Tuesday August 26, 2025 | NATIONAL NEWS [Reporting from VICTORIA, BC – Posted at 7 am PT – updated 8:15 pm]
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
In the next two weeks, the federal government will announce ‘nation building projects’ that will include an emphasis on east coast and Arctic ports, as revealed today by Prime Minister Mark Carney.
This dovetails with the Carney Liberal government’s emphasis on developing trade diversification (in large part with Europe across the Atlantic) and northern border defence (to deal with the proximity of Russia across the Arctic).
Today during his joint press conference in Berlin with the Chancellor of Germany, Carney made the soft announcement of these big federal expenditure and investment plans.
An investment in building energy and port infrastructure is the “number one focus”. That is “particularly intelligence infrastructure with AI,” as outlined by Carney today.
“A number of those investments, the first of which we will be formally announcing in the next two weeks are with respect to new port infrastructure,” said Carney.
The prime minister itemized some examples of public domain investment as:
- some reinforcement and building on the Port of Montreal;
- effectively a new port in Churchill, Manitoba to open up LNG and other opportunities; and
- other east coast ports for critical minerals.
“There’s a lot happening. It’s the number one focus of this government is to build that infrastructure and particularly infrastructure that helps us deepen our partnership with our European partners and particularly Germany,” Carney said in response to a media question.
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said later today on national TV that he received a large number of phone calls regarding the possibility that the Port of Churchill could be upgraded as one of the nation-building projects.
Relying on Europe:
Canada is moving as quickly as possible to supply European countries, particularly Germany, with critical minerals for progress with intelligence technology and defence.
It’s part of trade diversification to ‘build Canada strong’ in the face of potentially worsening economic and sovereignty threats from the United States.
Will BC be in the mix?
It’s unclear at this point whether BC will be left out of the loop in terms of port development, notably in Vancouver where trade with the Asia-Pacific region is a significant factor.
===== RELATED:
- New Canada-Germany partnership on critical minerals and energy (August 26, 2025)
- Eby hosts Carney for meeting in Vancouver (August 3, 2025)
- Premier Eby explores BC economic opportunities with Liberal MPs (July 29, 2025)
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