What Indigenous Nations need to know about the One Canadian Economy engagement
On May 8, the federal government released two discussion papers that, taken together, will become the operating framework for major project decisions in Canada over the next decade. The Privy Council Office’s Getting Major Projects Built in Canada sets out eight legislative, regulatory, and policy proposals on federal review, consultation, and decision-making. Transport Canada’s companion paper Strengthening One Canadian Economy through Trade and Transportation proposes a parallel package on trade corridors, port governance, and supply chain modernization. Both close to written submissions on June 7, 2026.
The papers describe a process today that takes more than five years to clear a major project and propose to compress that to one. Federal impact assessment and permitting run concurrently. A single decision document carries all federal approvals. The Canada Energy Regulator takes the lead on pipelines, transmission, and offshore renewables. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission takes the lead on nuclear and uranium. Federal Economic Zones pre-approve categories of development across defined regions. A Crown Consultation Hub at the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada coordinates federal consultation in one track per project, per community (with CanNor keeping that role in the territories).
The two papers describe the operational framework under which every transmission line, pipeline, port, mine, and energy project on Indigenous territory will be reviewed, conditioned, and decided for years to come. The legislation flowing from this engagement will fill in the machinery underneath the existing Building Canada Act. The federal position is that the one-year timeline "will not change" the duty to consult or obligations under Modern Treaties, and that the proposals will not alter environmental approval processes set out in Modern Treaties.
In preparing submissions for several organizations over the past two weeks, many of the same risks have surfaced repeatedly, regardless of geography, governance structure, or rights regime.
The proposals, and the risks Nations need to be aware of
Crown Consultation Hub: A new federal coordination body, housed in IAAC, would manage Crown consultation for every major project in a single track. The objective of “one consultation process per community, per project” is one most Nations support in principle. The risk is a Hub designed around a common-law duty-to-consult template, defaulting to pan-Indigenous procedures that quietly displace Modern Treaty consultation processes, self-government consultation arrangements, nation-Crown consultation agreements, and the bilateral protocols Nations have spent years building. The Hub is supposed to coordinate federal contacts. It cannot substitute itself for the Nation as the consultation counterparty.
The one-year federal review: Federal impact assessment and permitting would run concurrently, with federal review and decision-making capped at one year once proponent information is complete. The Federal Review Coordinator at IAAC keeps the file on track. Without explicit conditions on when the clock starts (i.e. Nation notification through Nation-designated channels, capacity funding flowing, complete proponent information, Phase 0 work documented) there is a risk that the clock starts before consultation can meaningfully begin. In that case the timeline becomes a tool for compression rather than predictability. The duty to consult, deeper consultation where rights are stronger, and treaty-defined consensus-seeking obligations cannot be shrunk to fit a federal target. A pause mechanism in the legislation, tied to treaty consultation obligations and rights-holder capacity, is needed to keep the timeline from running past the Crown's ability to consult.
Single federal decision: One decision document, issued by the Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Nature with the relevant sector Minister, would carry all federal approvals for IAA-listed projects. The risk is a consolidated document that integrates Indigenous input at the margins, then locks into an instrument that becomes harder to revisit. The proposed ministerial authority to adjust conditions in “exceptional circumstances,” and the new authority of the Minister responsible for One Canadian Economy to adjust environmental conditions for national-interest projects, can become a backdoor to weakening Indigenous-specific conditions without consultation. The proposal to allow some early construction before the impact decision is made adds the risk of irreversible work on the ground while consultation is unfinished.
