This week, our guest is David Nikolejsin, Strategic Advisor at McCarthy Tétrault. David previously served the B.C. government as Deputy Minister for seven years under the Natural Gas Development and Energy and Mines Ministries. He was involved with implementing a successful “one window” approach that helped LNG Canada Phase 1 advance through construction.

In recent weeks, the Canadian federal government has announced several initiatives to fast-track major projects, including the establishment of the Major Projects Office (MPO) and the announcement of the first five projects.

Based on David’s experience in getting projects off the ground, both in government and now working with proponents, here are some of the questions we asked David:  How are environmental reviews for major LNG projects currently conducted in B.C., and which level of government—provincial or federal—takes the lead? What advice would you offer the newly appointed CEO of the MPO, Dawn Farrell, as she begins her new role?  In what ways have Indigenous rights in B.C. evolved over the past five or so years, and do projects now require Indigenous equity participation to get done?  Given that B.C.’s and Canada’s climate goals conflict with the acceleration of LNG exports, should GHG reduction targets be revised to attract more capital investment to B.C.?

Content referenced in this podcast:

• Prime Minister Carney launches new Major Projects Office to fast-track nation-building projects (August 29, 2025)
• Prime Minister Carney announces first projects to be reviewed by the new Major Projects Office (September 11, 2025)
• Globe and Mail, “Internal government list of 32 potential infrastructure projects includes new oil pipeline” (September 4, 2025)

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Episode 295 transcript

Disclosure:

The information and opinions presented in this ARC Energy Ideas podcast are provided for informational purposes only and are subject to the disclaimer link in the show notes.

Announcer:

This is the ARC Energy Ideas podcast, with Peter Tertzakian and Jackie Forrest, exploring trends that influence the energy business.

Jackie Forrest:

Welcome to the ARC Energy Ideas Podcast. I’m Jackie Forrest.

Peter Tertzakian:

And I’m Peter Tertzakian. Welcome back. We’re going to go back a couple weeks when the announcement of the Major Projects Office and CEO Dawn Farrell was appointed. So the Major Project Office, as it’s known as the MPO, so that’s getting to be in a lot of publications now, not to be confused with the PMO, which is the Prime Minister’s Office. This is the MPO, which is the Major Projects Office. So we’re going to talk about that, and we have a special guest, which we’re delighted to have, and we’ll introduce here in a minute. But I want to talk about the MPO for a minute. It is being led by Dawn Farrell, who was CEO of Trans Mountain, and she was on this podcast, oh, I don’t know, about a year ago, when Trans Mountain was about to start up. When was that?

Jackie Forrest:

Yeah, it was June of 2024.

Peter Tertzakian:

Okay, so it was over a year ago. Okay. And then she became chair of Trans Mountain, and now she’s been appointed to the MPO.

Jackie Forrest:

Well, in addition to that announcement back from August 29th, of course, last week, we learned September 11th that Mark Carney has these first five projects. Now this is the first tranche of more projects that are coming, including LNG Canada, phase two, the Ontario Small Modular Reactors, Port of Montreal capacity expansion, and two mining projects, one in BC and one in Saskatchewan. And the MPO is going to work. These are projects that are further along but have not yet reached final investment decision. And based on the notice that was given in the press release, the MPO is going to help fast-track so these proponents can advance their decision-making and their decision to invest here in Canada.

And if there was five other earlier-stage strategies that were also announced, including wind power and inland to Canada ports and rail, critical minerals, and the Pathways Project, which is the Carbon Capture Storage Project here in Alberta for the oil sands. Now we do expect more projects. We don’t know how many. This Globe and Mail article, and I will put a link to it in the show notes, since September 4th had a leaked list of potentially 32 projects. So we do know there will be more, but one thing we do know is the Major Projects Office certainly has a big scope of work, and likely this list of projects plus more coming in the future.

Peter Tertzakian:

So, to talk about major projects, let’s introduce our special guest, who has significant experience in all of this. So we’re delighted to have, straight from Vancouver, David Nikolejsin, who is a strategic advisor with McCarthy Tétrault. So welcome, David, to help us talk about these sorts of things, particularly from a BC perspective.

