Smarter, more efficient approvals can build infrastructure faster

Not all infrastructure projects are created equal, but Canada’s current approval processes often treat them as though they are. When widening an existing highway from four lanes to six, the relevant question is the incremental impact of the additional lanes, not whether the corridor should exist in the first place. Yet Canada’s federal approval framework for energy and linear infrastructure does not consistently make this distinction.

The distinction matters. Projects proposed within existing transportation, energy, and utility corridors often benefit from decades of established land use, environmental data, and community engagement. The risks are typically narrower and more predictable than those associated with new developments. But approval processes do not always reflect that reality.

Delivering infrastructure efficiently is rarely the responsibility of one order of government alone. Major projects typically require federal, provincial, and often municipal approvals, each with its own process and timeline. This paper focuses on the federal framework, where much of the reform agenda currently sits, but the larger opportunity lies in federal, provincial, and municipal alignment behind a shared process and ambition.

This paper is about the economic opportunity of more proportionate review, not the Crown's duty to consult—a constitutional obligation that must be upheld in full. Where we point to reducing duplication, the aim is a single, better coordinated consultation process that strengthens, rather than diminishes, Indigenous rights.

A more proportionate approach could help unlock faster project delivery without compromising oversight. While in-corridor development is not the whole opportunity, it is a clear place to start.

The case for regulatory reform is well established, and the federal government has set an ambitious agenda to pursue it. The opportunity now is not to re-argue the need for change, but to translate that ambition into implementable design with reform that delivers speed without sacrificing rigour.

Why this matters to Canada’s economy and society

Canada’s ambitions—building the strongest economy in the G7, becoming an energy superpower, diversifying exports beyond the United States¹—depend on expanding pipelines, transmission lines, rail networks, and export-enabling assets.² Economic growth, energy development, a better-connected and modernized electric system, and export diversification will largely be delivered through infrastructure built within or leveraging existing corridors.

For these in-corridor projects, the land, baseline conditions, surrounding communities, and existing mitigations are already better understood. Additional reviews can become redundant: delays disguised as diligence. The better approach starts with a key question: does incremental activity create incremental impact? If so, does that impact require anything additional beyond the mitigations previously proven effective for the corridor? More activity does not necessarily mean new risk, and new risk does not necessarily require new measures.

This points to a core regulatory principle: proportionality. Review effort should reflect incremental impact, and scrutiny should concentrate where incremental disturbance, and therefore risk, is greatest. Smarter, more efficient regulation can enable a faster path to the growth, productivity, competitiveness, energy security, and export diversification unlocked by new infrastructure.  

Current regulatory and policy challenges

The federal government’s recent discussion paper, “Getting Major Projects Built in Canada,” proposes a clear and ambitious direction: a single project authority, one-year review target, consolidated consultation, and the identification of preapproved economic zones.³ Its subsequent report, “What We Heard,” confirms both the appetite for reform and the care it demands.⁴ This signals real momentum. The opportunity is to build on it: translating these proposals into design choices that deliver in practice.

Realizing these gains will depend on how the reforms are designed and implemented. Specifically, reforms must include clarity with respect to how faster-tracked projects are defined, decision-making authority granted to the lead regulator (including any limitations or guardrails to that authority), and whether timelines are binding in practice.

Here are some of the key challenges present in the current approval landscape.  

Five recommendations to strengthen outcomes

The path to smarter regulation does not require lower standards, but rather a stronger alignment between regulatory effort and risk. These recommendations build on the direction the government has already set, focusing on the design choices that will determine whether its ambition is realized in practice.

These recommendations are not limited to in-corridor projects. They describe how to make federal approvals proportionate and efficient for projects of every kind, with in-corridor development being a clear and immediately actionable case.

Recommendation 1. Segment projects smarter: by risk and new disturbances, not gross size
(Foundational principle(s): Risk-based and proportionate)

A tiered approval model should sort projects into review classes based on risk factors that focus on incremental impact, rather than relying primarily on project size, for example. Project length or footprint may remain relevant considerations, but so may the proximity to sensitive areas, the novelty of the activity, and the extent of genuinely incremental disturbance.

Projects that are well-understood and lower risk, including those built largely within existing corridors, should enter a more proportionate review stream, while genuinely novel or higher-risk projects would remain subject to more comprehensive review. The same risk-based logic could be applied to transmission and rail infrastructure.

