1) Carney’s contentious major projects bill clears committee

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Canadian Press Staff, June 17, 2025

Running roughshod over the environment. Spawning the next Idle No More movement. Picking economic winners and losers.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Building Canada Act is anything if not a magnet for criticism.

The Liberal government’s controversial legislation that would let cabinet quickly grant federal approvals for big industrial projects like mines, ports and pipelines sailed through committee in the early hours of Thursday.

A House of Commons panel sat from Wednesday afternoon to after midnight reviewing Bill C-5 in a hurried study, as the Liberal government seeks to pass it through the chamber by week’s end.

Indigenous and environmental groups, along with opposition MPs and senators, raised concerns that the bill is being rushed through parliament and will grant cabinet sweeping powers to override other laws to plow ahead with industrial projects favoured by the government of the day.

“The process that led to Bill C-5 is a case study in how not to engage with Indigenous nations,” said Kebaowek First Nation Chief Lance Haymond, adding there was no “meaningful engagement” or a “recognition of the complexity of our rights, titles and interests.”

“The conditions for an Idle No More 2.0 uprising are being written into the law as we speak,” he told the House of Commons transport committee late Wednesday night.

The legislation enjoys support from the business community and building trades, who testified to parliament that it can take longer to get projects approved than to get them built.

Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc appeared at the hearings to defend the bill, warning Canada is weathering a “storm of change” amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s punishing trade war and that the country needs to quickly bolster the economy.

“Canadians have entrusted us to do things differently and better and move nation-building projects forward,” he said.

The bill is two pieces of legislation rolled into one, with the first part aimed at breaking down internal trade barriers – something Carney promised to achieve by Canada Day.

The second part grants the government the ability to designate major projects to be in the “national interest,” then fast-track their approval.

Thanks to help from the Conservatives, who won a handful of amendments to the bill, the Liberal legislation appears on track to clear the Commons at a brisk pace.

Even still, the Tories and the Bloc Québécois raised concerns that it consolidates too much power in the hands of the prime minister and his cabinet.

In a series of testy exchanges with LeBlanc, Bloc Québécois MP Xavier Barsalou-Duval said there’s no guarantee that the minister in charge of the new process will act in the best interests of the public by granting itself far-reaching powers.

“What we have at the end of the day is a series of decisions that will be made behind closed doors … and nothing guarantees that you won’t transform yourself into the minister of cronyism,” he said in French.

“I do not agree that this bill opens the door to corruption,” LeBlanc said in French.

As some MPs trotted out comparisons to the Emergencies Act, LeBlanc balked at the idea and added that it’s not comparable to a “White House presidential order,” either.

Conservative MP Philip Lawrence pressed LeBlanc on whether there are sufficient ethics screens in place.

He noted that Carney previously chaired Brookfield, which has a hand in infrastructure and construction, reviving conflict of interest concerns about Carney’s past ties to the firm that the party brought up constantly throughout the recent election.

LeBlanc said elected officials would continue to be bound by current ethics rules.

Critics lined up on Wednesday to warn one after another that the bill could pose a threat to species at risk and allow Ottawa to sidestep its duty to consult with Indigenous Peoples.

“The last thing we want to do is hold up industry and projects with court cases, and this is exactly where it’s headed,” Trevor Mercredi, grand chief of the Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta, told the Commons committee.

“We say go back to the drawing board,” Charles Hatt, climate program director with Ecojustice, said at a press conference.

Anna Johnston, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, said the bill throws the principle of informed decision-making “out the window.”

“Allowing cabinet to decide whether projects proceed before reviewing them is like building a house and then calling an engineer to ask if it’s safe,” she said.

Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski said he understands the concerns raised by Indigenous and environmental groups but believes the government needs to act quickly.

“Are we going to continue to put this on hold, to tinker with it and make slight amendments? I think it’s important we pass this legislation and there’s always an opportunity afterwards to amend it,” he said.

Heather Exner-Pirot of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute think tank warned the bill lets political Ottawa pick winners and losers and is “rife with potential for abuse,” but she said she does not oppose it. 

She said at the hearings that the Canadian economy needs to be turned around at a critical moment, and this should be the start of broader reforms to spur investment.

“What good is a pipeline if the emissions cap means you can’t fill it? What good is a railway if the Impact Assessment Act means you can’t mine products to ship on it?”

The House is scheduled to sit until Friday, and a Senate programming motion has the upper chamber wrapping up its examination of Bill C-5 by June 27.

