The Time To Start Building Is Now

August 22, 2025 · 6 min read

Canada doesn’t suffer from a lack of plans. It suffers from a lack of delivery.

This week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the next step in making infrastructure work better for Canadians: the imminent launch of a federal Major Project Office to streamline the approval of a wide variety of nation-building infrastructure. Not just transit or highways, but anything that can play a central role in the development of the nation.

This is not the first time we hear about it. It is part of the greater “Building Canada Act” and associated actions that promote the development of nation-building projects done in collaboration with the provinces, First Nations and municipalities. Over the coming years, multi-million and multi-billion spending initiatives will play a fundamental role in how we deliver for everyone.

But announcements are the easy part. The real test will be in delivery.

Where We’ve Fallen Short

Canada is not short on plans, strategies, or ambitions. From housing to transit, governments excel at lofty ambitions. The challenge comes when these visions get stuck, either in regulatory reviews, budgetary delays, or consultations that stretch on for years.

Every project delayed carries a cost. Inflation raises the price tag, political momentum fades, and public confidence erodes. Announcements don’t move freight or carry passengers, projects do. And every time Canadians see another plan stall, it deepens a sense that our institutions are not able to execute.

That sense of inertia isn’t just frustrating, it weakens trust in government itself.

Building Capacity to Build

This is why the conversation about execution matters. The real constraint in Canadian infrastructure isn’t ideas, or even money. It’s throughput: our collective ability to move projects from concept to construction.

The Montréal REM, delivered by CDPQ Infra, was flawed, yes, but it proved that when mandates are clear, funding is stable, and delivery is a priority, projects actually get built. As I’ve argued before, CDPQ’s model isn’t perfect, but it exposes what our public systems too often lack: the institutional capacity to deliver.

We tend to think of infrastructure as concrete and steel. In reality, it also includes the institutions, project managers, engineers, and governance frameworks that make those materials come together in the first place. Without that capacity, no amount of announcements will matter.

A Timely Opportunity

Mark Carney’s language, “big, bold, now”, speaks to urgency, and it is exactly what Canada needs. We are decades behind on housing, on transit, on energy corridors, on climate resilience. The gap is no longer abstract: it shows up in housing costs, gridlock, supply bottlenecks, and dependence on trading partners.

The Major Projects Office is one important tool that can help narrow that gap. By simplifying approvals and creating a single federal entry point for nation-building projects, it has the potential to shift our culture of infrastructure from one of delay to one of follow-through. But only if it focuses less on producing more plans, and more on clearing the path to build.

This isn’t about cutting corners: it’s about aligning processes with outcomes. We should always care about safety, environment, and community. But the way to protect those values isn’t through delay, it’s through competence. If we trust our institutions to actually deliver well, we won’t feel the need to slow them down at every step.

That urgency doesn’t just apply to governments, it’s also a challenge for those of us who care about execution: to demand not just bigger promises, but stronger systems to deliver them.

Why It Matters

Infrastructure isn’t just about what we decide to build, it’s about whether we are capable of building at all.

It is more than physical systems; it reflects culture, politics, and human choices. To me, building capacity is a national strength. It is proof that we can align our ambition with our execution. It’s why Carney’s words resonate, but also why I think they have to go further: It’s not enough to say we want to build more, we have to create the conditions that make building possible.

Where the government speaks of some nation-building projects, I believe the real test of Canada’s future is whether we can build more, across the board, consistently, and well.

I want to be part of that shift. Not just as an observer, but as someone who helps connect the dots between policy, finance, and the lived experience of people who depend on these systems every day. Canada needs people who believe that delivery matters just as much as vision, and I want my work to reflect that conviction.

How We’ll Know It Worked

The success of a Major Projects Office shouldn’t just be measured by how many approvals it hands out, or how quickly it moves paper. The true test will be in outcomes:

• Speed: are projects moving from concept to construction in years, not decades?

• Cost-effectiveness: are delays, overruns, and duplication reduced?

• Quality and trust: are projects built well, with environmental standards and Indigenous partnerships respected?

• Value created: do these projects actually improve Canada’s productivity, resilience, and daily life?

If we can say yes to those questions, this Office will have done more than streamline approvals: it will have strengthened Canada’s ability to execute.

We already know what works: procurement that isn’t buried in boilerplate, scopes designed with delivery teams, contracts built around collaboration, and engagement that continues through delivery. I’ve written before that these are the real levers of capacity. What’s different now is that Canada has a chance to scale them at the federal level.

The Road Ahead

The time to start building is not about chasing headlines or rushing through announcements. It’s about proving, to ourselves and to the world, that Canada can still deliver.

If the Building Canada Act is to mean anything, the Major Projects Office has to prove Canada can deliver. Projects could actually get built faster, smarter, and better: because we invested in capacity, not just concrete.

The time to build is now, and the real task is building Canada’s capacity to deliver.