David Nikolejsin:

Thanks very much for having me on this show. I’m very honored to be here. Thank you.

Jackie Forrest:

Okay, well, David, maybe tell us a bit about your time in the BC government. You were the deputy minister for seven years under the Natural Gas Development and Energy and Mines Ministry. So tell us a bit about how you got to that role, and also what you’re doing now at McCarthy Tétrault.

David Nikolejsin:

Sure. I had a great career with the BC Public Service, 31-year careers, which basically was two different careers. The first half of that time, I was in high tech and IT. I actually rose to become government’s chief information officer, and then I was moved to the natural resource sector. So my first role there was head of the BC Environmental Assessment Office, which is the standalone office that actually does the environmental assessment process for major projects. And at 2012, when I moved there, all of the big LNG and pipeline projects we’re just proceeding through that process. So I participated in that and can talk about some lessons learned and things we did there later. In 2013, when Christy Clark formed government, she ran on a platform that was really pro LNG and very much focused in on that industry as a major part of her campaign.

And so when she formed government, she actually broke up the Ministry of Energy, Mines, and Petroleum Resources and created a dedicated ministry called the Ministry of LNG Development. I always actually took over everything else that was energy and mining, and other things that used to be in that ministry. So I became deputy ministry of everything else, which included BC Hydro and all that. But shortly after that, I actually moved to take over that ministry of LNG development. And so that’s where I spent a big part of my career, and it was heady days. Those were the gold rush days of LNG. Had 18 projects on the books, every super major in the world was beating a path to our door. We had 82 megatons of projects and pipelines and all sorts of things going on, including oil pipelines. Lots happening in those days. When John Horgan formed government in 2017, it was a minority government in partnership with the Green Party, which was interesting.

And one of the things Premier Horgan did was put the Ministry of Energy, Mines, and Petroleum Resources back together again. So essentially, my last two jobs, and then I was asked to stay on and lead that ministry. And so it’s in that role that we got some of these big approvals, I think that we want to talk about over the line. When I left government in 2020, I joined McCarthy Tétrault as a strategic adviser. And in that role, I assist our clients and partners in McCarthy’s around major projects and major project development, mostly in the energy and mining space, but also high-tech real estate.

And a lot of that work that I do there focuses back on Indigenous groups and working with them with those big projects because, as anyone and everyone has figured out, if you want to build anything big in Canada these days, you better figure out that part about how to work with Indigenous groups. And yeah, I work with projects all across Canada now very actively on the North Coast Transmission line, which is a $5 billion project to twin the high voltage system across Northern BC, and that is very much a novel opportunity to work with Indigenous groups around that in a very new way, silo ZIM’s LNG, wind farms, so on. So yeah, that’s a lot.

Jackie Forrest:

Okay, well, we’ve got lots of topics to dig into. We do want to talk about your views on Indigenous rights and how that maybe has changed, but let’s talk about this major project office. And I want to start at the high level. Tell us about BC’s LNG Canada Secretariat, your role in that, and how you think that helped advance LNG Canada phase one, which we are very happy to see started up this past summer.

David Nikolejsin:

Sure. So I’ll talk about what led up to the Secretariat because one of the big differences between that example and what’s going on nationally right now is, first of all, it was a project-focused office Secretariat as opposed to much broader as you spoke about earlier, but also when it came into being. So I talked earlier about the work I did at the Environmental Assessment Office around LNG Canada. I guess the thing I’d like to stress is that it’s so important to have the whole system working together and to do all of the necessary work in an organized way that leads up to what these corporations call their FID, their final investment decision. A lot of the work that I think the MPO has set up to do, and it was aspiring to do, happened before we actually formed that LNG Secretariat in BC. And what I like to tell people is it actually was an interesting time of two different governments actually working together, although not in a planful way.

