A Building Canada Act listing settles whether a project proceeds. How far it gets through elections and court challenges depends on what’s ready before the next government arrives.
Federal cabinet approved the Trans Mountain Expansion on November 29, 2016. Seven months later, a new British Columbia government took office opposed to it. Over the next three years, Ottawa bought the pipeline and the expansion for $4.5 billion in May 2018, the Federal Court of Appeal quashed the approval over inadequate Indigenous consultation on August 30, 2018, and cabinet re-approved it on June 18, 2019. B.C. took its own challenge, a reference on regulating heavy oil through the line, to the B.C. Court of Appeal, which ruled against the province in May 2019, and to the Supreme Court of Canada, which dismissed it on January 16, 2020. The expanded line entered service on May 1, 2024. Two B.C. elections and three federal elections passed between the first application in December 2013 and first oil.
That is the record Pacific Link inherits. On October 1, 2026, the federal government listed it as the first project of national interest under the Building Canada Act. Its conditions document is due by September 1, 2027, service is targeted for 2032-33, and its cost is estimated at $35.2 billion to $43.7 billion including contingency. Between the listing and first oil, B.C. votes on October 24, 2026, three weeks after the announcement, for a line that ends in Delta, and at least one federal election is due before service begins.
The Act is built partly for this problem. A listing replaces the individual federal authorizations a project would otherwise need, under statutes such as the Fisheries Act and the Species at Risk Act, with one conditions document issued by the responsible minister. The Major Projects Office acts as a single window, with the aim of federal decisions in two years rather than five or more. Fewer separate federal decisions means fewer points at which a new government, or a court, can reopen the federal file. In announcing the listing, the Prime Minister put the case plainly: “Before the Building Canada Act, proponents would have to spend years and potentially billions of dollars doing this work before even knowing where the federal government stood on the project.”
What the listing does not lock in is everything outside Ottawa’s file. The Act requires consultation with provinces and, for projects within exclusive provincial jurisdiction, their written consent. Provincial and municipal permits are untouched, and provincial fast tracks are policies that a new government can change. The Crown’s duty to consult continues: the federal government says more than 130 Indigenous communities were consulted ahead of Pacific Link’s listing, and in July, Tsawwassen First Nation, in Delta, said it had not been consulted on the southern route and that a national-priority designation “does not diminish Indigenous rights or consultation obligations.” Local policy is the most changeable of all. Calgary elected a mayor in October 2025 who campaigned on repealing citywide rezoning; council voted the repeal on April 8, 2026, and from August 4, 99 per cent of affected properties returned to their earlier zoning. Applications already in process kept the old rules.
The strongest objection is that designation makes all of this less important, because a project with Ottawa’s backing and a fixed timeline is harder for any one government to stop. Part of that is right, and the ownership structure is the reason. Alberta and the federally owned Trans Mountain Corporation would each own 45 per cent of Pacific Link and Pembina Pipeline 10 per cent through construction, with Indigenous communities offered at least 10 per cent. A project owned across two governments, a private partner and Indigenous communities is harder to unwind than one held by a single proponent. But a senior federal official said private investors are watching whether Canada can approve and build the line by 2032-33, and are cautious because of how long Trans Mountain took. Investors are pricing momentum.
The same test applies to the next candidates, and they are national. The Mackenzie Valley Highway would run about 800 km from Wrigley to the Dempster Highway in the Northwest Territories, with $405 million from the Arctic Infrastructure Fund announced on September 8, 2026. The Grays Bay Road and Port in Nunavut, part-owned by the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, has a listing decision targeted by the end of 2026. Roberts Bank Terminal 2 in Delta and the Deep Geological Repository in northwestern Ontario are also in the listing process, and the Contrecoeur container terminal in Quebec has been with the Major Projects Office since 2025. Each will cross at least one provincial, territorial or municipal election before construction.
Momentum across a change of government comes from work that does not depend on the next decision. Baseline environmental data, ground investigation along the corridor, consultation records, ownership agreements and a filed application all hold their value whoever wins. They also address the risk Trans Mountain shows was larger than approval: its cost rose from $12.6 billion in 2020 to $34.2 billion after its federal approval was in hand, driven by flooding, archaeology, terrain and labour rather than permits.
A listing can survive an election. A project survives one when its next step is already under way before the votes are counted.
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