There is a particular kind of federal audacity in spending six years building a regulatory maze, watching the Supreme Court of Canada tell you part of it was unconstitutional, patching it with amendments, and then announcing you have discovered the virtues of streamlining. That, in compressed form, is the story of the federal Impact Assessment Act.
How We Got Here
Bill C-69 was introduced in February 2018 and received royal assent in June 2019. It replaced the former Canadian Environmental Assessment Act with a broader, more unpredictable regime that gave Ottawa sweeping authority to designate projects for federal review. The uncertainty that followed was not theoretical. Proponents deferred investment decisions. Capital moved. Alberta’s energy sector bore the sharpest edge of that uncertainty.
Alberta referred the legislation to the courts. In October 2023 the Supreme Court of Canada found that the federal scheme for designated projects was partly unconstitutional, ruling that core provisions intruded on provincial jurisdiction. Ottawa responded with amendments that came into force in June 2024, narrowing the definition of reviewable effects to focus on areas of clear federal jurisdiction and strengthening language around provincial substitution.
The Major Projects Office Changes the Picture
The more significant shift came in August 2025, when the federal government launched the Major Projects Office under the Building Canada Act. Headquartered in Calgary, the MPO is tasked with coordinating regulatory approvals across departments for projects of national interest, with a stated target of completing assessments within two years. Projects designated under the Building Canada Act are exempt from certain Impact Assessment Act provisions, and standard IAA timelines do not apply to them.
That is a meaningful change from the open-ended timelines that defined the C-69 era. The principle is one project, one review, with the MPO serving as a single point of contact for proponents, Indigenous governments, investors, and other levels of government. Dawn Farrell, the former TransAlta chief executive, leads the office. She is not a bureaucrat who needs convincing that project timelines matter.
In March 2026, Canada and Alberta reached an agreement-in-principle for a one project, one review approach to major infrastructure. A formal Co-operation Agreement on Environmental and Impact Assessment followed in April 2026. Alberta is now required to submit a comprehensive proposal for a bitumen pipeline to Asian markets to the MPO by July 1, 2026. Under the 120-day approval framework the province itself has been building out, Alberta has positioned itself to meet Ottawa partway on timelines.
What Approval Certainty Actually Means
The business case for major resource and infrastructure projects rests on predictable timelines. A proponent accepting a billion-dollar capital commitment needs to know when a decision will come, not simply that one will eventually arrive. For most of the C-69 era that certainty was absent. Projects were not necessarily rejected outright. They were delayed, subjected to expanding scope, and ultimately priced out of the investment queue.
Alberta’s pipeline, mining, and transmission projects represent the clearest test of whether the new architecture delivers. The MPO’s two-year timeline, if honoured, would mark a genuine improvement over what preceded it. Whether that timeline holds under political pressure, and whether the Co-operation Agreement with Alberta produces consistent outcomes, will take years to confirm.
The Score Ottawa Owes
Credit where it is due: the federal government has moved further on regulatory reform in the past twelve months than in the previous decade. The IAA amendments, the Building Canada Act, the Alberta Co-operation Agreement, and the pipeline deal framework are all steps in the right direction. But they follow years of approvals uncertainty that cost Alberta real investment, real jobs, and real export capacity.
The federal government did not discover that long review timelines deter capital because of some policy revelation. It discovered it because the courts said so, because the provinces pushed back, and because a global trade environment now makes Canadian energy exports look like an asset rather than an inconvenience. That sequence matters. Ottawa is not leading on regulatory reform. It is catching up.
The MPO has early-stage projects under consideration and Alberta’s pipeline proposal deadline of July 1, 2026 will be an early indicator of how seriously Ottawa is treating its own commitments. For now, the direction is right. The pace and follow-through remain to be demonstrated.
If Ottawa had built the Major Projects Office in 2019 instead of the Impact Assessment Act, how many projects would already be in production today?