So the Christy Clark government got the LNG Canada project up to the one-yard line. They did a lot of work and a lot of credit goes there, but it wasn’t done yet. John Horgan government comes in, and as I said, minority government with lots going on actually pushed it into the end zone, and to do that is a big negotiation with lots of moving parts. So that led to the successful FID, an announcement that the project was going to be built. The LNG Secretariat was created by me when that decision happened, around actually getting it built because what happens a lot, and I think project proponents would say this is half the job, is getting through environmental assessment, getting your capital together, announcing the project. The other half, and sometimes it’s the tougher half, is actually getting it built, and there’s thousands of permits needed, issues always coming up across the board. And the LNG Secretariat was created to deal with all of that and make sure the project actually got built on time and on budget.

Peter Tertzakian:

So just a couple of questions here because getting a little bit confused with all the different acronyms and departments. So, the BC LNG Canada Secretariat is that different from the Ministry of LNG Development that you talked about?

David Nikolejsin:

It was a department within the ministry.

Peter Tertzakian:

Okay. So now we have the MPO Major Projects Office federally, which is of seemingly a federal analog of the building of LNG infrastructure and the Ministry of LNG Development. So, can you talk about how having two layers of offices, federal and provincial, is going to work?

David Nikolejsin:

Yeah, it’s going to be interesting, and what I will also say is this isn’t the first major projects office either federally or provincially. Interestingly, when I created the LNG Secretariat in BC, there’s also was and still is a major projects office in BC, and the feds have had multiple major projects, offices in the past. So you’re asking the exact right question and what in my opinion I think needs to happen is something that’s been missing in the past, which is a really clear and comprehensive discussion about who’s going to do what and making sure that the federal office is asking itself the question, are we doing the things that only we can do as the federal government? And then actively making sure that they’re not duplicating things that should rightfully be done by the province. And conversely, on the provincial side, it depends which province you’re talking about.

So we’re focused in on BC. BC also needs to step up and actively meet up with, well, hopefully that attitude I just talked about, and then effectively recreate what was going on at that LNG Canada secretariat. The best test for whether these offices work or don’t work is not to ask the people who set them up or the people working there; it’s to ask the projects and the proponents, is this working? And the fact that the feds are setting up another one tells you there’s something missing there. But if you were to ask LNG Canada, they would very much say that secretariat worked. So I would really encourage people to look at why was that, what was different about it? And as much as possible, try to duplicate those features.

Jackie Forrest:

And I just want to add, and I’ve talked to a number of proponents for these LNG projects specifically in BC, actually, most of them say that the BC process is actually working fairly well to get to the environmental review and get your approval. And it’s because the BC government is mostly leading, the feds have said, “You know what? You guys can lead in most areas, but there’s certain areas the feds are still involved in.” And most of them say that’s the problem, actually, we’d like just one window, one regulator in it to be the province. The other thing is when I look at this announcement for the Major Project Office, it seems like it’s the feds going to be leading this.

And I’m like, well, you got something working well here in BC, so I hope they’ll be flexible to allow the province to take the lead. And then the second thing I wanted to ask you about, David, is it really seems in the materials for this Major Project Office, it is very much focused on getting that FID, getting the environmental review done. And when I talk to proponents, it’s exactly what you’re saying. These permits not only from the province, although I think from the BC province, they are less of an issue because there’s some coordination amongst departments, but federally, these permits can be really, really onerous for the proponents. Do you think it’s important that they consider all the way through to starting up?

David Nikolejsin:

Yeah, there’s two pieces to that question. On the first part, around the one project, one review. So when I took over the BC Environmental Assessment Office in 2012, I utilized part of the act, so the FEA Act at the time, the Federal Environmental Assessment Act had a provision in it that allowed a process called substitution. There was two processes. Substitution was a legally defined opportunity within that legislation for provinces to substitute the federal environmental assessment, and it was a very formal mechanism. So I put in place an MOU at the federal government to allow formal substitution.

So in order for that to work, the feds have to agree on a project-by-project basis. We will not do a federal process. We will substitute our process for the provincial one, and what the province agrees is, we will take into our provincial process any federal values that might be truly in the federal mandate. At the end of that, you have one review, one report that goes to two different decision makers. So there’s still two missile keys, one in BC and one in Ottawa, that both have to turn, but there’s only one process. So that’s why proponents like it. By the way, just as an aside, there’s also a process that allowed a thing called equivalency, which would’ve gone one step further and meant only one decision. So the feds would also delegate the decision. That’s never happened. There’s lots of examples where now almost every major project, mining, oil, and gas, doesn’t matter in BC, is a substituted process because it works for the feds, it works for the proponents.

