Canada is fortunate in a way that many countries would consider almost unimaginable.
We possess enormous hydroelectric resources. We are a major oil and natural-gas producer. We have world-class uranium deposits and decades of nuclear expertise. We possess significant reserves of critical minerals required for advanced manufacturing, electricity systems, defence technologies and the emerging energy economy. We also have wind, solar and other renewable resources spread across an enormous territory.
Few countries have such a broad energy hand to play.
Canadian nationalism should ask why we sometimes behave as though this abundance were an inconvenience rather than a strategic advantage.
Energy is not simply another industry. It sits beneath virtually every other industry. A manufacturing plant requires electricity. A mine requires power and fuel. Homes require heating. Data centres require enormous amounts of reliable electricity. Transportation systems require energy in several forms. Hospitals, military bases, communications networks and food supply chains all depend upon energy systems functioning continuously.
A country that cannot reliably supply itself with energy eventually becomes dependent on countries that can.
Canada should never willingly place itself in that position.
The challenge is that our energy strengths are distributed unevenly. Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia possess major hydroelectric resources. Ontario has a substantial nuclear fleet and is developing additional nuclear capacity. Alberta and Saskatchewan possess major oil and gas resources, while Saskatchewan is also one of the world’s important uranium-producing jurisdictions. Atlantic Canada has significant wind and offshore-energy possibilities. Critical mineral deposits exist across much of the country.
Instead of treating these differences primarily as sources of regional conflict, Canada should begin thinking of them as pieces of a national portfolio.
The federal government’s June 2026 Nuclear Energy Strategy stated that roughly 80 percent of Canada’s electricity already comes from non-emitting sources and set out an ambition to substantially expand nuclear capacity and the workforce supporting it. Canada is also continuing to develop its critical-minerals strategy, with a renewed 2026 focus on domestic production, processing, national security and reducing vulnerability to foreign control over strategically important supply chains.
Those policies can and should be debated.
The underlying strategic reality is harder to dispute.
Energy is power in both senses of the word.
A country with abundant reliable energy can attract manufacturing. It can support artificial-intelligence infrastructure and data centres. It can process its own minerals instead of exporting raw materials and purchasing finished products back at much higher prices. It can produce fertilizers, metals and industrial materials. It can provide households with greater security against international supply disruptions.
And it can export energy to allies who do not possess the same resources.
Canadian energy nationalism should therefore avoid becoming trapped inside a false choice between the country’s traditional energy industries and emerging energy technologies.
Canada can produce oil and gas while building nuclear power.
It can expand hydroelectricity while developing wind and solar where they make economic sense.
It can mine uranium while developing battery minerals.
It can reduce emissions while remaining a major energy producer.
A country this large and resource-rich should possess enough confidence to pursue several strategies simultaneously.
The greater danger is failing to capture enough of the value from what we possess.
Consider critical minerals.
Lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, copper and rare-earth elements are increasingly important to batteries, electronics, defence equipment and modern industrial systems. Canada has identified 31 minerals as critical and has significant resources across many of them. The strategic opportunity is not merely to dig these materials out of Canadian ground. It is to conduct more processing, refining, manufacturing and recycling here as well.
That distinction matters.
Extracting a resource creates value.
Transforming that resource into increasingly sophisticated products creates much more.
The same principle applies throughout Canadian energy.
We should ask how Canadian uranium can support Canadian nuclear technology, how Canadian minerals can support Canadian manufacturing, how Canadian electricity can attract advanced industries and how Canadian engineering expertise can become an export in its own right.
None of this eliminates legitimate environmental questions.
Resource development can have significant impacts, and Indigenous communities frequently possess rights and interests that must be central to major projects. Good nationalism cannot mean declaring every project automatically desirable simply because somebody has attached the word “Canadian” to it.
It should mean evaluating projects according to the long-term Canadian interest rather than pretending that refusing to develop resources causes global demand for those resources to disappear.
Canada has been handed a geographic inheritance that generations of people elsewhere would envy.
The question is what we do with it.
Energy security, economic security and national sovereignty are increasingly connected.
Canada has the resources to remain remarkably independent in an uncertain world.
We should have the ambition to use them intelligently.
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