Front Burner - Canada’s energy minister on pipelines, Bill C-5 controversy

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Canada’s energy and natural resources minister Tim Hodgson is in charge of an extremely important file for the federal government.That’s because Prime Minister Carney campaigned on getting big energy and resources projects done, boosting Canada’s economy and extracting us from our close relationship with the U.S.The stakes are pretty high for Minister Hodgson, who is new to politics but has extensive experience in the private sector, including time as CEO of Goldman Sachs Canada. He was also an adviser to Mark Carney during his time as governor of Bank of Canada.He talks to host Jayme Poisson about the controversial piece of legislation, Bill C-5, that would allow the government to fast track projects, but also exempt them from environmental laws and with some exceptions, acts of Parliament.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

If you want to hear daily news that doesn't hurt your soul and might even be good for your soul, check out As It Happens. I'm Chris Howden. And I'm Nielke Oksal. Every day we reach people at the center of the most extraordinary stories, like the doctor who restored a patient's eyesight with a tooth. Or a musician in an orchestra that plays instruments made out of vegetables. Take the scenic route through the day's news with As It Happens, and you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, everybody. I'm Jamie Poisson. Today, I am talking to Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson. He is in charge of an extremely important file for the government right now.

Prime Minister Carney campaigned on getting big energy and resource projects moving in this country to boost our economy and to extract us from such a close relationship with the United States. Prime Minister Carney has vowed to make Canada, I quote, energy superpower. The job is also at the heart of national unity because many people in Alberta, of course, believe Ottawa has hamstrung energy projects and that has fueled separatist sentiment. So the stakes are pretty high for Mr. Hodgson's, who is new to politics, but to be fair is not new to a lot of other things. He was CEO of Goldman Sachs Canada for a time.

He was also an advisor to Mark Carney during his time as governor of Bank of Canada. He served for years on the board of MEG Energy, one of Canada's top oil and gas producers in Hydro One. We're going to discuss among other things a controversial piece of legislation, Bill C-5, that would allow the government to fast track major projects, but which critics say runs roughshod over democratic norms. Minister Hodgson, it's really a pleasure to have you on the show. I want to start today with Bill C-5, the Building Canada Act, and this is the legislation that your government wants to use to fast track major projects

to speed them through the regulatory process. The bill seeks to fast track projects deemed to be in the national interest. And just, could you explain to me what that means? So for your listeners, just to kind of set the stage, for the last 80 years, the way Canada has fit into the world is through free trade

and through a relationship with other countries where we worked for mutual benefit. What the prime minister has correctly identified is that world that we knew and we built our economy around is over. We are now in a world where countries are much more about ex-country first and about how do I extract things from my neighbors. Unfortunately, that means we are in a trade war and it has profound implications for this country. And I hear people say, why are we moving fast?

My response is, why don't we ask all the auto workers who are getting laid off that we should go slower? Why don't we ask all the people at the Fasco and Algoma and the other steel operations why we should go slower because they're losing their jobs today? Why don't we talk to all the workers in the aluminum sector? Why don't we talk to all the farmers who can't sell their crops and their farms are going to be economically challenged? We are systematically seeing sectors of our economy being attacked right now, and we need to respond. We need to come up with

solutions to this new reality we find ourselves in. And just not to ask too obvious of a question, but why would fast tracking these major projects help those farmers or those steelworkers? So there's two aspects of the bill. The first aspect of the bill is designed to remove trade barriers. By removing trade barriers, we are going to make life more affordable for Canadians. The estimate from people who look at this is that removing those trade barriers

are the equivalent to a 15% reduction in costs. Then we have to, at the same time, deal with the reality that this uncertainty that is being created is killing Canadian jobs. Steel, aluminum, autos on the farm, and that uncertainty is starting to play through in all kinds of other sectors. When I talk to businesses, they're afraid to invest today. They're afraid to hire new people because they don't know what's going to happen. What the Building Canada Act does is it creates the opportunity for us to control our own destiny to choose, to create a framework so that capital can go to work and start new

job, new projects, which will put people to work, which will put people to work on building transmission lines, on building new offshore wind, on building onshore wind, on getting new critical minerals mines developed, which will facilitate energy transition, on getting new ports built, etc., etc. That's going to give us the jobs and the good, high-paying, quality jobs that Canada needs and Canadians expect us to get from them. Do you have a list of projects yet? What are the projects? Yeah, so when we were in Saskatoon, just a few short weeks ago,

Premier started bringing ideas to us. There is no official group of projects yet, but at that meeting, a lot of different projects. I'll highlight two that really resonated with people, which is the Western Canadian Premiers came up with their port to port to port infrastructure corridor. Pacific Northwest to James Bay to Grays Bay Point.

