Reviving the ‘National Dream’: Why Canada Needs a Bold New Transportation Vision for 2025
Thunder Bay – OPINION – More than 150 years ago, Sir John A. Macdonald’s “National Dream,” the transcontinental railway, physically connected Canada and served as a vital tool for protecting sovereignty and unifying the young nation from coast to coast. Without it, homesteaders likely wouldn’t have settled the prairies, and over time, the United States might have expanded into the territory.
Today, as Canada faces economic uncertainty and trade challenges, including threats declarations from the Trump White House about the possibility of Canada becoming the “51st state,” there’s a clear call for a new national dream.
This vision, needed for 2025 and beyond, should prioritize bold investments in transportation infrastructure to secure Canada’s future.
A modern, robust, and independent transportation network isn’t just about economics; it’s essential for national survival. It is seen as a way to assert sovereignty, boost competitiveness, and ensure the efficient movement of Canadian goods, innovation, and people across the country’s vast geography.
While Ontario is already focusing on building roads to resources, particularly a path north to the Ring of Fire, achieving this goal requires the inclusion and reconciliation of Indigenous peoples who will be impacted, along with cooperation and investment to create real jobs in Northern Communities.
Canada faces several real threats to our transportation corridors.
Every time there is a major collision on Highway 17, part of the Trans-Canada Highway, our entire country is cut in half. While there have been efforts to expand the highway, and increase the rest areas and passing lanes, the real need is for a two way divided highway from coast to coast.
Experts have suggested several significant nation-building ideas to turbocharge Canada’s competitiveness, protect sovereignty, and ignite regional economies.
These “bold ideas for the 2025 National Dream” include:
• National Port Expansion and Integration Strategy: Canada should link its large and small ports to inland terminals and smart logistics hubs. This integration could create seamless coast-to-coast shipping lanes, connecting resources like Prairie grain, Quebec manufacturing, Atlantic seafood, and Northern minerals to global markets more quickly and smartly.
• Twinning Major Rail Corridors: Adding second lines to key rail routes could eliminate bottlenecks, significantly reduce shipping times, and cut emissions. For places like Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario, enhanced rail infrastructure could help re-establish the region as a central shipping crossroads.
• Building Trade Expressways: The southern Trans-Canada Highway is crucial, but experts imagine a twinned, high-speed expressway engineered for heavy freight and climate resilience. Additionally, a second Northern corridor could connect Canada’s resource-rich northern regions to global markets, opening new frontiers for prosperity.
• A National Freight Data Platform: Digitizing Canada’s freight movement across rail, trucking, marine, and air could eliminate costly delays, improve environmental performance, and make Canadian exports more attractive internationally.
• Arctic Gateways and Churchill’s Revival: Significant investment in Arctic shipping hubs, especially Churchill, Manitoba, could open entirely new trade routes as polar ice melts. Canada’s North is viewed not just as a frontier but as a gateway to Europe and Asia in the 21st century.
Building this next great national project will require bold leadership and extensive collaboration among provinces, Indigenous communities, private enterprise, and the federal government. The stakes are considered too high for caution.
As the world fragments into new alliances and power blocs, Canada must ensure it has the necessary infrastructure backbone to remain sovereign, prosperous, and united. The dream that once built a railway must now focus on building a smarter, faster, greener nation, ready for the future.
The time for the 2025 New National Dream is seen as now.
