Indigenous participation is the future of major projects

The future of major project success in Canada is unfolding in Kitimat, B.C. 

Last week, five First Nations announced a plan to invest $1 billion for a majority equity stake in an LNG storage tank, which would be part of LNG Canada’s likely expansion. 

“We are not just participating in Canada’s energy future,” Kitselas chief councillor Glenn Bennett told The Globe and Mail. “We are ensuring that future directly sustains our community for generations to come.” 

LNG Canada is already a model of successful natural gas development in Canada. The single largest private investment in Canada’s history, it reached final investment decision and began deliveries to Asia a year ago, only after the Haisla Nation became a full participant with real influence and benefit-sharing. 

Over the past 15 years, more than a dozen LNG projects sputtered or failed. Of all the ones that finally moved from proposal to construction, the common denominator was that Indigenous communities were brought in as genuine economic partners. 

Canada’s natural gas reserves in the Montney formation and the broader Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin are among the largest in the world. They offer a rare combination of scale, strategic location and cleaner production that few other jurisdictions can match.  

Yet for nearly two decades, the advantage has stayed locked away. Projects collapsed under the weight of overlapping reviews, financing gaps, shifting political signals and — most critically — shallow or adversarial relationships with Indigenous nations. 

Today, along with LNG Canada, several projects are underway that could admit Canada into one of the top-five LNG exporters globally. 

Cedar LNG, now under construction near Kitimat, became the world’s first majority Indigenous-owned LNG facility through Haisla equity.  

Woodfibre LNG advanced with the Squamish Nation acting as both governing partner and environmental regulator.  

The Nisga’a Nation-backed Ksi Lisims project has already secured a landmark offtake agreement with a major European buyer, showing that international customers see stability and credibility in Indigenous-led Canadian supply chains. 

When Indigenous nations hold equity, sit at decision tables and share in revenues, the risk profile of a project changes. Legal uncertainty shrinks. Social license becomes durable rather than fragile. Capital that once hesitated now sees a clearer path to returns. 

The lesson is straightforward. Indigenous economic participation is not a parallel track or a social add-on. It is the single most reliable de-risking mechanism available to Canadian LNG development — and nation-building projects in general.  

Without it, even well-designed projects remain vulnerable to delay, legal challenge and investor flight. With it, the same projects attract partners, clear regulatory paths and long-term community support. 

Turning this lesson into national practice requires deliberate choices that will address ongoing concerns. This week, Assembly of First Nations chiefs resolved to oppose federal government plans to fast-track major project approvals that could “weaken environmental protections, undermine oversight, limit meaningful consultation, compress review timelines or circumvent First Nations’ free, prior and informed consent.”   

When rights and title are acknowledged and affirmed, and there is buy-in from First Nations, it makes for a successful major project.   

The equity structures, benefit-sharing frameworks and collaborative governance models refined in B.C. and Alberta should not stay regional secrets. A structured national knowledge-sharing initiative — connecting  Indigenous partners from the West with First Nations in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and other regions now exploring natural gas — would shorten learning curves and prevent the repetition of mistakes. 

As outlined in a recent PPF report on how to harness Canada’s LNG advantage, embedding Indigenous equity as a core pillar of a national Natural Gas and LNG Strategy, alongside coordinated financing tools, infrastructure planning that links clean power and pipelines to LNG facilities from the outset, and steady federal-provincial oversight would also remove the bottlenecks that have repeatedly stalled progress. 

Federal loan guarantee programs could be expanded and accelerated to provide credible pre-final investment decision backing. Indigenous communities need access to capital during the highest-risk phases, when traditional lenders are most reluctant.  

Pre-employment training and job-readiness programs in host communities should be designed and delivered in partnership with Indigenous organizations and industry. LNG Canada’s Trades Training Fund trained 1,317 individuals. None of this works at the necessary scale if Indigenous nations remain external stakeholders whose concerns must be managed.  

At a time when buyers — from Europe to Asia — are increasingly concerned about major market disruptions and the legitimacy of supply chains, Canada’s strongest competitive advantages will be projects that are low-carbon by design and built on foundations of shared ownership and trust.  

The alternative is more years of promising announcements followed by quiet attrition, while other jurisdictions move faster to lock in long-term contracts and capital. Over the past 15 years, the U.S. has built the world’s largest LNG export industry while Canada has been on the sidelines. 

Canada already possesses the technical capability and has communities that have done the hardest work. What has been missing is consistent discipline in placing Indigenous economic partnership at the center of every major decision. That discipline is what separates countries that talk about becoming energy superpowers from those that actually become them.