He Said ‘No Business Case.’ Now His Government Is Begging the World to Buy.

In August 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz flew to Canada with a simple request. His country was in an energy crisis. Russia had cut off gas supplies after the invasion of Ukraine. Germany was restarting coal plants. Scholz wanted to buy Canadian liquefied natural gas. Justin Trudeau said no.¹

Standing beside Scholz at a joint press conference in Montreal, Trudeau delivered a line that would define a decade of Canadian energy policy: “There has never been a strong business case” for LNG exports from Canada’s East Coast. He cited distance from the gas fields, the cost of infrastructure, and the need for a transition to cleaner energy. Instead of a gas deal, the two leaders signed a hydrogen memorandum — for a technology that did not yet exist at commercial scale in Canada.²

Germany went elsewhere. Within two years, it built four floating LNG import terminals. Europe’s winter LNG imports hit near-record highs. The United States, Qatar, and Australia signed long-term contracts with European buyers. Canada’s first LNG export — from the Shell-led facility at Kitimat, B.C. — did not ship until June 2025. By then, the world had moved on.³

It was not just Germany. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida came to Ottawa in January 2023 seeking energy commitments. He received vague assurances about decarbonization. Poland’s President Andrzej Duda expressed interest in Canadian LNG. No concrete commitment followed. India’s high commissioner told CBC News this year that India is willing to buy whatever Canada is offering — crude, LPG, LNG — and urged Ottawa to streamline approvals.⁴

Now the Carney government has reversed course entirely. The Liberal government has made LNG exports a cornerstone of its federal energy strategy, with a stated goal of exporting 50 million tonnes per year by 2030 and up to 100 million tonnes annually by 2040. Energy Minister Tim Hodgson has been dispatched to Berlin, Doha, and New Delhi pitching Canadian gas. Carney himself has referred at least two LNG mega-projects to a new Major Projects Office for fast-tracked approval. A secretive Quebec LNG export facility in Baie-Comeau, backed by a Norwegian company, has a multi-departmental federal “deal team” facilitating it — with no public announcement.⁵

The stated urgency is real. The war between the United States, Israel, and Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz to marine traffic. Iranian strikes damaged Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex — the world’s largest LNG export plant — knocking out 17% of the country’s LNG export capacity. Repairs are expected to take three to five years. European gas futures surged 35% in a single day. LNG prices have risen roughly 60% since the conflict began.⁶

James Yarema / Unsplash — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Montreal, August 2022. Scholz came looking for Canadian LNG. He left with a hydrogen memorandum.

Canada is the world’s fifth-largest producer of natural gas. It now has exactly one operating LNG export terminal — Kitimat — which has shipped roughly 50 cargoes to Asian markets. It ranks 19th out of 24 LNG-exporting nations. The United States has nine export terminals.

The question is not whether there is a business case for Canadian LNG. The question is why it took this long to admit it. And the answer is documented in a decade of federal policy decisions that systematically blocked the industry the Liberal government now claims to champion.

Bill C-48, passed under Trudeau, bans large oil tankers from ports on British Columbia’s northwest coast. Bill C-69 introduced subjective approval criteria — including the effects on “the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors” — that slowed project assessments to a crawl. In its first five years, Bill C-69 saw exactly one project complete a full assessment. The previous system approved 17 in the same period.⁷

Investment in Canada’s oil and gas sector fell from $84 billion in 2014 to $35.7 billion in 2024 — a 57.5% drop in inflation-adjusted terms. Preliminary data suggest 2026 investment will remain below 2024 levels. Over 670 billion dollars in resource projects have been cancelled in Canada since 2015.⁸

The Carney government’s solution is not to repeal these laws. It is to create a new fast-track process — Bill C-5 — that allows cabinet to cherry-pick “national interest” projects outside the existing regulatory system. In practice, this means investors must convince a small group of politicians that their project deserves the prime minister’s favour. The regulations that blocked LNG for a decade remain on the books. The new system simply lets the government bypass them when it is politically convenient to do so.

The cost of the delay is not theoretical. Had Canadian LNG exports been flowing between 2020 and 2022, analysts estimate Canadian gas could have displaced an entire year’s worth of Canada’s total emissions by replacing coal in Asian and European power grids. Instead, European utilities burned more coal. Asian buyers signed contracts with competitors. Canada’s allies turned elsewhere — and are only now being asked to come back.⁹

In 2022, the German Chancellor flew to Canada and asked to buy the country’s natural gas. The Prime Minister told him there was no business case. Four years later, the Liberal government is spending billions trying to build the infrastructure it spent a decade blocking — while the regulations that drove away investment remain in place, the allies who were turned away have signed contracts elsewhere, and the only thing that has changed is the political calculation.