Canada’s Infrastructure Revival

By Drew Fagan CHAMPLAIN BRIDGE, MONTREAL, QUEBEC Canada Next: 12 Ways to Get Ahead of Disruption SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS The Government of Canada is leading a resurgence in infrastructure spending, with a 12-year budget of more than $180-billion and the creation of key institutions such as the Canada Infrastructure Bank. [...] It begins with the fact that the two are linked; Canada’s harsh winters But will this spending be remembered for being visionary, and extreme temperature fluctuations innovative and inclusive, for building the country’s productivity, as the seasons change take a toll on the competitiveness and social equity? [...] Or will the successes be country’s roads (and vehicles) and other outweighed in the public mind in the years to come by the infrastructure. [...] In Montreal, the epitome of how one sized this point in his most recent “mandate letter” shouldn’t build is the Champlain Bridge, which is to the infrastructure minister, asking that the pace now being replaced but needn’t have so soon had it of federal-provincial infrastructure agreements and been built to last in the 1950s. [...] It is on a scale has also emphasized that he wants his government approaching the construction of the 1950s and to be judged on its performance from the perspec- 1960s, when modern Canada—our universities and tive of 25 years hence, as well as from the perspec- colleges, our hospitals, our highways—was built.