Issue 86 - February 2026
Forging Canada's Electricity Future
On January 26th, Electricity Canada launched its eighth annual State of the Canadian Electricity Industry entitled “Forging Canada’s Electricity Future”. The report outlines what it will take to double Canada’s grid while balancing ambition, affordability, reliability, and trust. Current Affairs sat down with Electricity Canada’s Vice President of Government Relations Mike Powell, to dive deeper.
Hi Mike, thanks for joining us. This year’s state of the industry is called ‘Forging Canada’s Electricity Future’. How does “forge” encompass the overall theme of the report?
[Mike holds up the report]
As you can see, the actual picture on the front cover is a steel mill, where you’re creating something new. With metal forging, it is with heat and fire, but for us, it’s with effort and focus. The Prime Minister was in Davos a couple weeks ago and had a speech that underlined that the world is changing. We have to make sure as a country that we're setting ourselves up to be as economically self-sufficient and independent as possible, and that we have to be competitive and be able to build things in a way that is different than we would've assumed in the past. At the heart of that, for us to power the economy in a way that meets people’s and business’s needs, that starts with electricity.
In the last election, the government committed to making Canada a clean and conventional energy superpower. That starts with our strong success with our electricity sector, but we can't stop where we are. We need to think about how we can forge a new future and build an electricity system that meets the needs of tomorrow… and it’s going to need to be bigger, more resilient from a variety of different threats, and it will have to work differently.
The report emphasises a need for national integrated electricity grid. Where are the immediate opportunities and where should Canada explore future connections?
We commissioned some work with Deloitte to think about where the near-term opportunities are to build and increase the capacity to move power between Canadian provinces. Some of that is already underway! Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are already building a new line that will add additional reliability between Canada's Atlantic provinces. There are opportunities, in Western Canada to better connect the Prairie provinces to British Columbia. Ontario and Quebec already have an existing power swap where they change power between seasons and there's room to grow on that. There are some opportunities where we can better use the assets we have.
Everyone is short on power right now. There's a medium-term and long-term need to increase the amount of power that we produce, but how can we trade power between our jurisdictions a little better so that we can make sure we're taking best advantage of what that is? We’ve looked at the tangible steps of what the federal government can do including looking at some planning pieces, partnering with provinces and system operators and utilities to see what the opportunities for growth look like. Transmission is long lead time in some cases, so the time to get started is now, and so that is a key part of it.
Canada's Major Projects Office gets a shout-out in being a significant step forward to building large infrastructure projects faster, but there's still work to be done. Can you talk about what the next steps would be into getting all projects on track for all electricity infrastructure?
I think the Major Project Office (MPO) is doing some great work. Identifying key national projects and moving them along through the system is a big deal, but there's only so many of them. It really says something about our sector that of the first 11 or so major projects, three of them are electricity projects. But the first thing, is what lessons can we take from this process and how can we look to expedite projects more generally, so everything is moving at a two-year pace? I think that means taking the lessons of the MPO and finding out where those points of friction are and how we can simplify them across the board.
The second is looking for ways in which we can continue to better align federal and provincial processes so that you're moving forward with one approval.
In an era where we need to find every megawatt we can for the future, we can't wait around doing study after study if they aren't core to thinking about the ways in which we can make sure that a project is successful and balances both the needs of future energy use and that we're doing our part to make sure it integrates properly with environmental and other social concerns.
What is the biggest takeaway you want people to get out of this report?
I think for me, it's that we got a lot of work to do if we're going to meet the needs of becoming an energy superpower. We have a strong start. More than 80% of our electricity is already non-emitting. We have very affordable and reliable electricity. It is based on investments that we have made as a country with provincial governments and territorial governments and national governments for generations for really big assets, but we don't really get credit for the work that we've done. Now, we have to think about how we can get credit for the work that we're going to do. This is our eighth State of the Industry report, but the call to action we've always had is that there's an urgency to movement.
Out of all of the recommendations in the state of the industry, what do you think the government should tackle first?
One that strikes me that we've been working on for a little while are the EIFEL rules, which is an interest deductibility limit that they put in. They've changed how you count the taxes on interest for debt, and at a time when we're asking companies to invest more money into Canada to build more infrastructure, this actually makes it more expensive to do so. It has a material impact on some of our members for decisions that they already made.
Where the focus on EIFEL is to undo it altogether, or create a very clear exemption for infrastructure and existing debt that allows us to get building, this is a thing that the government could put in a budget bill and pass, and it will make it a substantially better investment climate for Canada to build the kind of things that we need. It doesn't require big paperwork and it doesn't require people swinging hammers to build factories. It is literally just a matter of the tax folks at Finance Canada, making a change and going back to how things were even just a couple of years ago. To me, that's one you could tick off your to- do list Monday morning so you can focus on the other hard stuff.
Read the full report on our website.
Listen to the Flux Capacitor episode on the State of the Canadian Electricity Industry featuring Electricity Canada’s Executive Team
Watch our President and CEO Francis Bradley discuss the 2026 State of the Canadian Electricity Industry report, at the Parliamentary Press Gallery on January 27, 2026.
Other stories
- Electricity Canada holds annual Deputy Ministers Meeting
- Electricity Canada and WaterPower Canada submit joint response to Fisheries and Oceans Canada
- Electricity Event Information Library
- Applications for the Faces of the Industry award are now OPEN