U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats of economic destabilization appear to be solidifying a Team Canada approach as the federal and provincial governments now look to speed up approvals of large “nation-building” infrastructure projects to kickstart the country’s economy.
The shift is one Ontario hopes to take advantage of to finally unlock critical minerals buried in the north of the province by building a massive new road and mining infrastructure, plans which have languished for years.
As Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Canada’s Premiers at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa the country’s leaders offered a sense of unity on fast-tracking large-scale infrastructure projects to boost productivity and insulate the Canadian economy from the United States.
“We can give ourselves, as Canadians, much more than anyone else can take away,” Carney told Premiers as he pitched the idea of a new Canada-wide agreement on the movement of goods and people without restriction.
As part of that push, Premier Doug Ford promised to table legislation to remove trade barriers with other provinces, following in the footsteps of Nova Scotia which promotes labour mobility and the mutual recognition of goods and services across all sectors of Canada’s economy.
“We’re getting rid of all the exemptions when we get back into the legislature, that’s going to be the first piece of legislation,” Ford said. “Hopefully all of the other premiers are going to follow because it’s going to benefit everyone in Canada.”
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Ford also threw his support firmly behind the idea of betting big on Canadian megaprojects, suggesting he supported Alberta’s push to build new pipelines and once again repeating his own desire to start digging.
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“Building large infrastructure projects like rail and ports as well along with critical minerals — the ring of fire — these are all the areas we’d love to discuss and move forward,” Ford said at the start of the meeting.
The Ring of Fire refers to an area of northern Ontario filled with critical minerals and rare earth metals needed to build new technology and produce batteries. For the past few years, Ford has put the area at the centre of his pitch for foreign investors, especially automakers, to locate in Ontario.
The focus on the Ring of Fire, however, comes without the infrastructure in place to access the resources buried in the north. Construction work on an all-season road to access the area was promised by Ford in 2018 but has yet to begin.
There has also been opposition from First Nations groups in the north about accessing the resources and the infrastructure.
With a fresh focus on national unity and moves to insulate the Canadian economy, Ford is now pushing to get the project off the ground — and asking the federal government to drop any environmental concerns it may have about the project.
“Get out of our way and let us start moving — because if we don’t we’re going to fall much further behind,” Ford said.
“We have more critical minerals there than anywhere in the world. The world wants them, the U.S. wants them, but we can’t take 20 years as we have been taking and duplicating assessments, which is wrong. If the province is doing one thing, let them continue on.”
The Ford government also hopes the new federal stance may allow it to speed-up construction of nuclear power plants.
At a separate meeting, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said he asked provincial governments to submit “10, 12, 15 projects of national interest” that could be fast-tracked for approvals and construction.
But while the federal government is focused on urgency in the wake of U.S. tariffs, Ottawa was also admonished by Ontario for its lethargic pace of greenlighting construction projects.
“We’ve been disappointed over the last couple of years that we haven’t acted,” said Ontario’s Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy. “The federal government has not acted.”
Until last year, Queen’s Park and the federal government had been locked in a bitter, longtime battle over whether or not Ontario could build Highway 413 in Peel Region and through the Greenbelt.
Ontario had wanted to build the road and Ottawa had said it could not until it met a range of environmental criteria. That stalemate ended last year when the federal government decided to drop its opposition.
Bethlenfalvy called for a “one permit, one process, one approval” process to streamline the development pipeline and argued that provinces can “build things responsibly, reliably, ethically and faster” with fewer barriers.
“This is our moment to do big things, to do nation-building things and what you’re seeing is a tremendous desire to not just talk about these but to get shovels in the ground and action,” Bethlenfalvy said.
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