Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, left, speaks with Claude Gagne of Fabric, a steel structure builder, in Saguenay, Que., Thursday, March 20, 2025.Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre visited Quebec’s Saguenay region Thursday to promote the revival of a $14-billion liquefied natural gas project, pledging to create “shovel-ready zones” for resource projects across the country.
The province refused to authorize GNL Québec Inc.’s proposed liquefaction facility and export terminal in 2021, and Ottawa followed suit in 2022, with both governments citing environmental and other concerns.
The project would have involved transporting natural gas, likely from Western Canada, using an existing pipeline network. A new, 650-kilometre pipeline would be needed to connect the network to the proposed plant.
The Quebec government said last month that it may be open to reviving the project as a way of diversifying Canada’s export markets in light of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian imports.
The federal election campaign is not expected to officially start until Sunday, but Mr. Poilievre is touring the country this week and holding campaign-style events. He made a similar announcement Wednesday during a stop in Sudbury, where he pledged to speed up permitting for mining projects in Northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire region.
The Ring of Fire project has faced several delays related to environmental approvals and consultations with Indigenous communities. While some First Nations are open to development in the area, others are strongly opposed.
The Quebec government had rejected the LNG project on the grounds that it did not have social acceptability in the province.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway had been interested in investing $4-billion in the project but backed away in 2020, citing Canada’s “current political context.”
The developer, Ruby River Capital LLC, a partnership of two U.S. private equity funds, responded to the rejection by initiating a NAFTA claim against the Canadian government, seeking to recoup US$120-million in sunk costs and another US$20-billion in lost profits, as damages.
Mr. Poilievre said Mr. Trump’s policies have altered what Quebeckers view as acceptable.
“The status quo does not have social acceptability,” Mr. Poilievre said in French. He said Northern Quebec can liquefy natural gas with fewer emissions because of its hydroelectric resources and colder climate.
“I am convinced that we can secure social acceptability,” he said. A Conservative government would take the steps to have the project preapproved, he said, “so that we can ship Western Canadian LNG through a pipeline to this region, liquefy it here, using the great workers of the Saguenay to get it done.”
The Montreal Economic Institute think tank issued a report Thursday that estimates the 10.5-million-tonne-a-year project would have diverted nearly 19.4 per cent of Canadian gas exports away from the United States to overseas markets had it been operating in 2024, representing “value” of $1.7-billion.
Officials from the U.S. backers of the project, Freestone International LLC and Breyer Capital LLC, did not immediately respond to queries about whether they would consider reviving the project.
Speaking more broadly, Mr. Poilievre said he would create “Canada shovel-ready zones” throughout the country to prepermit projects such as power stations, LNG plants and pipelines.
He said this can be done with “rigorous” environmental studies, while working with other levels of government and consulting First Nations.
“The goal will be to prepublish permits online so that everybody knows, and next time, investors don’t have to fear that they’re going to waste so much money on lawyers and fees all to get to nothing,” he said.
Prime Minister Mark Carney pledged during the recent Liberal Party leadership race that he would expand and modernize Canada’s energy infrastructure to diversify trade. His campaign mentioned both clean energy and fossil fuels, but he did not specify the level of support for each sector.
The Carney leadership campaign platform did include a pledge to designate “critical infrastructure corridors,” which sounds similar to Mr. Poilievre’s Thursday pledge of “shovel-ready zones.”
Mr. Carney’s infrastructure corridors pledge was described as a plan to “allow for rapid designation of corridors preapproved for multiuse national priority projects.”
In a March 14 news release announcing his new cabinet, Mr. Carney said the team would work to defend Canada’s sovereignty in the face of unjustified trade actions by the United States, “make Canada an energy superpower in both conventional and clean energy” and “create new trade corridors with reliable partners.”
Carolyn Svonkin, a spokesperson for Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, criticized Mr. Poilievre’s LNG announcement, saying the province rejected the project “based on potentially catastrophic environmental consequences, lack of social license and opposition of local Indigenous groups.”
In an e-mail, Ms. Svonkin described the announcement as “a desperate attempt to bend to his oil and gas CEO friends and donors.”
With a report from The Canadian Press