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Canada’s infrastructure landscape is changing fast. The passage of Bill C-5 — the Building Canada Act — signals a federal commitment to accelerating major projects in energy, transportation, and critical minerals. But acceleration does not mean bypassing Indigenous communities. If anything, the new framework makes Indigenous partnership more central to project success than ever before. For Nations and proponents alike, understanding what this means in practice is not optional

Canada’s duty to consult is one of the most cited and least understood obligations in Indigenous relations. For every proponent that approaches it thoughtfully, there are several more who treat it as a procedural hurdle — a series of notifications to issue and meetings to log before a project can proceed. That misunderstanding is expensive. Projects stall, relationships break down, and legal challenges follow. Here is what we consistently see proponents get wrong, and what a

The term “Indigenous engagement” appears in nearly every major infrastructure project in Canada today. But there is a significant gap between engagement that checks a box and engagement that builds genuine trust, surfaces real concerns, and produces outcomes that Nations can stand behind. At Opawamow Group, we have spent years working alongside First Nations, Crown corporations, and private sector proponents on some of the most complex engagement processes in the country. Her