Prime Minister Mark Carney added a new pack of “nation-building” projects to the to-do list of his signature Major Projects Office on Thursday: a liquefied natural gas terminal on the B.C. coast with an electricity transmission line to serve it, three mines in three provinces and a hydroelectric dam to serve Iqaluit.

“They’re here to reinforce our nation,” he said at an electricity substation in Terrace, B.C. “They are part of nation-building strategies to transform our economies… to build Canada and to build First Nations.”

The signal to investors: The business and investment communities are watching the Major Projects Office as a barometer of whether Canada can now build big things quickly. David Pierce, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce vice-president of government relations, said that this list looks different from the first, which was criticized for including projects that had already received some level of regulatory approval. These developments are not as far along, he noted.

While Pierce said he’s glad to see more test cases, he warned hesitancy to invest could linger if the government doesn’t clarify how projects make the list, and also speed up approvals for the many projects that are left off.

“There are hundreds of other projects that are ready to go where companies have decided to make the investment, they’ve set funds aside,” he said, but proponents don’t know if they’ll get the fast-track treatment. “Until that is fixed, it’s going to stifle investment in Canada, and other jurisdictions around the world are going to benefit as a result.”

Business Council of Canada CEO Goldy Hyder said in a statement that these initial projects could help change the business community’s perception that it’s difficult to build infrastructure in Canada, but added the government has to scale urgently, “which requires a much higher number of private-sector-led projects backed by private-sector dollars.”

Digging deep on critical minerals: The three mines on Carney’s new list are intended to pull nickel from the ground in Ontario, graphite in Quebec and tungsten and molybdenum in New Brunswick. 

The proposed Crawford mine outside Timmins, Ont., would primarily extract nickel—but other critical metals, too, including cobalt. Though it’s in the northern part of the province, the Crawford project is well southeast of the Ring of Fire and doesn’t come with the same challenges as potential mines there, either with infrastructure or public support.

It needs only a 20-kilometre rail spur to connect to the existing network, for instance, and road access is, if anything, too good; a provincial highway runs through the middle of the site and will have to be moved, the Canada Nickel Co. has said. Charlie Angus, the former New Democrat MP for the area, urged the government to get behind the project last year.

In Matawinie, Que., north of Montreal, Nouveau Monde Graphite’s proposed mine has backing from the provincial government.

Northcliff Resources’ proposed Sisson mine for tungsten and molybdenum has been working through approvals since a positive feasibility study concluded in 2013. What it needs, Northcliff says, is construction and operating permits, customers and financing.

All three mines will yield minerals whose production is now dominated by China, said Bentley Allan, vice-president of the Transition Accelerator and a political scientist specializing in modern industrial policies and geopolitics. Nickel, graphite and tungsten all have defence uses, and nickel and graphite are key ingredients in goods for both military and civilian purposes, he said.

“These are all great projects from a strategic value standpoint, and they’re all excellent projects as well on economic grounds” Allan said in an interview.

Though he added that easier permitting might not be all the potential mines need from the government—”policy supports,” such as a price guarantee for the Crawford nickel mine, could be called for.

And Allan is eager to see plans to maximize the value of the minerals. “Is there a plan to make all of these projects add up to more than the sum of their parts?” he asked.

Another bump for LNG: The Ksi Lisims project near Kitimat, B.C., would be Canada’s next major liquefied natural gas export facility after LNG Canada came online earlier this year. The proposal includes a $10-billion floating facility that will liquefy natural gas produced by a consortium of Canadian companies, then export it to Asian markets. Houston-based Western LNG is leading the project.

The local Nisga’a Nation has already backed the project, and the community has a 50 per cent equity stake in the pipeline that would connect the facility to gas fields in the province’s northeast. Ksi Lisims, however, will eventually need access to electricity that does not yet exist. Last month, the B.C. government said it would fast-track its North Coast Transmission Line—a major power conduit designed to feed projects like Ksi Lisims—but it’s unclear how long the development will take. The power line was also on the federal government’s list of projects on Thursday. 

A small start in the North: The hydro dam to serve Iqaluit is the first designated nation-building project in the North. It would replace a dirty diesel power plant, wean the territorial capital off fuel bought from the south and extend Iqaluit’s road system in the bargain.

Though it’s one of the four projects Nunavut lists as its priorities, and will not be cheap, the dam’s cost is not on the scale of the often–mentioned Grays Bay port and road proposal (which is in a somewhat nebulous category of plans that have been “referred to” the Major Projects Office without quite being designated as to-dos), or a deepwater port on eastern Baffin Island that the territorial government hopes will anchor a processing industry for Nunavut-caught fish that now go to Greenland or Newfoundland.

The state of play at the Major Projects Office: Dawn Farrell, the former energy executive Carney named to lead the office at the end of August, said at the announcement in Terrace that many projects on her docket have “been in development for quite a while,” but added: “There’s a lot of work as you get to the end of the line, and you need to pull things over.”

How much pull Farrell’s office can provide is yet to be seen. Carney announced his first batch of national-interest projects on Sept. 11—mine proposals from Foran and Newmont and LNG Canada’s aforementioned Kitimat facility, plus a government-driven nuclear power project in Ontario and a new terminal at the Port of Montreal. 

The Logic asked Foran, Newmont and LNG Canada this week what difference their designations have made so far. Only LNG Canada responded. “As with LNG Canada Phase 1, the proposed LNG Canada Phase 2 expansion continues to hold key permits and approvals, including the provincial environmental assessment certificate,” Brian Hutchinson wrote in an email that did not mention the designation or the Major Projects Office.

On Thursday, though, Farrell checklisted ways her office can help projects approaching final approvals. These can include securing financing, guaranteeing prices, making sure “the permitting [that] happens during construction works in a very slick and efficient way,” she said, ensuring the supply of skilled labour, and generally making sure costs don’t get out of control.

“The world only pays a certain price for our goods, and we need to meet them at those prices,” she said.

What about a pipeline?: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says a new oil pipeline is an essential nation-building project and the provincial government will start a project itself if necessary. Carney said the federal and Alberta governments are talking, it’s going well, and he looks forward to progress “over the course of the coming weeks.”

The Major Projects Office is already working on a major carbon capture effort in Alberta and Carney implied he wants the province firmly behind it, too.

“We’re looking for a major investment that, amongst other things, puts the industry—puts the country—in a position for the energy future,” he said. 

With files from Anita Balakrishnan in Toronto