Canada needs a true National Energy Program

National Observer

01-05-2025

It's time to build. That was Mark Carney's message to Canadians during the election campaign, and it ought to be one of his top priorities as he continues his job as prime minister. That means more housing, more healthcare and more (heck, any) high-speed rail. But it also means more energy — and more of the infrastructure that moves and manages it.
That's right: it's time for the Liberals to build another national energy program. Done properly, this one can enhance national unity rather than undermining it. It can help heal the rifts being exploited in Alberta by Danielle Smith and her not-at-all-merry band of separatists. It can lay the foundation for the sort of national economy (and national economic mindset) that Carney has talked about repeatedly. And it can help Canada meet its climate goals and grow its economy at the same time.
It should begin with a national electricity grid, one that improves our collective resilience, increases the volume of electrons available for decarbonization and lowers costs in the process. As the International Institute for Sustainable Development noted in a December 2024 report, this would stimulate economic activity across the country, from Quebec's planned build-out of hydroelectricity to Atlantic Canada's near limitless wind potential, Ontario's fleet of nuclear reactors and Alberta's massive wind and solar capacity.
Rather than buying electrons from the United States, as tends to happen now, we can buy them from each other instead — and create tens of thousands of new jobs in the process. It would also, in time, save Canadian households and businesses billions of dollars. As the Canadian Climate Institute's own report shows, reaching net-zero electricity by 2050 will mean a 12 per cent decrease in average household energy spending, with 70 per cent of households saving an average of $1,500 per year.
A new national energy program wouldn't just be about renewable energy, though. As Carney said during the campaign, 'it's time to build new trade and energy corridors working in partnership with the provinces, territories and Indigenous peoples.' Those corridors can help us unlock the enormous value contained in the ground across the country, whether it's critical minerals in Ontario and Quebec or oil, gas, uranium and potash on the prairies. In a world that will be defined over the next three decades by an energy transition, we have everything needed to fuel its progress.
This is not the sort of blank cheque for fossil fuel development that so many in the Conservative world are calling for, though. There can be no attempts to ram pipelines through resistance in the way that defined the Harper government's colossal (and costly) failures on this file. Instead, those new trade and energy corridors should be designed with the express purpose of empowering the adjacent communities in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec to benefit from the resources that might flow through them.
New oil and gas pipelines, if there is private sector interest in building them — no sure thing given collapsing oil prices and the prospect of another OPEC-driven price war — must be built with the national interest foremost in mind. That means displacing foreign and US oil imports and increasing our energy independence ought to be a higher priority than accessing global markets. It also means that there can be no new infrastructure connecting Canada's oil and gas with the United States, as Premier Smith and other Conservatives have continued to propose.
Pierre Trudeau did it first. Mark Carney can do it right. Why it's time for a true National Energy Program, and what it could mean for Canada's future.
And yes, all of this has to be done with an eye on climate change. Maybe that means a more deliberate attempt to get oil and gas companies off their wallets on emissions reductions, both through support for carbon capture and storage projects and the strengthening of the existing industrial carbon price. If the Carney government is willing to eliminate the emissions cap, as I suggested it should in an earlier column, it could both lower the political temperature and force the Alberta government to the negotiating table. Its price for any deal on that ought to be the elimination of all the provincial red tape and regulations that are being used to deliberately suffocate Alberta's wind and solar industry.
A national energy program for the 21st century wouldn't be without its critics. It would provoke howls of outrage from the people — mostly in Alberta or the pages of Postmedia publications — who practically live to complain about anything a Liberal government does. And it would invite comparisons to the first National Energy Program, one that has been effectively misrepresented and weaponized by Conservative politicians for over four decades now. It's not without its risks, in other words.
But the potential rewards make that risk worth taking. A new national energy program would create a clear sense of common purpose, support the creation of jobs and economic activity across the country and help advance Canada's interests and aspirations on climate change. It would, in the most literal sense of the term, be an act of nation-building — one that might be more needed than ever.