Good morning, everyone.

Premier Smith, Scott Burrows, Treaty 8 Grand Chief Mercredi, Chiefs Adam, Powder, Janvier, Cheecham, Lépine, and the mayors of Fort McMurray and Lac La Biche – thank you for being here. Federal and provincial ministers: Minister Jean, Minister Olszewski, Minister Hodgson, Minister McKnight, Caucus colleagues, thank you all for joining us on Treaty 8 territory.

This is an important day for Alberta and for Canada.

Fort McMurray knows that great feats often begin with adversity. This community has overcome many challenges, including a devastating forest fire a decade ago. And it has always emerged stronger.

Carved out of the wilderness at the meeting of the Athabasca, Clearwater and Hangingstone rivers, this region holds the fourth-largest oil reserve in the world.

There are more than three and a half million barrels of oil that leave here every day, to markets around the world, bringing home more than $40 billion to the Canadian economy every year.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of people who wake up and go to work every day because of what Fort McMurray has built.

Truck drivers, engineers, welders, and geologists from Alberta – joined by workers across Canada.

This bustling city started as a trading post, became a boomtown, and is now a global energy hub. That transformation did not happen overnight, and did not happen by chance.

It was steadily built by choice – through grit, determination, and through ingenuity.

Long before European settlers arrived, the Dene and the Cree peoples collected bitumen from the riverbanks – using it to dress wounds and waterproof canoes.

Later, explorers and researchers saw the economic potential – for fuel and trade. But the bitumen was too thick to flow, and most of it lay too deep to extract.

So, for years, the oil sands were written off. Written off as too costly, and too hard to develop at scale.

But generations of researchers, of engineers, workers and entrepreneurs kept pushing forward – finding new ways to separate the oil, to extract it and unlock what lay beneath the sandstone.

For decades, the Alberta and Canadian governments invested in research, created tax incentives for private capital, and even financed oil sands plants themselves.

And so by the 60s, a new industry began emerging in this region, and became home to the world’s first large-scale oil sands operations. Fort McMurray became a symbol of opportunity across Canada and across the world.

That’s what Canada can achieve when our workers, our builders, our scientists, and our governments work together to seize generational opportunities.

And it’s this legacy that we are calling on today. We have to do this, because the world is facing an energy crisis on three dimensions:

• the immediate challenge of affordability – and, in some countries, the very availability of hydrocarbons;
• the structural challenge of energy security; and
• the existential challenge of climate change.

These challenges are forcing countries to think differently about where their energy comes from – and on who they can rely on to supply it.

Global oil demand is around 100 million barrels a day. Global oil supply is often now impacted by conflicts, and is becoming more volatile.

And while the precise path ahead is always uncertain, oil demand will continue to be significant for decades to come. Even under any plausible net zero scenario, the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that world will still need tens of millions of barrels of crude a day.

So the question is: who will emerge as the world’s trusted suppliers?

It should be us.

It must be Canada.

Earlier this year, the head of the IEA said Canada has a “golden opportunity” to become the low-cost, low-risk, low-carbon energy supplier the world needs now. In June, the G7 leaders echoed that sentiment.

The oil sands are part of Canada’s once-in-a-generation opportunity to become a global energy superpower. To transform our economy. To diversify our trade. To achieve greater strategic autonomy, so we can continue to live our lives as we choose.

And the best way to seize that opportunity is to build together.

In Canada, we have built big before.

The Canadian Pacific Railway. The St. Lawrence Seaway. The Trans-Canada Highway. The oil sands.

These major projects of national significance profoundly transformed our economy. They transcended provincial boundaries and demonstrated, time and again, that Canada is bigger, stronger, and more prosperous when we stand united.

Now, the fact is, over time, the way we built became weighed down by well-intentioned, but arduous, and often duplicative, regulatory processes. And to build at scale and speed again, we have to do things differently.

Our government was elected to change things, to build Canada strong – and we are doing just that.

