Canada at the crossroads: Nation-building or nation-burning?
Canada is at a critical point where today’s choices made surrounding infrastructure, public investment, and policy will determine the country's economic and environmental resilience in the future. Two recent pieces in Corporate Knights make this clear, stressing that these choices will ultimately shape whether we are investing in a sustainable future.
In To save our economy, Canada must choose projects that are truly nation-building – not nation-burning, David Miller emphasizes the multiplying threats Canada faces, from climate change, extreme weather, and global economic shifts, calling on PM Carney to invest in a safe and prosperous future. As events of this past summer alone have shown, our cities, towns, and communities are front-lines in a climate-driven era of wildfires, floods, and extreme heat. All the while, countries around the world are moving towards clean energy by incentivizing low-carbon technologies and advancing policies that will help make this transition possible. Continuing to invest in fossil-fuel infrastructure and pipelines, Miller argues, is effectively “nation-burning,” both literally, through environmental degradation, and figuratively, by locking Canada in an industry that is unsustainable and losing economic relevance.
Rosa Galvez’s piece, Canada’s budget must finance our future—not our fossil past, complements Miller’s argument. Galvez cautions that public investment is not neutral and that the government choices on where to focus capital sends a strong signal about our country’s priorities. Continuing to invest in the fossil fuel industry, rather than shifting toward clean infrastructure and climate adaptation, risks Canada becoming a “stranded-capital nation,” leaving our economy and communities vulnerable.
These two articles emphasize that decisions around policy, infrastructure, budgeting, and public investment truly convey how our leaders steward economic, social, and environmental capital. For truly sustainable nation-building, there is alignment that needs to occur between fiscal policy and infrastructure, requiring evidence-based prioritizations, integrated risk management, and transparency and accountability. By integrating climate resilience, economic foresight, and environmental regeneration into infrastructure and fiscal planning, Canada can reorient today’s challenges into opportunities for resilience.
Written by Sabrina Careri, for Ann Dale.
Canada’s parliament building in Ottawa. Image credit: Nick Linnen from Unsplash