Environment Committee on Oct. 27th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the 52nd meeting of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.

Today we have a briefing on the Major Projects Office's mandate, priorities and operations, with Ms. Dawn Farrell.

Thank you for being with us today.

Before we begin, I have a budget question: Does the committee agree to adopt the budget in the amount of $500 for this afternoon's briefing?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

There are no issues there. Thank you.

Today we have Dawn Farrell, chief executive officer of the Major Projects Office, who is online. We also have Rob Van Walleghem, general counsel and vice-president, indigenous affairs, and Peter Feldberg, vice-president, regulatory affairs, who are both online.

Welcome, and thank you for being here.

We'll begin with five minutes of opening remarks from Ms. Farrell, and then we will continue with questions from members.

Ms. Farrell, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Dawn Farrell, Chief Executive Officer, Major Projects Office]

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to come back to your committee. My office tells me I was here last November, and it feels like a long time since we've talked to you.

As you know, I have Rob and Peter with me today. The three of us have been working closely on, now, over 18 projects and 10 strategies. I think that, when I was here last, there were fewer by quite a few. We can answer a lot of questions on projects, on our processes and on some of the interesting work that we're pulling together under the Building Canada Act.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on my opening comments, because I know you have a number of questions. I will say just that our portfolio is around $200 billion, and we're evaluating all the projects. Many of them are considered referred projects, so they're really not under the Building Canada Act. However, we're working with those proponents to ensure that we can help them with regulatory and financing and to see how to move them through the system.

Since I talked to you last, we had five projects. We now have four projects that we're looking to list under our act. Of course, once you are listed under the act, there is then a regulatory process to issue a conditions document. As you know, we have one PONI; this, of course, is the Pacific link pipeline, which was listed on October 1. We can talk about how we expect the process to look as we go from the listing to the conditions phase.

The four projects that we're currently evaluating are the Mackenzie Valley highway, Roberts Bank terminal two, Grays Bay port and road, and the NWMO deep geological repository. We can answer questions about what our process looks like for evaluating projects and determining whether they should be listed.

You should know that it's the government that asks us to evaluate a project for the potential for listing. This does not guarantee that you get listed. There's a very extensive process that we undertake, which includes evaluating a project in terms of its business case, its economic impact and its execution. Then we also evaluate the national interest factors that are listed under the act, and we can add other factors as well. We can get into any level of detail that you'd want to know about there, in terms of how we do that process.

When I was with you last, we probably had about 20 people; we now have 200 people working on these projects. They work in first nations consultation, regulatory, financial evaluation, economic evaluation, and they have practices that cut across energy, transportation, communications and many other sectors. We have a good group of people who can now evaluate the work we're doing, and our evaluations also include independent third party studies.

Perhaps the most important work we do is that we try to figure out how to determine whether the balance of factors satisfies the criteria to make a project a PONI. Once we've done that, we figure out how to make sure, as we go through to the conditions phase, that we've evaluated all the issues associated with first nations' rights and title under section 35, as well as all the environmental factors. It takes a lot of coordination among our office, the proponent, indigenous communities and environmental communities, as well as the departments in federal and provincial governments, to ensure that as we're evaluating and considering the projects, we've considered them on all fronts. Fundamentally, if we do, in the end, permit a project, we would list all of those factors that we have considered in the final conditions document.

There's a lot to talk about. I'm very interested in your questions. I'll take questions, as will Peter and Rob. We're looking forward to the discussion today.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you so much, Ms. Farrell.

We will begin with the Conservative Party for six minutes with Mr. Leslie, please.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Farrell, I have a quick one. I was reviewing some of your testimony from April at the BCAN committee. During an exchange with my colleague Aaron Gunn, you said that whether a project was Canadian-owned or owned by an American company made no difference to your evaluation. Does the same answer apply if the project is owned by the CCP government or a state-owned enterprise?

[Dawn Farrell]

CCP...?

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

That's the Chinese Communist Party.

[Dawn Farrell]

Is this a state-owned enterprise outside of China or somewhere else?

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

A Chinese state-owned enterprise....

[Dawn Farrell]

We have a requirement under the act—Peter or Rob can speak to that—to do a security evaluation. That security evaluation could change how we would look at the project and what would have to be true—

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Okay. That's enough. Thank you.

You previously told us at this committee that we'd see by how much your office had accelerated projects. Can you name one project for which you can say exactly how many days or months were saved because your office intervened?

[Dawn Farrell]

Okay. In terms of the projects that we have under construction today, the one project that I would point out is—you saw the announcement for it—the LNG Canada two project, which was announced on October 1. That project not only went FID, but it went final notice to proceed and is now under construction. I would say that the work we did ourselves and with the government secured the project for Canada.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Could you table any sort of evidence showing the number of days that project was expected to take and then after your intervention how much it would save?

[Dawn Farrell]

I cannot, but I don't know that the project would have come at all had we not done the work that we had done. You can certainly talk to the company about that. I think they're quite pleased with the work we did with them.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

During your opening testimony, you mentioned that you have 200 employees. You've brought employees from private companies to work at your office, and in some cases, those companies are still paying at least part of those individuals' salaries. Your office thus far won't say which companies they came from. How many employees are in this situation, and which companies are paying them?

[Dawn Farrell]

I don't have that data with me today. We can endeavour to get you some information on that, but I don't think we release the names of the companies or the names of the employees.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Okay. You can see how it's difficult for the public not to assume that there are at least potential conflicts of interest. I'm not saying that there is wrongdoing here, but there's a clear potential conflict of interest when these sorts of financial relationships are not disclosed. Would you agree that this is difficult?

[Dawn Farrell]

There are no conflicts of interest with these employees. These employees—

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Did the Ethics Commissioner clear all of that?

[Dawn Farrell]

It's all been cleared.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

By whom...?

[Dawn Farrell]

It's all been cleared. Under the PCO, we work with HR. We clear every single employee. They have to sign disclosures, and they have to disclose areas in which they might be conflicted. They cannot work on any projects for which there are conflicts.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

To be clear, you do not use the parliamentary Ethics Commissioner and there was no—

[Dawn Farrell]

Well, we do for people like myself—