Now let me tell you how that feeds into your real question, which was about permitting. What drives proponents crazy is they’ll go through massive expense and time to do baseline study work as part of an environmental assessment, and then they have to do it again when they turn to get their permits. And it may be hard for some listeners to believe, but anyone who’s worked on a project knows what I’m talking about, and it drives people crazy because all of the duplication. And so you get this federal-provincial duplication, but that’s where these major project offices could come in is helping with that second matter saying, “You know what? We have the authority here to talk to the statutory decision-maker community,” and say, “We’re not going to redo all this work just because you weren’t involved in that first study, we’re not going to redo it.”

And it’s that kind of expediting and power, quite frankly, in the system where these offices can be most effective at expediting things. And what I always, always, always warn about, and I tell you, I worried about it when we did it in BC, the point isn’t to duplicate or replicate because where these offices do go wrong is they say, “Well, department X isn’t getting it done quick enough, so I’m going to take it over and do it.” That’s deadly. If these offices become just another layer of bureaucracy, they don’t work.

Peter Tertzakian:

Yeah, let’s explore that some more because I want to distill this down to, I guess, a recommendation based on your experience. So duplication is one thing, but having different directives is another. And what I’m getting by that is if we think of the proponents metaphorically as airplanes and we have two air traffic controllers, one federal, one provincial, the potential for a crash here is quite high, or at a minimum, massive delays in getting nothing done. So what is, I guess, the recommendation here? Is it as you suggested, the equivalency that the Major Project Office at a federal level give the air traffic control over to the BC government again to get the projects that go through BC or are affected by BC jurisdictionally done? Is that the recommendation?

David Nikolejsin:

Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to be that simple. I think the current approach federally has something huge going for it that was missing before, which was if you… Is this idea of deemed approval, if you get through enough gates or whatever, that’s going to look like eventually, to be determined, and at which point then everything else in the system’s supposed to become about expediting things like permits. So, where I’m going with that is to say just delegating things isn’t going to get it done because we’ve got an entire generation, both federally and provincially, of bureaucrats that have been trained to manage risk to zero on everything all the time. And the problem that that creates, and that doesn’t mean they’re bad people or they’re not working hard.

It just means the cultures we’ve created is all about this idea of managing risk, and people have forgotten about the other side of the equation, which is building the economy and paying the bills and having economic development. And it needs to become much more of a balancing act. And so, where I go when I hear your question is yes, we do need to get those clear… I talked about that earlier: clear, stay in your lane, focus on the things that only you can do, and move those other things back to the provinces, and then respect those things. Don’t second-guess, don’t trip over each other, but having said that, the key will be execution and results as opposed to process.

Jackie Forrest:

We do hear feedback from proponents, things like species at risks or permits you need from the Department of Fisheries. These requirements don’t sort of look at the economic versus the cost. They’re just throw a bunch of requirements on these projects and not think about does the project make sense with these requirements on. So that’s what you’re trying to talk about, David, more balance in terms of what the expectations are with the goal of we want this over the finish line. So what’s reasonable within the constraints of getting this project done? One other question I have, since you’ve had experience. I look at the scope. I mean, I don’t know how many nation building projects we’re going to have. I don’t know, Peter, if you saw that Globe and Mail article-

Peter Tertzakian:

32.

Jackie Forrest:

… talking about 30-some in a potential list, but let’s say it’s even one per province, it’s like 13. When you think about the effort it took for you to do the BC Secretariat, which was just post-FID efforts for one project, do you think that this office can be effective if they’re advancing 13 or maybe even more-

Peter Tertzakian:

32.

Jackie Forrest:

… 32 projects in parallel?

