G. Kent Fellows: Lessons on Canadian pipelines from Tolkien
Shortcuts make for long delays.
By: G. Kent Fellows
In May 2016, I found myself in a quiet conference room at the Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa, speaking live with then-radio host Danielle Smith. Just an hour earlier, I’d been in that same room with colleagues from the Calgary School of Public Policy and senior federal officials to discuss a national infrastructure strategy — specifically, Economic Corridors.
Smith had long championed the idea of “Utility Corridors” to streamline the construction of infrastructure like pipelines and transmission lines. She reached out that day to discuss a paper I had recently coauthored with Andrei Sulzenko, a former senior assistant deputy minister and NAFTA negotiator. Our paper argued that a national economic corridor could help accomplish three urgent goals: unite Canada economically, diversify trade, and spur private investment in critical infrastructure. These remain unmet national priorities nearly a decade later.
To be candid, I hadn’t always seen it that way. When Smith first floated the corridor idea during her political career, I dismissed it as political positioning during yet another pipeline debate. But a conversation with a retired economics professor led me to a pile of transportation policy books and rediscovered Canadian planning literature — from Richard Rohmer’s The Green North (1970) and Essays on Mid-Canada (1969) to Senate and think-tank reports dating back decades. What I initially saw as a political gimmick turned out to be a serious policy idea with deep roots in Canadian history.
My thinking shifted over months of research. Economic corridors, if done properly, offer a framework for long-term national development. That meeting in Ottawa — and my conversation with Smith — ended on a note of optimism. The federal government seemed genuinely interested in the corridor concept. For the first time in 40 years, the pieces were aligning.
Unfortunately, that optimism was either misplaced or, perhaps, premature.
Since I began working on this file in 2015, and especially since becoming director of the Canadian Northern Corridor Research Program in 2020, federal engagement has remained limited. The most notable move — the $4.6B National Trade Corridors Fund — has so far produced only modest results, largely via incremental infrastructure investments near major cities. A request-for-proposal model guided federal decisions, rather than a strategic, nation-building approach.
This isn’t surprising. Economic corridors are hard political work. The benefits are real but diffuse, often accruing over decades — while the costs and controversies are immediate. That’s bad political math.
And we have the bad results to prove it. Alberta has now had three premiers in a row supportive of the corridor concept, and the province has spearheaded a “memorandum of understanding” on economic corridors with Saskatchewan and Manitoba. At the federal level, Andrew Scheer and the Conservative party announced a “national energy corridor” as part of their 2019 campaign platform. During the last federal election Pierre Poilievre promised to “create a ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor to fast-track.” The Carney Liberals similarly promised “a suite of measures to develop a national trade and economic corridor” with a four-point list of specific policy measures included in this umbrella strategy.
This all brings us to Bill C-5. Specifically Part 2, the “Building Canada Act” which purports “to urgently advance projects throughout Canada, including in the North, that are in the national interest, including projects that foster the development of economic and trade corridors…”
Bill C-5, and the rhetoric around it, emphasize the speed at which the federal government intends to deliver on infrastructure. While I appreciate the enthusiasm, as someone who has spent an entire career (so far) involved in corridor conversations, I want to make sure expectations don’t become a problem.
Early in the first Lord of the Rings book, Pippin warns Frodo that “short cuts make for long delays” (this proves a prescient warning). The pipeline file shows exactly how governments get their hands slapped when they try to shortcut infrastructure approvals. The Supreme Court quashed the Northern Gateway approval because the Harper government failed to conduct sufficient consultation with First Nations. The Trudeau government decided not to re-engage with First Nations consultations on that project, effectively killing it. The court case that stalled the Trans Mountain expansion dealt with a similar issue wherein the Crown was judged to have failed in fulfilling its duty to consult. In both cases, the federal government tried to take a shortcut, by having the National Energy Board (now reorganized and renamed the Canada Energy Regulator), consult on its behalf. Process concerns also plagued the Energy East pipeline project.
Trans Mountain was eventually completed, but at a cost of almost seven times the initial estimate (estimated $5 billion in 2013, actual cost over $34 billion by 2024). While the court case and delay certainly aren’t responsible for the entire cost overrun, they very clearly played a role.
The other pipelines didn’t go ahead. Shortcuts make for long, sometimes terminal, delays.
In 2017, about a year after my radio interview with Smith, the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce published a report called “National Corridor: Enhancing and Facilitating Commerce and Internal Trade,” drawing heavily on Andrei and my paper as well as supportive testimony from dozens of witnesses, similarly advocating for the idea. Despite not seeing much action from the federal government on this file, the School of Public Policy continued our research on the topic, in part bolstered by the Senate endorsement.
The Trump Administration’s asinine declaration of a global trade war presents Canada with a potential crisis and an opportunity. Like the fears of American territorial expansion that helped prompt government support for the Canadian Pacific Railway, or the Great Depression spurring fiscal stimulus to support construction of the Trans-Canada Highway, the upending of stable Canada-U.S. trade relationships (not to mention global trade with the U.S.) has resulted in public support for government action on this file. Angus Reid polling shows increasing public support for pipeline projects and it’s likely this would extend to other infrastructure projects as well. The public appears to be receptive enough to the idea to give the federal government sufficient social license (are we still using that term?) to pursue it. But we need to talk them out of trying the same old shortcuts.
Because shortcuts make for long delays.
G. Kent Fellows is an assistant professor of economics and the director of graduate programs for the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.
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I’ve said it for the last five months — Trump and the threat he represents to Canada is the EASY challenge for Carney and the Federal Government compared to Reconciliation or whatever we want to call the question of the Canada-Indigenous relationship.
The current situation with the jurisprudence around the Treaties and S.35 of the Constitution, let alone the UNDRIP Act which is only starting to make its way into legal decisions, in my opinion has effectively ended what we grew up considering the country of Canada, as in a sovereign Crown that (with its federalist counterparts in the Provinces) makes decisions in its borders and has absolute sovereignty. This is no longer the case — the country as it stands now is de-facto co-sovereign with First Nations.
To me, we either come to a productive version of co-sovereignty — a new Grand Bargain, Indigenous Voice in Parliament, whatever you want to call it — and move forward, or the country is cooked. We aren’t going to get any investment and standard of living will decline and we are ripe for a genuine economic takeover by the US or other powers, starting with Alberta leaving Confederation.
For those saying we should go hard at this and repeal UNDRIP, change the Constitution to remove S.35, and rip up the Treaties (basically accomplish by force of conquering what was attempted by Treaty 150 years ago) — do you understand that violence on our shores is not unthinkable? Sure, there are 40 million Settler Canadians and 1 million Indigenous. Nobody disputes that ultimately might makes right in the world. But how far are you willing to take this? Israel is conquering Gaza, too; nobody disputes the military superiority there.
The only way to proceed with national infrastructure projects is to use a war measures style piece of legislation mandating energy corridors and projects. No private capital will enter Canada with the present environment of judicial obstruction on demand. Carney is going to have to repeal UNDRIP and make the hard call.