Hannah Rebentisch (McGill University)
As governments across Canada increase investments in sustainable infrastructure, comparative research is necessary to recognize systemic constraints and identify means for improvement. This article examines the way in which structural factors specific to the Canadian and Ontario context, such as multilevel governance, funding, and procurement practices, shaped Ottawa’s Line 1 rail project and its outcomes. Launched in 2019, the project was a flash point in local politics and became the subject of a nationwide media frenzy and ultimately a damning provincial inquiry. While the provincial inquiry revealed obstacles at institutional and higher levels, it nonetheless failed to recognize and indeed reinforced problematic assumptions and practices specific to the Canadian context. Using Ottawa’s rail expansion program as a case study to investigate the political, regulatory, and professional factors that scaffold infrastructure projects, this paper contributes to the transportation policy, megaprojects, and planning cultures literature and is an early intervention in characterizing the Canadian approach to megaproject management. We argue that Canadian megaproject management can be characterized by: privatized planning processes and reliance upon consultants for key duties of government; lack of state capacity and expertise for effective oversight of contractors; weak and convoluted governance structures that allow for political interference and politicized decision-making; a structurally embedded lack of transparency; and financial austerity, felt particularly at the municipal level, that shapes design and project delivery models. We trace the impacts thereof through the design, procurement, build-out, and launch of Line 1, and identify alternative approaches from countries outside of the ‘anglosphere’.