David Nikolejsin:

Yeah, honestly, no. I worry about that. I mean, as soon as you start talking about every project becoming a major project, then no project’s a major project. That’s the way I look at it. So if you truly want to have some exceptional things done, then make them exceptional and treat them exceptionally and do exceptional things to make them work. That’s just my instinct, and honestly, it sounds like the classic thing that we do in Canada quite often, which is, oh, there’s something happening. We got to make sure there’s one per province or this many per capita or it’s got to be… You know what I mean? And honestly, I don’t think the true nation-building projects will divide up that way, and that shouldn’t be the main criteria. There’s other criteria that should and are being applied, but that one, I think, is going to make everything slower.

Peter Tertzakian:

Right. So 32 may be too much, even though other nations around the world seem to be able to do it, not naming names, so probably not 32, but some countries probably could do 320 and get stuff done. And we seem to have difficulty getting even three done. But let’s talk about getting it done in particular, the regulatory and permitting stuff. So what we’ve been hearing is that the identified projects may have their own special adjustments or exemptions on a project-by-project basis. And so the question really is, well, why not just reform the whole process rather? I guess what I’m getting at is instead of the government picking winners and losers, that other types of projects may also benefit from regulatory reform that may only accrue to a handful of projects. Does that make sense?

David Nikolejsin:

And that would be better. And by the way, your point about 320 versus three, 320 would be better. I just live in the world where it’s pretty broken. I mean, things are not working, and we need to do something. And what I imagine is this is actually going to turn out well if we get it right. And what we’re going to find out is we can work together with our Indigenous peoples, we can actually have a safe environment and have nice things and good projects, and people are going to start to turn that corner where things do become normalized as opposed to needing to be exceptional. But if we try to boil this ocean at once, I’ve seen this movie; the bureaucracy is a powerful, powerful thing, and it’s going to take some real management to get some things done.

Jackie Forrest:

So what advice would you give Dawn Farrell if she starts your new role? If you had a conversation, what’s the first thing she needs to do?

David Nikolejsin:

So I would say that Dawn Farrell is an excellent choice, by the way, to lead that office. I think good choice, and she’s forgotten more about management than I’ll ever know. And so I say this with humility, the number one thing I would say is do not be impressed by or settle for process. Far too often, bureaucracies are very impressed with how busy they are. They have lots of meetings, they work late, they work hard, they produce tons of reports by the truckload, but they don’t ask themselves the one most important question, which is from the proponents’ or project perspective, is what’s better on Friday than it was on Monday? And just producing a truckload of work doesn’t make that a good answer. And so my number one piece of advice would be focus on results, not process, because bureaucracies are very good at process.

And then the other piece of advice I’d give is focus back on your Indigenous support in those stakeholders and make partners of them. I mean, there’s all this controversy out there about that, and it’s unnecessary in my opinion and in my experience. And so go make partners of Indigenous people, Crystal Smith, who you folks know had it right. What most of those Indigenous folks want is a share and a say, and what you’ll find if you engage them in that way and build that trust, you’ll never find better partners.

Peter Tertzakian:

Well, let’s talk about the Indigenous issue and understand what’s changed based on your experience, say, over the last five years. Because when we talk about building infrastructure projects, certainly energy infrastructure projects, most of the economic roads go through BC, and Indigenous stakeholders are critical, as you pointed out. So what’s changed, and what do you see changing going forward?

David Nikolejsin:

Well, things have very much changed over the years, and it’s been this long history of change where everything changed overnight, it feels like, but BC has been the high bar for Indigenous jurisprudence in Canada for a long time, mostly because most of BC is not covered by treaties. Most of the rest of Canada is, and so that’s why a lot of the court cases have come out of BC, and the long history of court cases that have established that Indigenous folks have rights and, in fact, enjoy title and have been granted title over pretty big chunks of land in BC. And so all of that jurisprudence led up to the day in 2019 where British Columbia, which as far as I know is the first sub-national in the world that did this, passed a law that is called DRIPA, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, that law enshrined the principles of UNDRIP into BC law and does call on every law on the books in British Columbia to be made consistent with the principles of UNDRIP.

