(iPoster) Governing Transit Infrastructure in Canada: Intergovernmental Program Design and Implementation Timing

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Constitutional Law and Jurisprudence; Policy Challenges and Innovations; & Institutional Constraints and Government Performance in Multilevel Systems
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Institutional Constraints and Government Performance in Multilevel Systems

Abstract

Long-term infrastructure investments create a temporal mismatch for democratic governments: they require immediate costs and political risks while delivering benefits only years or decades later. This study examines how intergovernmental relations shape whether local governments can overcome this mismatch to invest in urban rail transit. Using Canada as a case, this research argues that weak intergovernmental arrangements exacerbate temporal mismatch by increasing political uncertainty and encouraging opportunistic behavior, creating unfavorable conditions for sustained infrastructure development.

The analysis traces urban rail development from 1990 to 2020 through historical process tracing, evaluating intergovernmental strength across four dimensions: fiscal stability and predictability, policy continuity, joint decision-making institutions, and commitment enforcement capacity. While Canada exhibits structural weaknesses across all dimensions, meaningful variation exists across time periods. These variations correspond with different patterns of transit development.

The 1990s fiscal restraint era, characterized by weak intergovernmental arrangements, produced minimal transit investment as federal withdrawal left provinces and cities without stable funding frameworks. The 2000s "New Deal for Cities" period brought moderate improvements, enabling renewed project initiation through dedicated gas tax transfers. The 2006-2015 Conservative era established stronger arrangements through the Building Canada Fund, producing systematic transit expansion with predictable federal matching. The 2015-2020 Liberal period further strengthened commitments through the Public Transit Infrastructure Fund and Investing in Canada Plan, achieving unprecedented investment scale.

This research suggests that all levels of government operate within an institutional environment creating systematic incentives for temporal mismatch. Effective infrastructure governance requires both political motivation to initiate projects and institutional capacity to sustain them through implementation challenges. The findings indicate that intergovernmental arrangements—not partisan ideology or economic conditions alone—determine whether democratic systems can deliver long-term infrastructure.

Author

• Hao Xi, University of Waterloo