Mine was more of a comment on "Canada should be looking at a long term plan of new strategic townsites", and wondering how does a government, let alone a federal government do that.
I don't know that I see the need or desirability for completely new, building off existing is likely more cost effective and practical.
If we want to plunk people, they need a reason to be there. Either a bedroom community or industry does that, but how does the federal government become the effector of that?
I don't think the Federal government should be getting into the nitty gritty of municipal planning or the day to day management of universities either.
On the other hand. If you're planning to build a 30B + HSR corridor, whose weakest feature might be long stretches with sparse population, it would make sense to consider where additional population along the route might be desirable.
That should likely be led provincially, but the feds cannot be uninvolved given that the new infrastructure should support the enhanced town/city, and vice versa.
Likewise, the federal government does provide strategic support to University Research and Graduate students and they have some logical role in discussing where future research dollars may go and at what estimated level, so as to inform
provincial wisdom on what type of post-secondary may be desirable to support and where.
We cant decry the federal government getting its nose into everything yet want them to solve all the problems at the same time.
I don't recall decrying that about the Federal government particularly, though I certainly think there is room for them to exit certain program fields and be more judicious with their subsidies, both in overt corporate welfare (cough, regional development) and in the form of tax credits.
While I agree we ought not to ask government to tackle every social program or desirable capital project all at once, that would be unwise. We can ask them to 'walk and chew gum at the same time'. Which is to say, those questions that would benefit from being examined together, such as co-location of major transportation infrastructure with growing and future population centres is not an unreasonable ask.
Using a new university as an example (not a satellite campus), there's a lot of infrastructure that has to happen because they are people-intensive. Who pays for that - up front? We can't saddle the municipal taxpayer with that, and if it doesn't happen up front, then prices for what is there skyrockets.
Whoa, who is building a university right now? I think you're jumping several steps ahead. The object is to understand where the university will go, so that it works with the population growth/management plan and the transportation infrastructure investment. Knowing where something will be built in 10, 20, or 30 years is not the same as funding detailed design or construction today.
Also......I don't recall Ontario billing Peterborough when it built Trent, or Thunder Bay when it built Lakehead. But I could stand to be corrected on that. I don't know where you're going w/this.
In terms of commuter bedroom communities, one spin-off problem with them is they tend to have high property taxes because they have a small industrial base. That is a problem plaguing many current communities because our industrial base (actual industrial, not commercial/retail) has been hollowed out. Think of actual manufacturing that went on in places like Peterborough, Midland or even little Durham that used to have a couple of furniture factories. I think this is where the federal government can hope to have an impact; repatriating actual manufacturing.
I think you're just running too far in front here, trying to find problems that don't need solving, at this juncture. The manner in which municipal government is funded, even if big cities is a point of debate. Should they get a 1 point share of the HST etc. That does need to be considered. But that's a broader issue than the question of figuring out how to manage growth, which we already plan for, how well, is debatable. But Ontario has population projections done out to 2056.
These are done specifically to support long term investments in hospitals, schools, roads, airports and rail.
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