Economy
Panama Canal drying up woes could have benefited Canadian LNG – If only we had any
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
There’s a disturbance in the force of global shipping, as if a major transit point started slipping away.
There’s a very serious problem occurring a few thousand miles to the south of us, one that Canada could have taken tremendous advantage of, if only we had built and completed some liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals by now.
The Panama Canal, one of the wonders of the modern world that utterly changed trade and geopolitics, is drying up.
The canal, which usually handles about 36 ships a day, has in recent days reduced that to 24. By Feb. 1, it is expected to fall to 18. And the largest ships who do transit the canal have to reduce their cargoes, lest they scrape bottom.
That’s because the canal uses fresh water, captured by dams and forming the massive Gatun Lake. That fresh water is collected from ample rains. Every single time a ship passes through the canal, water used to operate the locks is flushed into the ocean. While the greatly expanded third set of locks allows much, much larger ships to use the more than 100 year-old canal, they also use a lot of water despite an innovative water recovery system. And the Canal Authority says they’ve had the lowest rains in 73 years, since 1950.
So when you add up the additional, much larger locks, with a local drought, the canal is rapidly falling into crisis. And the world is starting to take notice.
As they should, since soon half of all ships that usually use the canal will be turned away.
No one depends on the canal more than the Americans. They built it, after all, for a reason. And one of the biggest is it allows for quick access for Gulf Coast ports to Pacific markets. This was a very real reason why building a half dozen large LNG terminals made so much sense (in addition to their proximity to gas production.)
Well, a lot of that just got thrown out the window. Cutting ship transit numbers by half means a dramatic curtailment of the ability of US LNG cargoes to access the Pacific markets. Their alternative is to add something like 8,000 miles going around South America’s Cape Horn, which absolutely no one wants to do due to the treacherous weather and seas.. Otherwise, they have to cross the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Red Sea, Indian Ocean and Straits of Malacca to get to east Asia markets.
The net effect will be some cargoes from the Gulf Coast destined for Asia will have to go much, much further to deliver their product. That means fewer cargoes per ship per year. It’ll tighten up ship availability, and likely put pressure on LNG prices.
And if Canada had moved quicker on building out LNG terminals, particularly on the West Coast, we would be perfectly positioned to cash in on this situation. Not only is Kitimat, Prince Rupert and the like much, much closer to China and Japan, there’s no drying up Panama Canal to contend with, either.
Small wonder, then, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre chose on November 10 to post on his various social media channels, “Since Trudeau took office: 18 LNG terminals have been proposed. 0 have been completed.”
To be fair, LNG Canada, the largest proposal, is in the finishing stretch. In July they reported 85 per cent completion. In recent weeks, TC Energy reported the completion of the “golden weld” on the Coastal GasLink pipeline that will supply LNG Canada and presumably other facilities on the West Coast. Without pipeline, which was both massively delayed and overbudget, no small thanks to pipeline protesters, LNG Canada would be useless.
Other projects are finally gaining traction – Woodfibre LNG at Squamish on the south coast, and Ksi Lisims LNG right on the Alaska/BC border, and Cedar LNG, a floating LNG terminal adjacent to LNG Canada and served by Coastal GasLink.
Remember when the German chancellor came to Canada, seeking LNG, and was told by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau there was “no business case?” And then the Japanese prime minister was told something similar a few weeks later?
The Ukraine War has proven a business case for almost two years in the Atlantic basin. The Panama Canal reduction in service will soon prove it in the Pacific. What more do we need?
Canada should have built these projects years ago. We’d be securing markets and cashing in today.
No business case, indeed.
Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of PipelineOnline.ca, and occasional contributor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He can be reached at [email protected].
From the Fraser Institute
At a time when Canadians are grappling with epic housing supply and affordability challenges, the data show that homebuilding continues to come up short in some parts of the country including in several metro regions where most newcomers to Canada settle.
In both the Greater Toronto area and Metro Vancouver, housing starts have languished below levels needed to close the supply gaps that have opened up since 2019. In fact, the last 12-18 months have seen many planned development projects in Ontario and British Columbia delayed or cancelled outright amid a glut of new unsold condominium units and a sharp drop in population growth stemming from shifts in federal immigration policy.
At the same time, residential real estate sales have also been sluggish in some parts of the country. A fall-off in real estate transactions tends to have a lagged negative effect on construction investment—declining home sales today translate into fewer housing starts in the future.
While Prime Minister Carney’s Liberal government has pledged to double the pace of homebuilding, the on-the-ground reality points to stagnant or dwindling housing starts in many communities, particularly in Ontario and B.C. In July, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) revised down its national forecast for housing starts over 2025/26, notwithstanding the intense political focus on boosting supply.
A slowdown in residential construction not only affects demand for services provided by homebuilders, it also has wider economic consequences owing to the size and reach of residential construction and the closely linked real estate sector. Overall, construction represents almost 8 per cent of Canada’s economy. If we exclude government-driven industries such as education, health care and social services, construction provides employment for more than one in 10 private-sector workers. Most of these jobs involve homebuilding, home renovation, and real estate sales and development.
As such, the economic consequences of declining housing starts are far-reaching and include reduced demand for goods and services produced by suppliers to the homebuilding industry, lower tax revenues for all levels of government, and slower economic growth. The weakness in residential investment has been a key factor pushing the Canadian economy close to recession in 2025.
