In mid-June 2026, the Canadian government unveiled its nuclear energy strategy, a four-pronged plan to meet Canada’s rapidly expanding energy needs through nuclear power. In his foreword to the plan, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson called 2026 a “pivotal year” for Canada’s nuclear infrastructure, pointing to how several provinces – including Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick – are making strides in developing, expanding, and planning nuclear projects.
Notably, several of these provincial plans involve small modular reactors. Like traditional nuclear reactors, SMRs rely on nuclear fission to create heat, which is then used to generate electricity. However, SMRs offer several benefits that their traditional counterparts lack: They are structurally smaller and have a lower power capacity (up to 300 megawatts – approximately one-third the capacity of a traditional nuclear reactor), which means they take up less space. Because of this smaller footprint, they can be built on locations that cannot host traditional nuclear reactors – which are often custom-designed to fit specific sites – using prefabricated, modular parts.
The result is an electricity source that is both faster and cheaper to construct than a traditional reactor; their small size also means SMRs can be deployed incrementally to account for changing energy demands. While the potential of SMRs to meet Canada’s energy needs is not a new topic – the federal government first published a roadmap for deploying SMRs in Canada in 2018 – lawyers who work with the energy sector say the federal government’s recent push for electrification has put renewed focus on the emerging technology.
Small modular reactors gain new momentum
SMRs are moving from the realm of “policy ambition towards project development,” observes Vivian Kung, a partner at Norton Rose Fulbright in Toronto whose practice focuses on power, infrastructure, construction and mergers and acquisitions. This progress has been accelerated by an “almost insatiable electricity demand from electrification and data centres and AI,” Kung says.
“I think a lot of us are of the view that it’s going to be the next big energy opportunity.”
Mark Johnson, a partner at McCarthy Tétrault in Toronto who co-heads the firm’s national energy group, agrees the biggest driver behind the government’s recent embrace of SMRs is Canada’s growing demand for electricity.
“Whether that’s the electrification of transit systems, whether that’s electric vehicles, whether that’s electrification of industrial processes, whether that’s new industrial, like data centres, or old industrial – everybody needs a lot of power,” Johnson says. “Nuclear provides effectively a low-carbon – depending on how you measure it – or no-carbon solution for significant continuous power.
“That’s kind of where the SMRs… really fit in.”
Released weeks ahead of Canada's nuclear energy strategy document this spring, the federal government’s national electricity strategy outlined its push for greater electrification, arguing that reliable electricity is key to boosting Canada’s competitiveness, energy security, and economic sovereignty. The government said that geopolitical conflicts, shifting trade relationships, and rapid technological change have intensified competition for resources. It noted that other major economies – including China and Europe – are investing in electricity technologies and systems.
The federal government also pointed to domestic reasons for electrification. These include the growing demand for electricity from sectors such as critical minerals development, AI data centres, and advanced manufacturing. According to the national electricity strategy, electricity demand in Canada is expected to double by 2050.
Canada's built-in nuclear advantage
Johnson argues that one reason the federal government is focusing on nuclear energy as a potential source of electricity is that Canada already has the infrastructure to support it. The lawyer notes that Saskatchewan produces much of the uranium – the primary fuel for nuclear reactors – used both in Canada and internationally. That uranium is then processed, though not enriched, in Ontario.
Meanwhile, the recent refurbishment of nuclear stations in Darlington and Bruce, Ontario have further strengthened the province’s nuclear infrastructure. “The fact that those units have successfully been going through refurbishment means that the nuclear supply chain, the engineers, the construction contractors, the fabricators have all been able to really brush up on their expertise and ramp up their operations,” Johnson says. He adds that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the federal nuclear power regulator, is internationally respected for its rigorous safety and oversight standards.
The federal government seems to have “picked up on all of those trends and realized that there’s a bit of a competitive advantage that Canada has internationally because we have a deep-rooted nuclear industry,” Johnson says.
“We have a lot of experience, and in many ways, we have what the rest of the world is now very interested in looking at.”
Provincial progress and the challenges ahead
The many advantages of SMRs – particularly their modularity, which shortens construction timelines and makes it easy to ramp up or down their output as needed – make them a practical option for harnessing nuclear energy. After the federal government published its 2018 SMR roadmap, which sought feedback on how SMRs should be deployed in Canada, it created a federal SMR 2020 action plan to advance its SMR agenda.
The following year, Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and Alberta signed a memorandum of understanding, committing to work collaboratively to deploy SMRs. The provinces later published a plan with three streams, identifying specific SMR projects they plan to build and deploy in each province.
The project closest to completion is an SMR at the Darlington nuclear site in Ontario, which is expected to be operational within the next five years. The project by Ontario Power Generation, the Crown corporation that generated roughly 58 percent of the electricity delivered to the province’s electricity system in 2025, will be the first operational SMR in a G7 country.
The projects next in line for completion are in Saskatchewan and Alberta, but construction has not yet begun on either.
“Ontario’s the clear leader, with strong provincial financial backing,” Kung says, noting that “part of the funding for Darlington was a $3 billion joint commitment from the Canada Growth Fund and the province’s Building Ontario Fund.” While the projects in Saskatchewan and Alberta are both moving forward, with the former’s Crown corporation, SaskPower, supporting SMR deployment, Kung notes that New Brunswick seems to have stepped back from its interest in the technology.
SMR project delays in the province have “led to some questioning as to commercial viability,” Kung says. Later this year, the province is scheduled to release its integrated resource plan, which will outline how the province plans to meet its electricity needs. “We’re currently awaiting the release of the… plan and whether it will include or exclude nuclear,” Kung says.
Johnson says the challenges involved in deploying SMRs are “the same challenges that are facing other large nation-building projects in Canada.” One of the biggest challenges for those provinces investing in SMRs is ensuring Canadian businesses can support as much of the supply chain as possible, he says. “That de-risks projects from a global perspective, from the other things that are going on in the world – whether it’s tariffs, whether it’s wars, whether it’s other actions,” Johnson adds. “Having a domestic supply chain helps to de-risk that.”
The other major challenge for provinces is investing in skilled labour. “These are long-term projects. They produce very good jobs, and they require the training and interest of trades and engineers and others who are looking to get into the industry and make a career in the industry,” Johnson says.
“We need to do more to get people into the nuclear industry, because if we don’t, then we’re going to have labour shortages, and that’s not good for anybody,” he adds. “It's getting people excited about building big things in Canada again.”