OPINION: Canada is building the future in silos — which is why we need a national coordination office

I read an opinion piece recently that talked about China's strategic advantage over the West. It suggested their advantage lies not in superior technology but rather its ability to integrate network, cloud, AI, and energy into a unified control architecture, while western companies remain fragmented and unable to act as a cohesive system. It got me thinking about infrastructure projects in Ontario, and, from a macro perspective, Canada — specifically projects that support building integrated communications infrastructure. The question nobody is asking out loud is whether we have a coherent vision and picture of the infrastructure we’re trying to create. MORE FROM JASON: Ottawa is spending billions on defence while leaving our critical infrastructure undefended With the federal government's 2025 Budget committing $51 billion over ten years through the new Build Communities Strong Fund, along with a new Major Projects Office and an expanded Canada Infrastructure Bank, governments across every province are committing to net-zero energy transitions, utility infrastructure upgrades, universal broadband connectivity, faster transit, and a digital economy capable of competing in a world being reshaped by artificial intelligence. The budget also sets aside $1 billion over four years specifically for Arctic infrastructure. These are generation-defining mandates, each backed by real capital, real timelines, and real political promises. But supporting these initiatives involves numerous mandates that are often not coordinated with one another, whether within or across provincial owners. Transit progresses independently, power operates separately, and broadband follows its own path. Everyone is digging their trenches without a clear understanding of where these lines intersect. More crucially, no one has a comprehensive view of what the final integrated infrastructure should look like, what it is ultimately meant to support provincially, or how it fits into a larger federal plan. The information needed to build that picture already exists. We know roughly where AI compute demand is heading, which tells us where power corridors, fibre density, and cooling infrastructure need to be located. We know which communities are structurally underserved and where new capacity will determine whether they remain viable over the next twenty years. LEO constellations will continue to impact rural connectivity, and the ground station infrastructure to support Canadian space-based assets needs to go somewhere — ideally, somewhere that could use everything else that comes with a serious infrastructure investment anyway. None of this is a mystery, but it is sitting in a dozen federal and provincial agencies with no obligation to compare notes. Nowhere is this more visible than the Arctic. Sovereignty, defence, resource corridors, and northern connectivity are all moving at once, across the same geography, with no one holding the full picture. The decisions being made there are not reversible. The private sector is also filling this gap, but that only compounds the problem. A hyperscaler breaking ground on a data centre, a regional ISP running fibre along a highway corridor, and a tower company building in an underserved region, some moving through a permitting process, others not, but all invisible to those making the big capital decisions. Does it fill a gap or duplicate something already in the pipeline? Is the overlap useful redundancy or waste? The question never gets asked. The asset gets built and disappears from view. Permitted projects are just one aspect. Early discussions should include a company still in the planning stage, a rural operator designing a fibre ring, or a clean energy developer testing the feasibility of their calculations. These talks are essential before sites are finalized and economic details are settled. Any project, whether permitted or still in planning, should have a place to ask whether it fits the picture, whether nearby corridors change the economics, and whether public funding exists to support a project that is in the public’s best interest and aligns with the national objective. At the very least, it should be on a national registry. What Canada needs is a standing, non-partisan office whose job is to hold the full picture — a live geospatial view of everything significant being planned or permitted across transport, energy, digital, water, and housing, public and private. It should have actual authority to require that the view be consulted before projects break ground. It should report to legislatures, not just the cabinet, so there is a public record of whether coordination happened, not just whether it was announced. Done right, this could change how projects are funded. Infrastructure capital in Canada flows through proposal cycles and political timing. An office holding a live national picture establishes an ongoing federal-provincial funding mechanism in which dollars flow toward projects that demonstrably advance the coordinated vision. The rationale becomes clear. This project fills this gap. Here is the gap. Here’s how it supports the vision. For this to work, provinces must be actively involved in decision-making. A federal presence covering half the country would exactly reproduce the coordination failure the office is meant to solve. Federal-provincial infrastructure collaboration has a long history of being announced and celebrated, yet it is often overlooked in practice. Effective cooperation requires shared data, common mapping, and collective accountability. These elements need to be integrated into the system itself; a simple memorandum of understanding isn’t enough to ensure it. What gets built in the next ten years will shape what Canada can do over the next fifty. Infrastructure isn’t policy. It doesn’t get revised in the next budget cycle. It gets inherited. Jason Presement is the founder and Principal of Verity Aptus, an advisory practice that helps forward-thinking communication service providers and tech companies with market development and infrastructure strategy. He also publishes Jason’s Industry Insights, a weekly newsletter covering broadband, telecom, and critical infrastructure. The positions and opinions expressed by The Wire Report columnists and contributors are solely reflective of the author’s perspective and do not necessarily reflect The Wire Report’s views or values.

OPINION: Canada is building the future in silos — which is why we need a national coordination office

Regulatory |
By Jason Presement
|April 15, 2026

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OPINION: Canada is building the future in silos — which is why we need a national coordination office

Regulatory | By Jason Presement |April 15, 2026

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