To be clear, Canada has no shortage of major projects. Natural Resources Canada lists 500 of them across the country. What is significant about the latest First Ministers’ meeting is that they discussed a list of projects that would make Canada more self-reliant. Here, I will do a scan of the environmental issues and Indigenous peoples involved in some of the projects that are most likely to appear on the country’s to-do list.
Roads North
A number of projects are included in this category, including the road to the Ring of Fire in Ontario and the Hudson Bay Railway to Churchill, Manitoba. Here, I focus on the port and road to Gray’s Bay in Nunavut. This would be a northern deep water port with a road south to Yellowknife passing through potential mine sites. Part of the justification for this road would be to provide military supplies to the Canadian Arctic. The first 325 km of this all season road would reach the border of the Northwest Territories across the tundra. The technology for building the road would be based on a similar project to Tuktoyaktuk. Gray’s Bay is not currently a settlement but would provide docking facilities for icebreakers, submarines and ore ships. The project would impact the Amundsen Lowlands and Western Taiga ecoprovinces and particular attention would be paid to barren-ground caribou (see attached Major Projects Table). Support would be needed from Inuit and Dene people. The road would reduce the isolation of this central arctic region with both positive and negative cultural impacts.
Pipelines
Most of the attention around major projects has focused on pipelines. Possible pipelines include natural gas pipelines east and west for the purpose of Liquid Natural Gas exports and ammonia pipelines as part of a carbon-free (but corrosive) energy infrastructure. Here, I will focus on a westward bitumen pipeline, which moves a substance as thick as molasses. A bitumen pipeline from Edmonton to Prince Rupert would enhance the export potential of the Alberta oilsands for overseas markets. Such a pipeline would cross three ecoprovinces and the lands of at least eight Indigenous peoples. It would also create issues for a proposed ecological corridor in the Northern Rocky Mountain Foothills. A “grand bargain” was proposed at the First Minister’s Meeting in which the revenue from bitumen exports would partially pay for the Pathways Alliance project to decarbonize oil production. It is important to underline that “decarbonized oil” represents reduced emissions on getting bitumen out of the ground and not necessarily on its ultimate use as a fuel. The Pathway Alliance is currently focused on a network of pressurized carbon dioxide pipelines and an underground permanent storage facility in Cold Lake, Alberta. Though carbon dioxide represents few local environmental impacts, it may be more efficient to decarbonize oil production with small modular reactors or electricity from elsewhere in Canada (see below). It is easy to see that this project has the greatest potential environmental impact as well as the most promising economic return.
East-West Transmission lines
Much of Canada’s hydro-electric capacity was built with the American market in mind. As a result, transmission lines run north-south, leaving little potential for a single Canadian electrical grid or for export overseas. Several high voltage lines are needed for this ( including between Quebec and New Brunswick ) but here I focus on the connection between Manitoba Hydro and Hydro One in Ontario. Such a line between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay would cross the Lake of the Woods ecoprovince and the North Shore of Lake Superior ecological corridor. Bats would be of particular concern with regards to species at risk. Ojibway and Metis peoples would be involved. The Trans-Canada Highway would be the likely corridor for this project and the biggest impact would arise from a potential widening of the existing right of way. The potential for sharing renewable energy across Canada, including that from potential offshore Atlantic wind farms, is tremendous.
Rare Earth Mining and Refining
Commercially, it would be difficult to catch up to China in its dominance of this market for materials needed for high-tech applications. Strategically, it makes sense to have domestic production of these elements that have unique properties for making magnets for cellphones or military use. Though potential rare earth mines exist across the country, particularly in Quebec and Labrador, I focus here on three mines in the NWT, Saskatchewan and Ontario as well as a recently constructed refinery in Saskatoon. The project would impact the Western Taiga, the Mid Boreal Shield and the Parkland Prairies Ecoprovinces and would require consultation with Dene, Cree, Ojibway and Metis peoples from several treaty areas. The downside of Rare Earth mining and processing is that it requires large amounts of ore and significant energy to produce small amounts of pure elements.
Small Modular Reactors
Nuclear reactors are often dismissed as a potential source of clean energy. The key reasons for this are 1) the unresolved issue of long term storage of nuclear waste and 2) the complex specifications and environmental review for new nuclear reactors. In Canada, a site for long term underground storage will be selected this year in either Ignace or South Bruce , Ontario. Once selected there will be many more years of development before spent fuel rods can be permanently stored. Even then, there are remaining issues for bringing radioactive rods to this site. The second reason is being addressed by making reactors smaller and modular so that they can have uniform specifications and be built in a factory. Ontario has announced the installation of a small modular reactor (SMR) in Darlington, near Toronto. This would impact the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Lowlands and the traditional territories of Ojibway people. Some of the species at risk in this area include American Ginseng, Wood Turtle and Blanding’s Turtle. The site is part of an existing nuclear power station and has been well studied. Should this be successful, it would provide a good balance to the interrupted power supply from solar and wind power. It would also provide a potential replacement for diesel powered generators across northern Canada.
Build Canada Act
The recently passed legislation takes advantage of the fact that the existing Impact Assessment Act allows projects to proceed even if they are found to have negative effects on the environment, provided that Cabinet decides that they are in the national interest. The new legislation aims at a two year approval process for projects that are named as being in the nation’s interest ahead of time. The environmental assessment will examine how the project is to be built and not whether it is a good idea in the first place. Even so, few of these ideas will become a reality before 2030. It will take a great political balancing act to simultaneously promote the five criteria required for a project to be designated as being in the national interest: independence, prosperity, practicality, Indigenous sovereignty and reduced carbon emissions. I am hopeful that, for a small number of projects, we will succeed.