The head of the Major Projects Office (MPO) faced a barrage of questions from MPs and senators in a lengthy committee meeting Tuesday night. 

Dawn Farrell was summoned to Ottawa to answer to the parliamentary body tasked with overseeing the exercise of powers under the Building Canada Act. 

Conservative MPs, joined by the lone Bloc member and several senators, scrutinized the MPO’s project track record in a session that occasionally veered into confrontational, partisan territory. 

After one particularly pointed round of questioning, Liberal MP Kody Blois thanked Farrell for “stepping up” into a public role after a successful career in the private sector, and she jokingly muttered “I don’t know why I do it.” 

Farrell was pressed on why no projects have received a national interest designation so far, considering the Liberal government’s rush to pass the Building Canada Act nearly a year ago. 

She explained that her role is to provide recommendations to Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who then advises Prime Minister Mark Carney as part of the designation process. 

“I can say that the threat of C-5 has everybody working together in, I think, the way C-5 was intended,” she said, adding that “everybody wants their project referred to the MPO… because it sends a signal” to investors.

LeBlanc had a similar answer when asked why no projects have been designated yet. 

“The good news is that we haven’t yet had recourse to that legal instrument, the Major Projects Office has been able to work with proponents, provinces and territories,” he said. 

Their comments mirror those of Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has declined to use his own Bill 5 to accelerate Ring of Fire development—despite citing that very project to justify the law’s sweeping regulatory exemptions.

Special economic zones are not needed “when you have great partners,” he said during a mining conference in Toronto earlier this year. 

Back in Parliament, however, Farrell said she believes the national interest designation will be used eventually. 

“I think the Act will be useful for sure, but it will apply more easily to projects that are massive and really make a difference to our infrastructure and are yet to be here,” she said. 

Farrell said when she was approached to head the MPO, the pitch was that she would be bringing in her project management expertise to make meaningful changes to federal processes, and that C-5 would be one of the tools she could use. 

“I wasn’t presented with: your job is to come execute C-5 and designate three projects and follow the designation through.”

When she previously held executive roles in major energy companies, Farrell called out the government for being unwilling to move faster and improve the regulatory environment.

Asked how she reconciles these views with the work she’s been doing at the helm of the MPO over the past few months, Farrell said accepting the role was a way to “put [her] money where [her] mouth is.”

She acknowledged that some of the 15 projects referred to the MPO so far were relatively advanced, but said that in some cases her team made the difference – citing the Contrecoeur terminal expansion as an example. 

“The project was not going to happen. They had no money for it,” she said. 

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“We facilitated getting [Canada Infrastructure Bank] in, helping see the business case, helped get the financing so that they could start the work,” she said.

It’s not clear how much influence the MPO has over the CIB, which is meant to be an independent public fund that operates at arm’s length of the government. 

It is also too early to tell what role, if any, the MPO will play in disbursing the new $25 billion Canada Strong Fund announced Monday.