Financing and Funding Approaches for Establishment, Governance and Regulatory Oversight of the Canadian Northern Corridor

Abstract

The Canadian Northern Corridor (CNC) is a proposed multimodal, multijurisdictional corridor. It is a highly complex, long-term infrastructure project. Such projects often fail to get implemented, but the limited evidence suggests that they can get built when a single entity (a national government or a supranational organization) assembles the rights of way and provides corridor access to various infrastructure providers. This entity, which we refer to as the “assembler,” has to (1) assemble the required rights of way from all those currently holding the property rights; and (2) decide on the allocation of, at least, usage property rights to different kinds of infrastructure providers (and ultimately users of that infrastructure). For the CNC, the assembler could be the federal government or a consortium that also includes subnational levels of government. Because First Nations and other Indigenous groups in Canada have constitutional (or at least quasi-constitutional) status, they might also have a role in a consortium.

Keywords

• financing
• fundraising
• infrastructure
• northern corridor