Single project authority for CER and CNSC: Pipelines, transmission, and offshore renewables go to CER, with CER-led projects exiting the IAA process. Nuclear and uranium go to CNSC, which conducts the impact assessment under the IAA. The risk is that the duty to consult, capacity funding flows, and equity pathways do not automatically follow the file. CER and CNSC have sectoral expertise IAAC does not. They do not have IAAC’s institutional knowledge of how Crown consultation with specific Nations is conducted. A two-tier framework, in which CER- or CNSC-led projects come with a lower Indigenous-engagement standard than IAA projects, is a litigation hazard for proponents and a credibility hazard for the framework. Transmission deserves particular attention. The National Electricity Strategy, announced May 14, commits to doubling Canada’s grid by 2050, and nearly every major transmission corridor crosses Indigenous territory.
Federal Economic Zones: Cabinet would have authority to pre-approve categories of development within defined zones (transportation corridors, telecommunications networks, energy regions, industrial areas). A regional impact assessment supports the zone designation. Specific projects within zones move through a faster permitting process. This is the most consequential proposal in the package and potentially the most problematic for Indigenous Nations in its current form. Pre-approving categories of development across a region forecloses the project-level consultation the Crown owes when a specific project is proposed inside the zone. Where the zone overlaps Treaty Lands, an Impact Assessment Area, a co-management region under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, or a Modern Treaty in transition to effective date, the zone can foreclose treaty-defined rights before any project is proposed. Without co-design with affected Nations from the outset, a Nation-controlled off-ramp where unanticipated rights impacts emerge, and binding economic participation conditions attached to the zone itself, the zone becomes a one-way door, and the proponents inside it inherit the litigation risk the zone was meant to eliminate.
Streamlined regulatory environment: The package narrows navigation permits, increases flexibility on Fisheries Act offsetting, transfers some decision powers from Cabinet to Ministers, allows certain early construction activities, and gives Cabinet limited authority to exempt projects from the Species at Risk Act jeopardy test in the public interest where the proponent has made reasonable efforts to mitigate. Many of these changes are defensible in isolation. Layered together, they shift discretion further into ministerial hands and lower the procedural floor on which Indigenous consultation has historically rested. The Species at Risk exemption authority is particularly consequential where species at risk are integral to a Nation’s harvesting rights (i.e. Boreal caribou).
The Indigenous economic participation suite. The doubled $10 billion Indigenous Loan Guarantee Program, the $40 million capacity envelope at the Major Projects Office, and the Indigenous Advisory Council to the MPO are the package’s economic participation backbone. The risk is not the existence of these tools but their design. The ILGP needs to be tailored to the entity structures Modern Treaty Nations and self-governing Nations actually use, not retrofitted from a Section 35 rights-holder template designed for entities operating under the Indian Act. The capacity envelope needs to flow directly to Nations and sequence ahead of project clocks, not behind them. And the Indigenous Advisory Council, by Canada’s own commitment, does not satisfy the Crown’s duty to consult. Its current composition includes no representation from the BC Modern Treaty Nations transitioning to effective date or from the Northwest Territories Modern Treaty Nations whose lands the Mackenzie corridor runs through. That gap should be corrected on the next rotation.
National Trade Corridors: The Minister of Transport would be authorized to designate National Trade Corridors, defined geographic zones covering important routes for moving goods, with performance goals set across ports, railways, airports, trucking, and warehouses within them. A new National Corridor Council, composed primarily of industry leaders, would advise the Minister on corridor efficiencies and port collaboration, including the possible amalgamation or divestiture of ports. The Council is mandated to consult with Indigenous groups. The risk is that corridor designations function as a geographic pre-commitment to certain kinds of development before Nations whose territories the corridors cross have had any say in the design. Consultation by an industry-led advisory body is not Crown consultation. Designating a corridor across treaty lands, co-management regions, or other Section 35 rights-holder territory triggers the same structural tension as a Federal Economic Zone, and the paper offers no equivalent of even the zone's regional impact assessment backstop.
