Plan around an election pause and lose weeks. Wait it out and lose a season.
The Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road, the ice road that supplies the diamond mines northeast of Yellowknife, opened on February 14, 2026. It runs mostly over frozen lakes and averages 67 days of operation a year, and this season it was expected to carry 3,200 loads north. Everything a mine needs for the year has to move in that window. A permit, a funding decision or a contract award that arrives after the window has closed costs the project a year, whatever the length of the delay.
That arithmetic applies across the resource sector, and this fall it meets an election calendar. Quebec’s campaign began on August 27 for a vote on October 5. British Columbia’s Premier called an election on September 22 for October 24. Quebec is where Hydro-Québec plans more than 10,000 MW of new wind by 2035; B.C. is where the Province reports halving its mining permit backlog. Both campaigns run through the end of the northern field season. In B.C., PRI’s teams expect permitting and funding decisions to slow for about six weeks across the campaign and the formation of a new cabinet.
The approval systems the new governments inherit are themselves changing. Ontario’s “One Project, One Process” framework, launched on October 17, 2025, gives designated mines a single provincial permitting team and targets at least a 50 per cent cut in government review times, against delays the province says reached 15 years. B.C. began guaranteeing mineral exploration permit decisions within 40 to 140 days on April 1, 2026, depending on complexity. Federally, the Major Projects Office is reviewing mines in Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Faster processes help. They do not move a freeze-up date or a fish timing window.
The way to protect budget is to separate the work that depends on a decision from the work that does not. Baseline environmental data, geotechnical investigation, a design basis and Indigenous engagement are needed under almost any outcome. Mobilizing a camp or ordering long-lead equipment usually is not. A project that keeps the first category moving through a pause, and holds the second until the decision lands, arrives at the next window field-ready. A project that stops everything arrives at the decision with nothing to send north.
The strongest objection is that money spent before an approval is money at risk. If the decision goes the wrong way, or the new government changes direction, the work is sunk. That is true of some work, and it is why the distinction matters. Baseline and geotechnical data hold their value through a change of government, a change of design and in many cases a change of owner. Camp construction and equipment orders do not. The risk lies in spending on the wrong things during a pause.
The owners who come out of this election season ahead will be the ones whose projects were ready for the field whichever way the results went.
Planning around an approval pause this winter? The PRI Team can help sequence the work.
Contact Our Team.
We would love to hear more about you and the project that you have in mind.
“Our team is invested in helping communities thrive by finding real-world engineering solutions for the most extreme climates.”
Arash Yazdani, CED, FEC, QP, P.Eng.
Chief Technical Officer
arash.yazdani@priengineering.com