To build a national power grid, Ottawa should open its chequebook, not the Constitution

The country has done this before. In the 1880s, the unifying technology was steel rail, and the political insight was that Ottawa had to pay for what the provinces could not. The technology has changed. The lesson has not.

Power lines near the Bruce nuclear power generation station near Kincardine, Ont. Canada's grid is balkanized. Power flows south into the United States far more easily than it moves east or west between provinces. Quebec sells to New England; Manitoba and British Columbia sell south; trade between provinces is a rounding error next to it.The Hill Times photograph by Kristen Shane

Opinion

BY JATIN NATHWANI, BARRY APPLETON

June 25, 2026

Canada was built around a railway. The country's next unifying project runs along many of the same rights of way, but it carries electrons instead of freight.

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