8 min read
April 1, 2025
By
Isaac Thornley is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Human Geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough. His research focuses on the political and ideological dimensions of energy transitions, with a focus on conflicts related to fossil fuel pipelines, electric vehicle battery supply chains, and critical mineral extraction in Canada.
As Trump tariffs reignite economic nationalism in Canada, it is necessary to reveal the many ways such rhetoric can be mobilized to justify social and environmental injustice, while getting us nowhere closer to true economic independence. Throughout its history, Canada’s blend of settler-colonial capitalism and staple-export economic development has meant that economic nationalism has functioned as a perennial fantasy. Appeals to autonomy in this context often ignore how Canada’s economy has historically been limited in developing manufacturing capacity, rendered dependent on other countries (primarily on Britain, then the United States), and subject to volatile cycles of boom and bust.
Freedom from constraint (whether framed against federal government regulations, dependence on the U.S. for trade, or limits on oil transport capacity) is a common discursive theme promoting extractive industry in Canada. “Unlocking” our full resource potential is often couched in terms of an external constraint, displacing structural limits onto imagined green-left scapegoats. This disavows how multinational corporations successfully extract and export most of the value of Canadian resources while leaving the public largely on the hook to pay the ecological costs.
The Alberta tar sands, for example, are as productive as they ever have been and yet we still hear calls to “axe the [carbon] tax,” “scrap the [emissions] cap,” and build new pipe to address the evergreen “pipeline shortage.” The recent all-time high production levels of the tar sands were prompted by the anticipated completion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion, arguably the largest fossil fuel subsidy in Canadian history, which became operational May 1, 2024. This project was justified by claims that it would free Canada from its overreliance on the U.S. as its near-exclusive export destination for tar sands crude. Relatedly, the threat of Trump tariffs has renewed calls for the cancelled pipeline projects of the 2010s (such as Energy East and Northern Gateway). Blanket calls for “more pipelines” conceal the role infrastructures play in locking in patterns of economic dependence and trans-national supply chain integration. Organizations like Unifor and the Alberta Federation of Labour have often opposed the expansion of tar sands pipelines precisely because they undermine the development of domestic refining capacity and value-added industry, while exporting jobs “down the pipeline.”
Trump tariffs are also prompting calls for other supposedly greener forms of extraction. On February 14, Ontario premier Doug Ford made the following statement: “As we stare down the threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs, northern Ontario has never been more important to the future of our province. We’ll do whatever it takes to unlock the economic potential of the Ring of Fire and turn Ontario into a critical mineral superpower.” Echoing the “energy superpower” rhetoric of the Harper era used to boost tar sands development, the potential of nickel mining in the Ring of Fire region illustrates how Canadian politicians attempt to reframe status-quo extractivism in terms of sustainability and economic nationalism. Ontario Minister of Mines George Pirie went as far as to say that “you can’t be green without mining. You can’t develop as Ontario wants, and transform the economy into a green economy, without accessing critical minerals out of the Ring of Fire.”
The Ring of Fire is a large deposit of “critical minerals” (chromite, cobalt, nickel, copper, and platinum) in the Hudson Bay Lowlands of Ontario’s far north. Part of Treaty No. 9 territory, the area is occupied exclusively by Indigenous peoples, many of whom have consistently opposed mining activity in the region and refer to their territory as the “breathing lands.” The Ring of Fire is situated within the second-largest intact peatlands ecosystem in the world, making it a carbon storehouse of global climate significance. Considering the carbon storage and sequestration work done by peatlands, it is counterintuitive to dig them up to mine minerals to make EV batteries—assuming the goal is decarbonization and not corporate profits. Pointing to a failure to protect peatlands as a “blind spot” in Canadian climate policy, Laura Tanguay and Victoria Goodday recently argued that it is hypocritical to “justify degrading a globally important carbon-rich ecosystem to feed a ‘green’ transition.” Raising the spectre of cars that “run on peat” (rather than gasoline), the Wildlands League found that if only three per cent of the Ring of Fire is developed, this would result in the equivalent of 62 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, just shy of the total emissions reductions achieved by Canada between 2005 to 2021.