Port governance: Proposed amendments to the Canada Marine Act would modernize Canada Port Authority governance, increase financial flexibility for ports, update borrowing and fee-setting rules, and, for the first time, directly reference Indigenous Peoples in the Act, recognizing their distinct identities. The paper also proposes the creation of Indigenous advisory mechanisms to ensure ongoing input from Indigenous communities near ports. These are real but limited steps. The risk is that the commitments stay at the level of dialogue rather than structure. Port governance changes that affect lands, waters, or navigation in Modern Treaty areas engage treaty-defined rights, and changes affecting non-treaty marine and harvesting territories engage Section 35 rights. The paper does not propose any mechanism to give Indigenous governments a decision-making role in port governance, as distinct from a consultative one.
Transportation Project Office: Transport Canada would establish a Transportation Project Office within the department to coordinate federal permitting and Crown consultation for transportation projects not subject to impact assessment under the IAA, not listed under the Building Canada Act, and not in CanNor's jurisdiction. This is the TC parallel to the PCO's Crown Consultation Hub, but it captures a broader range of smaller transportation projects where Crown consultation has historically been weak. The risk is the same as the Hub, and arguably more acute. A coordination office designed without distinctions-based protocols and without treaty-specific mechanisms can default to common-law duty-to-consult procedures that displace established Nation-specific consultation processes. The paper says engagement will follow Canada's commitments under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. That is a starting point, not a substitute for distinctions-based or treaty-specific design.
Regulatory streamlining: The paper proposes to remove duplicate processes under the Canada Transportation Act, align more quickly with international standards, simplify marine liability obligations, clarify competition rules in the marine sector, and update railway construction rules, including increasing the amount of track that can be built without Section 98 approval from 3 km to 5 km. Individually, most of these changes are defensible. Layered with the PCO paper's parallel streamlining package, they compound the reduction in procedural floor. The cumulative effect across both papers is a framework in which discretion concentrates in ministerial hands at the same time that the procedural anchors for Indigenous consultation are being compressed.
The missing carve-out for Modern Treaty Nations
From my perspective, the single biggest gap in the package, as drafted, is the absence of any statutory provision recognizing Modern Treaty Nations as a constitutionally distinct category in the design.
The discussion papers acknowledge in places that Modern Treaty environmental approval processes are constitutionally protected. They assert in places that the proposals will not change treaty obligations. What they do not do is propose statutory language that gives effect to those commitments in the operational framework. Modern Treaty Nations have been clear that without an explicit “subject to” clause in the legislation flowing from this consultation, the commitments do not hold in operation. A clause in regulations, ministerial guidance, or a preamble is not equivalent.
The same logic applies to Nations transitioning to a Modern Treaty effective date. Several BC Nations hold treaties initialled, ratified by community vote, with effective dates anticipated in 2028 and 2029. The federal framework being designed in this consultation will run across that transition. How that transition is managed depends on what goes into the legislation drafted following this engagement.
What this means
Submissions are due June 7. What needs to be on the record? Statutory carve-out language. Treaty-specific provisions on consultation, assessment, and economic participation. Reporting requirements that the Commissioner for Modern Treaty Implementation will be able to use once Bill C-10 receives royal assent. Forward-compatibility provisions for Nations in transition. Distinctions-based consultation design for Section 35 rights-holders outside the treaty process, applied equally to the PCO's Crown Consultation Hub and Transport Canada's Transportation Project Office. Project-level off-ramps from any zone-based regime, whether a Federal Economic Zone or a National Trade Corridor designation. A decision-making role, not a consultative one, for Indigenous governments in port governance where treaty rights or Section 35 rights are engaged.
This analysis is policy analysis, not legal advice. Nations should engage legal counsel before submitting. That said, the analysis here is yours to use, draw on, adapt, or cite in your submissions. PCO and Transport Canada have made capacity funding available to Nations and Indigenous organizations to support engagement on these papers. If your organization has not yet accessed that, there is still time to ask. If you want help turning this analysis into a submission before June 7, reach out. The window is tight. Something on the record is better than nothing, and a focused submission can make your Nation’s position clear. Message me at jake@kgsassociates.ca
