Canada's Energy, Mining Projects to Face Single Review Within 12 Months, Resources Minister Says

By Paul Vieira

OTTAWA--Canada is pushing to ensure all prospective projects in the energy and mining sectors are subject to one regulatory review and completed within a year, according to the country's energy and resources minister.

Changes to regulatory rules enacted last week and commitments by Prime Minister Mark Carney at an investment summit in Toronto hopefully set the stage for companies and investors to pursue commodity projects, Tim Hodgson said in an interview Tuesday. The Carney government has said it wants to position the country as an energy superpower.

"If you come to Canada, you will have one review--not multiple reviews from different agencies of the federal government, different agencies of provincial governments," Hodgson said on the sidelines of the Carney-organized investment summit.

Upon taking office in 2025, Carney moved to reduce some of the regulatory overlap related to project assessments, and have projects deemed of national importance to be completed within two years.

The new goal is to shorten the timeframe even further, to 12 months, Hodgson said. Such a move "attracts capital. That gets things built. That creates jobs. That creates prosperity," he said.

Officials have added that there is new legislation coming to parliament in the fall that aims to entrench the reduction of regulatory overlap across all sectors of the Canadian government in an effort to speed up the building of infrastructure, mines, data centers and other projects.

Last week, Canada said that proposed oil-and-gas pipelines, natural-gas plants and electricity-transmission lines would no longer be subject to a secondary environmental assessment under a scheme introduced by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. At the time, Trudeau made it a top policy priority to contain carbon emissions and position the economy to reach a target of net-zero emissions by 2050.

Meanwhile, Hodgson said he is confident that a tax change, introduced Tuesday, which deals with the accelerated write-off on a broad-based range of depreciable property on a permanent basis is going to attract investment in the energy and mining fields.

This will be "an incredible motivator to invest in new projects," Hodgson said.

"We are going to build the infrastructure so we can get our energy and critical minerals to [ports], so we can trade with all of our allies, not just allies we share a border with," the minister added.

Write to Paul Vieira at paul.vieira@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 15, 2026 13:19 ET (17:19 GMT)