— With files from Kyle Duggan, Alessia Passafiume, David Baxter and Sarah Ritchie.

2) PM Carney says he has no plans to tackle 24 Sussex question during his mandate

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Catherine Morrison, June 14, 2025

Almost a decade after 24 Sussex Drive was abandoned as the official residence of the Canadian prime minister, taxpayers are still shelling out tens of thousands of dollars a year to maintain the vacant property, and the new prime minister has signalled he’s in no rush to deal with the crumbling building.

Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters in May that it’s up to the National Capital Commission to decide what to do with 24 Sussex.

“It’s not a challenge for today, this month, this year and it’s probably a challenge for this mandate,” Carney said in French, adding that multiple ideas on how to renew 24 Sussex have been put forward by former prime ministers.

The home is a 35-room mansion that was built in 1896, and served as the prime minister’s official residence starting in 1951. It has been a federal heritage site since 1986.

But former prime minister Stephen Harper was the last leader to live at 24 Sussex. When Justin Trudeau took over as prime minister in November 2015, he and his family instead moved into Rideau Cottage, a home on the grounds of Rideau Hall. Carney and his family now also live at Rideau Cottage.

While the grounds of 24 Sussex were used during Trudeau’s tenure for some social events, it was closed by the National Capital Commission in 2022 for “health and safety reasons.”

Those included an infestation of rats that was so severe they found rodent carcasses and excrement in the home’s walls, attic and basement.

The commission has since spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on maintaining the building.

A document detailing expenses for 24 Sussex, obtained via information access law, shows that upkeep of the building cost taxpayers more than $680,000 between January 2018 and June 2023.

Those costs included elevator maintenance, janitorial services, boiler maintenance, the removal of a bees’ nest, pest control, roof repair and pool cleaning.

In 2022, the NCC spent just over $76,000 to repair a stone wall and steel fence after a tourist bus crashed into the gates of 24 Sussex.

NCC spokesperson Valérie Dufour said the organization is unable to provide any up-to-date information on operations and maintenance costs for the building. She confirmed the NCC continues to pay to maintain the building.

A separate document from 2023, obtained via an access to information request, shows the Trudeau government looked at three main options for the official residence.

The first option would be to establish Rideau Cottage as the prime minister’s permanent residence by investing in additional residential infrastructure, such as laundry and staff offices.

The second option would be to build a new “modern facility” at 24 Sussex with “limited heritage elements,” which would accommodate both residential and official functions.

The third option would be to build an entirely new residence on NCC-owned land elsewhere in Ottawa.

Dufour said the commission presented options on the future of the official residence to the government and is awaiting a decision.

In a letter addressed to then-procurement minister Jean-Yves Duclos, Trudeau asked for a proposal on new options for the official residence to be drafted by January 2026.

Trudeau said the proposal should include a plan to transfer all responsibility for the official residence, except for general maintenance, from the National Capital Commission to Public Services and Procurement Canada.

Andrew MacDougall, who was director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper, said that while Carney is right to focus on more important files, Canada still needs to maintain “symbols” of its nationhood — including 24 Sussex.

“Imagine a U.S. president leaving the White House in a dilapidated state. They would never,” he said. “And so why do we tolerate it?”

MacDougall argued that Carney is already “opening the taps and spending like there’s no tomorrow” and he might as well take on a problem that too many prime ministers have ignored.

Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said the real problem is that the National Capital Commission is “too good at wasting our money but bad at managing properties.”

“With debt interest charges blowing a $1 billion hole in the budget every week, Prime Minister Mark Carney must make it a priority to hold the NCC accountable to stop wasting so much money,” he said.

“Canadians also shouldn’t be paying for an official residence for any opposition leader or Speaker, and the prime minister doesn’t need multiple residences.”

Katherine Spencer-Ross, president of Heritage Ottawa, said Carney’s reluctance to tackle 24 Sussex is “hardly surprising” given the amount of work on his plate.

“I’m not holding my breath,” she said. “I think he’s got another fish to fry.”

Spencer-Ross said that while prime ministers have been afraid to do anything about 24 Sussex because of the political optics, the prime minister of the day is still the “steward” of the building.

“It is not their home. It is not their party’s home. It belongs to the people of Canada,” she said.

Spencer-Ross said Heritage Ottawa wrote to Trudeau in 2018 to suggest setting up an external advisory committee to look at options for the residence. She said nothing happened with that idea until Trudeau included it in his letter to Duclos.

She said her organization believes the building should be maintained, renewed and kept in public hands, even if it’s no longer the official residence.