As much as we would rather ignore Canadian architecture, that’s simply not possible. For better or worse — mostly worse — it is everywhere around us. Let’s be honest: Canada’s built environment is a mess. To be fair, architects don’t bear all the blame for the unremitting ugliness of the Great Fright North; they share responsibility with the misguided planners, politicians, both cowardly and corrupt, along with the venal developers who, by default, have become the nation’s city-builders.

Thanks largely to this unholy cabal, communities across Canada have been turned into an endless blur of nearly identical subdivisions and concrete, steel and glass towers, most of them clumsy, unadorned and wholly indifferent to their context as well as those who inhabit them. There are various causes: for starters, the market, especially the condo market, is primarily based on investors, not homebuyers. Typically, they want apartments that are small and cheap. Developers and architects are only too willing to oblige, housing crisis be damned.

Take the twin towers of the ICE condos in downtown Toronto; not only do they look like a pair of footless prosthetic legs, they are notorious as a “ghost hotel” known for out-of-control partying, gun fights, and even murder. Over at Jarvis and Dundas streets in midtown Toronto, another recent condo has become infamous for elevators that regularly fail, poor quality materials and botched layouts.

Is it any wonder Canadian architects have lost their creative spunk? Spending so much of their professional lives designing one cookie-cutter condo after another has turned their brains to mush. They don’t have time to worry about architecture. Serving a development industry drunk on years of uninterrupted profit flow has blinded them to the growing banality of their profession. Or is it a case of a marketplace that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing?

Worse still, at some point before the middle of the last century, architectural culture abandoned the time-honoured commandments of commodity, firmness and delight — especially delight — for the lure of “good enough, good enough.” Thus, Canada’s cities, to borrow Cory Doctorow’s phraseology, have been “enshittified,” with their quality rapidly declining over time Little wonder the most desirable neighbourhoods in any city are invariably the oldest.

Not that Canadian architects aren’t good at what they do. They are supremely capable. What they lack is originality, character and the ability to design outside the tiny boxes with which they have grown comfortable.

So it’s no surprise that we increasingly turn to foreign architects on those rare occasions when we want something special and engaging built, something more than competent mediocrity.

Even when it comes to residential construction, Canada’s architectural bread and butter, builders that incorporate design as a marketing asset are opting for global architects. For example, the most compelling condo development in Toronto is an innovative and entirely original project by celebrated Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. It proposes a wholly novel and utterly compelling alternative to the standard-issue tower, taking inspiration from Canadian architect Moshe Safdie’s beautiful stepped terraced apartments and featuring vertical gardens and glass bricks.

Yes, international luminaries from Ingels to Jeanne Gang and Norman Foster are now designing residential developments in Canadian cities. They are the exception. When one wanders the downtowns of Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver and other cities, it’s still hard to tell one tower from another.

For many builders, architecture is merely the exterior — what a structure looks like. The idea that this is where a building should connect with the larger world and make its contribution to the public realm is not part of the calculus of mass development, laser-focused on down and dirty.

This has led to unprecedented architectural homogeneity; buildings and cities look more alike than ever. Except, perhaps, for the quirkiness of Montreal, the architectural character that makes towns and cities unique is being buried beneath layers of contemporary construction.

Perhaps it’s our self-effacing ways that make Canadian architects loath to stand out from the crowd. They go to great lengths to fit in, be polite and well-mannered, to the point of invisibility. That approach can succeed, but only to a degree. The civic duty of most buildings doesn’t extend much beyond filling a gap in the streetscape.

At the same time, a few are expected to go beyond such modesty: opera houses, train stations, city halls, concert halls, museums, art galleries and the like, have permission to draw attention to themselves. Indeed, that is their unspoken function.

No building better illustrates the failure of Canadian architects to grasp our desire for spectacle than Toronto’s proudly plain Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Opened in 2006, that city’s first dedicated opera and ballet house is also one of the biggest disappointments of the 21st century. Far from celebrating the performing arts, it looks like a warehouse with a stage attached. However well-intentioned, a bargain basement ballet and opera house misses the point.

Toronto’s most exciting new structures are the luminous Ontario Court of Justice by Italian master, Renzo Piano, and a second courthouse that shares space with the strikingly new St. Lawrence Market North building by Adamson Associates Architects and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners. Incidentally, Piano and Richard Rogers teamed up in the 1970s to produce the hugely influential Pompidou Centre in Paris.

In Calgary, the most compelling recent additions include the wonderfully urban Central Library (2018) by Snohetta Architects of Norway; the soaring Bow Building (2016) by London-based Norman Foster; Ingels’ twisting Telus Sky Tower (2022) and the joyfully colourful Peace Bridge (2012) by Spanish architect and sculptor Santiago Calatrava.

