Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson speaks during Question Period on Parliament Hill in November, 2025.Blair Gable/Reuters
Aaron Burnett is a German-Canadian senior security policy fellow based at the European Resilience Initiative Center in Berlin.
Four years after then-prime-minister Justin Trudeau’s infamous questioning of the “business case” for liquefied natural gas deals with Europe, one such deal has finally been struck.
Granted, the deal does not involve exporting LNG from the East Coast as Mr. Trudeau was talking about, but it achieves the same outcome: Canada selling LNG, Europe buying it. More than offering evidence that Canada may indeed finally be breaking with the short-term parochialism of the Trudeau era, the deal offers a first win for Canadian national security, the economy and national unity.
Under the agreement, which Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson announced Wednesday in Vancouver, Ksi Lisims LNG in northwestern British Columbia will effectively sell around one million tonnes a year to Germany’s state-owned utility SEFE. Under the terms of the deal, the gas would be sold to Asia, displacing supplies there that would be sent to Europe. SEFE would have the option of buying that. Shipments will start in the early 2030s and last 20 years.
Four years ago, as Russian tanks rolled across Ukraine’s borders, Mr. Trudeau sent then-German-chancellor Olaf Scholz home from Ottawa with no help to diversify away from Russian natural gas – at a time when Germany was buying more than half its supply from Moscow.
Federal and provincial leaders have announced that Germany’s government-owned utility SEFE has agreed to buy one million tonnes of liquefied natural gas annually from an upcoming LNG project in B.C. The yet-to-be-built Ksi Lisims floating terminal is a partnership involving the Nisga'a Nation, and the deal calls for deliveries to begin in the early 2030s covering up to 20 years.
The Canadian Press
As a born and raised Albertan working in Berlin’s foreign and security policy community, I witnessed firsthand that Mr. Trudeau’s “no” proved to be one of the most damaging things a Canadian leader has ever said. For his part, Mr. Scholz left Canada and signed deals with Norway and Qatar instead – and Germany built LNG unloading terminals in a record 194 days to accommodate new supplies.
Today, Germany has largely severed its Russian gas sources. But with recent events in the Middle East now destabilizing Germany’s Qatari-sourced gas supply, this new deal is an important signal that when Canada chooses to do so, it can be a reliable ally and help the democratic world meet a geopolitical moment characterized by Russian aggression, Chinese economic coercion and an uncertain future relationship with the United States.
Ksi Lisims reaches LNG deal with German utility SEFE
It provides a useful blueprint for how Canada can band together with other “middle powers” as Prime Minister Mark Carney put it in his much-cited Davos speech.
On top of a win for both Canadian and German national security, both countries stand to reap some economic benefits. The same Alberta-sourced natural gas that sells on North American markets for between $3 and $4 a gigajoule goes for four times that in Germany. With numbers like that, Canada can sell gas at a clear profit while Germany nets big savings at the same time.
Finally, the economic benefits provide a win for national unity at a time when it is being sorely tested. Mr. Hodgson may have said “the world trusts Canada” at Wednesday’s announcement, but that doesn’t mean the average Albertan trusts Ottawa right now.
Albertans arguing for their province to remain in Canada will need clear victories – in the form of greenlit projects, exported resources and pipeline constructions – to demonstrate that Confederation can still work for Alberta.
After years of federal regulations that have stymied investment in Albertan natural resources and Canadian growth, memorandums of understanding such as the one between Ottawa and the province will not by themselves restore eroded trust – no matter how patriotically Canadian many frustrated Albertans are.
Opinion: Germans want to buy LNG, but Canadians might end up paying
At the same time as we celebrate this win, it’s also important to put it in context. One million tonnes of LNG represent approximately 2 per cent of Germany’s annual natural gas needs. It’s also roughly the same amount of natural gas Alberta can produce in four days.
This deal, while an encouraging first step, doesn’t alleviate the need for more Canadian LNG capacity, more pipeline infrastructure for both oil and gas, and major regulatory reforms allowing for quicker approvals for major projects, including critical mineral mines.
From tungsten for ammunition to aluminum for missiles, main battle tanks and submarines, Canada has significant deposits of 10 of NATO’s 12 defence-critical raw materials. Much of the key investment required to meet the needs of both alliance security and the Canadian economy remains subject to regulatory uncertainty leftover form the Trudeau era that Canada still needs to fix.
So, in the end, we should view the Canada-Germany LNG deal as a benchmark or signpost of where we should be going. By itself, it’s not sufficient to address Canadian and alliance national security at a time when authoritarian adversaries have spent decades cultivating energy and minerals as geopolitical weapons. It’s also not enough to truly maximize Canadian – and particularly Albertan – resource wealth.
But as a first real step? It’s sure a good one.