An Abundance Agenda for Canadian Transportation

Planks for a federal transport platform, for any party that wants them

Canadians live with scarcity.

We live in a country where we don’t have enough housing; where our transport systems—roadways, transit, airports—are congested; and where our regulatory systems throttle attempts to build more.

Our failure to build has begun to bite, and at a difficult time. President Trump threatens punitive tariffs on Canadian goods and refuses to stop making almost-threats to annex the country. As America ceases to be a reliable partner, Canada can no longer rely on access to US markets to drive its prosperity. Belatedly, Canadians are realizing that no one is coming to do the work for us; we must build our own future.

As a former civil servant tasked with building new things, and as a present-day voice calling for an aggressive strategy on driving automation, I've seen firsthand Canada’s inability to build in a timely fashion, or even to take seriously the idea that we should try.

The upcoming federal election, the campaign for which is already underway, provides an opportunity to change course.

Today in Changing Lanes I want to offer a transportation platform for any party willing to embrace it. This platform relies on the abundance agenda, the most salient intellectual movement for diagnosing our problems, and solving them. By embracing that agenda, we can create the transportation system that a resilient and prosperous Canada will need.

Understanding the Abundance Agenda

So what is the abundance agenda, and how can it transform our transportation networks?

It’s been discussed under a variety of names. These include supply-side progressivism, state-capacity libertarianism, and techno-futurism, but the abundance agenda seems to have won the contest for naming rights, with Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson—two forerunners of the idea—co-writing the just-released Abundance. The book’s central thesis is that the United States, and by extension, the West as a whole, has become too procedurally complex to build the things societies need—housing, energy infrastructure, transportation networks—at the scale and pace required.¹

This is an important book, and closely related to the matters we are most interested in at Changing Lanes. I plan to review it in depth in a future newsletter, but for now, the key insight worth highlighting is this: sometime in the 1970s, Western governance shifted from building things to preventing the building of things. Proceduralism replaced results-oriented governance, contracting requirements multiplied costs without improving outcomes, and government outsourcing hollowed out public-sector capacity. These changes sprang from several sources: a desire to protect natural heritage from wanton destruction, a turn away from growth as seemingly-unsustainable in the face of oil-price shocks, and a default stance of skepticism toward government, as 1960s optimism about big institutions curdled into 1970s suspicion.

The result was a national mood that seemed to take prosperity as a fait accompli, a feature of the world, one that would naturally persist, leaving only one vital question, namely how to divide up its benefits; and especially avoid further harms. Because building things always incurs harms: new housing creates noise, new neighbours compete for street parking, and new subway tunnels (to say nothing of new airports) are disruptive. Proceduralism, with its emphasis on legal review and stakeholder consultation, provided a framework for ensuring those harms were distributed equally; or rather, were not inflicted at all, by making building so burdensome that it often didn’t happen.

Klein and Thompson argue that this failure to build has had profound consequences. They identify a pattern where the policy changes of the 1970s have created “regulatory sediment”, meaning layers of process requirements that individually might be reasonable but collectively paralyze progress. In their analysis, this has led to dramatically higher costs and longer timelines for infrastructure projects, effectively pricing societies out of the investments needed for continued prosperity. When more housing can't be added near transit, or new transit stations can’t be added to neighbourhoods without it, then people must accept longer commutes and higher housing costs.

The abundance agenda sets itself against all this.

Fundamentally, the abundance agenda recognizes that prosperity isn’t something we have definitively achieved, such that the only question left to resolve is how to divide up its benefits. Nor is prosperity something we’re entitled to; Tyler Cowen wrote a whole book to show that it’s not a natural feature of our world. To the extent we are prosperous today, it’s because previous generations invested in substantial infrastructure: power stations, transmission lines, highways, subways, airports, and especially new housing. Our failure to build means that our contemporary prosperity is in question, and our future prosperity is very much in question.

This pattern is particularly evident in Canadian transportation policy. Canada built most of its transportation infrastructure—highways, subways, railways—before the 1970s, with relatively modest additions in the half-century since.

But Canada's complacency has an additional dimension: we've long assumed that the United States would protect our economic interests and provide Canadians with stable access to their markets. Recent events have broken this assumption. President Trump's tariff regime, and his constant annexation rhetoric, have severely alarmed Canadians, to the extent that this present federal election has only one issue: what to do about Trump, and how to make Canada resilient to his threats.

I have called this moment a ‘darker age’, in which Canada can no longer rely on the USA as an open market, or even as a partner. It lends urgency to the need for a Canadian abundance agenda. If we can no longer depend on untroubled access to American markets, we must take steps to enable more efficient internal trade, access international markets beyond the US, and determine for ourselves how to govern emerging technologies, rather than relying placidly on the Americans to do it for us.

