Portrait of Scotiabank’s CEO Scott Thomson at the Scotiabank north tower in Toronto on Sept. 27, 2023.Niv Shimshon/The Globe and Mail
Bank of Nova Scotia BNS-T chief executive officer Scott Thomson said that Canada must boost investment in energy infrastructure to export resources to foreign markets and across provincial borders to grow its economy and diversify its trade partners.
During the bank’s annual shareholder meeting in Halifax on Tuesday, Mr. Thomson called on the federal government to remove barriers to transporting energy resources and critical minerals. He said the candidates competing to be Canada’s next prime minister should commit to increasing real GDP per capita growth by 2 per cent annually.
“Canada is facing one of the most consequential economic and existential challenges that it has faced in its 158-year history,” Mr. Thomson told shareholders. “This is no mere inflection point – this is something bigger. The country cannot afford to stand still, to wait to see where the chips will fall, and then react.”
How to awaken Canada’s sleeping economic giant
The U.S. natural gas industry employs more than 220,000 workers and contributed about $45-billion to the economy in 2024 as it helped global partners transition from thermal coal to options with fewer emissions. Meanwhile, red tape and regulatory barriers hindered Canada’s ability to launch its own “meaningful” export terminal, Mr. Thomson said.
European leaders have cited Canada as a preferred resource partner, but the country’s critical mineral exports to the region account for only a fraction of exports to the U.S., he said.
“It is clear that Canada has in abundance what the world needs, but it will take massive investment, and a clear path to enable that investment, to fully assert its position as a natural resource powerhouse,” Mr. Thomson said. “Nowhere is the challenge more obvious than in the energy sector.”
Mr. Thomson pointed to the abandoned Northern Gateway project, which would have transported oil from Alberta to the West Coast.
By contrast, the U.S. has built eight liquified natural gas (LNG) export facilities over the past decade, with two dozen in development. The facilities have the capacity to export about 14 billion cubic feet per day of LNG to foreign markets, including the Netherlands, France, Japan, and South Korea, Mr. Thomson said.
Concern among environmental groups has mounted as some of the world’s biggest banks have pulled out of their commitments to the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), a global group of financial institutions created to direct capital to climate targets.
Earlier this year, all of Canada’s six big banks withdrew from the NZBA, following the exit of the largest lenders in the U.S. Canada’s banks have said they are not abandoning their commitments to their climate goals.
In response to a shareholder question, Mr. Thomson said that the bank is introducing an energy supply ratio, which would track the financing of fossil fuels compared with investment in alternative energy sources.
He also said that 80 per cent of Canada’s electricity is already emissions-free. Most clean tech projects in Canada are in the energy sector, with three out of every five energy projects planned or underway classified as clean technology, Mr. Thomson added.