"Canadians are ready to build"

Santa Carney brings the goods. New research on gains from interprovincial trade. And there's a new defence tech newsletter in town.

So did Christmas come early?

Prime minister Mark Carney met with the 13 provincial and territorial leaders in Saskatoon last Monday in what advance billing described as one of the most consequential such meetings in perhaps decades. Carney had asked everyone to come up with a list of major infrastructure and energy projects that were of such significant national interest that they should be fast-tracked.

Everyone agreed it was a good meeting. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe called it “a generational opportunity for Canadians,” Ontario premier Doug Ford called it the best first ministers meeting “in ten years” (Build Canada readers are invited to do the math on that), the other leaders all said similar things. One even called Carney “Santa Claus.”

But we here at Build Canada were a bit disappointed with the substance of what had been agreed to. There was no fast-tracking of the Northern Gateway pipeline, no commitment to an Arctic military base, nada. Instead, the joint communique issued after the meeting was long on agreement about where the country needs to go, and seemed somewhat shorter on taking steps to get us there. It seemed like everyone was just punting stuff to the fall, and looking to take a nice long summer break.

But Friday afternoon we started to hear the distant jingle of sleigh bells. Was it Rudolph and the gang? No, it was even better. It was Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc tabling a bill in the House of Commons. Formally titled One Canadian Economy: An Act to enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act, the bill would give the federal government new powers to quickly push forward major projects cabinet deems to be in the national interest.

There are only a couple more sitting weeks for Parliament until the summer break, and the Liberals’ minority position means Carney will need some help getting it passed. The good news is the prime minister has not ruled out extending the sitting of the House of Commons to get it done.

For the most part, we’re pretty happy about this, with some perhaps substantial reservations. For starters, Carney deserves huge kudos for this bill. These are big steps, and a significant about-face in the right direction for the federal government, especially compared to the last decade. Second of all, not only is this bill making very significant changes, by the standards of Ottawa it was composed and introduced with lightning speed. But most importantly, it shows that Carney is not only following through on his promises, but doing it quickly. He seems to have got his cabinet in caucus into line over the dire economic situation we are in.

On the downside, there are a number of places where it doesn’t go far enough, especially on internal trade barriers. One of the things we didn’t like out of Monday’s first ministers meeting was this part of the the readout: “First Ministers directed the Committee on Internal Trade to rapidly conclude a comprehensive Mutual Recognition Agreement covering consumer goods, in alignment with the Committee on Internal Trade discussions, with implementation by December 2025.”

This is too slow. Carney needs to push the provinces, with carrots and sticks, to get things moving on this front.

But our biggest concern is Carney saying he won’t impose projects on provinces and will engage in “meaningful consultation with Indigenous peoples.” We don’t know what the means exactly, but what it cannot mean is what it meant under Justin Trudeau. Namely that provinces and Indigenous groups can simply veto projects that are in the national interest. The promised one-stop shop for federal approvals within two years is a great step forward, but if the problem of veto points isn’t resolved, then it will just put us back to where we have been for over a decade.

---

Atlantic Canada wins when trade barriers are removed

Speaking of interprovincial trade: Students of Canadian history will recall that the discussions for Confederation originally began when John A. Macdonald and friends crashed a meeting of the Atlantic provinces in Charlottetown that was looking at creating a maritime union. To a large extent, the ambitions of Build Canada are just to get Canadians to remember why their country was created their country in the first place.

To that end, University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe has a really interesting new paper out through the PPF looking at trade barriers in the Atlantic provinces in particular, and the potential benefits to eliminating them, especially in services. He advises mutual recognition of occupational credentials and harmonizing service regulations as a way of unlocking significant gains in both labour mobility and trade liberalization. The upshot:

These are not merely marginal shifts; they represent meaningful changes in provincial income levels and overall economic strength. Importantly, these gains are not at the expense of other provinces. Rather, they result in net national improvements, with modest benefits extending to the rest of Canada as well.

Read the paper here.

---

A new defence tech newsletter

A bit of good news. Some friends of Build Canada have started a new defence and technology newsletter called The Icebreaker (you can and should subscribe here), and while it is only a few weeks old they already have a scoop: According to Friday’s edition of the newsletter, BDC (Business Development Bank of Canada) and EDC (Export Development Canada) leaders are about to get over $1 billion in new federal funding, aimed at jump-starting the Canadian defence tech sector.

The Icebreaker argues that this could go a long way toward de-stigmatizing defence tech investing in Canada, to the point where it would be seen as a strategic national asset and not a “sin” industry akin to tobacco or gambling. Their bottom line is that “For the first time, if you’re building or backing defence tech in Canada, you now have government tailwinds, not headwinds.”

Fingers crossed!

---

What else we’ve been reading

US scientists eye other countries

The US continues to slash spending on science and research, even Nobel Prize winners aren’t immune:

Dr. Patapoutian's federal grant to develop new approaches to treating pain has been frozen. In late February, he posted on Bluesky that such cuts would damage biomedical research and prompt an exodus of talent from the United States. Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to "any city, any university I want," he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years. [NYTimes]

Other countries are seizing the opportunity to attract scientists, we think Canada could do the same.

Canada used to know how to build

With all the Prime Minister’s talks about nation-building projects, let’s not forget that we’ve done it before:

The Last Spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway was driven on Nov. 7, 1885, at Craigellachie, British Columbia… Three and a half years to make a National Dream…

Fast forward to the present, and the Eglinton Crosstown. It’s been under construction since 2011. [Globe & Mail]

---

🗞️ Finally, we bid a very sad goodbye to Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space, whose ambition for Canada was an inspiration for some of us here at Build Canada. Garneau died this week after a very short battle with cancer. Ad astra, spaceman.

---

🏗️🇨🇦 Build the Canada You Know is Possible