All of which is to say, Canada must build its own prosperity, and recognize that we cannot rely on the USA to do the hard parts and then slipstream in its wake. We will have to do it ourselves. This geopolitical context infuses the abundance agenda for Canada with both necessity and opportunity.

Necessity, because Canada has no choice but to rapidly adapt to this darker age.

Opportunity, because this moment can inspire us to do hard things.

Abundance with Canadian Characteristics

Into this moment comes the Build Canada initiative, a volunteer non-profit that aims to rejuvenate Canadian infrastructure policy. As stated on their website, Build Canada was created because its founders “got sick of sharing bold ideas on social media, in private chats and political events, and seeing nothing happen”. Their explicit goal is to “bridge the gap between 'great entrepreneurial idea' and 'a real policy a leader can use’”. The team includes friend of Changing Lanes

Benjamin Parry

, as well as

Andrew Potter

, with whom I disagree occasionally but whose writing I admire; if you have a spare moment, scan his archives at the old In Due Course blog.

The Build Canada platform focuses on policy ideas that support growth, innovation, and prosperity. Their approach aims to overcome what they describe as “small thinking, bureaucratic inertia, and special interests” that have prevented Canada from realizing its potential. Their platform specifically aims to support “selling more Canadian products and resources around the world,” implementing “changes to boost productivity and competitiveness,” and developing “a culture that celebrates freedom and ambition.”

Build Canada's foundational belief, namely that Canada “could be the most abundant nation on earth” if we overcome bureaucratic obstacles, aligns perfectly with the abundance agenda for transportation, even though they don’t use the Klein and Thompson framing explicitly.

In the transportation domain, Build Canada's policy recommendations include two noteworthy memos that exemplify abundance thinking. Harley Finkelstein's Let's Show the World How Canada Builds presents a detailed plan for implementing high-speed rail in the Toronto-Quebec City corridor that could transform 40% of Canada's economy. Rather than focusing solely on the what, Finkelstein emphasizes the how; he proposes creating a centralized authority with technical expertise that can deliver the project on time and on budget. He advocates for detailed upfront planning, standardized infrastructure designs, and streamlined permitting to avoid the pitfalls that have plagued similar projects in the UK and California. The proposal directly challenges the fragmented, consultant-heavy approach that has led to chronic cost overruns and delays in Canadian infrastructure projects.

Meanwhile, Stewart Lyons' Build Here, Not There: Winning the Transportation Race tackles the regulatory fragmentation hampering transportation innovation. Lyons points out how municipal control over emerging technologies has created a hostile environment for innovation, with inconsistent rules across jurisdictions driving businesses away. He proposes to centralize transportation regulation under Transport Canada, creating “one standard [for] one nation”. This is already the case in telecommunications, where federal policies supersede those of other jurisdictions. Lyons offers this approach as one that will make Canada “the friendliest place in the world to build new transportation technologies”.

To date, and to my chagrin, the memos have only received media coverage to the extent that they are seen, in some quarters, as ‘gaffes’. Perennial bad-faith actor Paris Marx took to the Toronto Star to make the specious argument that Build Canada is nothing more than proposals by “a coterie of Canada’s tech elite” to “serve their own interests,” and patted himself on the back for “calling out [Canada’s] would be tech overlords before it’s too late”. I had expected better of Canada’s tech journal, The Logic, but it merely took pains to note that all of the authors that Build Canada has published to date have been men. I shake my head at the idea that the gender of the memo’s authors, rather than the content of the memos themselves, is the thing worth talking about here.

At least these critiques serve as a helpful example of the broader problem that the abundance agenda points to, namely proceduralism. To a proceduralist, whether an idea is good, or can be implemented, is not relevant. What matters is if the 'right' steps were taken to generate that idea, and whether it is endorsed by ideologically-approved sources. If not, it may be lazily dismissed.

Abundance thinking challenges this focus on process over substance. If the house is burning down, we don’t ask whether the nozzle of the firehose is made of copper or steel.

I note in passing that Build Canada’s proposals align not only with the abundance agenda, but also with my own work. The Canadian Automated Vehicle Initiative's white paper, which I co-prepared, began by recommending national regulations for automated vehicles (AVs), superseding those of other governments. The paper argues that a unified federal approach would prevent the emergence of conflicting provincial regulations that impede innovation… which is a well-founded concern, as Ontario permits AV pilots while British Columbia has banned them. That take aligns perfectly with Lyons' vision of regulatory harmonization, as the white paper explicitly calls for Transport Canada to “provide stronger leadership and a clear federal framework that would prevent the fragmentation of CAV regulation at the provincial and municipal levels”.

