Canada has entered a new chapter in how it conceives, funds, and executes nation-building projects. The Building Canada Act, passed in June 2025, created a legal framework to designate “Projects of National Interest,” fast-track their approvals, and coordinate across federal and provincial lines. At the same time, the government has unveiled a $5B Strategic Response Fund and rolled out a “Buy Canadian” initiative to reduce tariff exposure and secure domestic economic capacity (Financial Times).

For boards and CEOs, this isn’t abstract policy. It’s a direct change in the operating environment. We’re moving from a decade of policy chatter to a decade of execution. The question becomes: which leadership teams are fit to move at policy speed without blowing up budgets?

The New Landscape: Policy as a Platform

1. The Building Canada Act.
The Act, sometimes called the One Canadian Economy Act, not only empowers Ottawa to accelerate approvals, it also attacks a long-standing drag on growth: interprovincial trade and labour barriers. By breaking these down, executive recruitment and workforce deployment can move more fluidly across provincial borders (Wikipedia – One Canadian Economy Act).

2. Major Projects Office (MPO).
The government has already named early candidates for accelerated treatment. The most prominent is the Contrecœur terminal expansion at the Port of Montréal, which will boost container capacity by nearly 60%. Other candidates include the Eastern Energy Partnership, which envisions 5,000 MW of new hydro capacity and 24 TWh of transmission upgrades in Atlantic Canada (One Canadian Economy site).

3. “Buy Canadian” + Diversification.
A $5B fund has been allocated to strengthen supply chains and redirect trade flows toward new corridors, reducing exposure to volatile U.S. tariffs and foreign supply shocks (Financial Times). That gives boards an explicit policy framework to align projects with—those that qualify will get both political oxygen and financial scaffolding.

4. The macro backdrop.
The Bank of Canada recently cut its policy rate to 2.5%, the lowest in three years, citing weak growth and slack in labour markets (Reuters). Cheaper money is oxygen—but without capable leadership, it won’t translate into throughput.

Why Leadership, Not Concrete, Is the Bottleneck

Mega projects are rarely killed by engineering. They fail because of governance, capital missteps, and stakeholder paralysis. The new national-interest framework compresses timelines; that raises the premium on leaders who can navigate ambiguity and compress complexity.

Critical roles for the decade ahead:

• Program CEO / SVP Major Projects: A P&L leader who can orchestrate multi-party risk and maintain schedule discipline.
• Chief Permitting & Stakeholder Officer: A politically fluent executive who treats Indigenous partnerships and environmental approvals as critical-path, not compliance paperwork.
• CFO (Project Finance): Capable of blending public funds, PPP structures, export credit, and private equity.
• Chief Supply Chain & Industrial Strategy: Designs procurement for resilience against tariffs, FX swings, and single-threaded suppliers.
• VP Labour Mobility & Workforce Alliances: Leverages the new Free Trade & Labour Mobility Act to build pan-Canadian crews.

In a slow-growth environment—StatCan just reported a continuing decline in business dynamism, with firm entry/exit rates falling since the 1980s (Statistics Canada)—capital will gravitate to well-run teams. Cost of capital is now a function of governance quality.

Capital Formation: Stacking the Deck

Blend public scaffolding with private discipline.
The Strategic Response Fund is designed as catalytic capital. Boards should treat it as early-stage risk coverage (permitting, site prep, intertie studies), then lock private money against hard milestones.

Fit-for-purpose project finance.
Use revenue-backed instruments, long-tenor debt, and strategic equity tranches. Ports can lean on tariff-backed debt; interties on wheeling-charge models.

Widen the investor tent.
Infrastructure funds and pensions are natural, but strategic suppliers (cement, steel, OEMs) and offtakers should also be at the table. With the Canadian dollar posting its largest weekly decline since February against the U.S. dollar (Reuters), domestic co-investment becomes a hedge against currency shocks.

IR that speaks “policy + project.”
Investors want proof on three fronts: durability of policy (Building Canada Act protections), execution capacity (PMO credibility), and resilience (FX, labour, commodity risk). If your leadership team can’t articulate this in a one-pager, you’ll pay for it in spreads.

Revisit Flow-Through logic.
Flow-Through Shares have historically raised over $1B annually for mining exploration (The Logic). As government looks to crowd in private capital, don’t be surprised if FTS-style incentives are applied to early-stage infrastructure or clean-tech pilots. Boards should have position papers ready.

Governance at Policy Speed

The MPO will demand speed—but lenders will demand predictability. The answer: two-chamber governance.

• Strategic Board (quarterly): Sets risk posture, capital stack, partnerships; interfaces with ministers and regulators.
• Delivery Council (biweekly): Program CEO + C-suite for Finance, Permitting, Supply Chain, HSE, Indigenous Partnerships. Has authority to cut scope creep and approve rapid decisions. Compensation tied to predictability.

Social license is no longer a CSR afterthought. The MPO is explicit: Indigenous and community agreements must be contractualized on the critical path. Boards should treat them like turbine orders or port cranes—not press releases.

Early Signals: Case Windows

Contrecœur Terminal Expansion.
The Port of Montréal’s Contrecœur project, approved for fast-tracking, is expected to boost capacity by 60% and create thousands of jobs. It exemplifies how national-interest criteria are applied: relieving bottlenecks, expanding trade corridors, and driving regional growth (Reuters).

Eastern Energy Partnership.
The proposed interties (5,000 MW / 24 TWh) show a portfolio approach: multiple linked assets, staged financing, and a central PMO. Boards should expect to template governance across projects, rather than reinventing for each (One Canadian Economy).

Macro Policy Endorsement.
BoC Governor Tiff Macklem has been clear: internal trade reforms and infrastructure acceleration are structural tools to counter U.S. protectionism and tariff risk (WSJ). That’s a policy signal lenders and investors will trust.

Boardroom Checklist

• Can your project map line-by-line to Building Canada Act criteria?
• Do you have a capital stack that blends public scaffolding with private tranches—backed by letters, not wishful thinking?
• Which leadership seats are vacant for a 36-month sprint?
• Where are you exposed to single-threaded suppliers or USD shocks?
• Are your Indigenous and local agreements signed, funded, and scheduled—or just “in discussion”?
• Can your lenders see the same truth as your PMO, weekly?

Moving Forward

This is Canada’s most consequential build window in decades. The scaffolding is there: the Building Canada Act, the Major Projects Office, the Strategic Response Fund, and the Buy Canadian initiative. The winners will be those who professionalize leadership stacks for throughput, architect capital for resilience, and treat social license as a deliverable.

If you’re ready to align governance, capital, and leadership with national-interest projects, this is the moment to act. Perry-Martel International’s Inside-Out vs. 4.0 approach separates leaders who look good on paper from leaders who get megaprojects across the line.