Canada Needs a New Model for Building Cities Prime Minister Mark Carney's Canada Investment Summit has brought some of the world's largest pools of capital to Toronto with an ambitious objective: to catalyze $1 trillion of investment in Canada over the next five years. That's exactly the kind of ambition Canada needs. But it also raises a bigger question: Are we being ambitious enough about what we ask investors to invest in? Much of the discussion around investment understandably focuses on energy, critical minerals, AI, manufacturing and major national infrastructure. But Canada has another enormous investment challenge sitting in plain sight: our cities. Canadian municipalities are struggling to build the transit, housing infrastructure, water systems, public spaces and other assets needed to support population growth. The usual explanation is that cities don't have enough money. That's true — but I think it misses the larger problem. Canada doesn't simply have an urban infrastructure funding problem. We have an urban infrastructure business-model problem. Our current system is remarkably fragmented. A city plans a transit line. Another government funds part of it. Developers build housing around it. Landowners benefit from rising property values. Governments collect additional income, sales and corporate taxes, from the economic activity it creates. Pension funds and other institutional investors invest their capital elsewhere. Everyone participates in the economic value created by the infrastructure — but we rarely design the project from the beginning so that some of that value helps pay for the infrastructure itself. Instead, municipalities rely heavily on property taxes, development charges, debt and periodic funding agreements with provincial and federal governments. Then we wonder why it is so difficult to build. There is another way. Suppose we stopped thinking about a new subway line as simply a transportation expenditure. Think of it instead as the backbone of a 30-year urban investment strategy. The public sector could assemble land around stations, establish the planning framework, build the infrastructure and retain ownership of strategically important public land. Private developers could compete for development rights. Instead of selling valuable public land outright, governments could use long-term ground leases. Some of the increase in land value created by the transit investment could be captured and reinvested. Commercial development, housing, district energy, station retail and other revenue-producing assets could create investable cash flows. The Canada Infrastructure Bank could provide patient capital or help reduce particular project risks. Canadian pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and global institutional investors could invest in assets capable of generating long-term returns. Government would still fund the portions that are genuinely public goods. But the entire project would be designed as an integrated economic platform, not a collection of disconnected expenditures. This requires more than new financing instruments. It requires a different institutional model. Our largest cities need dedicated Urban Investment Corporations that can combine public land, infrastructure, planning, development rights, and private capital into projects spanning several decades. City councils would still determine the public objectives. But professional investment and development organizations would turn those objectives into executable projects. There is an important principle here: Public infrastructure creates enormous economic value. The question is whether we deliberately capture some of that value for the public, or simply allow it to accrue elsewhere. Canada already has many of the ingredients. We have enormous pension funds. We have sophisticated infrastructure investors. We have the Canada Infrastructure Bank. We have valuable public land. We have rapidly growing cities. And now, through the Canada Investment Summit and a reinvigorated Invest in Canada, we are actively looking for opportunities to put large amounts of long-term capital to work. The opportunity is to connect those pieces. Instead of asking only: "Where will governments find the money to build our cities?" perhaps we should also ask: "How do we redesign our cities' growth so that it becomes investable?"

Wow!

Something is mentally wrong with this guy.

A truck loaded with thousands of copies of Roget's Thesaurus spilled its load leaving Toronto. Witnesses were stunned, startled, aghast, stupefied, confused, shocked, rattled, paralyzed, dazed, bewildered, surprised, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, confounded, astonished, and numbed.

Uber is piloting a new delivery vehicle for Toronto this winter.

Well, duh! Partnership means treating each other with mutual respect -- not as territories to be conquered.

This @globeandmail History of Alberta Separatism podcast is a first class analysis. I highly recommend that all Canadians listen to it. podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcas…

OK, that's pretty funny.

This report is worth reading, reviewing, and debating. Let's get started, folks.