Introduction

Canada’s recently passed Building Canada Act allows the federal government to streamline approvals for “nation-building” infrastructure projects by consolidating permits into a single federal authorization (Building Canada Act, 2025). While this Bill is formally designed to strengthen economic security and sovereignty amidst shifting North American trade dynamics, it may risk undermining both meaningful participation by First Nations and a robust implementation of established environmental protection laws.

Background and Legislative Context

Receiving royal assent on June 26, 2025, the Building Canada Act (or ‘the Act’) is one of two pieces of legislation introduced in the broader One Canadian Economy Act (Bill C-5). The Act allows the centralization and streamlining of regulatory approval processes for projects deemed as nation-building, formally called ‘National Interest Projects’ (Heelan-Powell, 2025). According to its preamble, the legislation was enacted “in the interests of Canada’s economy, sovereignty and security, including its energy security, to urgently advance projects throughout Canada” (Building Canada Act, 2025).

In pursuit of this economic and energy security, the Act outlines that the Governor in Council may designate certain initiatives as being of national interest using a broad, discretionary set of criteria such as economic benefit, natural resource, energy sector, or infrastructure development, and whether it considers the interests of Indigenous peoples (Building Canada Act, 2025). However, these criteria are not mandatory, and there is no measurable threshold set for designation (Woodward & Company LLP, 2025). After this designation, the project receives a consolidated authorization document that supplants each federal authorization that would typically be required for that project to proceed (Woodward & Company LLP, 2025).

The imperative for Canada to consolidate project approvals in this way must be contextualized within recently destabilized North American trade relations – namely the tariff pressures waged by President Donald Trump amidst the United States’ (US) trade war with Canada and Mexico (Ahmadi, 2025; Lawder et al., 2025). While Bill C-5 has been labelled by Prime Minister Mark Carney as the “core of [Canada’s] domestic response” to the tariffs, it draws upon a legislative template already used in Ontario (Bill 5) and British Columbia (Bills 14 and 15), which have similarly sought to expedite “nation-building” infrastructure projects (Woodward & Company LLP, 2025). These bills indicate a federal and provincial governmental consensus that truncated timelines and centralized decision-making for National Interest Project approvals are necessary to neutralize the economic fallout triggered by shifting continental trade dynamics (Woodward & Company LLP, 2025). While this economic context helps clarify the pressures shaping Canada’s policy choices, it also reveals how trade anxieties are being used to justify legislative shortcuts that disproportionately harm First Nations.

Implications for Indigenous Rights and Environmental Oversight

While the Building Canada Act is still in its early stages of implementation, with its full impact largely unrealized, it has already evoked concerns from Indigenous rights advocates and environmental organizations. For instance, Ecojustice (Canada’s largest environmental charity) describes the legislation as a “dangerous step backward” for democratic oversight, environmental protection, and Indigenous rights (Ecojustice, 2025).

Interestingly, both environmental protection standards and the rights of Indigenous peoples, the latter anchored in Canadian constitutional law (section 35) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), are explicitly acknowledged within the Act and Bill C-5 more broadly (Building Canada Act, 2025; One Canadian Economy Act, 2025). Nonetheless, critics argue that the Act’s emphasis on “nation-building” and “projects of national interest” masks a deeper centralization of authority that limits opportunities for Indigenous consultation and bypasses necessary aspects of environmental assessments under the existing Impact Assessment Act (Chartier et al., 2025; Heelan Powell, 2025).

Despite the Act’s promise to accelerate the implementation of National Interest Projects while “working in partnership with provincial, territorial and Indigenous governments and Indigenous peoples” (Building Canada Act, 2025), First Nations have alleged that there is no clear plan within the Act to embed the principle of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) – the central tenet of UNDRIP – into project approvals (Chiefs of Ontario, n.d.). FPIC is intended to holistically address Indigenous rights and participation beyond consultation at the first stage of approvals, and Indigenous groups in Canada point to the fact that there is no expression in the Act about when or how this principle will be implemented in the newly centralized approvals process (Woodward & Company LLP, 2025).

Without clear guarantees that Indigenous consent will shape or constrain project approvals, First Nations face the prospect of major energy, infrastructure, and natural resource projects advancing on their territories with limited avenues to prevent concrete harms (Chiefs of Ontario, n.d.). Chiefs of Ontario warn that expedited approvals risk disturbing sacred sites and burial grounds, undermining ongoing reconciliation efforts, endangering species, and weakening communities’ ability to protect their lands and resources. In this context, the absence of enforceable FPIC not only restricts procedural participation but also heightens the likelihood that these material impacts proceed without meaningful avenues for prevention or redress. (Chiefs of Ontario, n.d.). 

Because of this omission, Indigenous rights advocates argue that the Act’s commitment to consultation is “a smoke and mirrors trick” obscuring the erosion of First Nations’ capacity to meaningfully participate in decision-making (Jones, 2025). Nine First Nations communities in Ontario have therefore asked the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for an injunction against both Bill C-5 and Ontario’s Bill 5 (Jones, 2025). They argue that the federal government should not have such unhampered authority to designate and expedite National Interest Projects, particularly when the Act lacks legally enforceable FPIC or impact-benefit agreements, weakening First Nations’ bargaining power even when consultations occur (Chiefs of Ontario, n.d.). Claimants also contend that First Nations were largely excluded from meaningful legislative review during the passage of Bill C-5, and that consultation timelines were too short (as short as six days) for them to meaningfully engage with proposed measures (Chiefs of Ontario, n.d.).

As consultations with Indigenous peoples on National Interest Projects covered by the Act have begun, these objections are beginning to rear their heads – Ontario chiefs report being inundated with consultation requests without federal investments in their consultation capacities, compromising the thoroughness of the Indigenous participation promised under the Act (SpearChief Morris, 2025).

Ultimately, First Nations leaders stress that their position does not oppose development per se but calls for its responsible implementation to ensure that the long-term costs of development do not outweigh its anticipated benefits (Jones, 2025). They contend that approval delays result from cumbersome bureaucratic institutions and not from resistance by First Nations, and as such, infrastructure and natural resource projects only stand to gain by comprehensively operationalizing Indigenous rights and protections (Jones, 2025).

Environmental organizations have raised parallel concerns about the Building Canada Act, claiming that it weakens key environmental safeguards by allowing designated National Interest Projects to circumvent standard federal laws such as the Fisheries Act and Species at Risk Act (Woodward & Company LLP, 2025). The Act also permits skipping the “planning phase” of the Impact Assessment Act, Canada’s main framework for evaluating environmental effects and facilitating public participation. Ecojustice warns that this shift prioritizes economic urgency over substantive environmental protection, relegating ecological health, mitigation planning, and community engagement to secondary considerations addressed only after development is underway (Ecojustice, 2025).

Conclusion

The full implications of the Building Canada Act remain to be seen and depend upon how its provisions are implemented – and whether its streamlined approach can effectively coexist with meaningful Indigenous participation and robust environmental oversight. Framed as an urgent response to economic and energy security challenges, the legislation reflects how the rhetoric of crisis, rooted in US-Canada trade tensions, has shaped the federal shift toward broad discretionary powers and compressed development timelines. For First Nations communities, these developments carry not only procedural consequences but also tangible risks: weakened environmental safeguards and curtailed consultation windows increase the likelihood that projects affecting their lands, waters, and livelihoods proceed without adequate protections or consent. Ultimately, the Act captures a core policy tension facing Canada: the pursuit of economic resilience through fast-tracked development projects versus the preservation of democratic accountability, Indigenous sovereignty, and environmental protection.