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Kelly McParland: Doug Ford's build build build ethos runs into Canadian obstructionism
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has big ideas. Bigger than big. Like, Mega Big. He loves to build — the more ambitious, the better. Probably no politician in Canada is more intent on meeting Prime Minister Mark Carney’s call to “build, baby, build” than the Conservative leader.
A big new highway . A big new spa , science centre and concert venue. A really big new tunnel . A massive new convention centre. The world’s largest nuclear station . Transit all over the place. You name it, Ford will break ground on it. Today, if you let him.
Is the premier getting praise for all this construction activity? In Canada, are you joking? The moaning is enough to drown out the backhoes. A new highway with all those cars? An expanded airport with all that noise? More high-rises with all those shadows? And nuclear … aren’t we supposed to hate nuclear, like we used to hate coal? Windmills is what we want, people, windmills !
The premier gets impatient when he hears this stuff. His response to complaints about his sudden enthusiasm for expanding runways at the smallish Billy Bishop airport on Toronto Island, enabling it to handle jets, was typical. “I know Mayor (Olivia) Chow wants to expand it,” he said. “She may disagree with the jets, but those jets are coming in there, one way or another.”
Chow says she’s against jets so close to a shoreline forested with condos. Too bad. Ford’s already declared plans to take over the airport, which the province doesn’t currently control. In Ford’s Ontario, you snooze, you lose. Build baby build waits for no one.
Much as his plans jibe with federal strategy, there are legitimate concerns when it comes to the premier’s projects. Ford has a tendency to announce first and plan later. A scheme to build housing in the protected Greenbelt was halted by a public backlash.
His call for a gigantic new “world class convention centre” seemed to catch everyone off guard. The existing hall was busy hosting an enormous annual mining event with attendees from around the globe when he denounced the site as “one of the worst in the world,” maintaining that the city is losing conventions to bigger, grander facilities elsewhere.
Keen to start on a replacement, he said he’d already picked out a location, “unlike any other location in the entire world.… Wait until you see the design.” The site, it turned out, doesn’t yet exist, but is to be created by dumping landfill along Toronto’s lakefront. That brought the usual hoots of derision from regular Never-Forders. “It’s just another idiotic idea,” griped Ontario NDP Leader Merit Stiles. “Nothing about this makes life easier for people in Ontario.”
The lack of immediate practical benefits is a regular complaint about Ford’s big projects. Adding jets to Billy Bishop, which is currently limited to turbo-props, won’t do anything for the homeless or the price of gas. The $1 billion he’s ready to spend on a blingy new science centre won’t help the province’s struggling universities or pacify critics angry at the closing of the old science centre.
A new convention facility might attract more business, but won’t it just add to downtown Toronto’s chronic gridlock? And don’t even mention the revamp going on at Ontario Place, the lakefront park and playground, with its $400-million taxpayer-financed parking garage and its privately-run luxury spa, or the tunnel the premier swears he’ll dig under Ontario’s grossly overburdened Highway 401, which almost nobody other than Ford believes will ever be built.
It’s all grist for criticism, objections, red tape and the debilitating Canadian resistance to big ideas that both Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre blame for Canada’s economic constipation. “In the middle of a massive price hike for oil, our industry is not expanding, it’s retreating,” Poilievre asserted as the Iran war affected global supplies. Carney takes regular flak for jetting around the world signing trade deals and investment agreements, rather than spending his days taking questions in Parliament.
Carney and Poilievre both insist the country needs to tear down barriers, speed up permitting, expand infrastructure and find new markets outside the United States. But just try and put up some infrastructure or cut through the layers of bureaucratic obstructionism without finding yourself a target for well-honed delaying tactics.
Canada’s largest city may have a critical housing crisis, yet forfeited millions in federal funds rather than allow construction of six-unit buildings in other than a few locations. When a developer attempted to build an innovative structure with 10 units in six stories, local residents succeeded in having it blocked even though it met regulations.
Provincial leaders have spent a year now seeking ways to reduce their own barriers, only to find few changes that are even remotely acceptable. The courts are happy to help with impediments: when Ford tried to remove bike lanes from some major arteries, a judge ruled it unconstitutional. If you can’t close a bike lane without a constitutional roadblock, what hope is there for more ambitious quests?
Ford has nonetheless managed some victories despite the barriers. Construction is set to begin on a much-debated, much-delayed all-season road to the Ring of Fire, a mineral-rich region in northern Ontario. An array of hospital projects is underway, including a $14-billion expansion turning a Mississauga facility into Canada’s biggest teaching hospital.
Ground is due to be broken on a new 52-kilometre highway diverting traffic away from the 401, a project mothballed by the previous Liberal government but revived by the Conservatives. And a site has been approved for a new nuclear plant capable of generating enough electricity for 10-million homes.
Someone has to build those homes, of course, yet there’s little sign of progress on that front. A deal was reached with Ottawa in June after tense negotiations, but municipal barriers remain formidable and relations with local leaders are often fraught. Condo sales have all but ceased and home purchases hit a 45-year low in 2025. There are properties available but while prices have eased, they remain out of reach for many. Ford calls the situation a “massive inferno.”
Cue the Fordian fire department. The premier is nothing if not determined. Barely a year into his third term, he’s already announced plans to seek a fourth. Big plans will no doubt be forthcoming. Complaints are sure to follow.
National Post
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