Let’s be clear. Canada will remain a country of high standards. But high standards do not require slow decisions. They require a focused government. A government that gets all the information that it needs from all stakeholders, and shares it immediately with all those who need it, including all stakeholders, and then sets the right conditions to build effectively, sustainably, and inclusively.

Investors should know that when Canadians want something built, Canada will get it built.

In a more volatile, dangerous and divided world, speed, certainty, and predictability are competitive advantages.

That’s why, right after we were elected, our government proposed – and Parliament passed – the Building Canada Act. This legislation enables the federal government to streamline approval processes for major projects that are determined to be in the nation’s interest.

To make that determination, the government considers five factors:

• whether the project strengthens Canada’s autonomy, our resilience, and our security;
• whether it has clear economic or benefits for Canadians;
• whether the project has a high likelihood of being completed;
• whether it contributes to Canada’s clean growth and climate goals; and
• whether the project advances the interests of Indigenous Peoples.

Last November, Premier Smith and I signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to unlock the full potential of Alberta’s energy – both clean and conventional. And at the centre of this agreement is a new bitumen pipeline to the West Coast.

In July, the Premier and I announced that Canada and Alberta would share equal ownership of this project, with a meaningful stake reserved for Indigenous peoples.

Pembina came on board as a private sector investor and contributor of its immense expertise. Project development will be led by Trans Mountain, the company that just built the largest oil pipeline to Canada’s West Coast.

With this historic partnership between governments, the private sector, and Indigenous Peoples, our government began immediately to undertake consultations to determine whether this project merited being listed under the Building Canada Act by today.

Over the past three months, the Major Projects Office (MPO) has received more than 100 submissions from Indigenous rightsholders and conducted rigorous consultations with more than 130 Indigenous communities near or along the potential routes in Alberta and B.C., as well as with federal departments and with the Government of British Columbia.

Today, we are ready to move forward for Albertans. For Canadians.

And I am proud to announce that the Government of Canada is officially listing the West Coast Pipeline, now known as Pacific Link, as a project of national interest.

Over the next year, the MPO, supported by the Canada Energy Regulator, will lead consultations with all stakeholders to set the conditions for this project – specifics about the ownership, the benefits, the environmental protections, and the local hiring, contracting and oversight. The MPO will then work to finalise those conditions by the first of September next year – clearing the way to get shovels in the ground.

This means that as the project proponents work over the next year to develop their final concept – everything from community consultations to route mapping, ecological surveys, cost estimates, procurement, and workforce planning – they can do so with confidence that the federal government supports this project.

It’s an entirely new way of building in a Canada that works.

Because before the Building Canada Act, proponents would have to spend years and potentially billions of dollars doing this work before even knowing whether the federal government stood on the project. So for many builders, the risk was not worth it. So, Canada stopped building big.

Now, the federal government is making its position clear at the beginning of the process, rather than at the end.

Let me take a moment to explain why the federal government is behind Pacific Link.

A pipeline to the West Coast is part of our mission to transform our economy – to double our non-U.S. exports over the next decade, to create tens, in fact, hundreds of thousands of good jobs, to unlock our full potential of Canada as a global energy superpower, and to catalyse tens and tens of billions of dollars of new investment into the Canadian economy. To make Alberta and Canada more prosperous, more independent, and to do all of this in the right way.

Today, 90% of Alberta’s oil goes to the United States.

Pacific Link will materially reduce that dependence by allowing us to export an additional one million barrels a day to growing markets in Asia.

That means more customers, more choice and higher prices for all Canadian energy producers. And it means greater long-term security of demand.

We estimate that the Pacific Link will create 140,000 jobs across the country – from the engineers who design it, the pipefitters who lay the lines, the welders who connect it.

It will generate over $20 billion in GDP per year and over $100 billion in government revenue by 2060 – revenue that will help build the infrastructure and homes that Albertans and Canadians need and protect the social programs they rely on every day, from healthcare and dental care to childcare.

This is true nation-building.

And it will take a nation to build it.

Because today’s announcement is part of a series of initiatives.