So yeah, that’s a big, big, big change. And from there has stemmed these things we hear about in the news. So there’s lots of talk in BC about these consent agreements, what they call these government-to-government agreements that are being done in place of modern treaties. And those agreements are essentially the manifestation of what DRIPA calls on and very, very much changes the dynamic of who controls the land in British Columbia and what it’s going to take to work with those folks to get projects done. And some big examples are going on in BC, and by the way, most of them are actually turning out okay.

Jackie Forrest:

And also, the UNDRIP also resulted in changes to the BC environmental review process too. We’ve also had this Blueberry First Nations court decision. So when you think about some of these ideas of having fast tracking, like the Federal Bill C-5 wants to get approval done in two years, BC themselves have put forward their own fast tracking the Bill C-14 and C-15, maybe not for LNG, but for other types of energy projects and other kind of infrastructure projects. Do you think that politicians are going to have to weaken their Indigenous rights or repeal some of these rules in order to get these things done in two years? Because doesn’t this all just mean things take longer?

David Nikolejsin:

I would say they can repeal the laws if they want. It’s not going to change anything. The fact is, so politicians can pass laws like Bill 14, 15 in BC. They can pass laws like Bill C-5 in Ottawa; the government can change, they could repeal those laws, they can change them. That’s all good. None of that affects Section 35 of the Constitution, which defines the actual issue you’re talking about here.

And so whether you have Bill C-5 or not, whether you have Bill 14 and 15 or not, none of it trumps the requirements of Section 35 of the Constitution, nor that Supreme Court-tested case law I talked about earlier about the actual rights and how they manifest themselves. So those are inalienable. Unless someone’s going to take on changing the Constitution, which is not going to happen, to take out Section 35, because you cannot weaken your response, because the Constitution won’t let you. So, therefore, the right question is if you want to get something done in two years, you better figure out how to work effectively with Indigenous people, and let’s get on with it and stop fussing over the rest of it.

Peter Tertzakian:

Yeah, just for our audience, for those of us that have not studied the Constitution, what is Section 35?

David Nikolejsin:

The Constitution has a section in it that describes the rights of Indigenous peoples and when our Constitution was repatriated and became the Constitution of our country, that section has been tested over and over in different ways in some of those court cases I talked about earlier where the Constitution pretty simply spells out the fact that the Indigenous people enjoy rights, the extent of those rights, how they work with regard to the actual land itself has been the subject of all these other court cases that have come along. And it has been a consistent pattern of winning by Indigenous tests against the court that have established those rights that I talked about earlier.

And so unless you’re going to go undo all of that, which is impossible, technically, maybe possible, it’s practically impossible. The only path forward is to accept it and say, “Okay, what are we going to do?” And I keep saying there’s this mythology out there that this is somehow a problem we’re talking about. I don’t think it’s a problem. I think it’s an opportunity, and in fact, my experience working on major projects, the Indigenous people are not the problem. We need to turn our minds to the fact, okay, rather than trying to move that aside or make it easier, let’s go all in and let’s figure it out.

Jackie Forrest:

I wanted to come back to the Indigenous consultation that the government had in July, and people across the country saw a pretty negative reaction to C-5, and a reaction that Indigenous people didn’t want these projects to move forward quickly. Is that the right impression that I think a lot of Canadians got?

David Nikolejsin:

I would say not for a couple of reasons. So could the government have done a better job of rolling out C-5? Of course, that’s always true of any of us on any of these things. Having said that, the true test of what Indigenous people, First Nations, and others feel about Bill C-5 and moving major projects forward needs to be found by talking to the actual Section 35 rights holders. So let’s go back to Section 35 again. The rights are actually manifest in the nations whose territory it is, and there’s a lot of them. In BC alone, there’s 204 recognized First Nations, plus there’s hereditary chiefs, which we can talk about, plus Métis; there’s lots of groups, but if you just talk about First Nations for one moment, it decomposes pretty quickly if you’re trying to do a pipeline and there’s 20 or 30 First Nations online. But the honest truth is you’ve got to go one by one and you’ve got to find out what did the Section 35 rights holders thinks?

