Scenario description
Assume that by 2027-03-31, Canada’s one-year federal major-project review-and-decision framework is materially slowed, narrowed, overturned, suspended, or rendered ineffective for national-interest natural-resource or trade-corridor projects. This includes a binding court order, formal federal policy or legislative change, regulator implementation decision, or unresolved federal-provincial/Indigenous process blockage that prevents the Pacific Link pipeline or similarly designated projects from using the promised one-year federal review-and-decision path in a commercially meaningful way. MarketBrief reports that Pacific Link is the first national-interest designation under the Building Canada Act; in this scenario, the economic shock is a weakened or non-operational permitting regime rather than ordinary project delay alone.