Sitting 144 — September 25, 2026

The sitting was dominated by second-reading debate on the Building Canada Strong Act, the government's roughly 250-page omnibus bill to accelerate federal project reviews, modernize trade corridors and ports, and reform federal labour relations. The central argument was whether new legislation is the answer at all: Liberals said the bill would deliver "one project, one decision, one year" and complement the half-trillion dollars of commitments from the Canada investment summit, while Conservatives said the problem is failed implementation of Bill C-5, passed 15 months earlier, under which no project has been designated and the Major Projects Office has spent $42 million without approving one. The Bloc Québécois focused on the bill's repeal of the five-year sunset clause the Bloc and Conservatives had secured in Bill C-5, and on the transfer of pipeline assessments to the Canada Energy Regulator.

On the bill's substance, Liberal parliamentary secretary Tim Louis said it would move federal reviews from consecutive to concurrent workflows, with the Impact Assessment Agency coordinating departments and delivering one decision within a year of a complete application; he said proposed changes to the Species at Risk Act jeopardy clause were removed after 26,000 submissions, that the constitutional right to strike would be preserved, and that a Crown consultation hub and indigenous advisory committees would handle the duty to consult. Leslie Church, parliamentary secretary for labour, said section 107 is not new but would gain guardrails: a special mediator's public report and a national impact assessment before a minister could end a work stoppage, plus measures on wage theft, misclassification and health and safety. Nathalie Provost, Secretary of State for Nature, compared the one-year target to Quebec's own 75-day and nine-month service standards and cited Bombardier's Saint-Philippe project as proof of faster permitting.

Conservatives did not commit to a position. Gabriel Hardy said his party supported Bill C-5 out of respect for Canadians but that the government used the powers to build bureaucracy, not projects; Chak Au argued the problem is execution, not legislation, noting Roberts Bank Terminal 2 sat unapproved after a decade of assessment, and that the one-year clock can be paused, extended or opted out of with no consequence. Vincent Ho and Luc Berthold made the same case, Berthold noting Conservatives backed Bill C-5 in good faith and are now skeptical. Bloc members Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Gabriel Ste-Marie and Yves Perron said the bill makes permanent what was meant to be temporary, removes scientists from assessments in favour of a regulator whose commissioners came from TC Energy, Shell, Pembina, Imperial Oil and Cenovus, and threatens the right to strike; Ste-Marie asked whether the government would invoke the notwithstanding clause. Elizabeth May noted Bill C-5 already lets the government override laws for projects of national interest. Ryan Turnbull moved that the question be now put.