And within that are opportunities in energy, critical minerals and well beyond. And specifically within energy, opportunities yes for an oil pipeline, oil pipeline to get to tidewater. In the East, they talked about another potential project called the Eastern Energy Partnership which would see transmission lines linking Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI to Quebec and creating

a positive virtual circle where offshore and onshore wind could be helping turn the hydroelectric operations in Quebec into the biggest batteries in the world. Those are two that got a lot of traction that we were talking about, but there were many, many that we were talking about, but there were many, many more put on the table. What's going to happen is over the next weeks and months, proponents are going to have to come forward to propose projects. This is not the federal government building projects. This is us creating the environment through the act to give them regulatory clarity and certainty

so they'll put their money to work for Canadians. On that point, Premier Daniel Smith, Alberta Premier Daniel Smith, said that she expects a proponent to come forward for a pipeline to the BC coast, the Northern BC coast, I think Prince Rupert. I think if there's some certainty that a process is going to be successful in a reasonable period of time, a two-year window, I think that there will be a proponent that will step forward.

My view would be that we'll have failed at the assignment if government has to build another pipeline. That will demonstrate to us that we are creating the pipeline. Are you supportive of that pipeline? So what we did in the act was we laid out five criteria. I'm happy to go through them if it's helpful to the listeners. Strengthen Canada's autonomy, resiliency and security.

Provide economic and other benefits to Canada, which means that the economy is going to be more resilient. Provide economic and other benefits to Canada, which means that it's going to generate economic prosperity. Have a high likelihood of successful execution, which means private sector money is going to support the development of it. Advance the interests of indigenous people. The prime minister has been extremely clear projects of national interest will be ones that First Nations are supportive of. And ideally there would be significant economic ownership of First Nations

because economic reconciliation is an incredibly important part of what we're trying to do. And then the fifth criteria is contribute to the clean growth and to Canada's objectives with respect to climate change. So every project that comes forward will be evaluated against those criteria. If and when a pipeline were to come forward, it would be evaluated against those, just like all the other things. In your estimation, would a project like that do well against that criteria? You know, that's a hypothetical question. And until a real project comes forward,

I think that's, you know, that's, that's, but is it so hypothetical if she's saying that it's coming forward next week? I haven't seen it yet. And I'm not going to negotiate. I don't think it makes sense to negotiate in public. What I will tell you, what the Prime Minister has said very clearly is that if we are going to build pipelines, it will be with the support of the jurisdictions affected. It will be with the support of Indigenous people. And to the extent that it involves oil, it will be decarbonized oil. I want to come back to some of the issues raised by First Nations. And I promise I'm not going to talk about pipelines this entire interview, but just one more question. For an oil pipeline in particular, do you see a business case for an oil pipeline, another

one right now? You know, I know BC Premier David Eby said this week that he's not necessarily opposed to one, but that the Trans Mountain pipeline has significant additional capacity. S&P Global Commodity Insights recently released this report that said, sure, oil sands production is at an all-time high right now, but is also set to plateau later this decade. So is it possible that we would have a new pipeline

kind of ready to roll in several years, and there's just not enough demand for it? So, as I've said, these projects will be led by private sector proponents. If private sector proponents are putting up money for an infrastructure, they expect to earn a return on investment. If they expect to earn a return on investment,

they believe there's a case for it. It's not for me to decide. It's for the people who are putting the capital up to make that decision about, is there an economic case for it? If they do and they come forward with that case, we will evaluate it against the criteria. Long before the internet, AI or social media, Douglas Adams imagined our future, and he didn't always like what he saw.

Douglas Adams, the ends of the earth, is a journey into the mind of the man who foresaw the digital age in all its wonder and terror. Hear the speeches that inspired a generation of futurists and interviews with those who have followed in his footsteps, from Stephen Fry and David Bediel to innovators in technology, conservation and even politics. Get Douglas Adams, The Ends of the earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Let's move to some of the

controversies that the bill has unearthed. It allows the government to exempt these projects. These projects are deemed in the national interest from a bunch of legal requirements that are intended to protect the environment, for example. It would allow essentially a project to be effectively pre-approved, as I understand it, with review processes happening after that approval. Is there anything that could come out of these reviews after, like, an environmental assessment review that would kill a project. So if a project is designated it will have a series of

conditions attached to that designation. It's called a conditions document. All of the requirements, all of the requirements including whenever consultations are left to do with Indigenous peoples, including whatever environmental requirements will be outlined in that conditions document. That conditions document is designed to bring all of the requirements of the various acts together into one document and to rationalize and synthesize those into one set of conditions That document will be a public document. It will be

transparent Everyone will get to see it in addition Under the act Every project that goes through will be reviewed by a committee of parliament. So there will be lots of opportunity to make sure that we are upholding. Responsibilities to first nations and we are upholding our responsibilities on the environment and again all repeat. on the environment. And again, I'll repeat the fifth criteria for a project. Contribute to the clean growth and to Canada's objectives with respect to climate change.

