OTTAWA – Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is scaling back a major Trudeau-era environmental review process, a move environmental groups say will weaken oversight of some of Canada’s largest industrial projects. The change, published Wednesday in the Canada Gazette, removes several energy projects from the federal impact assessment regime and shifts responsibility for their review to the Canada Energy Regulator (CER). The federal government said the change will “simplify the project decision process” by relying on a single federal regulator. Environmental groups quickly condemned the move. “The government has wiped its hands of doing a fulsome environmental review of the most polluting projects like oil pipelines and gas plants, at a time of unprecedented climate disaster,” said Julia Levin of Environmental Defence. Levin said the Carney government was “turning its back on the requirement to conduct real reviews” of major projects. Since the federal election in 2025, the government has argued that major projects need to be approved more quickly and with less regulatory duplication. Ottawa has promoted a “one project, one review” approach, saying it will streamline approvals by consolidating federal decision-making and making the CER the lead reviewer for many pipeline and energy projects. The regulatory filing also highlights support from the energy industry. “Industry stakeholders expressed strong support for the proposal to have all pipeline projects reviewed exclusively by the CER. Industry actors view this as a key step toward improving regulatory certainty, reducing duplication, and streamlining approvals,” the federal government said in its regulatory impact analysis. The move comes just as Carney gets set to lead the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto next week. It is the federal government’s attempt to attract major infrastructure investments in Canada with a goal of $1 trillion in new investment over the next five years.