Pacific Link needs a route to the West Coast, it needs a new port when it gets there; needs new conservation measures consistent with the higher maritime traffic it will create, and it needs new partnerships with First Nations to build shared prosperity, as well as new investments in low-emissions technologies to keep Athabasca crude competitive over the long term.

In this regard, we will build sustainably.

Canada, the Government of Alberta, and the Oil Sands Alliance will advance construction of the Pathways Project – one of the largest carbon capture and storage projects in the world.

Pathways will use special absorption towers to capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions before they enter the atmosphere. That CO₂ will then be transported and permanently stored underground – making Alberta oil among the world’s lowest-carbon intensity crude.

Pathways will help reduce 16 million tonnes of emissions every year – the equivalent of taking 90% of Alberta’s cars off the road.

Pathways alone will create an additional 40,000 jobs and more than $16 billion in GDP.

And it will give Canada a new competitive advantage in the medium-term, leveraging Canadian expertise to create an entirely new industry of carbon capture right here at home.

It reminds me of when I was a kid and the oil sands industry was being created by Alberta ingenuity and grit. The same long-term vision, similar transformative potential.

To unlock this potential of Pathways and Pacific Link, the Government of Canada is working with the Government of British Columbia to expand the port there, the Pacific Gateway. The federal government is investing $10 billion to expand the Roberts Bank Terminal, which will serve as the landing point for crude moving through Pacific Link.

As we build Pacific Gateway, we are taking major additional measures to protect the environment that surrounds it – because in a strong Canada that works, growth and conservation are fully integrated.

The conservation starts with the route of the pipeline itself. It will follow a southern route which protects British Columbia’s North Coast and avoids highly sensitive ecosystems, including the Great Bear Sea.

And as we expand infrastructure at Roberts Bank, we will strengthen protections for the marine life that call these waters home, including a series of measures to protect the habitats of killer whales during construction.

I set out more elements of that plan on Tuesday, including to protect 30% of Canada’s oceans by 2030.

Today, we are announcing a major step in a pipeline to the Pacific.

These are not two plans. They are part of one plan, from one government working with all governments and all stakeholders.

We are developing this pipeline with Indigenous Peoples involved from the start – this is the start of that development – with opportunities to share in the prosperity that Pacific Link will create.

To that end, Canada, Alberta have agreed that the project proponent will offer Indigenous communities a minimum of 10% ownership interest in the pipeline – financed by our respective Indigenous Loan Guarantee Programs.

We will also ensure the creation of Indigenous programs contracting and employment opportunities.

We will build in solidarity with workers.

Through Team Canada Strong, we will create up to 100,000 apprenticeship opportunities in the skilled trades to train pipefitters, welders, and steamfitters.

Many of them will help build this pipeline, as well as the ports, railways and other infrastructure required to support the project.

Our unions will train many of these workers.

We will build Canadian. To build the Pacific Link, we will give preference to Canadian-made materials, including Canadian steel.

We will build Canadian, we will use Canadian steel, with Canadian workers, trained by Canadian unions.

And we will build together – with Alberta, British Columbia, and every province and territory – in the true spirit of cooperative federalism, harnessing the full force of a united Canada.

This is a Canada that works.

A Canada that recognises opportunity and then seizes it.

A Canada where our workers, our industry, our governments pull in the same direction in the pursuit of a common goal.

A Canada where we build together what we could not build alone.

Even in Fort McMurray, even here at SMS, it can sometimes be hard to conceive of projects of this magnitude, so let me leave you with this thought.

When I was born just north of here in Fort Smith, and at that time, the oil sands were a concept – a curiosity to most. But by the time I got to high school in Edmonton, they had been transformed into one of Canada’s largest industries.

That’s the scale of what Alberta and Canada can achieve – and the speed with which we can achieve it – when we work together.

Fort McMurray, Fort McKay, this region and Alberta are stepping up. And so is Canada.

Because the biggest things we have built in this country were never done in isolation.

Canada is working.

Building Alberta strong. Building Canada strong. Building together for all.

Thank you.