Time for BC and Quebec to get some competition and lose the power they use to fuck the rest of Canada.
Ottawa, Manitoba Announce Additional Steps Toward Port of Churchill Project
Olivia Gomm
11/17/2025|Updated: 11/18/2025
The federal government and province of Manitoba have committed to taking additional steps toward expanding the Port of Churchill, including funding a feasibility study.
Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew on Nov. 16 in Winnipeg ahead of the Grey Cup game. He announced Ottawa will provide funding to the Arctic Research Foundation to carry out a feasibility study on the potential use of specialized icebreakers, ice tugs, and research vessels at the Port of Churchill in northern Manitoba, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a Nov. 16 news release.
Kinew announced his province would provide $51 million in additional funding to improve the Hudson Bay rail line and build a new critical minerals storage facility at the port, bringing the project’s total provincial funding to $87.5 million. The project’s joint federal-provincial funding over five years now amounts to $262.5 million, which includes $175 million of federal funding announced in March.
“We’ll move forward in steps,” Carney said at the start of his meeting with Kinew in Winnipeg on Nov. 16. He also said the project is “very big” and “very ambitious,” adding that it will require “a lot of work.”
Kinew has highlighted the port town of Churchill, on the west shore of Hudson Bay in northern Manitoba, as an opportunity for Western provinces to get agricultural, mineral, and energy products to other countries through Hudson Bay.
The Port of Churchill is Canada’s only deep-water Arctic port that is connected to the North American surface transportation network. The port has the potential to become a key hub for exporting grain, oil, and potash to global markets.
The Port of Churchill has not yet made it onto the Carney government’s major project list, which is made up of what his government calls “nation-building” projects that will be referred to the Major Projects Office for fast-tracking.
However, during Carney’s first major projects announcement, he also named six “strategies for projects” that are at earlier stages and require more development, including the Port of Churchill Plus project to expand trade corridors and export capacity in Manitoba.
Following his Nov. 16 meeting with the prime minister, Kinew said he and Carney agreed to meet every three months to discuss the project and other matters. He said they are thinking about “a major piece of infrastructure,” and noted that a five- to 10-year timeline is “probably realistic.”
“This strong collaboration highlights the Port of Churchill Plus as a priority and will ensure it moves from consideration to implementation,” the PMO said in the news release. “Significant progress has been made to date and this will only continue to pick up speed.”
The project will also require a Crown-Indigenous corporation, which the province has yet to establish. |
