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?"

This is the correct analysis.

🇨🇦 Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves seems to have forgotten that acquiring Stelco came with legally binding commitments to Canadian workers. ⚖️ Under Canada’s Investment Canada Act, sections 39 and 40, Ottawa can pursue enforcement of those commitments, including court-ordered compliance and penalties. Cleveland-Cliffs championed Trump’s steel tariffs, which undermine Canadian production, and now wants to lay off hundreds of Canadian workers. You cannot support policies that damage your Canadian operations and then simply walk away from the employment commitments that helped secure federal approval of your acquisition. This isn’t about nationalization. It’s about enforcing the law and holding foreign investors accountable. If Cleveland-Cliffs has breached its undertakings, Ottawa should act. An agreement is an agreement. 🇨🇦 📰 theglobeandmail.com/business… #Stelco #ClevelandCliffs #CanadianSteel #Trade

So why are you even here? If you really believe that “Canada is a white supremacist, racist, colonial project” and you “don’t even consider (yourself) to be Canadian because this is occupied indigenous land,” then maybe you should end your part in the occupation and leave. Or do you prefer to denigrate Canada as a dystopian hellscape while benefitting from the country that hard working people have built over centuries, including a prosperous market economy, enormously generous social benefits, and the rule of law in a rights respecting liberal democracy?

This is brilliant.

Says the man who signed CUSMA with Canada’s dairy tariff-rate quotas explicitly in it. Your own administration published a fact sheet celebrating those negotiated terms. “Nobody knew”? They were in your deal. Did you catch Canada in the act, or finally read what you signed? 🇨🇦

Former British banker and whistleblower Simon Andriesz, 57, has died by suicide. Andriesz had exposed U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s past links to Jeffrey Epstein, including evidence of a 2018 email exchange about a start-up business. Source: The Banker

There’s a troubling pattern developing in Canadian political discourse: cheering virtually any U.S. action that hurts fellow Canadians because it can be turned into partisan ammunition at home. And it deserves more scrutiny when separatist movements in Alberta and Quebec are simultaneously looking outside Canada for relationships or support while challenging Canadian unity. Alberta separatist representatives have already met with U.S. officials. Criticizing Ottawa is legitimate. Supporting provincial autonomy is legitimate. Supporting separation is a legitimate political position too. But cheering punitive foreign policies against Canadians because you dislike their politics is something different. At some point, Canadians should ask: when does partisan loyalty become more important than the interests of your own country? Your political opponents are still your fellow Canadians. 🇨🇦 We should be extremely cautious about allowing foreign political interests to exploit our internal divisions, regardless of whether those divisions originate in Alberta, Quebec, Ontario or anywhere else.

We came in peace…he already talking about tariffs on our spaceships.

Pentagon excludes key allies from NATO meeting - POLITICO politico.com/news/2026/09/30…

Suggest you delete this post, Eric. It's pretty gross.

Nothing is free. Either money has to come from somewhere else or the service is not funded adequately to maintain reliability. Good economics charges a price equivalent to the amount of infrastructure consumed.

US Ambassador to China David Purdue revealed this morning that President Trump offered to sell modern US weapon systems to our greatest enemy Communist China which General Jack Keane stated has been ramping up arms shipments to Iran. This offer was made in flagrant violation of US laws which prohibit the transfer of any US military technology to the PRC let alone weapon systems. This just serves to underscore what a lawless president Trump has become. We can add this one to the list of his impeachable offenses.

🇨🇦🇺🇸 There is a massive amount of sunk capital tying our economies together, and it goes far beyond energy. 🏭 Factories and specialized tooling 🚗 Integrated auto and parts plants 🚂 Railways and logistics networks ⚡ Transmission infrastructure 🌾 Fertilizer and agricultural distribution ⛏️ Critical mineral processing ✈️ Aerospace and defence supply chains 🚢 Ports, terminals and warehouses 🛢️ Pipelines and refineries Public and private investors spent decades and trillions building these systems around an integrated North American market. Diversification is possible, but it means new suppliers, infrastructure, financing, permitting, logistics and sometimes stranding perfectly productive existing capital. Meanwhile, we’re asking North American companies to compete with China and other enormous industrial blocs while simultaneously making our own continental supply chains more expensive. It makes North America look strategically incoherent: integrate for 40 years, spend trillions building around that integration, then deliberately increase the cost of using it. That doesn’t make Canada or America more competitive. It makes North America less competitive. 🇨🇦🤝🇺🇸🇲🇽 #CUSMA #USMCA #Trade #Manufacturing #Competitiveness

Hey @NavdeepSBains How about you get behind this idea?

Hey folks. Since Trump is talking about building an arch, I have a proposal. Why don’t we build one in Toronto but better—on the Toronto Island? The best view of Toronto is arguably from the island. This arch could be like the St.Louis Arch — with an elevator to the top — but bigger and with a really nice viewing platform. It would frame the CN Tower and the Rogers Centre providing a new iconic image of Toronto. At the bottom of the arch looking over the city, we would build a fantastic restaurant and we would call it The Harbour Room. Lawn space out front would be perfect for weddings and special events. I’ve done a pro forma on this. It could become a massive money making visitor attraction. Let me know if you’re interested in working on it with me.

“Could America’s oil deal in Venezuela be a model for other countries?” So they are saying it out loud? The US plans to overthrow the governments of other countries, take their oil as if it is their own, and turn them into client vassal states?

Canada experienced net negative migration in the first half of 2026. It is also currently below its historical unemployment average. There are plenty of issues to discuss if you drill down deeper. But POTUS is not engaging with reality in this post.

CSIS should investigate whether Sylvain is a foreign agent.

The Archie Bunker?