Ottawa, ON – It’s been one year since the Liberals’ Building Canada Act received royal assent, a bill Carney promised would “build big, build bold, build now.” The big promises might still be on the Prime Minister’s homepage, but the reality is in: the Liberals have not used their powers to approve a single project.
Ten months after the launch of the Major Projects Office (MPO), there are 500 projects awaiting federal approval that want to get building, yet none have broken ground. Even if one or two get through this process, the problem still hasn’t been fixed. Carney promised that the MPO would speed up projects, but it’s clear he has failed to deliver.
Canadians are paying the price: Carney is now leading the only G20 country in a recession because builders are blocked from doing what they do best. Conservatives want to approve as many projects as possible to grow our economy, but instead of an equal playing field where the best projects move forward, Carney has kept in place the Liberal club picking winners and losers.
Just two days ago, his Energy Minister held a press conference to announce that three projects that have been languishing for a decade will now be eligible for consultation on possibly being designated to have their permit application moved from one federal bureau to another federal bureau for further consideration.
It’s not fast-tracking to take nine months to consult if projects should be fast-tracked. Another bureaucracy that requires three months of consultations to launch even further consultations is the exact opposite of the “build baby build” Carney ran on. And far from clearing the path for projects to get built, the Liberals have still not repealed a single law that blocks the development of projects.
Instead of results, they have delivered more press conferences, photo-ops and reannouncements. The only new thing they have managed to do is take credit for other people’s work. For example, Darlington Nuclear was approved for construction by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission before Carney was even elected. Ontario was also able to start construction of the road to the Ring of Fire five years early with no help from the MPO or Carney’s Liberals.
Meanwhile, the MPO has done nothing to get Canada any closer to building the easiest pipeline to the Pacific. There is still no route, no proponent, no federal Indigenous consultations, no start date, no construction and no plan for how they will grow oil production to fill it. In fact, when presented with a motion to declare a Pacific pipeline to be in Canada’s national interest, Liberals shut down the Natural Resources committee to prevent a vote.
We know the results: Canada has lost $20 billion in business investment since Carney took office, has the lowest business investment per worker, and Carney is now the only G20 leader to lead his country into a recession. It’s clear that more bureaucratic busy work doesn’t build the economy; what will is getting out of the way, repealing the anti-development laws, scrapping the industrial carbon tax and granting permits for construction to begin.
Conservatives would get results by getting out of the way and off the backs of builders, investors, and workers. We would bring in one application, one review, so projects get approved within a maximum of one year, with a six-month goal, and shovels get in the ground faster.