The ecological risks of disturbing the peatlands by mining the Ring of Fire are exacerbated by opposition from many First Nations, many of whom have been systematically denied access to basic services and community infrastructure, exemplified by Neskantaga First Nation’s 30-year boil-water advisory. In 2023, ten Treaty No. 9 First Nations launched legal action against the provincial and federal governments, attempting to resist future mining activity across their homelands. Seeking $95 billion in damages, Attawapiskat, Apitipi Anicinapek, Aroland, Constance Lake, Eabametoong, Fort Albany, Ginoogaming, Kashechewan, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, and Neskantaga are bringing a treaty infringement claim against Ontario and Canada for a failure to recognize that their governing authority in the region was never ceded. Many of these same nations (as well as Grassy Narrows First Nation) have brought a challenge against Ontario’s Mining Act, which enables a “free-entry” mining regime where prospectors can stake a claim online without any consultation with the Indigenous inhabitants of the region.
One year ago, Saima Desai and I published our “Greenwashing the Ring of Fire” report as part of the Infrastructure Beyond Extractivism project. This report exposes both the greenwashing tactics employed by an Australian multinational mining company as well as the broader gaps in the fantasy of a fully integrated domestic EV battery supply chain (from “mines to mobility”) touted by political leaders in Ontario and Canada. We identified Indigenous jurisdiction (and a lack of free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples in the region) along with a lack of mineral refining capacity as significant gaps in the government’s mines-to-mobility vision. On the surface, such a vision is logical: given the apparent urgency and inevitability of decarbonization, why shouldn’t the transition from combustion-engine vehicles to EVs in Canada maximize the number of cars that are assembled in Canada, equipped with batteries manufactured in Canada, made with materials that were refined and mined in Canada?
Economic nationalism as such is not the issue. Socialist parties and movements have long advocated for more public ownership and control over key resources and industries. Ideally, this would enable more democratic decision-making over the kinds of economic development being pursued while ensuring that as much of the value being extracted and added is redistributed within Canada. The problem enters with empty rhetoric and discursive manipulation: state and industry leaders appeal to a fantasy of economic nationalism while advocating policies that essentially write blank cheques to multinational automakers and mining companies. To date, the governments of Canada and Ontario have announced production subsidies totalling at least $38 billion to companies like Volkswagen, Stellantis-LG, and Northvolt. It is also necessary to emphasize the deep integration of automative supply chains across the United States and Canada. No number of tariffs and nationalist rhetoric will change the fact that it is economically irrational to attempt to dislodge the integration of these supply chains. Meanwhile, Ontario’s free-entry mining regime makes it easier to initiate development without consulting locally affected peoples—a perfect recipe for intensified socio-ecological conflict in the years to come.
But as many Canadians point out, there are other ways to channel economic nationalist sentiment into projects with a longer-term view aligned with goals of ecological sustainability and social and environmental justice. As Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood argues, resuscitating the Energy East pipeline makes no economic sense given that the project was abandoned by the private sector in 2017 and the long-term economic trajectory of the fossil fuel industry is inherently risky. Rather, he argues for an east-west electricity grid that would accelerate electrification in Canada, make use of Canada’s wealth of clean energy, include opportunities for Indigenous ownership, and enable a broader shift to zero-emission electricity across Canada. The proposal to construct a high-speed rail line between Toronto and Quebec City is another large-scale infrastructure project that combines “nation-building” rhetoric with ecological sustainability. Such a line would reduce pollution by replacing long car journeys and short-haul flights. Trump’s aggressive tariff policies might remind Canadians about the value of economic autonomy, but this should not distract us from orienting towards development that is socially just, ecologically sustainable, and in the interests of the majority of people.
