Commentary
Canada cannot build a prosperous future if every major project becomes an endless regulatory exercise. Yet that is the logic behind much of the opposition to Ottawa’s proposed Strategy to Protect Nature.
In criticizing the strategy, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society National Executive Director Sandra Schwartz described nature protection as “nation-building infrastructure.” She is right. But if nature is infrastructure, then it must be subject to the same trade-offs and hard choices as every other form of infrastructure.
Schwartz’s phrase deserves scrutiny because infrastructure is not a synonym for “sacred.” Infrastructure is what societies build, maintain, prioritize, and sometimes reroute when circumstances change. It is subject to cost-benefit analysis, to competing demands, to the recognition that doing nothing has costs too….