Meanwhile, Germans and Americans are leading Vancouver into its architectural future. Ole Scheeren, has two condo projects on the go, California’s Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne of Morphosis is designing the boldly eccentric new Lululemon headquarters.

Like the rest of us, Canadian architects can only sit and watch.

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At the recent NATO meeting in Washington, Canada faced a torrent of abuse from its allies. Ottawa has been underspending on defence, indeed even cutting its spending by a billion dollars a year for three years, and it could not say when, if ever, it might meet the NATO goal of 2 percent of GDP on defence and 20 percent of that spending on equipment. Pressed hard, Prime Minister Trudeau finally told the world that Canada would honour its pledge to NATO in 2032. That is eight years and at least two elections hence!

But the prime minister did make an announcement that gratified some listeners. Canada, he said, was considering the purchase of up to twelve submarines with an under-ice capability. Trudeau earlier had mused on Canada securing nuclear subs to augment the Royal Canadian Navy’s (RCN) fleet, but this idea seemed to have been abandoned. As the official press release put it, Canada is “committed to exploring options for renewing and expanding our submarine fleet….”

Canada has no capacity to construct submarines, and the country’s shipyards are struggling to build destroyers, icebreakers, and supply ships. This means that submarines will need to be purchased from European or Asian shipyards with experience in building them. (There will be a certain irony if the RCN, having fought against U-boats in two world wars, ends up with German submarines.)

As of Trudeau’s announcement, let us be clear, no submarine design has been selected, and naval officers are said only to have been engaged in seeking the best models for the RCN. Given Canada’s broken defence procurement system, this is unlikely to be a quick process. The RCN may soon know what it wants but the bean counters will rule as they always do, and orders most likely will not be placed for at least three to five years.

Few expect that the Liberals will be in power in 2027, and if the Conservatives do form the government, it is worth noting that Pierre Poilievre has refused to commit to a date for Canada to meet its 2 percent pledge. New subs may not be an idea the Tories will accept.

If an old or new government does decide to continue with a submarine program, it is certain that a new conventional sub will cost at least $1 billion, many millions more to make it strong enough to operate for long periods in the Arctic, and millions more for its torpedoes, missiles, other weapons, radars, and electronic systems. The costs involved all but guarantee that 12 submarines are a pipedream—the RCN will be lucky to get four to six. Trudeau did not offer a timetable in his remarks, but it is highly unlikely that even a single submarine would be ready to go to sea before the early 2030s and the last by the 2040s.

Then there is the problem of manning a fleet of underwater vessels. The RCN has four Victoria-class boats now. These subs, purchased used from the Royal Navy, have not worked well, are constantly undergoing expensive repairs, and scarcely leave the dock. In other words, the crews have relatively little sea-going experience, the RCN is short of sailors already, and experienced mechanics and skilled technicians are in even shorter supply. Each sub will need more than sixty officers and sailors, and there must be at least three times that number on leave, on courses, or in training to support each crew.

There is little point in acquiring new submarines if there are no crews to sail in them, and with the fifteen new destroyers planned and just beginning construction, the senior service’s personnel needs must be a top priority. That need will not be met until the Canadian Armed Forces’ problems with recruitment are fixed, and that problem has bedevilled the military for decades. (I served on a Department of National Defence Special Committee in 1995 that advanced recommendations to improve recruiting, but nothing changed. Nothing has improved in the three decades since.)

So what did Trudeau mean when he said that Canada was looking at acquiring a fleet of a dozen submarines? Not much. He and his government will be very unlikely to be in power when any order is placed, let alone when finished subs are delivered. The RCN today does not have enough personnel to operate its little squadron of mostly inoperable submarines, and the recruitment process is so messed up that the situation could be even worse by the 2030s when the first new submarine might be ready.

Very simply, the prime minister’s remarks meant nothing. They were not a promise, not a pledge, only a way, he hoped, to tamp down the criticisms from NATO’s members, to quiet the grumblings from the RCN’s ranks, and to possibly redress unfavourable recent polling on his government’s foreign policy.

Some Canadians might believe he meant that Canada will get new submarines, and we can all hope that he did. But this government does not believe in deliverables for defence. A Globe and Mail editorial on July 15 put it well: “If words were weapons, Canada would be armed to the teeth. If platitudes were platoons, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would not have spent much of last week making excuses for his government’s failure to rebuild this country’s military.”

Unfortunately, I have a sinking feeling this is exactly right and that, despite the drubbing from our allies, nothing will change.