Mm-hmm. The bill states that every opinion and decision formed about a project once listed must be, quote, in favor of permitting the project to be carried out in whole or in part. I'm just trying to figure out how that's not like a rubber stamp. So I've spent much of my life in the private sector and had to allocate capital. Let me let me try and make it an example for your listeners. If your listeners are going to take their life's savings, they've they've worked hard, they've and they've scraped up enough money for a down payment and they're going to start building a house. And they say, OK, you can build us and you can live in it when

you've done the following 10 things. Okay. If you do those 10 things, you expect to be able to live in the house. What we can't do is say, go ahead, spend your money, risk all your money to build the house, and at the end of the process, I'll tell you whether or not I'm going to let you live in the house. Or I'm going to tell you whether or not I'm going to add four more things you need to do to live in the house. What the Act does is say, we will be clear with you once it is designated, here are all the things you need to do to operate that infrastructure.

That is the clarity that just like you would need if you were gonna take your life savings and build a house, that any private proponent needs to put their money to work. And that's the clarity that the act is trying to create. And that's a clarity that's missing today and why we have sometimes failed to build in this country relative to what other countries have done.

So let's just say you approve some project and experts come in and assess the environmental or species impact and they say this project is going to irreparably damage this caribou population. You shouldn't have it here or something like that. Could you just ignore that? The bill will go through. The project will be reviewed by the major process. We'll look at all of the requirements. And if that is, in your hypothetical example, if that is a critical, or if that would be a condition, and you would have to meet that condition, you would have to deal with that

particular condition before you could operate. And sorry, and then who makes those conditions initially is it. Cabinet it is the major projects office which coordinates with all of the existing ministries so the idea is to create a central. Function if I go back to your housing, if you're about to build a house and somebody says you need to go to X and meet with this official and you can't solve all your problems with that person, you need to then go across town to person Y. And then actually you need to go after that, you need to go across town again and meet with person Zed. And I can't tell you what day you're going to get those meetings. I can't even tell you what month you're going to get those meetings.

You got to do all those things before you can live in the house. We're trying to take that away and turn it into this is one place that you go where everything is centralized so you can have clarity and certainty. I take your point. I take your point. I know people have been incredibly frustrated with this process for many, many years now. But why not kind of work to streamline it better? I think, you know, what I'm hearing is the criticism people have is that it's flipped the process.

That, like, these environmental assessment impacts studies are happening after it's approved. Like, why not just try and streamline it on the front end to get through this stuff so that you can turn to your proponent and be like, hey, look, now you can build your house because we've done all of this work on the front end. I think what Canadians are saying is they expect more from their government. I think what we're saying and what the prime minister says, he wants these processes to be done in two years. If we are going to create jobs, if we are going to get people to put money to work, so that it creates jobs for Canadians, they need a timeline, they they they need to

know if they're going to risk their life savings to build a house, that they can move into that house in two years. And if if you're telling me, put your life savings to work in a house and maybe you can move in it to two years, but maybe it's five years. Maybe it's 10 years. Maybe it's 15 years. No one's going to build a house. They're going to say that doesn't work for me. We're trying to create that certainty of two years. And then what we're saying is to government, government, we need to re-engineer how we do things to get it done in the two years. That's on us. We need to do better as

a government to make sure we are delivering things in two years. Some Indigenous groups, including the Assembly of First Nations, which represents over 630 nations, have criticized this bill for a lack of consultation, like right off the bat. They say essentially the bill was rushed through without enough time for their input. I was listening to one chief talking about how she only had seven days to look at it. We need time to like review this with our lawyers. How does this affect our rights? We need time to speak to our communities. And a lot of communities weren't even present because they're busy fighting firefighters. I mean, fires, sorry. Yeah, actual fires. Yeah, there's, sorry. Yeah, yeah, actual fires.

Yeah, there's like 34 first stations, a lot of them displaced, one of them has like their whole community burned down. How are they even supposed to look at this and yet it's gonna affect their rights later? How would you respond to the concerns that they have that this is moving way too fast and that they're also worried

that the bill could infringe on their rights. So I think there's a lot to unpack there. First, let me start with there is consultation around the bill. And then there will be consultation around every project. Consultation around every project for free prior informed consent and honoring the responsibility under UNDRIP will be a condition on every single project. So nobody has done anything that is going to inhibit

the full consultation for a particular project. So, let's just, so that's, let's park that. Nothing has happened that is going to infringe on any, right? In fact, the bill enshrines that every project will honor its duty to consult. But let's talk about the act. As I alluded to, as we started this government, we've had a trade war declared on us. We need to move. Yes, we are moving fast.

