A half century ago, a pair of design theorists coined a new term for tough times: “Wicked problems.†It’s a type of problem, neither inherently good nor bad, that is hard to define. It calls for many possible solutions but makes it impossible to adequately test them out. Worst of all, it’s impossible to tell when you’ve actually solved it.
Rising crime, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber write, is a wicked problem. You could add more cops, fewer cops, more social workers, more CCTV cameras: It will take years to see results, in either direction, and nobody will ever agree on what worked.
It’s an idea that nicely sums up the challenges facing Canada as it tries — and fails — to build big infrastructure and resource projects. From pipelines to LNG terminals, hydrogen projects, wind turbines, roads and railways: Things take so long that they just never happen.
Understanding wicked problems also helps explain some of the backlash to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s quest to get Canada building big things again — and it might even help us understand how to untangle them.
Let’s start by recognizing the reason for this wicked problem: Our smothering regulatory state, which requires interminable paperwork, public consultations, environmental assessments, bureaucratic way-finding, and arbitrary decision-making.
The Canada West Foundation has spent years . When they looked at our approval process for major infrastructure projects in 2019, they found it took an average of three-and-a-half years to get the necessary approvals — some projects took a decade. That same year, Ottawa unveiled a plan to streamline that system and duplicate overlap: the Impact Assessment Act which, they said, would impose new timelines and duplicate overlap.Â
Canada West found it made things worse: Projects spent years at the first step, the planning stage, even though it was supposed to take just 180 days. Projects that got in early aren’t expected to receive a decision until 2027.
This whole process, Canada West found, is “sluggish, duplicative, inefficient and subject to short-term political considerations.†And of course it is. You can’t speed things up by making them more complex.
Rittell and Webber saw this coming, way back in 1973: “[If] the problem is attacked on too low a level (an increment), then success of resolution may result in making things worse, because it may become more difficult to deal with the higher problems.â€Â
Our “higher problem†still remains. Canada has seen a increase in regulatory burden from 2006 to 2021, according to Statistics Canada, measurably harming economic growth, employment, investment, and productivity.Â
We have pressed new armies of high-price consultants into service to escort big projects through this regulatory labyrinth. When the University of ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ looked at the cost to build new public transit in the city, it found that such as consultants and regulatory compliance. That’s more than twice what other countries pay.
Of course, we have to consider that constructing this complicated, inscrutable system is a way of getting to “no†without actually having to say it.
Canada West argues it would be better if the government simply used their words. When cabinet refused a Suncor oilsands project, citing its heavy carbon emissions, they wrote, “Suncor heard the ‘no’ relatively early and not at the very end of the process.†That’s good.
More often, industry just gives up while waiting. Since 2020, commodity prices have risen sharply and yet more than worth of mining, energy, and forestry projects have been cancelled or suspended. When projects are killed in Canada, that capital flows elsewhere — usually south.
If you make it wildly complicated to build the things you don’t like, you also make it too complicated to build the things you do like.
According to the , it takes eight to ten years to build a wind-to-hydrogen plant, at least a decade for a critical minerals mine, a quarter-century for a new hydroelectric plant. They asked executives to name the biggest thing preventing more investment in the critical minerals sector: Nearly said excessive and slow regulation.Â
In their book “Abundance,†Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue that “we will not turn back climate change by persuading the world to starve itself of growth.â€Â
For too long, liberals and the left have been happy to see growth slow, in service of solving other wicked problems: Saving a tree, avoiding construction noise, or preserving their beautiful view. Our consumption has only grown, however, meaning we have offshored the production of these nasty things, like oil and plastic, to places which can’t afford to conduct environmental assessments, or which don’t care to.
Klein and Thompson have been pitching a new kind of liberalism, one which imagines “a future not of less but of more.†This “abundance agenda†described by these two thinkers is not, they write, “omnidirectional moreness,†but rather a concerted effort to build good things: ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½s, hospitals, wind turbines, and, yes, oil and gas projects.Â
Carney echoed this sentiment in his “build, baby, build†campaign. The Liberals promised to “aggressively develop projects that are in the national interest,†shifting Ottawa’s regulatory regime from asking “why?†to asking “how?â€Â
Enter Bill C-5, the Building Canada Act. The bill, recently passed into law, allows Ottawa to designate certain projects and fast-track them through the federal rigamarole of oversight, consultation and approval.Â
The bill was decried as a power grab, a danger to the environment, even as undemocratic.Â
But, on the contrary, the bill is a democratic response to our economy seizing up. Our government has to be able to override or repeal laws that aren’t working: That’s democracy. And, importantly, big projects will not be exempt from all federal laws, as they will still have to go through provincial or territorial environmental reviews.
It’s not the intent of these laws and regulations that are bad. They exist because we are trying to solve other wicked problems — pollution, threats to endangered species, ecological destruction. But, as Rittel and Webber tell us, we should look at these systems and ask not what they were designed for, but rather “what do the systems do?â€
We know the answer: These systems slow and frustrate. And that will continue until we can move from exclusively looking at risks to appraising benefits.
History offers some instructive examples. In the throes of the Industrial Revolution, London faced such a deluge of waste and pollution that the summer of 1858 came to be known as “the Great Stink.†Its solution was simple and direct: Build a major new wastewater system to expel the stink. From approval to completion, the project took about two decades and is considered one of the engineering and public health marvels of modern humanity. The project didn’t solve the pollution problem, it only moved it. But it also made London livable, saved thousands of lives, and gave the city essential infrastructure it still uses today.
The trouble is, the public now expects the government to internalize every possible externality from a project — Londoners, for example, are upgrades to that 19th century wastewater system because the construction is too bothersome. But inaction has consequences, too.
C-5 isn’t perfect. It requires only consultation, not approval, from Indigenous nations directly impacted by these projects. If big projects which run on unceded or ancestral land cannot get sign-off from the elected representatives of these nations, then the project should be considered untenable.
The good news is that many First Nations are keen for environmentally-responsible projects that drive growth, and Indigenous buy-in makes projects better and move faster.
Take the Cedar LNG project, a floating marine terminal off the coast of Kitimat, British Columbia which will ship natural gas to Asia — it is a partnership between Pembina Pipeline and the Haisla First Nation. With that buy-in, it virtually flew through the approvals process, taking just four years. Work has begun, and it should be operational by 2027.
This should be the rule, not an exception. C-5 is a start, but it doesn’t go far enough: We still need to fix this regulatory mess.
We will not hit net zero emissions — nor will we reduce poverty, make cities more livable, nor increase employment — if we opt for de-growth, if we privilege the concerns of every prickly citizen or lobby group, nor if we consider every single federal regulation sacrosanct.
In fields of “ill-defined problems and hence ill-definable solutions,†Rittel and Webber write, we should value the ability for all the parties to look at “exotic†ideas and come to a simple solution: “OK let’s try that.”
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