From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Marco Navarro-Genie

Without infrastructure, Canada is losing billions while the U.S. cashes in on our oil and gas

Canada’s energy wealth is stuck in traffic, and our American neighbours are cashing in. It’s worse than that. Canada is bleeding millions of dollars daily because it lacks the infrastructure to export its natural resources efficiently.

While our oil and gas continue to flow—mainly to the United States—provinces like Alberta and British Columbia are forced to sell at steep discounts. This isn’t just an economic inefficiency; it’s a structural failure of national policy. The beneficiaries? American businesses and their governments which pocket the profits and tax revenues that should be circulating through the Canadian economy. This is no way to achieve economic sovereignty for Canada.

With U.S. interests reaping the rewards, this should have been a central talking point when Prime Minister Carney met with President Trump earlier this month.

Ottawa often offers the recent completion of the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) pipeline as an example of federal support for the energy sector. But such claims are misleading. Kinder Morgan, a private enterprise, had initially planned to build the extension without a penny from taxpayers. It withdrew only after being crippled by federal regulatory delays and political uncertainty.

Ottawa stepped in not as a benevolent saviour to help Albertans, but to prevent lawsuits and save face—ultimately overpaying for the pipeline and watching construction costs balloon to nearly six times the original estimate.

To now declare this bungled project a “gift” to Alberta, as a recent op-ed in the Toronto Star did, is not only tone-deaf: it’s an insult. It ignores the fact that Alberta’s taxpayers helped finance the very project Ottawa botched. It also reveals an astonishing lack of understanding of the historical, economic and political dynamics at play between Ottawa and Western Canada.

The tragedy is that TMX, despite its importance, is insufficient. Our infrastructure bottlenecks remain. With each passing day, Canada forfeits wealth that could fund essential improvements in health care, education and national defence.

According to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, which has developed a real-time tracker to monitor these losses, the price differential between what we could earn on global markets versus what we settle for domestically adds up to $26.5 billion annually.

Ottawa’s reluctance to greenlight new infrastructure is a primary cause of this problem. Ironically, the losses from this reluctance in a single year would be enough to pay for another TMX, mismanaged or not. The solution lies in a national commitment to building utility corridors: designated routes that facilitate the movement of energy, goods and services unhindered across provincial boundaries.

Carney’s recent promise to remove all interprovincial trade barriers by July 1 is a nice soundbite. But unless it includes meaningful infrastructure commitments, it is bound to fail like every other rhetorical flourish before it.

Canadians should be rightly skeptical. After all, what Ottawa has failed to achieve in the 157 years since Confederation is unlikely to be accomplished in the next 60 days.

The political math doesn’t help either. The Bloc Québécois holds the balance of power in the 45th Parliament, and its obstructionist stance on national pipeline development ensures the advent of more gridlock, not less. The federal government continues to uphold Bill C-69—dubbed the “no-pipelines bill”—further entrenching the status quo.

Meanwhile, Canada remains in the absurd position of relying on U.S. infrastructure to transport oil from the West to Ontario and Quebec. This undermines our economic independence, energy security and national sovereignty. No amount of “elbows up” will correct this enormous gap.

If the prime minister is serious about transforming Canada’s economic landscape and making the country strong, he must bypass the Bloc by cooperating with the Official Opposition. A grand bargain focused on utility corridors, interprovincial infrastructure and national trade efficiency would serve Alberta, Saskatchewan, and every Canadian who depends on a strong and self-reliant economy.

The stakes are high. We need a more productive country to face challenges within Canada and from abroad. Billions in lost revenue could fund new hospitals, more schools and better military readiness.

Instead, along with the limited exports of oil and gas, we’re exporting great opportunities to middlemen—and greater economic strength—south of the border.

The path forward is clear. A strong, self-reliant Canada needs infrastructure. It needs corridors. It needs leadership.

Marco Navarro-Genie is the vice president of research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He is coauthor, with Barry Cooper, of Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023).

MxM News

Quick Hit:

The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to shut down its long-standing Energy Star program, which has certified energy-efficient appliances for over three decades. The move is part of a sweeping agency reorganization that also includes eliminating the climate change office and other environmental initiatives not mandated by law.

Key Details:

• EPA officials announced the dismantling of the Energy Star program in a staff meeting on May 6, 2025.
• The agency is eliminating its climate-related divisions, including those overseeing Energy Star and greenhouse gas reporting.
• The move is framed as part of a broader restructuring to prioritize statutory obligations and reduce government overreach.

Diving Deeper:

In a significant shift for federal environmental policy, the Environmental Protection Agency will eliminate the Energy Star program, a popular certification used to identify energy-efficient home appliances like refrigerators, dishwashers, and dryers. Internal documents and a recorded staff meeting reveal that EPA leadership is dismantling entire divisions focused on climate change and voluntary energy initiatives.

Paul Gunning, director of the EPA’s Office of Atmospheric Protection—which is also being cut—told staff the agency would “de-prioritize and eliminate” all climate-related work outside of what’s legally required. The Energy Star program, created in 1992 under President George H.W. Bush, has helped save American households and businesses over $500 billion in energy costs and prevented billions of metric tons of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere.

Supporters argue the program has been a bipartisan success story. Nearly 90% of U.S. consumers recognize the Energy Star label, and manufacturers have long relied on it to market efficient products. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and major industries, from lighting to food-equipment makers, have urged the EPA to keep it in place. A joint letter in March from dozens of trade organizations to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin warned that ending the program would not benefit Americans.

Critics of the move, like Paula R. Glover of the Alliance to Save Energy, say the Energy Star program costs just $32 million annually but delivers $40 billion in utility bill savings. “Eliminating the Energy Star program is counterintuitive to this administration’s pledge to reduce household costs,” she said. Glover added that with electricity demand set to rise 35–50% by 2040, energy-saving measures are more important than ever.

The Biden-era EPA heavily prioritized climate policy and environmental regulation, often blurring the lines between environmental stewardship and bureaucratic overreach. In contrast, the current administration—under 47th President Donald Trump—is refocusing the agency toward its statutory mission, aligning with the broader conservative agenda of streamlining government and cutting redundant or ideologically-driven programs.

While Trump previously attempted to defund Energy Star during his first term, the effort failed amid bipartisan concern that privatization could lead to lowered standards. The current plan appears to accomplish the same goal through internal restructuring, cutting not just Energy Star but programs related to methane emissions reduction, climate science, and policy.

Notably, the agency’s largest union has cried foul over how the reorganization was handled. Marie Owens Powell, its president, accused the agency of “union busting” after being blocked from attending reorganization meetings. Staff have been told they may be reassigned or let go as the EPA scales back to staffing levels not seen since the Reagan administration.

For an agency that has long served as the regulatory spearhead for the left’s climate agenda, this realignment could represent a return to core environmental functions—clean air and water—while removing the taxpayer burden of subsidizing climate-centric programs with questionable returns. The decision also signals a shift away from corporatist alliances that prop up select industries under the guise of energy policy.