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Repealing the tanker ban
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Right now, it is illegal to sail an oil tanker into the one stretch of Canadian coastline where it would be most profitable to establish an oil export port.
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Under the 2019 Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, export tankers are forbidden from entering any of the waters between the Northern tip of Vancouver Island and the Alaska border.
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That’s the closest stretch of coastline to the oil sands, and it’s been earmarked as a pipeline terminus before. The Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, cancelled in 2016, had been planned to end in Kitimat, B.C.
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If Northern Gateway had been built on schedule, it would currently be exporting 525,000 barrels of oil per day. Which, at today’s elevated oil prices, is about $44 million worth.
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All the while, the tanker ban has very specifically been cited as the reason no other company has stepped up to build a pipeline to the Northwest Coast.
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“The previous government’s tanker ban effectively makes that export pipeline illegal. No company would build a pipeline to nowhere,” Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel told a meeting of the Empire Club of Canada last October.
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He added, “the tanker ban is a great example of how things will have to change to allow our country to maximize its economic potential.”
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And the Carney government could feasibly scrap the provisions of the tanker ban within a matter of days.
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In fact, it would be rescinded just as easily as the Digital Services Tax, which Carney suddenly axed last June amid trade negotiations with the U.S.
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All he had to do was instruct the Department of Finance to issue a statement saying that they wouldn’t be enforcing the terms of the Digital Services Tax Act, and would repeal it in full at the next session of Parliament.
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Streamlining regulatory approvals
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Whether they refer to it as “red tape” or “uncertainty,” there is relatively universal accord among the business world that getting something approved in Canada is exponentially more difficult than in other jurisdictions, most notably the U.S.
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When TD Bank drafted up a policy paper last October on Canada’s worst “barriers” to investment, they ranked “regulatory reform” right alongside high taxes.
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For years, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has listed “regulatory reform” as one of its chief policy goals. “Canada’s regulatory environment has become a collection of complicated, overlapping and inefficient sets of rules that permeate nearly every aspect of how business is conducted,” reads their most recent position statement.
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“Cutting red tape” is a pretty broad term. But a 2023 memo by the Business Council of Canada outlined some of the easier fixes to what it called Canada’s “slow and burdensome” approvals process.
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One of the easiest was “expedite processes for brownfield sites.” If a mine or nuclear plant wants to expand its existing operations, it actually faces more red tape as a “brownfield site” than if it was starting an entirely new project on a “greenfield site.”
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Another, which has become particularly relevant in recent months, was to “clarify the requirements for Indigenous consent of projects.”
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In B.C. in particular right now, business investment has been thrown into a holding pattern by uncertainty over DRIPA, a provincial law that effectively prioritizes Aboriginal rights over all other regulatory processes. A just-released survey by the Business Council of B.C. found that 74 per cent of their members were cutting back investment because of it.
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But so far, the Carney government’s only real progress on the issue of regulatory reform was last year’s passage of the Building Canada Act. The bill very specifically did not solve the underlying issue of overregulation.
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