First Nations Worry Canada’s Push to Be an “Energy Superpower” Will Harm Them

In his first news conference after winning the Canadian elections last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out his incoming government’s plans to tackle a “once-in-a-lifetime crisis” with the United States.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs on Canadian goods and repeated threats to annex Canada helped propel Carney’s Liberal Party to victory in the April 28 vote.

Now, Carney told reporters in Ottawa on May 2, the country would be embarking on “the biggest transformation” of its economy since World War II.

“We will work with provinces, territories and Indigenous groups to identify projects that are in the national interest — projects that will connect Canada, deepen our ties with the world, and grow our economy for generations,” the prime minister said.

“We’ll make the Canadian government a catalyst for these projects, not an impediment.”

Indeed, a central component of the Liberal Party’s 2025 election platform was a promise to streamline — and speed up — the process of getting major energy projects built in Canada, including oil and gas pipelines.

Amid a wave of anti-Trump Canadian nationalism, the plan has been widely welcomed.

Recent polls show a majority of people in Canada support moving away from the U.S. in favor of more economic independence. Many Canadians, including those who have historically been opposed to fossil fuel projects, also have expressed a new willingness to back pipelines.

Yet, as a Carney-led government moves to turn the country — home to one of the world’s largest oil deposits — into an “energy superpower,” experts say Canada’s obligations to Indigenous peoples must not be overlooked.

Under Canada’s constitution, Indigenous communities must be consulted and accommodated on any project that could impact their lands, waters and way of life.

Some have questioned how Carney’s push to speed things up will affect Indigenous rights — or be squared with Canada’s commitment to upholding the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

“To make Canada into an ’energy superpower,’ that requires more extraction, that requires more Indigenous rights violations … and massive contributions to the climate chaos that we’re already experiencing.”

“This notion of the ‘energy superpower’ kind of deeply unsettled me,” said Willo Prince, education coordinator at Indigenous Climate Action, an Indigenous-led group working to combat the climate crisis.

“To make Canada into an ’energy superpower,’ that requires more extraction, that requires more Indigenous rights violations … and massive contributions to the climate chaos that we’re already experiencing,” Prince told Truthout in an interview.

UNDRIP and the Duty to Consult

Indigenous rights are inherent, but they were made constitutional in Canada through the Constitution Act of 1982. Article 35 of the act states that, “the existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognised and affirmed.”

Since then, Canadian courts have laid out what this means in practice.

Notably, they have upheld that the Crown — the government — has what’s called a “duty to consult [and] accommodate” Indigenous people when considering an action that may negatively affect their rights.

“The duty to consult exists on what the courts have said is a spectrum,” explained Bruce McIvor, a partner at First Peoples Law, a law firm in the province of British Columbia specializing in Indigenous rights.

“Where the Crown is expected to decide it falls on that spectrum is a combination of how strong of a claim does the First Nation have, and how serious is the potential effect,” McIvor told Truthout in an interview. “The stronger the claim [and] the more serious the potential effect, the more onerous the Crown’s obligations are within the duty to consult.”

Canada has also endorsed UNDRIP, the UN treaty that stipulates that states must get the “free, prior and informed consent” of Indigenous people before moving ahead with any decisions that could affect them.

In 2021, Canada passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act to provide a framework for UNDRIP’s implementation in the country.

“Just a Footnote”

But despite these commitments, for decades, Indigenous leaders have said Canada’s approach to consultation has been flawed and failed to meet its obligations.

Many have accused governments at the federal and provincial levels of conducting a box-checking exercise — rather than meaningful consultation — and ultimately moving forward with projects despite community opposition.

In some cases, Indigenous leaders have also accused project proponents of seeking to divide and conquer their communities.

In one recent case involving a pipeline set to cut through traditional Wet’suwet’en territory in northern British Columbia, the company and government said they had the support of First Nations band councils along the proposed route.

Band councils are elected bodies that were created by the Canadian government to govern and oversee issues on First Nation reserves.

