Planning for Infrastructure to Realize Canada’s Potential: The Corridor Concept

Canada in 2016 faces new and uniquely modern challenges. At the same time, our prosperity largely depends on our nineteenth and twentieth century accomplishments. Canada was built by visionaries who were able to overcome massive geographic and topographic challenges to create a great trading country, bound together and made successful by infrastructure projects like the trans-continental railways, highways and the St. Lawrence Seaway. But as we approach the 150th anniversary of Confederation, today’s Canada faces serious challenges to its continued growth and prosperity as a trading country; challenges that are political and economic as well as geographic: improving access for our goods to diversified international markets, improving interprovincial trade and, most importantly, including the north in the prosperity of the south. Is there a way to unite Canada economically east, west, north and south, to bring badly needed trade diversification, and to encourage private investment in national infrastructure projects? The School of Public Policy and CIRANO have done initial research on this issue, and we conclude that there are strong grounds to start a discussion about a Northern Corridor rightof-way