Canadians elected this government because they saw what was happening and they want us to move fast. We are moving with First Nations at the exact same speed as we are moving with everyone else. And there are over 600 First Nations. We are engaging with as many as we possibly can as part of that bill. I can tell you I have personally engaged with many, many First Nations. I can tell you that Minister Gomasti and Minister Alty have engaged with many, many First Nations through this process. I could point to the First Nations Major Projects Coalition, which is represents over 170 First Nations who have projects who came out in support of this the first day and were part of some

of the discussions. That doesn't mean we've done it perfectly. We have not done it perfectly. But when you're in a trade war, I think what's really important though, is look at what the Prime Minister did. The first thing he announced when the bill was passed, was there would be full consultation with all indigenous peoples, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, and that is starting first on July 17th. Those are the first meetings that are actually happening. They are happening with First Nations. I just want to be clear about something. Let's say an indigenous group gives a hard no to a pipeline that crosses treaty land. Would you move to build the pipeline anywhere?

Um, again, you're talking about a hypothetical and I'm not going to what the prime minister has been clear is we would need consent from indigenous peoples from provinces and territories. So you wouldn't. We will we will deal with we'll deal with it when we get to the actual I think people are trying We'll deal with it when we get to the actual. I think people are trying to get to hypotheticals. The goal is to get to people being supportive. There are a lot of tools people have to get to places. If we're not getting consensus, it's gonna be very challenging.

There are a lot of projects, like I went through, there are lots of projects where we are going to get consensus. Like I went through, there are lots of projects where we are going to get consensus. Our preference is to work with, to help everyone get to a good place. Our preference is not to drive wedges between people. Our preference, like we're in a trade war. We got to pull together. Yeah, I think people will understand everything you're saying about the need to move fast

and come together as a country. But do you worry that by moving so fast, you'll actually galvanize opposition? You might actually not be bringing people along with you here. And that it actually might make the opposition more intense than it might have been otherwise. So, I'll just share with you my reality. We had a lot of debate on this in Parliament. I sat through a lot of question periods where 306 out of 343 MPs supported this legislation. I can tell you that... Some of them who don't support it are in your own party though. So I'm thinking of someone like Nader's can cement there. I would say we had pretty darn... we feel pretty good about the support within the party.

I would tell you of the First Nations I have met with, I've met with a lot. When we talk through what we're doing, when we talk through how we intend to do it, what I hear is, this is interesting to us. Let's keep going. Let's keep talking. If you're doing what you say you're going to do, this is a really important opportunity for First Nations. I think there's a lot of support for this. I'm struck by labor unions. The CBTU, which represents 600,000 tradespeople, came out in favor of this legislation. The level of support I think is pretty good. Look, there's always some people and some of it is maybe the dialoguing hasn't been

as fulsome and complete as it needs to be. We're committed to doing that over the next weeks and months. But I think when you talk to the majority of Canadians, they're excited about this. And I, you know, as one of my colleagues, Minister Blanc likes to say, this was on the front page of the Liberal Party platform. People voted for this. Well, sorry, and just a final question, because I know you do have to go. Do you think people voted for a bill that would allow your government to sidestep laws that exist? That's not clear to me.

So I don't believe. I mean, I will. I don't believe. Sorry, sorry. Here's an Angus Reid poll. I just want to read this to you before you respond. Half, 49% of people pulled on this bill are opposed to bypassing environmental reviews to speed things up.

So the premise of the question is wrong. No one's bypassing environmental reviews. I mean, it's just, that question is designed to get a answer which provokes controversy. It's not true. We're not bypassing environmental reviews. They're not. So the question is not relevant to the bill. Okay. Minister Hodgson, I want to thank you very much for this.

Thank you. Thank you. And you have a great show. I really enjoy listening to it. I'm so happy to hear that. Hopefully you feel the same way after this. I do hope that you'll a great show. I really enjoy listening to it. I'm so happy to hear that. Hopefully you feel the same way after this. I do hope that you'll come back on. Okay, take care.

All right, that is all for today. Frontburner was produced this week by Matthew Amha, Ali Janes, Jwaita Sengupta, Mackenzie Cameron, and Lauren Donnelly. Our intern is Katie Teeling. Our YouTube producer is John Lee. Music is by Joseph Shabason. Our senior producer is Elaine Chao.

Our executive producer is Nick McKay-Blokos. And I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you on Monday.