Prime Minister Mark Carney announces a GST break for first time home buyers, in Edmonton, on March 20.Amber Bracken/Reuters
Mark Carney is set to unveil a new approach for energy-infrastructure development at his inaugural meeting with provincial and territorial leaders Friday, as he closes out his first week as Prime Minister and prepares to call an election.
Mr. Carney said he wants a faster process to deliver projects such as pipelines and energy corridors, something Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has pushed for years.
Mr. Carney, alluding to the current trade war with the United States, said the “nature of the time” is that Canada needs to “do things that had not been imagined or thought possible, at a speed we haven’t seen before.”
A commitment to co-operation already exists, Mr. Carney told reporters after a housing announcement in Edmonton. What’s also needed, however, are “additional levers that we create and I’ll be laying some of those out [Friday] with the premiers,” he said.
Ahead of the housing announcement, Mr. Carney held a one-on-one meeting with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who has expressed skepticism about Mr. Carney’s approach to resource development even before Friday’s gathering.
In a statement after the meeting, Ms. Smith said she made it clear that Alberta did not want to be pushed around as she says it has been over the Liberal government’s time in office.
“I provided a specific list of demands the next prime minister, regardless of who that is, must address within the first six months of their term to avoid an unprecedented national-unity crisis,” Ms. Smith said in the statement.
Her list includes a number of policies that she wants changed and she’s demanding that Alberta have unfettered access across the country to build pipelines. The Premier is also calling for an end to the proposed greenhouse-gas emissions cap, which the province says would hamstring resource production.
Under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, the Liberals promised in the 2021 election campaign to cap emissions from oil and gas and began the process to regulate the cap a year later.
In November, they introduced draft regulations – two years behind schedule – requiring producers to cut emissions by about one-third over the next eight years, and said the regulations did not place a cap on production.
When asked by reporters Thursday whether he’d keep the emissions cap in place, Mr. Carney didn’t directly answer.
“What’s important is to have a mechanism in place to reduce emissions,” he said, speaking in French. “It’s a question of the end result, so we need to invest to get there, not just to have a law.”
During the Liberal leadership race, Mr. Carney promised faster natural-resource development, including a requirement that federal regulatory authorities complete reviews of projects in the national interest within two years, instead of the current five-year timeline.
He also promised to create a “one-window” approval process for large infrastructure and natural-resource projects to simplify applications, and ensure that reviews and Indigenous consultations are held within competitive timelines.
Mr. Carney won leadership on March 9 and was sworn in as Prime Minister on March 14. He is expected on Sunday to ask Governor-General Mary Simon to dissolve Parliament and call an election.
Mr. Carney’s remarks on the premiers’ meeting and resource development were made at a campaign-style event in Edmonton, where he announced the removal of the GST on new homes under $1-million for first-time homebuyers.
Mr. Poilievre had previously promised that same policy if he was elected – and he was also first to promise the end of the consumer carbon price. Mr. Carney set the price to zero just hours after he was sworn in, despite his previous support for the program.
Mr. Poilievre has also – for more than two years – promised to streamline approvals for natural- resource projects and fast-track permits for liquefied natural gas plants, pipelines, mines and factories.
On Thursday, Mr. Poilievre was in Jonquière, Que., where he vowed to create “shovel-ready zones” with preapproved permits for major projects. He met later in the day with Quebec Premier François Legault.
In a statement, Mr. Legault said he reiterated two key issues with Mr. Poilievre – a demand that supply management must be protected in trade talks with the U.S. and that the federal government must cut the number of temporary immigrants to Quebec.
In the 2021 election campaign, Mr. Legault tacitly endorsed then-Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, but Mr. Poilievre told reporters Thursday that he wasn’t seeking endorsements from premiers this time around.
Mr. Poilievre also took a dig at Mr. Carney’s refusal to fully answer questions about his financial holdings Thursday, accusing the Prime Minister of being less open to media than the Conservatives.
The Conservative campaign announced this week that it was breaking with tradition and not allowing media to travel on the same campaign planes and buses as Mr. Poilievre and his team, though their events will be open to the media.
“It will be refreshing to hear from local outlets on what they have to say about their local priorities,” Mr. Poilievre said.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who received the endorsement of the United Steelworkers union on Thursday, said his party is ready for an election, noting that it has more candidates at this point than the Liberals.
The NDP have 224 candidates, while the Liberals have signed up 192 so far. The Conservatives lead with 279 as of Thursday.
Polls, however, place Mr. Singh well behind the Liberals and Conservatives.
Mr. Singh told reporters during an event in Hamilton that his rivals would like nothing more than to see the NDP disappear because no one would be left to point out that the Liberals and Conservatives are ignoring working people.
“News for them, news for everybody, we’re not going anywhere. We’re always going to fight for working people.”
With a report from The Canadian Press