I also note that, here at Changing Lanes, we’ve explored abundance-aligned ideas across various domains. Canada Should Make Air Travel Sustainable argues that Canada should leverage its strengths in renewable energy and aerospace engineering to lead in sustainable aviation. Our Progress and Public Transit series diagnosed the Endless Emergency in transit funding, which I proposed to solve by moving transit to a full-farebox-recovery basis. And our sketch of transport policy for this darker age would have to annoy leftists by getting rid of environmental assessment of transit projects, but also rightists by charging for road use.

It's notable that there’s room for disagreement in the abundance tent. Finkelstein's Build Canada memo argues that Canada should build high-speed rail, while I oppose that project in favour of high-frequency service. But we align on core principles: the problem of local veto power over projects with broader benefits, the importance of regulatory streamlining for faster implementation, and the value of focusing on outcomes rather than process.

These principles provide the foundation for the agenda that follows.

An Abundance Agenda for Canadian Transport

Canada is currently having a national election. Changing Lanes is a non-partisan newsletter, so I offer these ideas as planks for any party’s policy platform, free to all takers.

Drawing from both the abundance framework and Canada's specific transportation challenges, I propose five key policy shifts that would transform our approach to building and managing transportation infrastructure. Each is one I have written about extensively elsewhere; please follow the links for more detail.

First, create a national transportation regulatory framework that centralizes authority for emerging technologies under Transport Canada to make Canada the most innovation-friendly jurisdiction for mobility technologies. This would enable companies developing autonomous vehicles, drones, and other novel transportation solutions to operate nationwide without navigating conflicting local regulations, positioning Canada as a global leader in transportation innovation. As the CAVI white paper, and Lyons’ memo for Build Canada, both argue, a patchwork of regulations has only created “significant operational challenges” that hinder adoption of new technologies.

Second, reform environmental assessment processes for transit, transportation, and energy infrastructure projects at both federal and provincial levels, implementing mandatory time limits and a presumption in favor of building. These differ across Canadian jurisdictions, and some, like Ontario, already have somewhat-streamlined approaches for housing and transit; but far more remains to be done. Radical reform would dramatically reduce the years-long delays that currently plague infrastructure development, allowing critical energy transmission lines, transit systems, and transportation networks to be built at the pace our economy requires. The German model, where judicial review of transportation projects occurs through a separate tribunal with decisions that aren't eligible for appeal, offers a potential blueprint.

Third, invest aggressively in vehicle automation across all transportation modes, prioritizing rail and bus automation to dramatically reduce operating costs while improving service frequency. This would address the Endless Emergency in transit funding by creating a sustainable path to farebox recovery, while positioning Canada at the forefront of transportation technology. With labor accounting for 42% to 70% of bus operating costs, automation presents the clearest path to financial sustainability for transit systems. Federal grants for transit spending should prioritize automation, as it is the quickest win to achieve.

Fourth, align transportation and land-use planning by lifting restrictions on density around all rapid-transit stations. By removing height restrictions, setbacks, and other impediments to growth within 400m of stations, we can ensure both transit viability and housing abundance. The current pattern—exemplified by Toronto's Line 2 subway stations surrounded by two-story buildings—represents a massive misallocation of infrastructure investment that abundance thinking must correct. Federal contributions to public-transit projects should be contingent on provincial partners implementing such a requirement.

Finally, commit to always pursue at least one grand-scale national transportation project as a matter of national discipline and unity. In a country as vast as Canada, a unifying transportation vision—whether sustainable aviation, next-generation rail networks, or other breakthrough mobility solutions—are valuable economically, but also politically. They strengthen our national fabric by physically connecting our dispersed population. Just as the transcontinental railway bound Canada together in its early years, ambitious transportation projects can reaffirm our national purpose in this darker age.

The transportation abundance agenda outlined here offers a path forward that transcends traditional political divides. It combines market-oriented regulatory streamlining (often coded right) with investment in state capacity and public infrastructure (often coded left), creating space for both private initiative and public coordination.

As Canada approaches an election and navigates an increasingly uncertain international environment, we should push candidates from all parties to address these issues specifically. How will they reform environmental assessment to enable faster infrastructure development? What approaches to intercity transportation will they prioritize? How will they balance local concerns with national priorities in transport?

Now, more than ever, Canada needs to remove the barriers that prevent us from building and expanding a 21^st-century economy. The country is doing well by removing internal trade barriers and choosing to invest in itself. The next, important step is to find ways to reduce regulatory friction and create material abundance.

1. Japan is an outlier here, as it seems to be doing well at building new things, under some circumstances. But western Europe is largely indicted as well, and the Anglosphere—the U.K., Australia, and Canada—are absolutely indicted.