But in the case of the Wet’suwet’en, the community’s hereditary chiefs — who, under Wet’suwet’en law, are the titleholders to the land — said they weren’t consulted on the Coastal GasLink pipeline. They have stood firmly against the project.

According to Prince at Indigenous Climate Action, Canada most often treats Indigenous consultation as “just a footnote” in its push to build. “It’s an afterthought. It’s a consideration that comes after the conversation is done,” Prince said.

At the same time, Indigenous communities in Canada are disproportionately affected by resource development projects, Prince noted. They bear the brunt of the environmental impacts and other outcomes of such projects, such as displacement, health problems and heightened risks of violence.

“What we need to be focusing on is community well-being [and] place-based initiatives that respect Indigenous sovereignty,” said Prince, who is Carrier Dakelh from Nak’azdli Whut’en, a First Nation in British Columbia. “These conversations need to be returned to the people who are being displaced and dispossessed by these projects.”

“One Window” Decision-Making

Carney — a former central banker and UN special envoy on climate action and finance who has never held political office before — has promised that Indigenous rights will be respected and that First Nation, Metis and Inuit communities will be able to participate in project development.

More concretely, in the Liberal platform, the party vowed to set up what it dubbed a “one window” decision-making system to quickly advance projects deemed to be in the “national interest.”

The Liberals plan to create a Major Federal Project Office to coordinate the process, and they will require the office to make final decisions on projects within two years.

The party did not say how the term “national interest” would be defined exactly, nor did it lay out which projects might fall under that umbrella.

But Carney said during the election campaign that he is open to “getting pipelines built across this country so that we can displace imports of foreign oil.”

Similar initiatives have been seen at the provincial level in British Columbia and Ontario — Canada’s most populous province — in response to frayed Canada-U.S. relations.

The British Columbian government has proposed legislation that would allow it to fast-track infrastructure projects while Ontario Premier Doug Ford is pushing a bill that would create “special economic zones” where major projects can be approved quickly and without having to meet regulations.

Both proposals have been met with pushback from Indigenous communities who say they will trample over their rights.

The British Columbia bill gives the government “the power to override consultation with First Nations, environmental protections, and due process, all under the pretense of efficiency and expediency,” Chief Don Tom of Tsartlip First Nation said.

“Shouldn’t Be Seen as a Transaction”

Back at the federal level, the Carney-led Liberals have said the goal of their changes is to shift “the focus of project review from ‘why’ to ‘how.’”

“This will enable businesses to navigate regulations more quickly and with fewer redundancies. This office will uphold rigour when it comes to environmental protection and Indigenous consultation and participation,” the party’s platform reads.

Yet the pledge to shift the focus of project reviews “from ‘why’ to ‘how’” has raised questions.

“You automatically undermine, I think, the spirit of the duty to consult if you’re starting point is, ‘How do we get to yes?’” said Leah Levac, an associate professor of political science at the University of Guelph who studies public policy.

Levac said Canadians should be asking, “What is at stake when we speed things up?”

“The reason these projects take a long time — although it tends to be wrapped in a blanket argument of red tape and bureaucratic barriers — actually also has to do with some fairly substantive commitments,” she told Truthout in an interview.

McIvor said reviews can take a long time for a variety of reasons, including unrealistic timelines set by governments or project proponents; governmental delays; or a lack of funding and other barriers that prevent meaningful Indigenous consultation from taking place.

“The general principle in the law is that consultation takes as long as it takes. If more time is legitimately required, the Crown needs to provide that time. It can set timelines but they have to be reasonable and they have to be flexible,” he explained.

McIvor said that ultimately, if Canada wants to speed things up, it needs to change its overall approach.

“Government should be coming to the table with Indigenous people asking, ‘How can we get your consent to this project? What do we need to do?’ Without any pre-formed ideas or conclusions,” he said.

“It shouldn’t be seen as a transaction,” McIvor added, stressing that Indigenous people are looking for a relationship based on respect.

“That means they need to be involved in a meaningful way, not just in the initial decision on greenlighting a project, but importantly, on the operation of the project on a go-forward basis.”