Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to make at least four additions to his government’s fast-track list on Thursday.Stephen MacGillivray/The Canadian Press

John Sandlos and Arn Keeling are professors at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Their new book, The Price of Gold: Mining, Pollution, and Resistance in Yellowknife, is out now with McGill-Queen’s University Press.

With tariff headwinds from the Trump administration blowing full tilt, the Carney Liberals have fallen back on a very old Canadian idea: building the national economy through natural resource development. Bill C-5 and the newly created Major Projects Office allow the government to leapfrog resource developments over red tape (environmental assessments, licensing, community consultations and the like), so long as they serve the national interest.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to add at least four new items to what he calls a continuously growing “living list” of prioritized major projects. The Globe and Mail has reported that the new projects include the Ksi Lisims liquefied natural gas project in British Columbia, the Crawford nickel project in Ontario, the Sisson mine in New Brunswick and a hydroelectric project in Iqaluit.

No doubt the rush to shore up the domestic economy in the face of

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