March 9, 2026
Reading time: 2 minutes
Full Story: The Energy Mix
Nathaniel Crouch
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The federal government is investing more than C$100 million in three Western Canadian transmission projects, underscoring the consensus that Canada’s clean-energy transition depends as much on wires as it does on wind turbines and solar panels.
Announced March 3, the funds will be drawn from Canada’s First and Last Mile Fund for critical minerals infrastructure, reported The Globe and Mail. Ottawa is providing $44.2 million to expand the Northwest Transmission Line, improving power supply to B.C.’s mineral-rich Golden Triangle and supporting developments like the Red Chris copper mine expansion and a gold-copper mine proposed by Seabridge Gold. Another grid upgrade will help power the Highland Valley Copper Mine near Kamloops.
In Saskatchewan, $18 million will fund planning and design work for a pair of new transmission lines connecting northern and southern grids. The Athabasca Basin would benefit with new mining opportunities created, Ottawa said.
Responding on LinkedIn to the announcement, New Economy Canada President Merran Smith highlighted how transmission expansions unlock large amounts of power for Canada’s critical minerals push.
We talk a lot about critical minerals, electric vehicles, batteries and artificial intelligence, Smith wrote. “None of these economic opportunities are possible without electricity.”
So “if we’re serious about electrifying the economy, competing in critical minerals, and reaching net-zero, we have to build the grid to match the ambition.”
But permitting challenges, jurisdictional complexity, and fragmented provincial electricity systems have slowed the pace of transmission expansion in Canada. Meanwhile, power demand is expected to rise as climate policy drives rapid electrification—from electric vehicles to heat pumps.
Expanding transmission is also key to addressing the growing risk of stranded renewables infrastructure amid grid congestion—a point recently underscored by analysts at Barclays. Traditionally, the idea of “stranded assets” was associated with fossil-fuel infrastructure rendered obsolete by climate policy. But Barclays now suggests the concept may increasingly apply to renewables when projects cannot connect to the grid or are forced to curtail output because of insufficient transmission capacity. In such cases, even fully built wind and solar installations can struggle to deliver their expected value.
“Slow grid expansion, not technology cost, is the binding constraint on electrification,” write [pdf] the authors of the Barclays report.
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