Machinery in a graphite mine in Lac-des-Iles, Que., in 2024.SEBASTIEN ST-JEAN/Getty Images
On May 21, agriculture and food policy reporter Kate Helmore, investigative reporter Matthew McClearn, environmental, social and corporate governance reporter Jeffrey Jones and mining reporter Niall McGee answered reader questions on Canada’s nation-building resource projects and the hurdles they face getting off the ground.
Readers asked whether Canada needs the help of foreign investors, what big projects the government should be supporting and the role of regulations in the approval process. Here are some highlights from the Q&A.
Thinking big in Canada
Carney says he wants to help start building big in Canada, but what can the government do to incentivize development, and are the provinces making their own moves, too?
Niall McGee: Carney’s government has already done a lot. In mining we have seen billions of dollars in direct government funding into Canadian mining companies. Some of the investments have gone into extremely early stage companies with projects that have far out timelines. For example, Nouveau Monde Graphite, a small development stage company just last week closed a US$213.2-million financing that included major contributions from government funding agencies Canada Growth Fund and Investissement Québec. So this is actually a huge financial bet on a project that carries a lot of risk. This is only one example and there have been lots more.
A full-scale mock-up of a Candu reactor, housed in a building in Courtice, Ont., near the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, in 2025.Matthew McClearn/The Globe and Mail
Is the Canadian government a financial partner in any of these mega projects and if so, how would you describe the level of risk and reward?
Matthew McClearn: The federal government is clearly a financial partner in certain projects. One example would be the Darlington New Nuclear Project, which involves building a new nuclear reactor in Ontario. The federal government has already provided $2-billion in investment to that project through the Canada Growth Fund, which makes the federal government a shareholder in that project. It also loaned $970-million to the project in 2022 through the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Ottawa is therefore a major financier of that project.
It’s difficult to provide a firm risk/reward assessment of such investments. In general terms, nuclear projects are very risky. They’re notorious for suffering cost overruns and being completed far later than promised, and for this reason it can be difficult to attract private financing. The proponent, Ontario Power Generation, understands the risks involved in major nuclear projects and has taken steps to mitigate those risks. In general, nuclear projects require government financing and support to proceed, so one might say Ottawa’s support is crucial.
Is this an ambition problem? Does Canada just not want to start big projects any more?
McGee: I don’t think there is an ambition problem per se. This Carney government I would argue has an ambitious agenda around saying they want to build big projects. The bigger question I would say is will the government be able to actually deliver on its promises?
In mining, the timelines can be incredibly long, sometimes a decade or more in terms of announcing at project is a “go” and then actually starting production. There are so many potential pitfalls, hurdles and embedded risks, including whether the companies can raise the money they need, whether the commodity price will stay at an economical level, whether they can work well with Indigenous stakeholders, and of course the geology of a deposit and whether the project is as promising as it appears to be in a technical report that uses mathematical models to predict what will happen. All of these things concern me more than ambition. It’s easy to promise big. Not so easy to execute.
In your opinion, why has Canada become such a poor planner, designer and executor of major products, in general?
McClearn: There are many dimensions to it. One thing to consider is that major projects were botched in the past. Some of the early hydroelectric projects in Ontario, for example, suffered huge cost overruns and caused scandals back in their day. At the time, citizens were asking the same questions about poor planning, design and execution. Those scandals have since been largely forgotten and some of these dams are still generating power. But it may be that in the big picture, things aren’t that much different today than they were in the past.
There has clearly been a great increase in the regulatory complexity of projects over the decades. We do a lot more planning to address impacts on the environment, local communities, Indigenous peoples, and so on than we ever did in the past. In the early 20th century, entire communities were moved to make way for reservoirs for hydroelectric dams; doing that today would be nearly impossible. The bureaucratic regulatory processes add additional layers of complexity that add to cost and make it more difficult to execute major projects. This may drive some proponents to favour other jurisdictions, and that’s also a real cost.
Power transmission lines and wind turbines near Pincher Creek, Alta., in 2024.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
The role of foreign investment
I’m worried about foreign ownership in critical industries in Canada. The big guys grab all the marbles and then call the game for their own benefit.
Kate Helmore: Good point. As the agricultural reporter, the topic of foreign entities holding arable land (and therefore grabbing a slice of our food security pie) is a long-standing, hotly debated subject. And it does feel like Canada’s perspective on foreign investment has flipped in the last year alone.
