Norwegian company has plans for LNG export project in Quebec
Marinvest Energy Canada says there's a strong business case for an LNG project in Quebec to export Canadian natural gas to Europe.
The company is offering few details about the project, but an elected official in Quebec's Côte-Nord region says it would be located in Baie-Comeau, along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River.
Quebec Premier François Legault says members of his team have met with representatives of the company.
Legault rejected a proposal for an LNG facility in Quebec's Saguenay region in 2021, amid widespread opposition to the project.
He has said Quebecers are now more open to fossil-fuel projects due to the trade war with the United States.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 4, 2025.
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Hamilton Spectator
3 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
What if killing Canada's digital services tax is just the beginning for Donald Trump?
OTTAWA—Call it a prudent climbdown, a show of weakness, or an unavoidable concession. There are several ways to look at Prime Minister Mark Carney's 11th-hour decision to cancel the federal government's Digital Services Tax last weekend. But what if it's also a tangible example of exactly what Carney warned would happen? The Liberal leader won a minority government on April 28 with a pitch that no one was better placed than himself to protect Canada from Donald Trump. The U.S. president has mused about using 'economic force' to annex Canada. As if taunting or teasing this country, he questions why it exists, and keeps floating the prospect of it becoming the '51st state' of the U.S. Two days before the election, Carney spelled out how he understood all of this. 'The U.S. is trying to put economic pressure on us to gain major concessions, to the extreme of a level of integration of our countries that would impinge our sovereignty,' Carney said that day in King City, north of Toronto. Carney, in his final campaign conference, ruled out any prospect the U.S. would use military Flash forward to last week. There was Trump, posting on social media that Canada's incoming Digital Services Tax — a policy that would force American tech giants and other firms, including Canadian ones, to pay up — was nothing short of a 'blatant attack' on the United States. Trump declared he had cut off all negotiations to resolve the trade war that started earlier this year with his wave of tariffs on Canadian goods. In other words, Canada's most important commercial and military partner, the destination for 76 per cent of all exports last year , was willing to ditch talks and dictate terms that could jeopardize thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity. All over a domestic policy the Americans didn't like. Barely 48 hours later, shortly before midnight on a Sunday, the government announced the tax was dead. Not only would Canada not implement the policy as planned, it would repeal the 2024 law that created it. Is this Trump using economic pressure to force Canada's hand? 'It is exactly that,' said Lawrence Herman, a veteran trade lawyer and special counsel with the firm, Cassidy Levy Kent. 'It's an example of, on a particular issue, how much pressure can be brought to bear to force Canada to abandon not only a policy, but a law that has been in force for 18 months.' In Herman's view, the decision looks like a 'significant retreat' by the government, which shows 'how dependent we are on a reasonable relationship' with Canada's largest trading partner. Other policies that Trump has complained about, such as the supply management system for dairy and poultry, could be next, he said. Pete Hoekstra, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, told the CBC this week that he has a 'strong belief' Canada could water down that system by changing a law designed to protect it if that becomes part of a new trade deal. 'It's not a particularly good start to this so-called new economic and security relationship,' Herman said. He was referring to Carney's stated goal of talks that are now continuing under an agreement struck at the Group of 7 summit in the Alberta Rockies last month to strive for a deal to redefine the relationship by July 21. Others have been harsher in their judgment. Lloyd Axworthy, a former Liberal foreign affairs minister, posted online that Carney was acquiescing to Trump in a way that contradicts his 'elbows up' mantra on the campaign trail. 'Forget any dreams of a more sovereign, self-directed Canada. We're doubling down on the corporate cosiness and U.S. dependency that's defined our last half-century,' he wrote on Substack. Axworthy did not respond to an interview request Thursday. For Jean Charest, a former Quebec premier who sits on the government's Canada-U.S. advisory council, the situation illustrates the 'chaos' of dealing with Trump, whose administration is grappling with trade talks and tariffs threats against most countries on the planet. This meant that Carney's government was operating 'in a world of very bad choices,' Charest said. Deciding to scrap the Digital Services Tax, in that context, was 'certainly a legitimate choice,' he said. 