John Turley-Ewart is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail, a regulatory compliance consultant and a Canadian banking historian.
It’s a red flag for domestic and foreign investors. A Canadian company and dominant player on the global stage is ready, in the middle of a trade war between Canada and the U.S., to invest upwards of a $1-billion in the U.S. rather than at home.
What is driving the investment south? Basic business requirements that a G7 country, especially Canada, should prioritize. Available skilled labour, inbound and outbound logistics, including rail connectivity, competitive costs, access to customers and markets, and a “collaborative partner for the proposed project.”
The Saskatchewan-based potash miner Nutrien NTR-T is the company. It made a preliminary decision last December to invest in the Port of Longview, Washington, rather than B.C.’s Port of Vancouver, through which it has long shipped.
Canada’s Transport Minister, Steven MacKinnon, recently told The Globe and Mail, “I’d be lying if I told you that [Nutrien’s] decision, which is still hard to digest, was not at least an impetus for some action” on the part of the government.
“Some action” for Mr. MacKinnon appears to be a reference to the recent referral of the Port of Vancouver expansion project to the federal government’s Major Projects Office to fast-track the development.
Nutrien’s choice of port is a case study in what Prime Minister Mark Carney must fix if all his talk, travel and foreign investment deals are to have any meaning.
The company’s proposal, which it plans to formalize in 2027, suggests many Canadian leaders have lost sight of what helped power economic growth in much of Canada’s past.
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A fine reminder of this, an essay entitled “Staples Theory is Back,” was recently published in the upstart 2067: A Journal of Canadian Consciousness. It highlights that Canada’s economic success was built on leveraging the demand for our commodities to build a diversified, modern industrial economy, creating high value-chains that lift living standards.
What that looks like in theory is using, for instance, the demand for Canadian potash to design and build the supporting infrastructure – the railways, roads, ports and ships needed to support exports. Nutrien’s intentions signal that Canada has made it harder to repeat proven patterns of economic growth.
In this case, the U.S. has not put up such barriers and therefore will see new infrastructure and all the primary and ancillary jobs it offers for decades to come, paid for by revenues generated from the sale of Canadian potash.
Nutrien is making plain what it believes. As Stuart Smyth, an agricultural and resource economics professor at the University of Saskatchewan, told the CBC, it has concluded that “things are easier to get done in the United States than they are in Canada.”
The kind of things that are easier to get done in the U.S. include reducing regulatory red tape, avoiding protracted approvals for building-required infrastructure, building rail capacity to guard against costly transportation bottlenecks, keeping construction and land development costs competitive, and delivering supply-chain reliability.
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In contrast, the Port of Vancouver is well known for its high costs, inefficiency, labour strife and railway bottlenecks that compound the costs exporters must endure, leaving them less able to compete with foreign rivals that can ship to market with greater pace and higher margins.
Added into this mix is the regulatory uncertainty caused by unsettled Indigenous land claims in B.C. The landmark Cowichan Precedent, handed down last August by the B.C. Supreme Court, recognized Aboriginal title for the Cowichan Tribes over 1,850 acres of industrial and waterfront land by the Fraser River in Richmond. This decision gives investors reason for pause because of the uncertainty it creates.
Aboriginal title includes the right to exclusive use. Numerous Indigenous bands have overlapping claims to lands that are part of the Port of Vancouver. This potentially includes a Washington State band, the Lummi Nation, that has also made a claim.
Such title risk in Washington State, where Indigenous land rights were largely settled long ago, is minimal.
The fast-tracked Port of Vancouver expansion, if all goes well, may be ready by the mid-2030s.
Meanwhile, Nutrien anticipates a four-year path from a decision in 2027 to the start of operations in 2031 in the U.S. That gap should be hard for Mr. MacKinnon to digest, not so much Nutrien’s declared intentions. It calls into question how investible Canada really is.
