How To Boost Patriotism
An Idea For Ottawa To Help The Provinces
One of the ideas that has been circulating in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s tariff threat is that Canada should make it easier to build pipelines, and that long abandoned ideas like Northern Gateway and Energy East should be revived. It’s an idea that even has some purchase with the Federal Energy Minister, a man who usually is significantly smarter than he was today.
Wilkinson, while suffering from an atypical lack of sense, said that in a world where there are legitimate concerns about the US as a trade partner and the fact that Line 5 goes through the US in ways that could make Central Canada vulnerable to unilateral American action, decided to float Energy East, or something like it, as a solution.
Energy East, was, of course, about getting oil from Alberta to Saint John, New Brunswick for export - enabling America to get higher prices for its oil. But apparently now an export pipeline to tidewater is somehow going to solve the legitimate problems of the routing of Line 5?
I’m not unsympathetic to the argument that Canada should use this crisis as an opportunity to strengthen the Federation, and I’m not even unsympathetic to the idea that oil is a part of it. I do think the next government should come to the table with a genuine effort to make Canada more helpful to Canadians, but I don’t think a pipeline that would take 10 years to build if they could ever get it through court challenges is the way to do it. I have a different, and better idea.
Every province gets to pick two projects and upload the cost to the Feds. It can’t cross a provincial border, it must have an actual cost estimate, and it must be an actual idea - not some newly-created “Million dollars for every citizen” program, but an actual project. A new hospital, a transit line, a highway, a new University campus, something like that. Every province has a version of this, I’m sure - there’s the Red Deer hospital expansion that’s been long mooted, there’s a ton of TTC and Ottawa transit stuff that needs to be built, I’m sure there’s some SkyTrain line or something David Eby would love to love to get off his books. Those projects would be cheaper in a total sense if the Feds’ lower interest rates were the borrowers, and it would be a gesture of goodwill from the Federal government to the provinces.
And it might be just what the health of the federation needs.
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One of the problems with the Canadian federation is that it’s usually oppositional - it’s one level of government with ideas trying to actualize those ideas on a different level of government, and there’s a push and pull. Since the tax points debacle, there’s been very little desire for the Feds to give the provinces more structural reforms that will then be used to position the Feds as apathetic and unnecessary. Some broad form of devolution - say, complete control of health funding but the total devolution of income taxes to the provinces - would be loved in provincial capitals but would be a disaster for the Feds. But there probably needs to be a Federal olive branch.
If it can’t be a structural reform, then the option is for one offs, and the best way to ensure it’s a one off is infrastructure projects. I’m going to use Ontario as the example - shocker, the Laurentian elite is going to be a Laurentian elite - but this mental exercise could be played out everywhere. Doug Ford’s PCs announced a GO transit plan today, a few new lines and a bunch of additional stations created by diverting freight trains around Toronto to open up capacity. There wasn’t a price tag attached to this project in the PC press release, but I suspect Doug would be rather grateful to not have to pay the cash. There’s the province’s share of Phase 3 of the Ottawa LRT, there’s the Brampton hospital, you could bundle some of the road projects for the Ring Of Fire together into one package, and it would significantly aid Ontario’s books while ensuring key projects don’t get cancelled due to deficit concerns.
The provinces would be in charge of picking the projects, so it couldn’t be the Feds trying to win seats in marginal seats. If you’re Danielle Smith and want the Feds to take over the Red Deer and Lethbridge hospital projects because you don’t want the Liberals to fund Edmonton and thereby increase the chances Randy Boissonault wins again, that’s your choice! But it’s also not a blank cheque.
The idea would be for projects just starting or in the late planning stages - projects with concrete budgets and coherent plans, not aspirations that might have shovels hit ground in 2030. The Federal offer, as I have it in mind, is not for a blank cheque but for the number the province is preparing to pay, plus a 20% buffer. Anything above that, and the province foots the extra. It’s a meaningful incentive to keep costs from exploding if Scott Moe or Wab Kinew know they’re on the hook if a billion dollar transit line or hospital ends up costing $2.5B.
Having the Federal government pick up the costs of a couple of provincial projects would be a meaningful step towards diminishing anti-Ottawa sentiment, give people meaningful and tangible examples to point to, remind people of the virtue of Ottawa and the Federal Government, and hopefully - if only for some weeks - lower the temperature between Ottawa and the provincial capitals. It would result in faster delivery of crucial capital projects across the country, as provinces wouldn’t have to make as many hard choices about what to fund and when. It would be a decent fiscal stimulus in what even before the tariffs of it all was a bad and weak economy. And it would make the lives of the residents of the places benefitting from these projects better.
It’s sure as hell more concrete action than saying it’s time for a discussion on a pipeline without a financial backer, environmental approvals, or Indigenous buy-in.
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I lived in Northern Ontario at the time of Energy East. Not one person, of any political stripe, was in favour of it. The ridiculous map of that pipeline barrelled straight past so many towns and lakes and watersheds, that everyone with an ounce of sense could see the disaster in the making affecting their lives and livelihoods.
I like the idea of uploading projects to the feds for another reason. The provinces, especially here in Ontario, have proven over and over that they can't be trusted to use funds for their designated purpose. Billions go "missing", and we don't get our healthcare, or schools, or whatever, because the province decides to use it as a slush fund. If the project is accepted and approved, at least we know there's something specific we can expect and demand to see.
I like this plan! With a few caveats. (naturally - this is the internet after all!)
First of all, absolutety no new highways! We've already not horrible car traffic, really poor rates of active transportation, terrible public transit. Inducing even more mobility injustice, forced social isolation, driver violence and other forms of car harm is a non-starter.
Secondly, building public transportation in Canada is WAY too expensive. The Broadway skytrain costs over double per km when compared to the recent Paris ligne 8 extension. This is where we need the feds to step in, negotiate better long term contracts with companies like Alstrom and have them build or relocate their factories to Canada, in deals involving technical universities and university engineering departments.
Lastly, the projects need to be built with strictly union labour. That's something the NDP would insist on at any rate.