Mar hits the right note

The #WCRStrongerTogether2023 made a strong start Feb. 7 with a keynote address from former Alberta cabinet minister and now Canada West Foundation President Gary Mar with deep insight to where Canada’s falls down on trade and the infrastructure that supports moving the goods.

Canada’s approach to funding transportation infrastructure has focused – to its detriment – on funding isolated, one-off projects rather than investing in strategic trade routes of identifiably high value and ROI to our GDP, Mar said.

Meanwhile, our country’s peers (and closest competitors) on the global trade stage have adopted long-term, sustained investment strategies that prioritize projects of national significance that meet defined criteria for funding. This lack of a trade corridor investment strategy that compels coordination and collaboration across the levels of government is largely the reason why the World Economic Forum has dropped Canada from 10^th to 32^nd place in its survey of trade transportation reliability.

That’s a problem as Canada faces increased competition from countries similar to ours for a larger share of the developing global trade markets.

Mar pointed to the CWF report (May 2022) From Shovel Ready to Shovel Worthy which details 7 recommendations on how Canada can play ‘catchup’ to get on a level field with countries like the US, UK and Australia.

How do we convince our government(s) to adopt a multi-year infrastructure investment strategy that builds a 20, 30 or 40-year pipeline of nationally significant projects?

The regions, the West can take the lead to make this a national priority: “National leadership in Canada doesn’t always have to be federal leadership.” The western provinces working together can demonstrate the importance of moving to a ‘shovel worthy’ investment approach.