Not what did these national organizing bodies think or other groupings. And I’m not saying those groups don’t serve a useful purpose. Of course, they do because it’s a way for them to collectively represent things to government, but the government can’t negotiate consent with those national groups or any other group. You can only negotiate consent with the actual person who holds the rights, which is the person whose land you’re talking about. And my experience, I’ll keep saying it has been, if you engage those nations in a very productive way, not a consultant accommodates, so I can get you out of my way attitude, but an actual attitude of I want you to be supportive of this. What’s that look like? And have that conversation. You’re going to find it’s different nation by nation by nation, but what you’re going to find out is what they really think as opposed to listening to that story you were talking about.

Peter Tertzakian:

I completely agree. They have to be made partners of the process, and I believe there’s progress that’s been made over the past five years in involving them as equity stakeholders and partners in different ways. But let me ask you this, then whose role is it to do these negotiations? Is it the Major Projects office? Is it the proponents? How does this work, given that it’s sort of constitutionally charged, but yet the deal-making happens at the proponent level?

David Nikolejsin:

So the legal correct answer is it’s the duty of the Crown to do that. Constitutionally required consultation and accommodation is the duty of the Crown, and they can’t move that aside. What they can do is partner very effectively with industry. So let’s go back to the thing we started talking about was LNG Canada. It is the most understudied thing in Canada’s history. It blows my mind that people want to keep talking about what should we do, what should we do, as opposed to going back and looking at what worked and what will work again.

And was it perfect? No, there’s lots of things like I said, we can learn, but boy, oh boy, it worked. LNG Canada did a good job of this issue that we’re talking about, and there’s other examples out there. I just talked about the North Coast Transmission Line. There’s other big major projects, and there is the ability for a partnership between the Crown and the proponent, and the Indigenous people to move these projects forward. And if you can catch lightning in a bottle there, which is fully possible, you will move projects way faster than any other dream that the Major Project Office might come up with.

Jackie Forrest:

Okay. Well, there’s a growing narrative that if you want to get a project done, actually, you’d need to have equity Indigenous partnerships. However, LNG Canada, I do not think, had that. It maybe had generous benefit agreements. So would you think going forward that if you had a client that said, “I want to build a project in BC,” you’d say, “You have to have Indigenous equity,” or is there a way forward with a benefit agreement like would’ve been done in the past, but maybe more generous?

David Nikolejsin:

No, you do not need to do equity. What you need to do is find out what do those groups want. And like I said, nation by nation, it’s going to be different. Some want to be owners and take on full commercial risk and everything, and reap the benefits of taking on risk. Others want nothing to do with that. They’d rather just have a royalty. Others would rather have more of a traditional accommodation payment. Others might just actually say no. But the answer will be found by actually going nation to nation and figuring that out, but no, you don’t need to do equity. In fact, many of them don’t want it.

Peter Tertzakian:

Well, LNG Canada effectively was sort of like, well, there’s the Coastal Gas Link pipeline, then there’s the liquefaction industrial facility in the port. I want to move the discussion upstream because if we build pipes, we have to fill them. And drilling wells in Northeast BC has become challenging because of the Blueberry River First Nations Agreement with the BC government, which limits the cumulative impacts of industrial development. So, how do you think about that Blueberry issue?

David Nikolejsin:

Yeah, it’s a tough one and a bunch of technicalities under the covers of that decision and the government’s decision not to appeal it, that are now creating other issues with their neighbors on whose territory is whose and which controls apply where. So there’s lots of implementation issues around that. What I would say is the Treaty Eight Montney area is much, much larger than the Blueberry issue.

And in fact, there’s other nations who are working very productively and happily with companies on well completions and filling up the pipes for LNG Canada, so what we hear about is the trouble, and there are issues, but by and large, there is development still happening in the Montney, even in Blueberry’s territory. But writ large, there’s development happening, and I think it’s going to continue to get better. And one of the reasons that I’m a big proponent of the BC Montney is, and we’re not talking about this today, but there’s the intersection between climate policy and energy, gas, LNG development, and there’s some really good news stories of electrification of the upstream in BC that are very powerful parts of our message as good actors as Canadian producers.

