The lesson Canada can’t forget as it sets out to do big things

Homes under construction stand in Fort McMurray, Alta., in 2013. Fort McMurray changed overnight from a remote northern town to a real city but it didn't automatically get the services it needed to cope with the boom. Photo by Brent Lewin /Bloomberg

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Canada is talking about building big again. There’s rare political consensus that we need to develop projects like the Ring of Fire, expand energy infrastructure, re-invigorate our industrial base and finally move critical projects from the realm of government announcements and press releases into reality.

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This is good. The ambition to build on a large scale has been missing from the national bloodstream for a long time. But ambition without capacity is just another kind of fantasy, and Canada is running out of time for fantasies.

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Every major project we talk about today has one thing in common, in that they all require far more than construction workers and engineers. They require communities capable of supporting the workers who will make these projects possible. And right now, we are not prepared.

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Governments love to announce workforce numbers: 1,200 workers here, 3,000 workers there. But the truth is more challenging. When you bring thousands of workers into a region, you also bring families, stress on local housing capacity and an immediate surge in demand for nurses, paramedics, early-childhood educators, teachers, transit and basic infrastructure.

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You can’t build a mine, a highway, or a battery plant without also building the ecosystem that lets people live relatively ordinary, everyday lives around extraordinary projects.

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Ontario’s recent labour mobility reforms, allowing certified workers from across Canada to begin working in the province more quickly, are an important step in removing red tape from the system. These changes will cut waiting periods and help get skilled workers on the ground faster. But they’re a solution to only half the problem.

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The other half — the harder one — is everything else: housing supply, community infrastructure and the social systems that prevent what could be a boomtown from turning into a burnout.

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I lived through the last Canadian boom what it came to national projects. When I worked on projects for the oilsands, Fort McMurray was transforming by the week. What had once been a remote northern town became a real city with expanding neighbourhoods, schools being built, a growing hospital, highways being widened and recreation centres going up. It was suddenly younger, sprawling and under constant strain.

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Fort McMurray did get the services it needed. But that didn’t happen automatically, and it certainly didn’t happen overnight. It required years of pressure, constant catch-up from all levels of government to support the rapid growth and an enormous civic effort from people who were building a life there, not just earning a paycheque.

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The point is this — even when governments are trying their best, when the money is flowing, workers are arriving, and everyone understands the stakes, the community-building side of these projects is always the hardest part. It always lags behind the job site. And the strain on the people who live there can be profound.