{"id":45530,"date":"2026-05-14T20:36:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T20:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/45530\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T20:36:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T20:36:06","slug":"ottawas-great-electricity-ambitions-run-up-against-unambitious-provinces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/45530\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa\u2019s great electricity ambitions run up against unambitious provinces"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Hydro workers perform maintenance on power lines in Renfrew County, Ont., in a 2024 file photo.Sean Kilpatrick\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Colleen Giroux-Schmidt is senior vice president of development, Western Canada and federal government affairs at Innergex. Merran Smith is president of New Economy Canada.<\/p>\n

Two questions burn at the top of Canada\u2019s economic agenda: how to accelerate growth, and how to mobilize the capital to fund it. Increasingly, the answer to both hinges on something we have long taken for granted: electricity.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s economic agenda is increasingly pinned to projects that require abundant, cheap and low-carbon electricity. Critical minerals mining and processing, battery supply chains, data centres and next-generation steel all require enormous amounts of power. So will planned investments in Canada\u2019s military and defence capabilities, from quantum computing to a stronger Northern presence.<\/p>\n

That growing demand is what\u2019s driving Canada\u2019s new national electricity strategy, which Ottawa unveiled on Thursday. The plan aims to double electricity supply by 2050 and accelerate electrification across the country.<\/p>\n

Ottawa begins consultations on strategy to double Canada\u2019s grid capacity by 2050<\/a><\/p>\n

This level of ambition is exactly what we need. But success will depend heavily on provincial and territorial action, where electricity is planned, managed and built in Canada.<\/p>\n

There is some movement on that front: Ontario\u2019s recently passed Bill 40 codifies \u201ceconomic growth\u201d as a new objective in electricity planning. But unfortunately, provincial electricity forecasts are still underestimating what is coming. An analysis<\/a> by The Transition Accelerator and Dunsky Energy and Climate found that forecasts do not sufficiently account for industrial electrification, data centres and electric transportation in a net-zero economy.<\/p>\n

In short, Canada\u2019s economic growth, investment agenda and data sovereignty are banking on electricity our country doesn\u2019t have plans to produce.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the holdup?<\/p>\n

Fundamentally, it\u2019s about how electricity is viewed: as a cost, not an investment.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t unique to Canada. Electricity regulators worldwide have long operated with a similar mindset: build for the demand we know, not the supply we might need. This stems from deeply ingrained principles<\/a> dictating that utilities should keep rates low, stable and predictable for ratepayers, deeply embedding caution in planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThou shalt not overbuild\u201d becomes the commandment because if utilities churn out more electricity than the market consumes, ratepayers bear the cost.<\/p>\n

But those were rules for a different time. Today, the greater risk isn\u2019t that we overbuild electricity infrastructure, but that we fail to build it at the pace and scale required to fulfill our economic potential.<\/p>\n

In-depth: Will soaring electricity rates kill Ontario\u2019s nuclear expansion?<\/a><\/p>\n

Canada is not the only country waking up to its future electricity demand. Countries around the world have recognized that electrification is a defining economic advantage and China, Indonesia, South Korea, Norway and (yes) Texas are all considered front-runners<\/a> in the race to expand capacity and attract industrial investment. Chile<\/a> has more than doubled its installed power capacity in just over a decade.<\/p>\n

Canada is not just competing on the outputs of an electrified economy \u2013 abundant, clean power that attracts global enterprise \u2013 but also on the inputs: the capital, skilled labour and supply chains needed to build it.<\/p>\n

Those resources cannot be marshalled overnight. Canada needs to send strong market signals now that we are committed to a 20- to 30-year investment in building electricity infrastructure. That would provide certainty to investors, commercial developers, Indigenous Nations and industry that Canada is serious about maintaining our reliable, low-cost and low-carbon grid in the face of growing demand.<\/p>\n

The federal government can and should set this direction, and the federal electricity strategy will play an important role. But provinces must power it.<\/p>\n

That will require a deliberate shift in provincial approaches to regulating electricity infrastructure \u2013 from building in step with (or just behind) demand to building in anticipation of it.<\/p>\n

For decades, we\u2019ve been living off the investments made in our electricity system in the 1960s and \u201970s. Now we need to build again, without overburdening households and businesses.<\/p>\n

This approach won\u2019t be easy. It will mean facing up to the real costs of modernizing our grid and having hard conversations about who pays, when and how, while finding creative ways to finance projects, share risk and protect affordability.<\/p>\n

But the alternative is more costly: an economy constrained not by permitting or approvals, but by a shortage of power. This is what growth demands. And our future won\u2019t wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Hydro workers perform maintenance on power lines in Renfrew County, Ont., in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[164,224,238,214,212,239,17,211,230,231,227,213,210,235,171,234,143,222,249,215,216,229,225,226,219,240,220,244,245,247,242,246,94,61,243,217,142,233,113,232,241,223,236,237,228,221,218,248],"class_list":{"0":"post-45530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ottawa","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-northwest-territories","38":"tag-nova-scotia","39":"tag-nunavut","40":"tag-ontario","41":"tag-ottawa","42":"tag-pei","43":"tag-photos","44":"tag-political-news","45":"tag-political-opinion","46":"tag-politics","47":"tag-politics-news","48":"tag-quebec","49":"tag-sports-news","50":"tag-technology","51":"tag-travel","52":"tag-trudeau","53":"tag-us-news","54":"tag-world-news","55":"tag-yukon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}