Guilbeault stepped in a pothole — but Canada still needs to tread carefully on infrastructure

If you squint, it's possible to read federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault's controversial comments about federal funding for road construction and see the faint outline of something the federal government and (most of) the provinces committed to more than seven years ago.

As part of the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change — which all of the provinces except Saskatchewan and Manitoba approved in December 2016 — the assembled governments agreed to a broad range of principles and goals, including a commitment to support «the shift from higher to lower-emitting types of transportation, including through investing in infrastructure.»

«Shifting from higher- to lower-emitting modes of transportation includes things like riding public transit or cycling instead of driving a car,» the framework said.

Transportation is the second largest source of GHG emissions in Canada, accounting for 22 per cent of the national total in 2021. And it only makes sense to focus public investments in infrastructure, as much as possible, on limiting those emissions.

But there's still a gap between that broad notion in the 2016 framework and Guilbeault's recent suggestion that the federal government has decided to "stop investing in new road infrastructure." The minister fell into that gap when his comments were reported by the Montreal Gazette this week.

In an attempt to dig himself out on Wednesday, Guilbeault said that he was speaking only about major new road construction projects like Quebec's Third Link; he'd already said that project is "incompatible" with the fight against climate change.

«Yes, we're moving more and more towards electric vehicles, but that in itself doesn't justify inviting urban sprawl,» he said in