Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spent years urging the world’s biggest banks to price climate risk into every decision. On Oct. 1, he put a million-barrel-a-day oil pipeline on the fast track.

Carney designated the proposed Pacific Link pipeline to the British Columbia coast a project of national interest, sending it through a single federal review with a target finish date of Sept. 1, 2027. He did it in the middle of a trade fight with Washington, a separatist push in Alberta and pushback from inside his own party. That is the kind of leadership U.S. lawmakers should be showing, and American progressives should notice who is leading it.

Canada’s actions matter  on this side of the border

For years, more than 90% of Canada’s crude exports went to the United States by pipeline, and Canadian barrels make up roughly 60% of U.S. oil imports. Washington walked away from the most famous cross-border line on Jan. 20, 2021, when President Biden revoked the Keystone XL permit. Five years later, that same Alberta crude is headed west to Asian buyers.

This is terrible news for American families, who are already experiencing raising prices at the pump due to a tight fuel supply. EIA expects households that heat with oil, most of them in the Northeast, to pay about 21% more this winter, and diesel to stay above $6 a gallon through October. 

American producers are ready to supply more, but only if they can build the pipelines to move it. When the United States makes building that hard, its own producers wait, and its partners stop waiting.

A climate leader made the call

Nobody can credibly call Carney an oil industry loyalist. He served as the UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, launched the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, and his energy deal with Alberta cost him his former environment minister, Steven Guilbeault. Carney let him go and kept building.

Critics will say Carney only acted because of President Trump’s tariffs. That makes the case stronger: under real economic pressure, Canada decided it could no longer afford an approval system that was too slow to compete. Now it has a system that sets a deadline and owns the decision, giving builders and communities a certainty the U.S. system rarely offers.

What Washington should learn from Ottawa

The first lesson Washington can glean is Canada’s process. Under the Building Canada Act, passed in June 2025, Ottawa can designate a project as being in the national interest, fold most federal approvals into a single review and aim for a decision within two years, down from the five years or more that major approvals used to take. Washington already has a two-year deadline on paper. Federal law requires environmental impact statements to be finished within two years, yet 61% of reviews still miss that deadline, and a quarter take five years or more. Even then, that review is only one step, with separate permits and lawsuits still to come.

Congress has a chance to fix that. The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (S. 5653), which oil and natural gas groups are urging lawmakers to pass, would speed federal approvals for the pipelines and other infrastructure American producers need, and give those projects more certainty. Two Democrats with long climate records, Sens. Martin Heinrich and Sheldon Whitehouse, wrote it with Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and the Senate is expected to take it up in November.

The second lesson is about security. With the Strait of Hormuz largely blocked since late February, North American production and the pipelines that move it are the best cushion against global supply shocks, and faster approvals are how that cushion gets built.

Bottom line

American progressives don’t have to abandon their climate goals to accept that the country needs a faster, more predictable way to decide on critical energy infrastructure. Canada’s climate banker built one. The Senate bill’s name says what is at stake: affordability and jobs. Passing it would help American producers deliver lower energy bills and good jobs here at home, and it would put Democrats in the company of Ottawa’s climate banker.