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�鶹��ýӳ�� has no shortage of things to build.

ICBA Economics tracks across British Columbia and Alberta alone: housing, pipelines, mines, ports, powerlines, LNG plants, hospitals, water and sewer lines. Far too many sit in the “proposed” pile, waiting for a permit, a review or financing that never comes.

The waiting is the problem.

Prime Minister Mark Carney started his mandate last year expressing a clear imperative to move faster, yet major projects can sit before the federal government makes a decision.

. The Port of Vancouver, a federal agency, has spent . Meanwhile, the sense of urgency continues to escalate as   and traditional global trading alliances shift.

. He’s right. But a country at war doesn’t take 15 years to approve a mine, or . If �鶹��ýӳ�� is going to up its game, it has to build faster, cheaper and smarter.

Faster means a federal decision in under a year for every major project, not just those labelled in the “national interest.”

fast-tracks a select few and leaves all the others stuck in line. When elected officials start picking winners, there is always a lot more lost than won. Markets, investors, entrepreneurs will always recognize opportunity sooner and move faster than any government department or agency.

How governments should respond is no secret and has been well-documented: set hard deadlines for assessment, give project proponents dates that decisions will be issued, stop the overlap between Ottawa and the provinces, and apply the same rules to all projects. Ottawa’s laid most of this out. Put that plan into action now.

And none of this matters if the materials we need are sitting on a ship outside a closed port.

Since 2024, the federal labour minister has to end shutdowns at rail yards and ports. Over 16 months in 2023-24, West Coast port closures cost . When Vancouver and Prince Rupert stop moving steel, glass and electrical parts, projects stop too. . , a special mediator and a standing arbitration authority for critical sectors would give �鶹��ýӳ�� a predictable system instead of a yearly crisis, without taking away the right to strike.

Cheaper starts with housing. Residential �鶹��ýӳ�� costs are , against across the economy. Constant building and electrical code changes are a big part of that. and have paused code updates to protect affordable supply. �鶹��ýӳ�� should too, through 2030.

, and cities collect them up front, when a builder’s cash is tightest. Federal housing money should go to cities that cut those charges or collect them at occupancy.  Where cities are under pressure – maintaining existing power, water and sewer lines and building new ones – provincial and the federal governments need to help find ways to finance these projects.

Cheaper also means fixing demand. Housing starts in the Vancouver area . B.C. recorded , against roughly 6,000 in the same quarter of 2021.

The federal GST rebate on new homes reaches only first-time buyers, . Extend it to every buyer of a new home under $1.5 million. And when the , replace it with the : keep foreign buyers out of existing homes and let them finance the �鶹��ýӳ�� of new ones.

Smarter means a tax system built for this century. �鶹��ýӳ�� ranks 22^nd .

A stunning report issued last year by the C.D. Howe Institute revealed for every dollar per worker an American business invests in machinery and equipment, .

That isn’t a Donald Trump tariff story; it started long before. Tax reform is long overdue – it’s been a generation since there was a comprehensive review of the tax code. It’s hard to compete globally and attract investment in 2026, when the rules governing investment and capital flow were written in the 1980s.

And businesses have almost become numb to the red tape they battle every day. Federal rules now number , and CFIB says the average small business spends . Reduce that burden to 25 hours.

Smarter also means training the people who will do the work. Ottawa has committed real money to the �鶹��ýӳ�� workforce, but a . .

Funding that skips most of the workforce won’t build much. Extend it to open-shop contractors, private trainers and the colleges that already do most of this work.

No one preparing to address the historic infrastructure deficit facing our country would start by saying, “let’s deploy just 15 per cent of the people who are ready to build.” 

�鶹��ýӳ�� has the capital, the resources and the talent to build. What it lacks is a system that moves at the speed this moment demands. This fall’s budget is the federal government’s chance to take up this generational challenge.

Chris Gardner is president and CEO of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association. Send Industry Perspectives Op-Ed comments and column ideas to editor@dailycommercialnews.com.