Jackie Forrest:

Okay, well, we will maybe ask you a question on climate as we wrap up, but I did want to say, I mean, I think you’re right, but when you look at the amount of the Montney that is covered by this Blueberry Rivers First Nation, it’s quite a large part, actually, of the available resource. And we’re actually talking about maybe really ramping up LNG exports, not just LNG Canada Phase One, but maybe a second phase and maybe a couple other projects. It may become more of a constraint in the future when we need to grow more quickly. Now, in the absence of getting much more supply from BC, I think it can come from Alberta. There’s an Alberta side of the Montney as well. So I have no doubt there’ll be supply to fill those LNG terminals, but maybe not as much will come from BC as was potentially possible.

But let’s talk about the climate. The CleanBC Roadmap in 2021 set a target to cut oil and gas emissions by 33 to 38% by 2030 versus a 2007 baseline. Now, this covers everything, including LNG terminals, refining, upstream oil and gas pipelines. If we’re going to expand LNG exports to maybe six BCF per day. This is my kind of high-case scenario, but I think it is possible we could do that. I don’t see how we can live within this reduction target. You can’t grow LNG like that. We don’t have that much clean electricity by 2030 to avoid emissions from these LNG terminals in the upstream. So how do we square this box? Because we’ve got leaders, even of the BC government, not only Mark Carney, but leaders like Premier Eby and Minister Dix are talking like they support LNG, but these targets are in contrast to that. So, do you expect these targets are going to be changed?

David Nikolejsin:

Yeah, and by the way, my vision is bigger than six B day, and if you want to know how I think that, I’m happy to share, but I think our upside is bigger than that. And yes, to reap that upside, we are going to have to make some changes to those policies, and it’s going to take some political courage, and we’re going to see. But in my opinion, there are environmental policies both federally and provincially that are honestly not that effective as policy. They’re great at virtue signaling climate concern, but they’re not actually even that effective as policies; but they’re huge impediments to growth, quite frankly. And so those are going to have to change, and there’s a couple of ways to change them. Some just quite frankly need to go away. Others, we need to change the timelines on just to make them actually more achievably realistic.

But I’ll go back to the point, it’s going to take political courage because we all know there’s tension around fossil fuels, climate, Canada’s role in all of that. I go back to, I mentioned early on the work I did with John Horgan to get LNG Canada across the line. That is a great example of political courage because he was a premier of a minority government held up by the Green Party inside his caucus, and his cabinet it was far from unanimous, let me tell you that. In fact, a lot of the people that just formed that government ran on an anti-LNG platform, and he did it anyways. So it’s going to take some political courage to move some of these climate rules aside, change others.

But honestly, that signal, if we do that, I think, is the signal that the world, quite frankly, is looking for; it will cause capital to start to flow back into Canada. Because why the capital is on the sidelines right now is people don’t believe we can build anything in this country anymore. So if the combination of C-5, the MPO, all of that combined with some truly, I’ll use the word again, exceptional examples of signaling that we’re open for business by changing some of those climate constraints, I think will unlock a whole bunch of interest that’s standing on the sidelines right now and waiting to see if we’re going to actually be able to pull this off.

Peter Tertzakian:

Well, there is a lot of wait and see on many dimensions, and it’s been great having you, David. I mean, you’ve given us so much to think about as an expert on navigating the administration and the politics of building major projects, especially from a BC lens. You’ve given us sage advice as well as the Major Project Office some sage advice on the administration from a BC versus a federal perspective. Certainly gave us a good reminder about the Constitution, or if not a lesson for me about Bill C-35 and Indigenous participation, to view Indigenous participation as a positive and not an impediment. I think that’s a great lesson to impart on our audience and the decision makers here. And finally, some sage advice on climate policy, which we would concur with. So thanks so much. David Nikolejsin, strategic advisor of McCarthy Tétrault. It’s been a delight having you.

David Nikolejsin:

Thanks for having me.

Jackie Forrest:

Yeah, thank you, David. And thanks to our listeners. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate us on the app that you listen to and tell someone else about us.

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