For much of Canadian history, nation-building was something people could physically see. Railways crossed enormous stretches of wilderness. Ports connected the interior of the country to international markets. Hydroelectric projects powered growing cities and industries. Highways brought communities closer together, airports connected regions that had once been separated by days of travel, and telecommunications networks gradually made one of the world’s largest countries feel smaller. These projects were rarely simple, inexpensive or universally popular, but together they helped transform a collection of distant regions into a functioning national economy.
Canada needs to rediscover that instinct.
One of the challenges facing the country today is that we have become remarkably good at discussing what Canada should become while sometimes struggling to build the physical systems required to make it happen. Housing needs infrastructure. Mines need roads and transmission lines. Manufacturers need reliable electricity. Farmers and resource producers need railways and ports. Northern communities need transportation and communications connections. Exporters need ways of reaching global markets that do not depend entirely upon a single foreign country.
Nationalism therefore has a physical dimension. A country becomes more independent when its citizens, businesses and governments possess the infrastructure required to move people, energy, goods and information across their own territory.
This is especially important for Canada because geography is both our greatest advantage and one of our greatest obstacles. Canada possesses extraordinary amounts of land, freshwater, forests, minerals, agricultural capacity and energy resources, but much of that wealth exists enormous distances from major population centres and export terminals. Resources underground do not create prosperity merely because they appear on a geological map. They become economically valuable when somebody can reach them, develop them responsibly, process them and move the resulting products to customers.
That is why seemingly mundane projects such as highways, electricity transmission, rail capacity and port expansions can be genuinely national projects. On August 28, 2026, for example, the federal government moved forward with the process of considering the Mackenzie Valley Highway in the Northwest Territories and the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project in British Columbia for treatment as projects of national interest under the Building Canada Act. Whatever Canadians ultimately think about the merits of individual projects, the broader debate is important because it forces the country to ask which pieces of infrastructure are significant enough to matter beyond a single municipality or province.
Canada should be having far more of those conversations.
A road into the North can create economic opportunities while also improving access to communities and strengthening Canada’s ability to operate throughout its own territory. An expanded port can give Canadian exporters greater access to Asian markets. An east-west electricity connection can allow one region’s generating capacity to support another. Better rail infrastructure can make Canadian products more competitive overseas. Modern telecommunications can allow people to build businesses in communities that previous generations might have had to leave.
The important principle is not that every proposed megaproject should automatically be approved in the name of patriotism. Poorly conceived projects remain poor projects, regardless of how many maple leaves appear in the announcement. Environmental consequences matter. Indigenous rights and partnerships matter. Economics matter. Local communities matter. Taxpayer dollars matter.
Nationalism should demand better decisions, not fewer questions.
But Canadians should also be willing to ask what happens when the default national response to building something becomes endless hesitation.
Infrastructure has a lifespan measured in decades. Decisions avoided today can shape the country’s economic possibilities in 2040, 2050 and beyond. A railway not expanded, an electricity corridor not constructed or a northern transportation link never completed may not create an obvious crisis tomorrow morning. Instead, the cost appears gradually through missed investment, reduced productivity, congested trade routes and communities that remain disconnected from opportunities elsewhere in the country.
There is also something psychologically important about building.
Countries need evidence that the future is going to be larger than the present.
A society that spends all of its time managing existing systems can become defensive. It begins debating how to divide what already exists rather than imagining what could be created next. By contrast, a country building ports, homes, energy systems, laboratories, transit networks and new industries communicates something important to its citizens: we expect to be here for a long time, and we expect the next generation to inherit more possibilities than we did.
Canada once connected an enormous continent with steel rails when much of the territory between communities was barely settled. Modern Canada possesses vastly greater technology, wealth and engineering capability.
We should not have lost the ambition.
Canadian nationalism should therefore include a simple idea that is not particularly glamorous but may be extraordinarily important.
Build Canada.
Not metaphorically.
Actually build it.
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