Canada Lists Pacific Link Pipeline

FORT McMURRAY, Alberta — Prime Minister Mark Carney on 1 October announced that the federal government has listed the West Coast Oil Pipeline, now formally named Pacific Link, as a project of national interest under Canada’s Building Canada Act — the first project to receive that designation.

Listing a project on Schedule 1 of the Act changes the federal posture from whether the project should proceed to how it will be approved. Instead of a long sequence of separate permits, the Major Projects Office is to run a consolidated federal review that produces one conditions document. Carney said that document is targeted for completion by 1 September 2027, so that construction planning can move forward with federal support already on the record. Officials described an operating target in the early 2030s.

What Pacific Link is

The proposed line would carry about one million barrels of oil a day along a roughly 1,200-kilometre southern route from Bruderheim, Alberta, toward a deepwater export point near Delta, British Columbia, with related work at the Roberts Bank terminal. The government said the southern route is meant to avoid highly sensitive northern ecosystems, including the Great Bear Sea.

Ownership during the construction phase, as described by the Prime Minister’s Office and CBC reporting on the announcement, would be split with Canada and Alberta each holding 45 percent and Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Corporation holding 10 percent, with Trans Mountain Corporation — the federally owned company that completed the prior Trans Mountain expansion — leading development. Indigenous communities are to be offered at least a 10 percent ownership stake, financed through federal and Alberta Indigenous loan-guarantee programs. Pembina would have an option to buy another 10 percent once the line is operating.

Why Ottawa is doing this now

Carney framed the pipeline as a trade-diversification and sovereignty project: more Canadian oil shipped to Asia-Pacific markets rather than almost entirely into the United States, plus jobs and tax revenue at home. The Prime Minister’s Office said the project could create up to 140,000 jobs and generate more than $20 billion a year in GDP, with further figures for long-run government revenue. A senior official speaking on background to CBC put a related estimate at up to $30 billion annually in GDP impact when higher export prices are included — figures that are government projections, not independent audits.

The Building Canada Act is the legal vehicle. It lets the federal cabinet designate “nation-building” projects for accelerated review. Carney said twenty-eight initiatives have already been referred to the Major Projects Office; Pacific Link is the first to be formally listed. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith welcomed the listing as proof that Ottawa and Edmonton can advance major energy infrastructure together. British Columbia remains a consultation partner; provincial approvals are not erased by the federal designation.

Opposition and climate caveats

Environmental groups including Greenpeace and the Pembina Institute (unrelated to the pipeline company) argued that new oilsands and pipeline capacity would raise absolute emissions. The government’s explanatory materials say the pipeline “does not directly contribute” to Canada’s greenhouse-gas reduction targets but is tied to intensity-reduction plans, including Alberta’s Pathways carbon-capture project and a methane-reduction agreement. NDP Leader Avi Lewis accused the Liberals of sidelining environmental protections; Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said his party supports a pipeline but that listing is not the same as steel in the ground.

Over the next year the Major Projects Office, with the Canada Energy Regulator, is to hold consultations on ownership, Indigenous rights, environmental conditions, local hiring, and oversight before the September 2027 conditions deadline.