Canada is talking about big construction again. There is a rare political consensus that we need to develop projects such as
expand our energy infrastructure, revitalize our industrial base, and finally move critical projects beyond government announcements and press releases into reality.
This is good. The desire for large-scale construction has long been absent from the national bloodstream. But ambition without ability is just another kind of fantasy, and Canada is running out of time for fantasy.
Every major project we talk about today has one thing in common: they all require much more than just builders and engineers. They need communities that can support the workers who will make these projects possible. And now we are not ready.
Governments like to announce the size of the workforce: 1,200 workers here, 3,000 workers there. But the truth is more complicated. When you bring thousands of workers to a region, you also bring families with you, put a strain on local housing, and cause an immediate increase in demand for nurses, paramedics, early childhood educators, teachers, transportation, and basic infrastructure.
You can't build a mine, a highway, or a battery factory without also building an ecosystem that allows people to live relatively ordinary, everyday lives around extraordinary projects.
Ontario's recent labor mobility reforms, allowing certified workers from across Canada to begin working in the province more quickly, are an important step in removing red tape from the system. These changes will reduce waiting periods and help attract qualified workers to the field more quickly. But they are the solution to only half the problem.
The other half, the more complex one, is everything else: housing, community, etc.
and social systems that prevent what could be a boom town from becoming a burnout.
I lived through the last Canadian boom in terms of national projects. When I was working on projects for
Fort McMurray was changing every week. What was once a remote northern town has become a real city with expanding neighborhoods, schools being built, a growing hospital, widening highways and recreation centers being built. He suddenly became younger, larger, and in constant tension.
Fort McMurray did receive the services it needed. But it didn't happen automatically and it certainly didn't happen overnight. It took years of pressure, continued support from all levels of government to maintain rapid growth, and a huge civic effort on the part of the people who built lives there rather than just earned a paycheck.
Here's the thing: Even when governments are trying their best, when the money is flowing, the workers are coming, and everyone understands the stakes, the community-building side of these projects is always the hardest part. He is always behind where he works. And the burden on people living there can be enormous.
These are the lessons Canada needs to remember now.
If we want to bring major projects to rural or northern Canada, we need a plan not just for miners and engineers, but also for nurses, housing, child care options, broadband and local emergency rooms. If we want to build and electrify the nation, we need livable communities to house and maintain power plants, substations, transmission lines, and workers.
Canada is rediscovering what our grandparents instinctively understood. Big countries do big things.
But there is a second part of this wisdom, the part that we have forgotten. Great things only last when you build human infrastructure around them. When you create a place where a welder can start a family. Where does the nurse see the future? Where the community will not collapse under the weight of its own growth.
This is the lesson of communities like
. This is wisdom for ambitious projects like Ring of Fire. And this opportunity is before us now.
If Canada truly wants to build at scale, with purpose and sustainably, we need to build the communities that make projects possible.
Because nation building is not just about work, but about the people who make a nation worth building.
Todd Clyde is the CEO and founding partner of Blue Branch.
