Would you believe there are two countries in North America?
One smart and rich, and the other one is Canada
Canada’s LNG Debacle is a Taxpayer’s Recurring Nightmare in Five Acts
Canada entered the new century holding the geological equivalent of a winning lottery ticket and then spent the next decade misplacing it under a stack of forms marked “Pending Review.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. which has never shied away from monetizing a resource, took the opportunity and built a global LNG empire.
Has Canada finished its first round of stakeholder engagement on LNG? One country treated LNG like a revenue engine; the other treated it like a "Meh."
This isn’t policy the Canadian taxpayer might have anticipated since Canada has no shortage of Natural Gas and has known this for a century. Historically the country unites for big projects. The country was created by a railroad project. The country dredged the St Lawrence Seaway. The country developed the world's third largest deposit of petroleum. The nation built the James Bay Project. The country opened ports on every coast.
Today the indolent response to economic potential in natural gas is more like a nation encountering nightmare after nightmare: A country crippled by institutional fetters watching the U.S. mint brand new and recurring wealth at industrial scale, overnight.
Meanwhile, the U.S. which has never shied away from monetizing a resource, took the opportunity and built a global LNG empire.
Has Canada finished its first round of stakeholder engagement on LNG? One country treated LNG like a revenue engine; the other treated it like a "Meh."
This isn’t policy the Canadian taxpayer might have anticipated since Canada has no shortage of Natural Gas and has known this for a century. Historically the country unites for big projects. The country was created by a railroad project. The country dredged the St Lawrence Seaway. The country developed the world's third largest deposit of petroleum. The nation built the James Bay Project. The country opened ports on every coast.
Today the indolent response to economic potential in natural gas is more like a nation encountering nightmare after nightmare: A country crippled by institutional fetters watching the U.S. mint brand new and recurring wealth at industrial scale, overnight.
From whence did these nightmares spring?
Nightmare 1: The One Where You Watch Someone Else Spend Your Lottery Winnings
The 2010s through early 2020s were golden years for LNG arbitrage. Asian buyers were paying premiums, the U.S. was still stretching before the race, and Canada had every structural advantage you can imagine. What it didn’t have was the ability to move faster than a glacier with a government appointment and a clipboard.Economic modeling from the Conference Board of Canada shows what taxpayers could have gained if Canada had built out roughly 56 million tonnes per year of LNG capacity:
- about $11 billion in annual GDP
- nearly 100,000 sustained jobs every year
- more than $2 billion per year in taxes and royalties
Nightmare 2: The One Where Every Project Dies of Sclerosis
Pacific NorthWest LNG—$36 billion, global capital lined up, Indigenous partnerships ready—spent years in regulatory limbo before finally expiring of natural causes in 2017. A fact we all know was a procession of West and East Coast proposals followed into the bureaucratic afterlife, casualties of timelines that averaged 19 months longer than U.S. approvals.
Broader tallies of cancelled or stalled resource projects since 2015 reach the $660–$670 billion range. For taxpayers, that’s not just a number. It’s the sound of revenue evaporating while taxes keep rising to cover the gap. Add to the evaporating cash the mismanagement of federal spending, and debt spirals while development process dies horrible deaths.
Nightmare 3: The One Where Your Neighbour Builds a Formidable Mint While You’re Still Reading the Instructions on a Tinker Toy.
This is the dream where the U.S. appears in a montage of hard hats, cranes, liquefaction trains rising like steel cathedrals, and Canada, same vicinity, same offices, similar ciews, cannot find the right sticky notepad.
The neighbour’s holdings now contain:
- the world’s largest LNG export system
- long‑term contracts with half the planet
- a job boom so large it needs its own zip code
Meanwhile, the Canadian taxpayer stands at the fence holding a bag of fentanyl precursor, wondering how the neighbour built a national treasure while Canada was debating the merits of people owning nothing or giving their property to a few sullen Native folk suddenly enamored of urban property belonging to others. The old game of Indian Giving taken to Grand Theft Auto Level 11 (and there's only 10 levels).
The people they are removing from property might be their MD, or their Professor, or their Band Accountant. If it seems like self-sabotage, that's because Canada's new motif is psychopaths rule.
Nightmare 4: The One Where You Finally Arrive, After the Market Has Gone Home
LNG Canada’s first cargo in mid‑2025 was a triumph, arguably, since it was the largest private investment in Canadian history now finally producing. But by then, the global market had shifted. U.S. and Qatari expansions had flooded supply. Prices had cooled. Competition was fierce.
Canada entered the market like someone fashionably late to a party that wasn’t supposed to be fashionable, like, for instance, making the King wait for knighting. For taxpayers, it meant the premium years were already gone, the years that would pay down debt and fund new services for immigration, for defense, for education, and new industry. Instead. Food banks, and grocery tax credits.
It's too pitiful for words, really. Let us continue with words anyway.
And now, Nightmare 5: This is the worst one. The lucid nightmare. The One Where the World Knocks—And Canada Isn’t Ready Yet
The moment when the taxpayer finally sees the problem clearly—and the problem is timing. In this dream, Canada isn’t short on demand because leaders from Japan, South Korea, India, Germany, heads of major economies with real energy needs, publicly stepped forward with the same message:
We want Canadian LNG. We want long‑term contracts. We want reliable partners.
They say it publicly. They say it diplomatically. They say it repeatedly.
And yet Canada, in the nightmare, answers with the soft thud of another discussion paper hitting another desk.
Meanwhile, Indigenous‑led projects—Woodfibre, Cedar, Haisla Nation’s leadership are proving what modern energy development can look like when communities lead: faster timelines, clearer accountability, stronger environmental stewardship. They’re building while the rest of Canada is debating the preamble.
The clocks in this nightmare have stopped moving. God forbid pensions go unfunded while taxpayers stand between global demand and Indigenous innovation and realize the nightmare isn’t a lack of opportunity—it’s a generational inability to act when opportunity arrives.
The bottom line remains at a decade earlier, when Canada could have had:
- stronger provincial and federal revenues
- diversified export markets
- tens of thousands more well‑paid jobs
- a fiscal position less dependent on hoping commodity prices behave
But the approvals stretched on into disapprovals, and the best projects aged out. But not on the exact same continent of North America where U.S. built an export empire in the same time it took for Canada drop to a zero growth GDP and no change in sight.
The Closing Gavel
Canada’s LNG story isn’t a tragedy of resources or capability. It’s a tragedy of timing. The world knocked. Indigenous partners stepped forward. Investors lined up. The opportunity was real, measurable, and repeatedly confirmed by global demand.
And yet, the decade slipped away.
The U.S. certainly didn’t out‑resource Canada. It out‑decided Canada's decision-makers and in so doing left Canadian citizens, taxpayers, in the lurch.
For taxpayers, the nightmare isn’t the lost wealth—it’s waking up to the realization that the alarm clock rang ten years ago, and the country is still reaching for the snooze button.
