This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By Karen Restoule, September 24, 2025
When Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled the first five projects on Ottawa’s new fast-track list, headlines called it a major achievement driven by the prime minister’s leadership. While it was the Carney government’s decision to implement an accelerated approvals process, the reality is these projects are not Ottawa’s achievement.
In fact, they are the result of focus and commitment by First Nations and industry who put in the work: identifying shared interests and building trust over the course of many years. Such partnerships lower risk, thereby attracting investors and boosting a project’s long-term likelihood of success.
So, here’s the key takeaway: Canada’s economic future doesn’t hinge on flashy policy or new offices in Ottawa. It rests on whether trust between First Nations and industry exists on the ground. It’s that simple: Where trust lives, projects move. Without it, projects stall—or worse yet—fail completely. The Liberal government—which has been busy setting up new advisory councils in Ottawa—should keep this reality in mind when considering its strategy for getting projects built.
Just a day after Carney’s announcement came the news that the Nisga’a Nation’s Ksi Lisims LNG project had been approved by both British Columbia and Ottawa. This initiative to build a liquified natural gas export facility—which is not one of the five projects on Carney’s fast-track list—highlights what it really takes to move projects forward.
The speed of this approval was not a gift from Ottawa. It was the product of years of preparatory work between the Nisga’a and their partners—Rockies LNG Limited Partnership and Western LNG—producing a joint project that governments could then quickly endorse.
Even still, the project comes with its challenges. Four of Nisga’a’s six neighbouring First Nations have long opposed it. The central concerns tabled by the dissenting Nations are protection of the Nass River’s salmon, climate targets, Indigenous rights, and a lack of free, prior, and informed consent. For example, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) has stated that its council “reject[s] any process that tramples our inherent and constitutionally protected title and rights, ignores free, prior and informed consent, and sacrifices the climate for foreign corporate profits.”
These kinds of tensions are now par for the Canadian resource development course.
A growing number of First Nations see business partnerships with industry as an opportunity to uphold economic and environmental interests. But many others still see development as nothing more than a cause of environmental harms and infringement on their constitutionally-protected rights.
Both perspectives are valid. That’s why the Ksi Lisims LNG project shows how building trust with rights-holders ultimately gets a project moving, even if dissent remains.
Yet back in Ottawa, seeking to navigate this conflict and uncertainty—or perhaps simply wanting to appear as doing something—the Carney team has defaulted to a tired playbook: another council.
Alongside releasing its first list of fast-track projects, Carney’s government unveiled the membership of a new Indigenous Advisory Council which it says will provide “leadership and guidance” to the Major Projects Office. The council is expected to “help ensure Indigenous perspectives and priorities are integrated throughout the implementation of the Building Canada Act.”
On its face, an advisory group sounds reasonable. However, there’s confusion about why there are no currently elected Indigenous leaders appointed to the council, and concerns that this body will be positioned as a replacement for consultation on government actions. There’s also expectations the council will wave some magic wand and get Nations to support a fast-track agenda.
Most of the council’s members bring real life, proven business and commercial experience. However, the Nations that already see the value of business partnerships on resource development aren’t causing the delays. Those stem from Nations who want to see projects stalled or cancelled altogether, and they tend to lead with a rights-based argument.
Some members of the new advisory council have practical experience in exercising and asserting Indigenous rights as formerly elected leaders, but there is little to no expertise on the rights-based legal language that drives litigation and political opposition. Missing altogether from the council are lawyers or advisers who operate in that space. Yet it is precisely those arguments—regarding section 35; UNDRIP; and free, prior, and informed consent—that dominate dissenting headlines and ignite the court of public opinion.
To be clear, I personally hold each of the council members in the highest regard. They are well-exercised leaders who have guided their Nations and/or businesses through the toughest of challenges—and delivered. But the council as a whole is oddly mismatched to the challenges they will be expected to address.
The Indigenous Advisory Council brings together the kind of insight industry leaders need in order to partner effectively with Indigenous Nations and de-risk projects. (And boy do some industry players need it!) Yet its mandate is to advise government, not the private sector.
Ottawa’s job is not to broker business deals but to build the policy and regulatory framework that lets markets function and partnerships flourish. That’s where the Carney government should focus its energy.
As we learned in this Globe and Mail last month, Nations have been meeting over the summer to advance plans for an Indigenous-led Northern Corridor—a clear sign that Indigenous governments are shaping the next generation of infrastructure on their own terms.
This approach continues to trend up. Indigenous-industry partnerships are where trust is built, risk is lowered, and projects find speed. In the past two decades alone, countless partnerships of this kind have been negotiated and closed successfully, many on a nation-building scale, from energy corridors to multi-billion-dollar resource projects.
Carney may believe he has launched a bold new infrastructure agenda. In truth, with this first tranche of projects, he is riding on the trust that industry leaders and Indigenous Nations have already built. The projects on his list are moving not because Ottawa finally got serious, but because the Nations and industry spent the past decade doing the work while the Liberal government played silly games.
The path forward is clear. If Canada wants speed, it must invest in trust. That means letting Indigenous leaders and their industry partners cut the deals, lower the risks, and set the terms.
Canada’s infrastructure future lives not in Ottawa’s offices, but in the hard work of trust on the ground.
Karen Restoule is director of Indigenous Affairs at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, strategic advisor on complex public affairs issues, and Ojibwe from Dokis First Nation.
