Minister’s Message

Our 2017–18 Departmental Plan provides Parliamentarians and all Canadians with information on what we do and what we hope to achieve during the upcoming year. To improve reporting to Canadians, we are introducing a new, simplified report to replace the Report on Plans and Priorities.

The title of the report has been changed to reflect its purpose: to communicate our annual performance goals and the financial and human resources forecast to deliver those results. The report has also been restructured to tell a clearer, more straightforward and balanced story of the actual results we are trying to achieve, while continuing to provide transparency on how taxpayers’ dollars will be spent. We describe our programs and services for Canadians, our priorities for 2017–18 and how our work will fulfil our departmental mandate commitments and the Government’s priorities.

At Natural Resources Canada, our mandate includes ensuring that our resources remain a vital driver of our economy and a source of jobs and opportunity for Canadians. Central to these efforts is helping get these resources to market by rebuilding our relationship with Indigenous peoples and addressing the environmental concerns of Canadians.

More broadly, we are leveraging the fossil fuel resources we have today to deliver clean energy solutions for tomorrow. To get us closer to that future, we are investing in clean technologies, revising regulations in areas such as energy efficiency and cultivating relationships with partners around the world.

Our plans for the future build on what our government has already achieved. In 2016–2017, we made significant progress on our mandate, including negotiating a historic accord with the United States and Mexico on Climate, Clean Energy and the Environment and announcing a Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. 

We saw progress on several major environmental fronts, including ensuring the highest safety standards for pipelines, making the most significant investment ever to protect Canada’s oceans and announcing a moratorium on oil tankers near the Great Bear Rainforest/Great Bear Sea area in British Columbia. We also realized major advances in the use of wood in the construction of tall buildings and in promoting trade and investment in Canada’s mining sector.

Following extensive consultations with Canadians, we approved the Pacific Northwest Liquefied Natural Gas facility, the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion and the Line 3 Pipeline Replacement Program, in addition to approving the Arnaud Apatite Mine, the Woodfibre LNG Project, the Black Point Granite Project, the NOVA Gas Pipeline and the Ridley Island Propane Terminal. Together, these projects will help move our resources to new markets, creating more than 30,000 jobs and opportunities across the country and injecting more than $26 billion into Canada’s economy.

NRCan’s focus in the year ahead will be on implementing these decisions as well as leading in a number of other areas: advancing clean technology in the natural resource sectors; contributing to the environmental assessment and regulatory review, including modernizing the National Energy Board; contributing to the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change; advancing the Canadian Energy Strategy; and promoting international collaboration on clean technology, trade and investment. 

We will work with our provincial and territorial colleagues to develop a national framework for advancing Canada’s forest bioeconomy — an area that holds tremendous potential to create jobs and help combat climate change — and to foster relations with the new US administration to support joint trade and infrastructure priorities. We will also continue to invest in innovative green mining solutions to increase productivity and enhance environmental performance.

To strengthen our relationship with Indigenous peoples, we will work through existing programs, such as our Economic Pathways Partnership, and implement new initiatives including advisory and monitoring committees on pipelines and other major projects.

All of these efforts will bring us closer to the future we seek: a strong resource industry, good jobs for Canadians and an even more sustainable energy supply.

The Honourable Jim Carr, P.C., M.P.
Minister of Natural Resources