QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Natural Resources
Foreign Investment in Natural Resources
October 9, 2025
Minister, thank you for accepting to come before the Senate. After a decade of Liberal red tape and stalled projects, the result is clear: Investments are leaving Canada. Enbridge now invests two thirds of its $30 billion a year in the United States, where they say, “The opportunities are better.” Imperial Oil is cutting 900 jobs, most of them in Calgary. Your government has added yet another layer of bureaucracy with Bill C-5 instead of repealing its own anti-energy laws like Bill C-69 and Bill C-48 and the oil and gas emissions cap.
Why create a new law to bypass your own barriers rather than simply abolishing them? With this irresponsible approach, you are fuelling the American economy while the Canadian economy, minister, continues to suffer.
Thank you for your question, senator. I would invite you to come with me on some of the trips I have been on in the last few weeks. I was in the Gaspé Peninsula this past weekend where there is a new multi-billion-dollar smelter being built and where we just provided funds for two new phosphate mines in Quebec. I was recently in Strathcona where they are building a multi-billion-dollar carbon capture and sequestration infrastructure, one of the world’s largest. I was recently in Squamish where the Squamish Nation is building a multi-billion-dollar export facility. I was recently in Kitimat where they just finished a multi-billion-dollar aluminum project. They have just started up and were shipping the first Canadian liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to international markets. We are in discussions about doubling the size of that, making it the second-largest LNG facility in the world. And we just green-lit the Ksi Lisims LNG project, so I would respectfully say that Canada is building right now.
Minister, your trips are nice and dandy and that perspective is interesting, but the truth of the matter is the stats don’t lie. International foreign investment is flooding to the United States compared to Canada, and our foreign investment in this country is at the lowest level it has been in over a decade. These are the facts, minister.
You promised to make Canada an energy superpower capable of standing up to the Americans. And now you are considering reviving the Keystone XL pipeline, not because Canadians asked for it but because Donald Trump asked for it. Is this the Liberal vision of strong sovereignty: promising to stand up to the Americans only to end up obeying Donald Trump?
Again, respectfully, I would disagree with this perspective. Canada is building strong. Our Prime Minister set a goal for our new government to attract $500 billion of new investment to Canada. In the first five projects that we announced as part of our Major Projects Office, $60 billion of private sector money has been attracted in just those five projects. There are many more like the Ksi Lisims LNG project and like the project I saw in Saguenay. I would respectfully say Canada is building, and it is building at a pace that it has not done in a long, long time.
