The ground is shifting beneath Canada. The emerging trade war with the United States — marked by tariffs, economic coercion and political brinkmanship — is forcing a long-overdue reckoning.
Canada’s dependence on a single export corridor to the U.S. has made our economy vulnerable, leaving our industries exposed.
A response is required, not through defensive retrenchment, but with bold, structural reform. We need to build our own future, and the blueprint already exists: the Canadian northern corridor.
First proposed by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, the northern corridor would connect Western Canada’s natural resources with Eastern Canada’s industrial and population hubs. It would link hydroelectric, hydrocarbon and transportation systems across provinces and territories. It would create new routes to global markets. And it could do all of this while meeting net-zero goals if designed with purpose.
In other words, this is not a pipeline project — it’s a nation-building project. Done right, it redefines what modern infrastructure can be.
A corridor built for the 21st century would integrate electrified transport, hydrogen development and a carbon management system that pulls carbon dioxide from major emitters in Ontario and Quebec, and sequesters it permanently in Alberta and Saskatchewan. With Western Canada’s geology and proven carbon capture capacity, we already have the expertise. With Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia’s clean power, we have the electricity.
What’s missing is the decision to act — together.
The economic potential is staggering. Thousands of jobs in construction, manufacturing, steel, cement and advanced energy systems. Lower transport costs for agriculture and goods. A hedge against protectionist U.S. policies. A way to drive both east-west trade and global exports. This could spark a Canadian industrial renaissance, focused on domestic integration rather than external dependence. And by embedding carbon storage infrastructure directly into the corridor design, we can lead the world in net-negative emissions logistics.
But this project is about more than GDP. It’s a generational opportunity to rethink how Canada engages with Indigenous nations — not through symbolic gestures or extractive deals, but through real partnership. That means equity ownership, shared governance and control over land-use decisions. It’s a model grounded in rights, prosperity and long-term self-determination — neither forced integration nor isolation, but something built together.
That’s what reconciliation looks like when we take it seriously.
Some will object — too slow, too complex, too expensive. Environmentalists will argue it doesn’t go far enough, fast enough. Fiscal hawks will balk at the scale. Provinces will raise jurisdictional concerns.
But the perfect should not become the enemy of the possible. Because what’s the alternative? Wait out the Americans while our supply chains fracture? Let another generation of Indigenous youth watch the wealth of this country flow past them? Watch foreign companies dominate carbon markets we could lead?
Canadians are tired of being pulled between impossible binaries. This is not a choice between pipelines or planet. This is a chance to rewire our economy in service of both. A net-zero corridor that moves energy, carbon, people and goods — not just faster, but better. One that connects regions economically and politically, offering Alberta, Quebec and Ontario a rare point of convergence. A project that replaces symbolic reconciliation with durable prosperity.
We’re not at a crossroads — we’re already in motion. The risks are here. The costs of delay are mounting.
But so are the opportunities. The northern corridor is more than a path through the wilderness. It’s a path toward self-determination for Indigenous communities, for the Canadian economy, and for a country that finally decides to stop waiting.
The moment isn’t coming. It’s already here.
Peter Cooper is a geoscientist and business leader currently at the Haskayne School of Business.
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