Moreover, according to Statistics Canada, the value of GDP (in current dollars) directly attributable to housing reached $238 billion last year, up slightly from 2023 but less than in 2021 and 2022. Among the provinces, Ontario and B.C. have seen significant declines in residential construction GDP since 2022. This pattern is likely to persist into 2026.
Statistics Canada also estimates housing-related activity supported some 1.2 million jobs in 2024. This figure captures both the direct and indirect employment effects of residential construction and housing-related real estate activity. Approximately three-fifths of jobs tied to housing are “direct,” with the rest found in sectors—such as architecture, engineering, hardware and furniture stores, and lumber manufacturing—which supply the construction business or are otherwise affected by activity in the residential building and real estate industries.
Spending on homebuilding, home renovation and residential real estate transactions (added together) represents a substantial slice of Canada’s $3.3 trillion economy. This important sector sustains more than one million jobs, a figure that partly reflects the relatively labour-intensive nature of construction and some of the other industries related to homebuilding. Clearly, Canada’s economy will struggle to rebound from the doldrums of 2025 without a meaningful turnaround in homebuilding.
Jock Finlayson
Ship containers are stacked at the Panama Canal Balboa port in Panama City, Saturday, Sept. 20, 2025. The Panama Canals is one of the most significant trade infrastructure projects ever built. CP Images photo
From the Canadian Energy Centre
Q&A with Gary Mar, CEO of the Canada West Foundation
Building a stronger Canadian economy depends as much on how we move goods as on what we produce.
Gary Mar, CEO of the Canada West Foundation, says economic corridors — the networks that connect producers, ports and markets — are central to the nation-building projects Canada hopes to realize.
He spoke with CEC about how these corridors work and what needs to change to make more of them a reality.
Gary Mar, CEO of the Canada West Foundation. Photo for the Canadian Energy Centre
CEC: What is an economic corridor, and how does it function?
Gary Mar: An economic corridor is a major artery connecting economic actors within a larger system.
Consider the road, rail and pipeline infrastructure connecting B.C. to the rest of Western Canada. This infrastructure is an important economic corridor facilitating the movement of goods, services and people within the country, but it’s also part of the economic corridor connecting western producers and Asian markets.
Economic corridors primarily consist of physical infrastructure and often combine different modes of transportation and facilities to assist the movement of many kinds of goods.
They also include social infrastructure such as policies that facilitate the easy movement of goods like trade agreements and standardized truck weights.
The fundamental purpose of an economic corridor is to make it easier to transport goods. Ultimately, if you can’t move it, you can’t sell it. And if you can’t sell it, you can’t grow your economy.
CEC: Which resources make the strongest case for transport through economic corridors, and why?
Gary Mar: Economic corridors usually move many different types of goods.
Bulk commodities are particularly dependent on economic corridors because of the large volumes that need to be transported.
Some of Canada’s most valuable commodities include oil and gas, agricultural commodities such as wheat and canola, and minerals such as potash.
Rail cars carry commodities through Saskatchewan. Photo courtesy CN Rail
CEC: How are the benefits of an economic corridor measured?
Gary Mar: The benefits of economic corridors are often measured via trade flows.
For example, the upcoming Roberts Bank Terminal 2 in the Port of Vancouver will increase container trade capacity on Canada’s west coast by more than 30 per cent, enabling the trade of $100 billion in goods annually, primarily to Asian markets.
Corridors can also help make Canadian goods more competitive, increasing profits and market share across numerous industries. Corridors can also decrease the costs of imported goods for Canadian consumers.
For example, after the completion of the Trans Mountain Expansion in May 2024 the price differential between Western Canada Select and West Texas Intermediate narrowed by about US$8 per barrel in part due to increased competition for Canadian oil.
This boosted total industry profits by about 10 per cent, and increased corporate tax revenues to provincial and federal governments by about $3 billion in the pipeline’s first year of operation.
CEC: Where are the most successful examples of these around the world?
Gary Mar: That depends how you define success. The economic corridors transporting the highest value of goods are those used by global superpowers, such as the NAFTA highway that facilitates trade across Canada, the United States and Mexico.
The Suez and Panama canals are two of the most significant trade infrastructure projects ever built, facilitating 12 per cent and five per cent of global trade, respectively. Their success is based on their unique geography.
Canada’s Asia-Pacific Gateway, a coordinated system of ports, rail lines, roads, and border crossings, primarily in B.C., was a highly successful initiative that contributed to a 48 per cent increase in merchandise trade with Asia from $44 million in 2006 to $65 million in 2015.
China’s Belt and Road initiative to develop trade infrastructure in other countries is already transforming global trade. But the project is as much about extending Chinese influence as it is about delivering economic returns.
Piles of coal awaiting export and gantry cranes used to load and unload containers onto and from cargo ships are seen at Deltaport, in Tsawwassen, B.C., on Monday, September 9, 2024. CP Images photo
CEC: What would need to change in Canada in terms of legislation or regulation to make more economic corridors a reality?
Gary Mar: A major regulatory component of economic corridors is eliminating trade barriers.
The federal Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act is a good start, but more needs to be done at the provincial level to facilitate more internal trade.
Other barriers require coordinated regulatory action, such as harmonizing weight restrictions and road bans to streamline trucking.
By taking a systems-level perspective – convening a national forum where Canadian governments consistently engage on supply chains and trade corridors – we can identify bottlenecks and friction points in our existing transportation networks, and which investments would deliver the greatest return on investment.
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