Recommendation 2. Delegate authority to the lead regulator
(Foundational principle(s): Harmonized and coordinated)

The lead regulator should maintain delegated authority over relevant federal permits because coordination alone is not sufficient. Even where a lead regulator exists today, independent approval authority often rests with separate federal departments, each with its own process, data and information submissions, consultations, and conditions.

Where individual statutory decisions must remain with their respective authorities, they should nonetheless be integrated into a single coordinated process—one application, one consultation, one timeline, and one decision—led and sequenced by the lead regulator, so the proponent faces one accountable point of contact rather than several running in parallel.

A primary lead regulator with delegated authority provides the essence of harmonization: one regulator should oversee one process, one consultation, and one decision.

Recommendation 3. Coordinate consultation through one process
(Foundational principle(s): Harmonized and coordinated)

Major projects trigger multiple, overlapping consultation and engagement processes across federal departments, and with communities, stakeholders, and Indigenous rightsholders. These should be coordinated through a single, well-organized process led by the lead regulator, rather than run in parallel by separate departments. Crucially, the Crown's constitutional duty to consult Indigenous Peoples must be upheld in full within that process—coordination should make it more meaningful and better-resourced, not diminish it.

Recommendation 4. Name the timeline and make it binding
(Foundational principle(s): Transparent and predictable)

Timelines should be explicit and binding. Binding statutory timelines are not new to Canadian regulation; the CER Act already sets a 300-day limit for Section 214 applications. For projects within the in-corridor review class, this discipline should be tightened: a decision within six months of a completeness determination, with extensions reserved for genuinely exceptional circumstances and defined circumstances. The precedent exists; the task is to apply it where the proportionality case is strongest. Time certainty is a critical consideration for investors making decisions across jurisdictions. Without timeline certainty, Canada risks losing investment to jurisdictions that can provide faster and more predictable approval pathways.

Recommendation 5. Calibrate information requirements to actual risk
(Foundational principle(s): Risk-based and proportionate, Outcomes-focused)

Information requirements should be calibrated to residual risk, with standard mitigations codified for common and well-understood impacts. Where risks have been repeatedly assessed and are already known to regulators, proponents should not be required to recreate the same evidentiary record for every project. Regulatory effort should focus on genuinely incremental impacts and unresolved risks. Where previous assessments have already established baseline conditions and effective mitigations, that knowledge should be reused rather than recreated.

Together, these changes would advance broader smarter regulation principles:

• risk-based and proportionate review
• reduced duplication
• stronger harmonization across agencies and governments
• clearer accountability;
• and a greater focus on outcomes rather than process.

Economic analysis and estimated impacts

Smarter, more efficient regulation can reduce delays, improve certainty, and support faster deployment of capital into critical infrastructure. The economic logic is straightforward: the same project, built sooner. The federal government has already set the ambition. The Major Projects Office, established under the Building Canada Act, has a core mandate to reduce approval and permitting timelines for nation-building projects to a maximum of two years.⁹ The target is clear; the task now is delivery.

The prize for getting there is substantial. We modelled¹⁰ approximately $255¹¹ billion in major energy projects, spanning oil and gas and electricity assets, drawn from projects listed as “in review” and “announced or planning” in Natural Resources Canada’s Major Projects Inventory. As approval timelines shrink from up to a decade toward the government's two-year target, projects move from planning to operation much faster. A facility that would not have begun operations until 2041 under historical timelines could be operating as early as 2033, delivering economic benefits years sooner.

Applied across the projects we modelled, this acceleration would bring forward approximately $361 billion in real GDP between 2028 and 2045,¹² and around 57,000 additional jobs per year on average over the same period, as employment is generated earlier and sustained across more years than under the status quo.

But the greater risk is not delay; it is projects that never get built at all. Without the certainty of a faster, more predictable process, capital moves to jurisdictions that decide sooner, and projects that would strengthen Canada’s economy are shelved or relocated. Under a scenario in which half of this investment fails to proceed, the additional foregone opportunity is approximately $185 billion in real GDP between 2036 and 2045 and roughly 48,000 jobs per year on average over the same period.¹³

Together, faster approvals and greater execution certainty represent an opportunity to unlock more than $540 billion in real GDP. Staying the course risks leaving that value on the table. Canada does not need to lower standards to build faster. By making approvals more proportionate to risk and reducing unnecessary duplication, governments can maintain strong oversight while enabling critical infrastructure investment, turning ambition into on-the-ground delivery.