Want to Bulletproof the Economy? Build More Pipelines.

Trump has made no secret of what he wants from Canada: oil, and lots of it. The U.S. currently produces 13 million barrels of oil per day and it uses 20—that’s a daily deficit of seven million barrels. Canada sells them four million barrels daily to reduce the deficit. And Trump wants a Canada that can continue to help offset that difference. Developing our domestic energy industry and finally building our all-but-abandoned pipeline projects would help us establish new trading partners beyond the U.S., reduce our reliance on the Americans and transform Canada into a truly independent economic superpower.

Oil is our leverage, and right now we’re wasting it. Canada produces some of the cleanest, most ethically sourced oil in the world, yet more than 90 per cent of our crude exports go straight to the U.S., usually at a steep discount. We sell low, buy back high, and hope that Washington doesn’t change the rules. It makes economic sense to trade with them because we do not have the infrastructure in place to consistently sell oil to another trade partner. Our entire negotiating position is based on the hope that America continues to want our oil and doesn’t decide to punish us elsewhere. This isn’t a trade relationship; it’s dependency. And it’s dangerous. 

We’ve missed previous chances to bolster our energy industry. Over the last decade, proposals have appeared to build or expand on three of our major pipelines. The idea was to twin the existing Trans Mountain pipeline, build a separate one to shuttle more oil between Alberta and B.C., and construct an eastern pipeline that would deliver oil from the prairies to Quebec and the Maritimes. This final project would secure domestic demand and supplying refineries with western Canadian oil, reducing their dependence on expensive foreign imports from Saudi Arabia and West Africa. All three pipelines would diversify Canada’s economy by giving us trading options: funnelling crude oil to Saint John and Halifax and exporting it to Europe, for example, or transporting more fuel to the west coast and bolster our trade relationships with Asian countries like South Korea and Japan.

When these pipelines were proposed, they presented a way to get off the American drip. But we stalled. Politics got in the way. Regulatory gatekeeping, court challenges and sheer timidity delayed or outright killed all of those projects. And now we’re vulnerable, stripped of negotiating power and bullied by our southern neighbours.

That can change. We have to produce oil as though it’s a national emergency—because it is. We have the slowest-growing economy in all G7 countries, and the answer is right in front of us. Building a major export pipeline would allow us to export one to two million barrels per day. Let’s assume that the price of oil is $70. That means for every million barrels sold per day, you’re selling $70 million, and over the course of the year, that generates $25 billion.

If we take the right steps, improving our energy industry can take mere months. For example, Germany built an LNG terminal nine months after Russia invaded Ukraine. In the 1950s, we built 3,500 kilometres of the Trans-Canada Pipeline in under three years. We can operate with this level of urgency again.

Expanding our energy industry could take as little as three years: six months to approve, six months of engineering and 24 months to build. The fastest way would be to construct the Northern Gateway—a pipeline to the B.C. coast that was previously approved but cancelled by the Trudeau government. Longer term, we could build another pipeline to central Canada. Doing so would reduce our dependence on the States and bulletproof our economy. 

Moving quickly would require us to rethink how these projects are financed. A government-owned enterprise could lead development, but that model is expensive to taxpayers and notoriously slow. It took six years for the federal government to build the Trans Mountain pipeline; we do not have that kind of time in this political climate. Besides, a Carney government willing to foot pipeline bills might put us in murky waters with the Americans, who will not recognize a state-owned enterprise as a viable trading partner.

The better route would be to attract private capital—particularly from U.S. investors who have an incentive to keep Canadian oil flowing. For that to be possible, we need a regulatory overhaul that includes repealing the pipeline-banning Bill C-69, the emissions cap and the industrial carbon tax. The government should also enact a maximum six-month approval window for critical infrastructure. Otherwise, private investors won’t be interested.

None of this means abandoning our obligations to the environmental or Indigenous populations who own the land on which pipelines would be built. Such projects would involve Indigenous communities from the start—not as afterthoughts, but as partners. They’d require us to use risk-based assessments grounded in real-world data, not bureaucratic caution. The greatest threat to the planet is an unstable, uncoordinated energy transition, one where authoritarian petro-states fill the gaps that responsible producers like Canada leave behind.

Polling shows that 82 per cent of Canadians now support expanding the energy sector. But support alone isn’t enough. We need urgency. We need execution. If we act now, not only can we squash tariffs, but Canada can get to two million barrels per day of oil exports to non-U.S. markets within five to seven years. That means tens of thousands of jobs, long-term economic stability, and the end of our single-buyer vulnerability.

This is our moment to act, and break our dangerous dependence on the U.S. market. Canada’s oil isn’t just a resource—it’s a strategic asset, and our strongest economic card. And it’s up to us to decide whether or not we want to use it.

Adam Waterous is CEO of Waterous Energy Fund.