Hudson Bay could cut 3,000 km off the U.S. Gulf route to Europe, making Canada’s failure to develop it harder to justify

On Monday and Tuesday of last week, while the Prime Minister stood before global investors in Toronto promising ports and corridors that “open our Arctic to the world,” a room full of Canadians in Winnipeg was already considering how that might actually be done.

Engineers, Arctic builders, defence experts, First Nations leaders and financiers came from Nova Scotia to British Columbia for the Frontier Centre’s Reclaiming the North conference. The discussion was not simply about asserting Canadian sovereignty in the North. It was about the infrastructure required to make that sovereignty economically meaningful.

Consider some of the arithmetic.

Alberta gas sells for a dollar or two a gigajoule; the province’s reference price averaged $1.37 in June. On Tuesday, Europe’s benchmark contract closed above 80 euros a megawatt-hour, about $36 Canadian a gigajoule. The price gap is enormous. So is the geographic opportunity. NeeStaNan, the First Nation-led proponent at Port Nelson, calculates that the route from Hudson Bay to Europe is some 3,000 km shorter than from the U.S. Gulf Coast. Yet Canada has never shipped LNG from Hudson Bay. Every winter Europe shivers while Canada gets poorer for want of a liquefaction plant, a rail link and a wharf.

Using Hudson Bay as a trade route is hardly a new idea. For more than four decades after 1812, York Factory on the Bay was the main door through which European settlers entered Western Canada. The Selkirk settlers who founded Red River came in through the Bay. The West was built through that door, and for a century it has stood nearly idle.

The old objection was ice. Two studies from the University of Manitoba and Arctic shipping company Fednav, backed by preliminary Arctic Research Foundation findings released in August, find year-round navigation from Churchill technically feasible with existing ice-class ships. Ten months of navigation and more is within reach. The new polar icebreaker being built by Quebec shipbuilder Davie is due by 2030.

Churchill already provides one piece of the infrastructure. It is a capable midsized harbour with a four-month season that sent durum to Europe this month. Port Nelson could provide the second. NeeStaNan holds federal authorization to export LNG from there. The proposal is to connect the two through an integrated corridor, with a rail spine built to national standards feeding both ports under one joint port authority.

For Manitoba, the stakes are enormous. Premier Wab Kinew puts an LNG terminal and related Churchill infrastructure at $70 to $80 billion. Investment on that scale would mean thousands of construction jobs and lasting economic activity. A larger tax base would also reduce Manitoba’s reliance on the $5 billion in equalization it receives this year. A more prosperous Manitoba strengthens the federation. So does a country with a working third coast.

The corridor crosses First Nations lands across the Prairie provinces. Its leading projects, NeeStaNan and Wapusk LNG, put First Nations ownership at their centre. They would bring payrolls and own-source revenue to communities long left waiting for clean water and clinics. Former grand chief Ron Evans told the conference that such projects stabilize the relationship between First Nations and Canada. Reconciliation with a paycheque endures.

What remains missing is government urgency. The gathering drew greetings from the Prime Minister and the Premier of Alberta, and attracted a government MLA from Saskatchewan and elected members of Manitoba’s opposition. But it took no government money; Frontier never does. Manitobans did this themselves, with an urgency Ottawa has yet to match. The Canada Strong Fund, announced in April with $25 billion promised over three years, had yet to borrow its seed money as of this month and still had no board or chief executive.

There is a sovereignty dividend too. A country with Pacific, Atlantic and Hudson Bay coasts all working reaches world markets and answers to no one.

The Prairie West was settled by people who built. The Bay opened this country once. Let Manitoba open it again.

Dr. Marco Navarro-Génie is the Vice-President of Research and Policy at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. An expert on radical revolutionary movements and political identity, he is a recipient of the King Charles III Coronation Medal for exemplary public service. He is the author of three books, including the 2023 release Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic, co-authored with Barry Cooper.