In response to the U.S. economic aggression, Prime Minister Carney’s strategy is to focus on foreign investments to build oil, gas, and port infrastructure projects, as well as data centres. In short, nothing too inspiring and nothing to address the urgent challenges that Canadian communities are facing. How can a pipeline really help us make ends meet?
Mark Carney's vision is to keep the same game plan and hope for a different outcome with new trading partners. Canada is already, by far, the OECD country that relies the most on foreign direct investment – equivalent to 82 per cent of GDP according to the Canadian Shield Institute –. Can it really be in the best interest of Canadians that strategic assets, such as our airports or our critical minerals, be controlled by foreign investment funds?
The size of an investment announcement cannot be our only measure of success. In its report, the Canadian Shield Institute proposes four tests for foreign investment:
- Does it preserve Canada’s ability to govern its public infrastructure, including digital infrastructure?
- Does it protect the security of the people who use those systems?
- Does it keep strategic capabilities, especially in emerging technologies, under Canadian control?
- Does it prevent investors’ pursuit of profit from undermining infrastructure’s core function or sharply increasing its cost, particularly when it was built with public money?
Foreign investment should strengthen Canada’s autonomy, not weaken it.
These criteria offer a useful starting point for deciding what “building Canada” should mean in today’s geopolitical context. Investment decisions should consider whether a project preserves our autonomy, strengthens community resilience and meets essential needs, not simply how much capital it attracts. The lasting public benefit should matter more than the size of the cheque or the returns promised by the latest technology bubble.
Building Canada strong must be more than an industrial policy. It must put in place the social and environmental conditions necessary for the well-being of our communities and the people who live in them.
- We will not be able to build a strong Canada by building gas powered data centres on agricultural land, nor by allocating our limited water to them.
- We will not be able to build a strong Canada if we continue to rely on polluting vehicles to travel around our already congested cities and suburbs, where the number of vehicles on our roads is outpacing population growth.
- We will not be able to build a strong Canada by investing in oil and gas infrastructure, when we need significant investments in our aging municipal water and road infrastructure and our schools and hospitals.
- We will not be able to build a strong Canada by relying on industries that fuel the climate crisis, making our communities in forested regions more vulnerable to wildfires and our coastal communities more vulnerable to flooding.
Rather, we want the government to invest in public infrastructure that integrates climate change adaptation into its design, particularly to reduce the risk of floods. We want the government to focus more on solutions that help people move around than that help oil and gas move around. We want the Prime Minister to focus on our agricultural sector to strengthen our food autonomy. To support municipalities to maintain our infrastructure. We want the government to put more effort into finding solutions to the homelessness crisis and to lower housing costs than it does into dismantling environmental protections.
Though he has repeatedly demonstrated his economic expertise, the Prime Minister has also shown that he has blind spots for the current social and environmental crises. These crises will not disappear with promises of billions of dollars of investments. The Prime Minister must give these crises the necessary attention, budgets, regulations, and legislation.
Since taking office, the Prime Minister has presented an exclusively industrial and diplomatic vision to respond to American trade aggression. The time has come for the Prime Minister to broaden his horizons and start paying attention to what is happening in our communities. There will be no additional economic trickle-down to communities from the promises of billions of dollars in investments than there is right now. The government has a responsibility to set up the conditions for Canadian communities to thrive, not for foreign investors to thrive.
