Canada has spent the past year debating whether to build. The women who joined our Powering Prosperity national event tour are asking a harder question, which is whether the country understands what it’s competing against.
That question runs through Canadian women’s prosperity ambitions from coast-to-coast, a national report we co-authored with Deloitte Canada. In June we filed that report with the federal government as part of our submission to its consultation on getting major projects built in Canada.
It draws on our national research of more than 1,000 engaged women across the country and on insight from workshops with 700 women in Regina, Halifax, Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver.
Regional priorities differed. Calgary focused on investment certainty, Halifax on ending its reliance on imported fuel, Toronto on affordability and youth unemployment.
Underneath those differences was the same expectation in every city, where 92 per cent of engaged women said moving too slowly is Canada’s biggest prosperity risk. They were equally clear that speed without clarity and coordination will fail.
“We have had a Canada-centric view for a long time, where we’ve thought about how can we do what’s best for Canada, without connecting the dots between global competitiveness and the end result for Canadians,” says Stephanie Prior, Canada Powered by Women Executive Relationship Partner at Deloitte.
Prior’s case is that the cost of getting this wrong compounds. If Canada can’t get its resources to global markets and can’t attract the investment to develop them, GDP per capita keeps falling as it has for a decade, and affordability keeps getting worse for households already feeling it.
The report puts what women said in front of the people writing energy policy, and the six themes are where they told us to start.
Energy is the foundation everything else rests on
The six themes in the report cover different ground: energy as a strategic economic engine, leading clearly or losing the moment, the delivery credibility gap, export diversification, unifying the home market, and the economy as the bottom line.
No matter the subject, they all build toward a single argument. And that is, engaged women see energy as the foundation of Canadian prosperity, they want governments moving faster to develop it, and they don’t yet believe the country can deliver on what it has promised.
In workshops across the country, women described energy as the engine behind social programs, infrastructure and the services their communities depend on.
That perspective changes what an energy decision is.
A policy that delays a project becomes a decision about the revenue that pays for hospitals and schools, and women are making that connection ahead of the people writing the policy.
The numbers back that up, with 86 per cent saying a strong and growing energy sector supports economic stability and 85 per cent saying Canada’s natural resources give the country a position of power in global trade. They see the environmental argument running in the same direction, since energy produced in Canada meets standards many other countries don’t come close to.
This is Deloitte’s second year working with CPW on the Powering Prosperity national tour and Prior says what stands out to her each time is how closely their expectations line up.
“I’m always amazed at how aligned women are from coast to coast,” says Prior. “I don’t see that same alignment in our discourse, or reflected in the media.”
Women want speed, and they don’t believe it’s coming
Agreeing that energy matters is the easy part, and what women want next is for governments to move on it, which is why 70 per cent support accelerating regulatory and approval processes to get major projects built faster.
They also said they want the trade-offs explained first, with 71 per cent of engaged women telling us governments should act quickly only when the benefits and costs of a decision have been laid out clearly.
Only 23 per cent expressed confidence that Canada can get large energy projects approved and built, and 61 per cent believe current delays are already making the country less competitive.
In the workshops, engaged women pointed to the same two problems: there’s no clear accountability for timelines, and no one designated to resolve conflicts or enforce deadlines when a project doesn’t move ahead. More than half (65 per cent) said the ability to attract capital should be a key element of energy policy.
For Prior, the more useful question is a different one.
“The world already sees us as a reliable supplier of the energy we produce today,” she says. “What it doesn’t see us as is a reliable supplier of future growth, and we have to fix that with urgency.”
Buyers trust Canada to deliver the oil and gas it already produces. What they don’t trust is that the new pipeline, terminal or mine will arrive when Canada says it will.
The fastest opportunity is inside Canada’s own borders
What women asked for next is already available to Canada. A big majority (86 per cent) believe domestic policies need to be revised to make trade between provinces and territories easier, and 85 per cent support breaking down interprovincial barriers to enable affordable and reliable energy development.
The report identifies connecting provincial energy markets as the fastest way to lower costs and improve reliability, and points to east-west connectivity in electricity and energy corridors as capacity Canada isn’t fully using.
The second opportunity is having more than one customer, with 64 per cent saying Canada needs sufficient pipeline and LNG export infrastructure to reach global markets alongside the United States.
At the events, women said depending on one buyer leaves the country exposed, and argued that pipelines, transmission lines and ports should be treated as national priorities.
Every policy gets judged at the kitchen table
The last theme is the one that ties the rest together, since women evaluate every energy policy through what it does to the cost of living.
Our findings showed that 73 per cent of engaged women believe oil and gas contributes to a successful and prosperous economy, while just 11 per cent support prioritizing environmental policies ahead of economic growth. The balance shows up in the 82 per cent who want the two pursued together. Engaged women don’t accept that Canada has to pick between a strong economy and a healthy environment, and they expect policy to deliver both.
“All of these things come from the same wallet,” says Prior. “If we can put a few more dollars in that wallet by exporting our energy, it helps fund a better quality of life for Canadians. Schools, hospitals and the supports families count on all draw from the same funds.”
The report’s closing argument is that the cost of inaction now outweighs the risk of acting imperfectly. Women in five cities and more than 1,000 survey responses have said what they want in the same terms, and they have been specific about it. What they’re waiting for is a government willing to act on it.
Read the full report: Canadian women’s prosperity ambitions from coast-to-coast, written in collaboration with Deloitte Canada