The Canadian government is considering spending $6 billion to $12 billion to introduce what it calls “high-frequency trains” between Toronto and Quebec City. Though some media reports have described these as high-speed trains (which generally means trains capable of...
Big Topics & Big Ideas
Calgary Transit is mired in the past, building an obsolete transit system designed for an archaic view of a city. Before the pandemic, transit carried 45 percent of downtown Calgary employees to work, but less than 10 percent of workers in the rest of the Calgary...
The jury is still out in Winnipeg: should governments be spending money on roads or more public transit? Well, a new policy brief from the Frontier Centre show that the sooner governments abandon their bias against cars the better. A recent University of Toronto paper...
A Snapshot of Property Rights Protection in Canada After 10 years
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
• A recent University of Toronto paper by Jeff Allen and Steven Farber examines work access as measured in travel time to get to work. The “30-minute job access” is a rounded-up average in all heavily populated regions in Canada. • The 2021 census revealed that...
The latest urban planning fad to sweep across Canada is the 15-minute city, which proposes to redesign cities so that all urban residents live within an easy, 15-minute walk of schools, retailers, restaurants, entertainment, and other essentials of modern life. This...
Big Topics & Big Ideas
Canada’s first subway line, which opened in Toronto in 1954, was 7.4 kilometers long and cost $6.8 million per kilometer—$76 million per kilometer in today’s money. That seems a bargain compared to a subway line Toronto is now constructing at a projected cost of well...
Policy Series 241
WINNIPEG, [March 12 2024] Canada's transit landscape is experiencing a profound transformation as eight major cities embark on the ambitious journey of developing rail transit systems. This marks a significant departure from the conventional wisdom of the 1950s when...
“The trading of goods has been in our DNA as Indigenous People for centuries, but somewhere along the way this was lost. It’s time to regain our prosperity, for the betterment of our communities and for our country.” – NeeStaNan website
Manitobans – including First Nations in some of our most remote communities – deserve much improved access to public infrastructure and opportunity. First Nation leaders in Northern Manitoba have a point about expanding all-season road access to some of the most...
Manitoba Hydro’s President and CEO Jay Grewal spoke on January 30 to members of the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce, and shared the utility’s plans to meet Manitoba’s future energy needs. They include a search for more purchased power from private entities (which would...