I have brought up these concerns with provincial and federal political leaders – premiers and the federal minister of agriculture and transportation. The response is typically that the devil is in the details. We want money. But that doesn’t mean we have to hand over ownership. The argument goes that it is better to have the plant in the country, employing Canadians, rather than no plant at all. This is especially acute for the industry I cover, which only captures around 4 per cent of total growth capital in the country.
I also ponder whether foreign ownership is always necessarily a bad thing. Bear with me, I’m just musing here. But a researcher recently told me that Saskatchewan’s total ban on any foreign ownership of agricultural land – to the extent that a company traded on the TSX cannot buy more than 10 acres – effectively depressed land values in that province for decades, while farmers in surrounding provinces with more lax provisions were better able to build their equity.
Where does Canada sit on the world stage when it comes to investing in our natural resources? What do foreign investors see as the benefits or drawbacks of developing here?
Jeffrey Jones: This question gets to the heart of what we’re dealing with. Canada is known for its bounty of natural resources – oil, gas, lumber, critical minerals. We’re a top 10 player in most cases. From the foreign-investor perspective, however, the problem in the past two decades has been in the follow-through. The biggest knock has been on an inability to approve and build projects on a timeline that offers investors payback within a reasonable period, if at all. With its Building Canada Act, the Carney government has said it is looking to break those regulatory logjams by shortening approval processes, bringing Indigenous Nations into developments as partners and, in some cases, providing some of the funding. Among benefits that foreign investors see are a relatively stable political environment (at least so far) and predictable regulatory regimes. There is evidence that foreign capital is starting to trickle back – witness Shell’s recent friendly takeover bid for Calgary-based ARC Resources.
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The number of foreign direct investment has increased in the past year. Can this success be attributed to the launch of the nation building program?
McGee: I think that some of the success can be attributed to the government’s actions. There is no doubt that the Carney government is at least trying to get thing moving, and even the language the government uses is different than under Mr. Trudeau. When speeding up regulation for example, the Carney government talks about not whether a project will be approved, but how quickly it can be approved. This kind of definitive language in fact has angered some Indigenous stakeholders who fear their rights to be consulted may be compromised.
Also we’ve seen so much money, literally billions of dollars in direct funding for mining companies over the past year, and some have been very early stage. The pace of investment is much faster than under the previous administration. The big question over the longer term is will these projects be a success? It could be a long time before we know the answer because the timelines in executing on major projects can be a decade or more.
Service shaft at BHP Jansen Potash Mine in Saskatchewan in 2025.Heywood Yu/The Globe and Mail
Energy and the environment
While mining for raw material should proceed, can we not think of the larger picture and co-operate among industries and among governments to minimize the environmental harms of these projects?
Helmore: It is a delicate balance between economy, industry and environment. I’ve covered the new $18-billion potash fertilizer mine being built by BHP. Potash is one of the three essential fertilizers used in pretty much all commercial agriculture. The Jansen mine is the largest private investment in Saskatchewan’s history, and it is the largest investment in BHP’s history (BHP is the biggest mining company in the world). And like any major extraction project, it has some environmental impacts.
The demand drivers behind this enormous investment are quite straightforward. The amount of land on Earth that is suitable for agricultural production is essentially static, while the global population is expected to reach 9.1 billion people in 2050, according to the United Nations. That means agricultural production must increase by 70 per cent between 2005 and 2050. I.e. they’ll need more fertilizer, especially developing agricultural economies such Brazil and India.
That said, there is a vibrant debate in the agricultural industry about whether these fundamentals stand up, and arguments that we are only becoming more dependent on fertilizer. We have an assumption that higher yields we need more fertilizer. But does that have to be the case? Could we not farm in a way that strips less nutrients from the soil? Could we be more targeted in our application? More strategic about which crops we plant where? (i.e. don’t plant crops that require immense amounts of nitrogen in starched soil).
What the Carney government can do is start paying attention to fertilizer. It is essential to food security and – unlike many nations in the world – we have no broad strategy for addressing its pricing, supply or ways to innovate on its application.
Is there a role for distributed clean generation (small wind, solar, hybrid) in Canada’s nation-building push, and is anyone in government thinking about it that way?
Jones: There is absolutely a role for these things. To your point, they are often overshadowed by the large utility-scale wind and solar projects. There are a slew of small-scale projects being developed in the country – from solar on the roofs of malls and distribution centres within cities to renewables that are replacing, or at least cutting reliance on, diesel generators in remote communities, many of them in the North. It’s exciting stuff and could be argued that it is building our nation’s resilience. However, in this discussion, they are not individually big projects. Communities can access their own funding sources and may not come up against the same hurdles that mega projects do.