Federal Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin defended her government’s push to make permanent the Building Canada Act’s special regulatory powers, which originally came with a sunset clause barring Ottawa from designating national interest projects past 2030.

The Building Canada Strong Act, tabled this week, proposes to remove the sunset clause that was negotiated in by the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois in June 2025.

Asked by iPolitics whether she’d be comfortable with a future government — a Conservative minority, for instance — benefiting from those powers, Dabrusin didn’t directly address the scenario, instead pointing to the urgency she says Canadians feel around building energy security and sovereignty.

“People feel very strongly that there’s a lot of work ahead of us,” she said. “We’re talking about Churchill Falls; that is not a fast project to complete.”

Dabrusin added she sensed a lot of interest in the clean energy projects being highlighted at the Canada Investment Summit earlier this month.

“When I was talking with [investors], they were interested in the long term,” she said.

In addition to removing the Building Canada Act’s expiry date, the new bill would introduce the power to create “regions of national interest,” areas where certain projects would be considered pre-approved but still subject to assessments and conditions.

READ MORE: Feds move to fast-track approvals across entire regions, not just single projects

Asked to provide examples of areas that could benefit from that designation, Dabrusin pointed to the offshore wind sector off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, an area that has already undergone a regional assessment.

She said the approach builds on the federal nature strategy’s “build well” pillar, which involves mapping where species at risk and carbon-dense areas are located across the country.

But Bloc Québécois MP Xavier Barsalou-Duval sees the end of the sunset clause and the creation of regions of national interest as attempts to “unravel the amendments” opposition struggled to push through during the review of the Building Canada Act in June 2025.

“Honestly, I never thought they would dare revisit Bill C-5…The pretext was an economic emergency. But an economic emergency won’t last forever,” he tells iPolitics in French.

“I find it really strange, actually, because they don’t know if they will still be in power in five years. Do they really want any future government to be able to use extreme powers like this to tailor laws to specific projects?” Barsalou-Duval said.

At question period on Wednesday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre questioned the value of the new bill, suggesting its predecessor Bill C-5 did nothing to “build at speeds not seen in generations.”

“The Liberals have come in and announced another sweeping bill, which the media has regurgitated unfiltered, as though it were gospel truth, and this time the Liberals are repeating exactly the same promises.”

Green Party leader Elizabeth May called the new bill an “abomination.”

A Liberal source speaking confidentially tells iPolitics the government is considering creating a special committee to study the Building Canada Strong Act as it makes its way through the legislature.