'We are not in an ordinary world of negotiations,' Charest added. 'It would be nice to think, 'You give, I give ... we compromise.' It doesn't work that way with Donald Trump, and we're making our way through this by trying to protect essentially what's the most important for us in the short term, and that's a negotiation that has some legs.' Charest noted that there was opposition inside Canada to the Digital Services Tax, which would have applied back to 2022 with a three per cent tax on Canadian revenues from digital services companies with more than $1.1 billion in global earnings and $20 million inside Canada. The U.S. also pushed back against the policy when Joe Biden was in power. David Pierce, vice-president of government relations with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said his business lobby group felt the Digital Services Tax should be paused. He also said it would have been wrong to proceed with it after the U.S. dropped a controversial provision from Trump's major budget bill last week: the so-called 'revenge tax' that would have hit the U.S. assets of foreign businesses and individuals. That decision came as the G7 agreed to exempt American firms from a co-ordinated effort to ensure corporations pay a minimum tax, which was 'absolutely a win' for the U.S. Even so, Pierce said Canada likely had no choice but to drop the policy, given Trump's exploitation of Canada's 'weakness' — its major economic reliance on trade with the U.S. 'We just hope that this now paves the way for a good renewed deal,' said Pierce. The ultimate goal of the federal government in that deal, at least publicly, has been to return to the terms of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), which Trump signed in 2018 during his first term, after disparaging North American free trade as unfair to his country. That would mean lifting the rounds of tariffs Trump has imposed since the winter, with import duties tied to concerns about drugs and migration over the border, and others that Trump slapped on Canadian autos, steel and aluminum in a bid to promote those sectors in the U.S. Canada has responded with countertariffs on its own that the government says hit more than $80 billion worth of American imports to Canada. Canada's lead trade negotiator with the Trump administration, Ambassador Kirsten Hillman, was not available for an interview this week, the embassy in Washington told the Star. Charest, however, said he believes it is possible that Canada could accept some level of tariffs in a July 21 deal, so long as they have no material effect. Such 'zero-effect' tariffs could only kick in at levels of trade that Canada doesn't or likely won't achieve, for example. Yet there's a question of how much any deal can be relied upon, so long as Trump is in the White House, unilaterally imposing tariffs that Canada views as 'illegal' violations of the 2018 trade deal. 'Trump is arguing about supply management and the (Digital Services Tax), but it's the U.S. that is in flagrant breach of its trade obligations. It's abandoned the CUSMA, virtually behaving as if it did not exist and the U.S. signature has no meaning,' Herman said. 'So we are in a world where rules and the rules-based system, and the stability that that treaty was supposed to provide, have gone by the board.' That means, at least for now, the Carney government is operating in a world where Canada's foremost ally, the colossus to the south, will use economic force to get what it wants.
Hamilton Spectator
9 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
S&P/TSX composite manages slight gain on real estate strength
TORONTO - Canada's main stock index finished slightly higher Friday, helped by strength in the real estate sector, while U.S. markets were closed for the Fourth of July. The S&P/TSX composite index was up 1.90 points at 27,036.16. Brent Joyce, chief investment strategist and managing director at BMO Private Investment Counsel Inc., said in an interview that gains in real estate stocks are 'interest rate driven,' adding that it appears likely the U.S. Federal Reserve will be cutting interest rates in July. 'Real estate is certainly going to be keying off of interest rates in the short term. In Canada, real estate's a lot of different things, if you think about the logistics area, the warehousing and industrial side of the real estate sector. 'If it's appearing like we're going to have a better outcome than certainly several weeks ago on U.S.-Canada trade, then that's going to boost that part of the real-estate sector as well.' Joyce added that the TSX moving above the 27,000 mark is 'psychologically important.' 