Pipelines have become an election issue. What exactly is Ottawa’s role to

Through a fluke of timing, the federal election coincides almost perfectly with the one-year anniversary of the government-owned Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion coming online — at a time when public sentiment around pipelines is relatively positive.

The two campaign front-runners are both emphasizing energy infrastructure, driven by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats of annexing Canada. Both leaders are pitching some version of an energy corridor, though Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has more directly emphasized pipelines, specifically, while Liberal Leader Mark Carney has more broadly pitched Canada as a “superpower” in both clean and conventional energy.

Both of the parties leading in the polls want to kick-start the economy, reduce Canada’s reliance on U.S. oil and drastically speed up the regulatory process for major projects like pipelines.

If the next government wants to put more pipelines in the ground, experts say that could include different strategies such as taking an ownership stake in one, or reducing red tape for private companies.

Whichever party forms government next week will also have to make a decision on the Trans Mountain project, including whether to continue owning the pipeline or put the Crown corporation up for sale.

Hands-on approach

For now, the parallels between the Liberal and Conservative platforms speaks to a broader acknowledgement that Canada needs to be more involved in building energy infrastructure, said economist Kent Fellows.

In some ways, he said, this shift represents a return to the way things used to be. Before the 1970s, most large, linear infrastructure in Canada was built with direct government involvement, from the Trans Canada Pipeline to the Canadian Pacific Main Line to the Trans Canada Highway. 

After that, he said, there was a roughly 50-year period in which the private sector stepped up and built major projects without much direct government involvement, he said. But as evidenced by the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project, which Ottawa purchased to get it over the finish line, that period seems to be over. Its original owner suspended construction in the face of regulatory delays and court challenges from First Nations and the province of B.C.

Fellows, an assistant economics professor at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy, said it’s not clear yet if the shift in government direction is a “good thing or a bad thing.”

“But that’s sort of where we are now with Canada’s inability to attract private investment for these pieces of transportation infrastructure.”

In the end, the Trans Mountain expansion project took 12 years and about $34 billion to develop and…