The federal government on Tuesday designated the West Coast oil pipeline a project of national interest, putting pre-approval behind a 1 million bpd system that will move Alberta oilsands crude to a new terminal at Roberts Bank, B.C., now branded Pacific Link.

The project carries an estimated cost of up to $43.7 billion. It will follow the existing Trans Mountain corridor to the Fraser River delta, where Ottawa will commit $10 billion to expand Roberts Bank for very large crude carrier (VLCC) loading.

"The oilsands are part of Canada's once-in-a-generation opportunity to become a global energy superpower," Prime Minister Mark Carney said at a Fort McMurray announcement with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

Carney said Pacific Link would create 140,000 jobs nationally and add more than $20 billion to GDP each year, while cutting Canadian crude's reliance on U.S. buyers, who currently purchase roughly 90% of Alberta output.

What does the national-interest designation change?

The designation lets cabinet exempt the pipeline from federal statutes including the Fisheries Act and the Species at Risk Act, and shifts project review to the Canadian Energy Regulator (CER). Carney's cabinet removed interprovincial pipelines from the Impact Assessment Act last month.

Carney said Canada's Major Projects Office will finalize ownership, benefit and environmental terms by next September to "get shovels in the ground." He described Canadian permitting as "well-intentioned, but arduous, often duplicative," yet pledged Canada would remain "a country of high standards."

Georgia Lloyd-Smith, marine program head at West Coast Environmental Law, told The Tyee that the narrower CER pathway leaves "fewer opportunities for public voices to be heard" and called the decision "financially and legally risky."

Which terminals and ecosystems are in the path?

Roberts Bank sits inside the Fraser River delta, a Pacific Flyway node that supports Canada's largest overwintering waterfowl population, southern resident killer whales, Fraser River chinook salmon and kelp forests. A federal environmental assessment of the already-approved Roberts Bank Terminal 2 port expansion — a separate project scheduled for construction in 2028 — concluded the second container port would cause "severe and permanent" adverse effects on those species.

Carney pledged $1.2 billion for ocean protection alongside the announcement, with $740 million over four years on spill prevention, forecasting and response frameworks, and $136 million for a national marine mammal spill plan and underwater noise monitoring.

How big is the spill exposure?

A VLCC could release up to eight times the volume of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, Casey Sixkiller, director of Washington's Department of Ecology, wrote in a letter to Ottawa asking the government not to fast-track the project. Lloyd-Smith flagged geological assessments showing Roberts Bank soils are prone to liquefaction in earthquakes. She called a resulting land-based spill into the Fraser estuary "alarming" and "scary."

Where do First Nations stand?

The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs said Pacific Link lacks free, prior and informed consent from impacted nations and that legal action will likely follow. Katisha Paul, the union's women's representative, told The Tyee that Carney's simultaneous spill-protection funding is "a warning sign all on its own" and warned that "man camps" linked to construction would heighten risks to Indigenous women and girls.

Roberts Bank Terminal 2 expansion in 2028 and the Major Projects Office's September deadline for project terms remain the watch items for Pacific Link's path to construction.