The challenge of navigating rapid regulatory changes in Canada’s energy sector is reshaping how legal teams deliver value, says Aileen Gien, general counsel and corporate secretary at Capstone Infrastructure Corporation. These shifts call for infrastructure lawyers to adapt on the fly to protect investments in capital-intensive projects as they are built and executed.
Gien’s career began in New York and moved through major Canadian law firms before she entered in-house roles, giving her a broad vantage point. She started as a project finance lawyer, shifted to construction, operations and maintenance, and then joined Ontario’s procurement agency for major infrastructure projects. Each step, she says, became a building block for her current work at an independent power producer, helping her anticipate the priorities of governments, lenders, and contractors.
Her move from private practice to in-house was driven by a desire to focus on projects with lasting impact. “When you're in the law firm, you have a wide gamut of clients which continuously change,” she says. Interesting renewable projects came and went, but she rarely saw them through to completion. In-house roles, first at Infrastructure Ontario and now at Capstone, put her at the center of projects that shape communities, from hospitals and transit to renewable energy.
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That transition demanded a new mindset. “I would say the biggest thing is becoming a jack-of-all-trades. In a law firm, you can be very specialized. And of course, when you go in-house, you're going to get questions from all different directions on all different aspects of the law,” she says. Gien had to master new areas, including securities law, to meet the demands of a publicly traded company. “This is all stuff that's learnable, it's doable, but you just have to be curious and be willing to look at a new area of law and just dive into it.”
Her team is lean – two lawyers and two legal clerks – which means exposure to every facet of the business. “My day can be drastically different, from working with the development side, the permitting side, the asset management teams, the finance teams. It could be securities law. It could be working on governance matters with our board or our project partners,” she says. The variety keeps things interesting, but the regulatory environment remains a constant source of complexity.
Recent projects have forced the team to adapt quickly, none more so than the Wild Rose 2 wind farm in Alberta. A sudden regulatory pause on renewable energy project approvals derailed what should have been a routine permitting amendment. The team navigated extra hearings and renegotiated major contracts, all while racing against winter construction. “This is a project that really required our entire company to band together, working hand in hand with the legal department, from everybody involved on the development and permitting side to the construction side and to the financing side,” she says. Despite the setbacks, the project reached completion, and will generate enough electricity to deliver power to 80,000 Alberta homes and offset 250,000 metric tons of emissions annually.
Managing these challenges demands strong relationships with external counsel. “The key to working [with] external counsel is very clear and transparent communication,” Gien says. She stresses the need for outside lawyers to understand the business realities, especially when deadlines and construction milestones are at stake. “Unless external counsel really understands what our issues are... then they can't really give you the practical advice to move forward.” Internally, translating legal advice into actionable business decisions is just as critical. “You can't really do that without really understanding what your contract says, what the law says, how it applies to your situation, and everybody has to work together to make sure that they understand that.”
Looking ahead, Gien sees regulatory certainty and supply chain stability as top priorities for the sector. “We need more long-term regulatory certainty and support for large capital-intensive investment,” she says. She also points to the importance of fact-based policy making and the challenge of navigating misinformation. “There's so much disinformation on the internet, and we do have confusion [about the effects of climate change on our daily lives]. It's hard for people to make decisions on what infrastructure to invest in or which needs should be prioritized to meet growing energy demand. One of Canada’s strengths, however, has always been its resource diversification, and emissions-free energy is part of that mix.”
For lawyers considering a similar path, Gien advises them to “stay curious.” She credits her early experience at a civil rights litigation firm for shaping her approach. “The litigators that I worked with there were able to be incredible advocates for their clients based on really good substantive arguments, but without a lot of bluster. And I like to think that I practise with the same approach, which is basically know what the contract says, know what the law is, know what the party's intent is, and try not to grandstand or waste anybody's time and just get to solutions.”