scalable down from grid and utility scale to the household level to camping site size, or even an apartment balcony.

That approach is going to lead to an increasing number of the pioneers to 'cut the power utility cord' as a simple financial decision before long. Why pay the utility for something you produce yourself? If the only value the utility provides is being a 'battery', then they can be replaced by a battery.

With that degree of self-sufficiency, the household is freed from utility fees and fear of power outages, which are becoming more frequent with storm damage from climate change to the utility's wires.

While such household set-ups are a bit complex today (October 2025), they are increasingly becoming more consumer friendly. E.g., balcony PV panels including some battery and self-synchronizing inverter are now available from web retailers which you simply plug into a wall socket in your house or apartment, 'behind the meter'. From the utility's perspective, they aren't visible; all they'll see is that your electricity consumption is reduced, along with your electricity bill.

A new generation of heat pumps for household heating are now including a battery so they can charge at low price periods for grid electricity and then power the heat pump from the battery at high price periods. That's likely to be the entry point for most consumers. Not cutting the cord immediately, but testing the products, calculating the savings and incrementing in-house generating capacity and storage over time. Grid ramp down before full grid defection. (When the household cuts the electric utility cord, they can shift the period the appliance internal batteries charge from the utility's low rate daily period to when household power generation is most plentiful.)

My expectation is that the biggest losers in this transition will be the provincial grids that routinely have to import electricity from their neighbours because their provinicial system is under-resourced, aging, creaky and refusing to embrace low-cost renewables as the future for their generation capacity.

The next biggest losers will be the last rate payers to turn off their grid connection, as their rates will skyrocket as utilities have less and less sales and a big legacy debt bill overhead from the nuclear boondoggles they're signing up for in 2025. (Well, except Saskatchewan, which apparently expects federal taxpayers to gift them a nuclear power generation empire. (CBC 2025.10.21)

And why not? Prime Minister Carney is apparently planning to put federal taxpayers on the hook for Ontario's boondoggle in waiting, 'small modular' fission reactors based on an unproven technology from the U.S., which will likely be powered with enriched uranium from Russia. (Financial Post 2025.10.23) Unfortunately for Canadian taxpayers, cutting that part of the taxation cord won't be nearly as easy as unplugging from the local electric utility.

National High Speed Broadband **

Not all of Canada is well served with high speed data communications access. We need to address the rural/urban divide in this area, as Internet is now the default means by which governments and businesses reach their citizens and customers.

National Natural Assets Inventory including forests, peat lands and wet lands **

Plastic Pollution Reduction and Removal

Plastic pollution is a serious and growing issue in terms of human health and environmental impact. For a grounding on the subject, I recommend RESTCo's web pages on the topic.

Productive Innovation vs. Sacrifices and Austerity **

Strategic National Commodities Reserves **

Many of the national projects will require materials to be implemented.
Even a pipeline will need steel for the pipe, copper for control and power circuits, concrete for structural supports …
Housing will need structural lumber, possibly mass timber, concrete, pipes, wire, nails, roofing, siding …
A national grid will require steel, aluminum, copper, transformers, control systems …
A high speed national broadband system will require optical grade fibre, copper, electronic components, microprocessers, communications towers, possibly satellites …
You get the idea: there's no point in creating grand plans if we can't supply the materials when they're needed, and that means inventory, and preferably enough made from Canadian sources employing Canadians that projects don't get stalled waiting for inventory when those materials are needed.

2025.10.31 It looks like the Carney government may have made a start on this one, based on an announcement made at the G7 energy and environment meeting in Toronto on Hallowe'en.
Shout out to CBC for covering this first.

Additional Reading

Carney’s ‘nation-building’ programme misses mark to be truly transformative for Canada (The Guardian 2025.11.16)
Remember, PM Carney was once Governor of the Bank of England, so the UK press knows him.

(likely more to come, but it's a start)
Note, I am not a proponent for any of the above possible projects, merely an advocate inviting further discussion.
The documents linked above are not formal proposals, just outlines of why they are appropriate, contextual conditions and key elements of how they might be implemented.
If you would like to discuss any of them further, get in touch.

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