Own, fund, and spill: Canada's ‘frontier-making state project,’ 1973–84

Since the Liberal Party of Canada's re-election in April 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney has initiated a major reconfiguration of the federal government's approach to resource extraction and transportation projects, many of which implicate the country's Northern regions. Drawing on Bob Jessop's concept of “state projects,” this article offers historical context for better understanding this political and geographical shift by examining the Liberal government's “frontier-making state project” of 1973–84 that poured immense resources into accelerating oil and gas exploration in Canada's Arctic and Atlantic offshores. It identifies three fundamental characteristics of this historical state project—direct ownership/participation, financial and pricing incentives, and oil spill research—and traces their usage over time, including through the subsequent period of neoliberalization. It concludes by suggesting that the federal government's new vision for resource extraction and transportation represents the revival of a“frontier-making state project” that hybridizes an older style of government involvement with more recent aspects of neoliberalization. Building on Jessop's theoretical work and the historical example of the former state project, it also highlights the potential for conflict over and even failure of such a project in the context of intersecting pressures and contingencies. • Canada's Bill C-5 has trigged a new “frontier-making state project.". • This effort contains key features of the “frontier oil and gas" drive of 1973–84. • The former project used direct ownership, fiscal incentives, and oil spill research. • These approaches will likely reappear, albeit in a neoliberalized form. • High-cost state projects can encounter conflicts, rollbacks, and failure.