Time to move from talk to action on regulatory reform: Heather Exner-Pirot and Michael Gullo in The Hub – MLI
March 24, 2025
Reforming the Impact Assessment Act is essential to attracting more investment, accessing export markets, and building and thinking bigger in Canada.
Canada’s growth and productivity challenges were already shifting the public and political appetite towards regulatory reform. The tariffs imposed by the Trump administration have only accelerated the call.
Regulatory reform for major projects is one of the most effective ways to pull more private capital into the economy and boost employment and incomes for Canadian workers. We’re now seeing a political consensus emerge around the need for such reforms and the projects required to secure Canada’s energy supply and improve its ability to export more energy and resources with its allies and trading partners.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has promised to “repeal C-69” within 60 days of being in office. Liberal candidate Mark Carney has similarly promised to “require all federal regulatory authorities, including the Impact Assessment Agency, to complete their review of projects that serve the national interest on a two-year timeline (much faster than the government’s current timeline of five years).”
