Canada’s relationship with Germany just hit a familiar note: liquefied natural gas. Prime Minister Mark Carney, standing beside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin, promised announcements within two weeks on new port infrastructure funding. That could mean long-delayed projects like the Contrecoeur expansion at the Port of Montreal and, more intriguingly, the revival of the Port of Churchill in northern Manitoba.
If Ottawa is serious, Churchill could become a game-changer. Not just for container shipping, but for Canada’s long-dormant LNG ambitions — a “new port, effectively,” as Carney put it. Energy Minister Tim Hodgson was even bolder, telling German buyers Canada could be ready to ship LNG in as little as five years.
That’s a bold timeline, and one critics immediately flagged as wishful thinking. Adam Pankratz, a lecturer at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, cut to the heart of Canada’s problem: “Until we see that the situation has definitively changed, I don’t believe there’s any reason to take the government at their word on anything on this file.” His skepticism is warranted. Canada has talked about LNG exports for over a decade, but our East Coast projects have been killed off by provincial opposition, foreign investors backing out, or Ottawa shrugging that there was “no business case.”
Remember Trudeau in 2022? Standing beside then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he mused that Canada was too far from the gas fields to compete with other suppliers. At the time, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had lit a fire under Germany’s energy needs, and Ottawa still said, “Maybe not worth it.” Fast-forward three years, and suddenly the business case has “changed.”
But has it? Europe’s need hasn’t gone away — if anything, it’s intensified. What’s changed is that Canada risks being left behind while the U.S. cements itself as the world’s largest LNG exporter. Washington didn’t dither. In the same seven years it took Canada to build one LNG terminal in Kitimat, B.C., the Americans ramped up to dominate the global market. Now President Donald Trump is dangling a US$750 billion oil-and-gas commitment with the EU, even if it’s not entirely realistic.
So here’s the reality: Canada is playing catch-up in a game it could have led. Yes, LNG Canada’s facility in Kitimat is shipping to Asia. Yes, more projects are coming online. But Germany doesn’t need Canadian LNG in Asia — it needs it in Europe, now. Without East Coast export capacity, Ottawa is trying to sell Berlin on a stopgap “swap” arrangement, redirecting Canadian shipments bound for Asia while backfilling with imports from elsewhere. That’s hardly a vision of energy leadership.
The bigger challenge is structural. To make Churchill or any East Coast port viable, Canada needs a pipeline from Western Canada. That means finding a company willing to build it, getting First Nations and local communities on board, and navigating environmental reviews. Even under Carney’s new “fast-track” law, that’s a herculean task. The only way it happens is if Ottawa spends real political capital, and so far, no government has shown that resolve.
Meanwhile, Germany — and Europe more broadly — are desperate for reliable partners. This isn’t just about short-term profits. It’s about geopolitics. Every delay in Canadian LNG is an opportunity for Russia, China, or the U.S. to fill the gap. As the Expert Group on Canada-U.S. Relations argued in a July white paper, getting LNG infrastructure built in the next six months is “critical” not just to the energy sector, but to Canada’s credibility as an economic player.
Pankratz calls the stakes bluntly: missing this chance would be “the biggest economic policy failure in decades.” He’s right. LNG could add at least $11 billion to our GDP every year. It could cement Canada as a trusted ally in Europe’s energy security. And it could prove that Ottawa is capable of doing more than making announcements and setting deadlines it never meets.
The window is still open, but not for long. Carney’s test is whether he’s willing to succeed where Trudeau hesitated — to stop treating LNG as a hypothetical and finally turn it into reality. If he can’t, Canada won’t just miss an opportunity. It will prove, once again, that this country can’t get its act together on big projects.