'Eleven of the past 13 weeks now we've had advances. With an almost unbroken string of advances for the past three months since April. You've got momentum in these indices; getting through that round number level is a psychological barrier that now could propel things higher,' he said. Going forward, Joyce said he expects more gains on the TSX, reaching beyond the 28,000 mark toward the end of the year. Growth on the TSX, he said, could be driven by both valuation and earnings. In contrast, he said U.S. markets are likely to need earnings growth to justify higher valuation levels. Joyce highlighted a higher degree of certainty in markets following the passing of the massive tax and spending cuts package by the U.S. House of Representatives. He said the next thing for markets to look for is looming trade deals as the clock ticks on U.S. President Donald Trump's July 9 tariff deadline. On U.S.-Canada trade relations, Joyce said Canada went from being 'public enemy No. 1' a few months ago to 'let's just be friends.' 'We've digested that there's going to be some level of tariffs, I think, between Canada and the U.S. And if it comes in better than that, which I think there's a good chance that it can, then this market certainly is going to react positively to that,' he said. He added that tariff uncertainty may cast a fog over upcoming earnings releases in the U.S. for the third quarter. 'We're moving into U.S. earnings season next week and beyond ... I think we're going to have a bit of fog that the market is prepared to look through here, tariff front running, uncertainty, some decisions being delayed perhaps over the past couple of months,' Joyce said. He said markets may 'give companies a bit of a pass' on the quarter, given some of the uncertainty, and instead look at guidance for the end of the year and into next year. The Canadian dollar traded for 73.50 cents US compared with 73.66 cents US on Thursday. The August crude oil contract was down 50 US cents at US$66.50 per barrel. The August gold contract was up US$3.60 at US$3,346.50 an ounce. The commodities prices are snapshots only as there are no settle prices on U.S. holidays. This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 4, 2025. — With files from The Associated Press. Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD)
Hamilton Spectator
9 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Ottawa talking to metals giant Rio Tinto about liquidity help amid U.S. tariffs
OTTAWA - Industry Minister Mélanie Joly says the federal government is talking to mining and metals giant Rio Tinto about helping the company with liquidity problems caused by the United States' global steel and aluminum tariffs. During a visit to Saguenay, Que., on Thursday to meet with businesses in the province's critical aluminum sector, Joly said in French that Ottawa had started talks with the firm earlier this week. She said the government had already offered funding help for a Rio Tinto project installing carbon-free aluminum smelting cells at its Arvida smelter in Québec, and that she is ready to have conversations 'to know how we are able to help Rio Tinto in its liquidity' when there is a tariff war harming them 'in a completely unjustified way.' A spokesperson for the minister confirmed Friday that the talks were ongoing but did not provide any further details. U.S. President Donald Trump last month doubled his administration's global tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50 per cent. Prime Minster Mark Carney said Canada will deliver its response to that latest volley in the trade war on July 21, based on how talks between the nations are proceeding by that time. Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest mining firms, is dual-headquartered in the United Kingdom and Australia but operates a number of mines and refineries with thousands of employees across Canada. Its website says it employs some 4,000 people in the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean region. The company announced plans in 2023 to spend $1.4 billion to expand its aluminum smelting operations in the area. The Canadian Press reached out to Rio Tinto for comment on the negotiations but has not received a response. Separately on Friday, Quebec Premier François Legault announced a new energy supply deal between Hydro-Québec and Alumenerie Alouette, an international consortium operating a smelter in Sept-Îles that counts Rio Tinto as a 40 per cent stakeholder. The consortium said as part of the deal it will invest $1.5 billion in modernizing its operations in Côte-Nord by 2045 with half of that spent in the next five years. A media release says these commitments will help maintain 1,000 jobs in the region. The new electricity pricing deal is described as balancing risk and reward for the partners — offering greater returns to Hydro-Québec when aluminum pricing is strong, but helping to make Alumenerie Alouette more competitive when market prices are low. The new deal will take effect in 2030 after the current agreement expires at the end of the previous year. Alumenerie Alouette counts Quebec investment agency QUALIUM, Austria's Metall AG, Norway's Hydro Aluminium and Japan's Marubeni Metals & Minerals among its stakeholders. This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 4, 2025. Note to readers:This is a corrected story. A previous version of the story stated that the industry minister said they were talking with Rio Tinto about cash flow problems.
