I still remember the moment my eight-year-old self first set foot on Canadian soil. My parents had packed up our family from an already declining England, convinced this country was the surest bet for the future prosperity of the family. Canada, they told me, was a land full of possibility.
Decades later, my three children aren’t seeing the same possibility in their future. The numbers are stark: sluggish growth, stubbornly low productivity, and a creeping sense that people with big ambitions belong elsewhere. For the past four years, I’ve worked remotely for a San Francisco tech company, an arrangement that lets me live here while building there. It’s a privileged perch, but also a troubling one: I can see exactly how much Canada is leaving on the table.
The easy move would be to keep my head down and complain about Canada’s direction from a distance. I tried that once already. In my 20s, I spent nearly a decade abroad and almost didn’t come back. But the pull of this place, of what it could be, is incredibly strong. So instead of being a spectator, I’m stepping into the arena, doubling down on Canada, and putting my energy into something more productive. That “something” is Build Canada, a non-partisan, volunteer-powered movement dedicated to one radical idea: Canada should be the most prosperous country on Earth—and ordinary Canadians can make it so.
We have become so accustomed to stagnation here that it starts to feel almost normal—the extraordinarily long health-care wait times, the potholed roads, and the talented immigrants who quickly move on to greener pastures. We have forgotten that Canada was built by dynamic, ambitious, high-agency people from all corners of the globe. The cavalry isn’t coming, but it doesn’t have to. It is already here, wearing hoodies, hard hats, and hockey jerseys.
Builders share three traits. First, they default to action. Canadians call it “giv’er”—that impulse to roll up your sleeves before the snow melts. Second, they obsess over outcomes, not process. Measurable progress should drive our focus. Third, they view constraints as engines of creativity. If your budget is small, you prototype. If regulation is slow, you innovate around it—or, better yet, propose smarter rules.
This mindset once powered our culture of invention and innovation, from the Canadian Pacific Railway to the Canadarm, from the first telephone to the first widely-used smartphone in the BlackBerry. Today, we glimpse it in our AI labs, startups, and the scrappy community groups fixing potholes faster than city hall. Yet too often these sparks fail to become bonfires. Why? Because we’ve drifted into a culture that politely waits its turn.
Canada’s Achilles’ heel is that we’ve decided we need the government’s permission, and too often its support, to solve big problems or do big things. But while we queue for permission slips or wait for yet another subsidy program, our regulatory thickets slow projects to a crawl, veto points stack up. Infrastructure projects take decades. Housing approvals can outlast an entire business cycle. Even our talent pipeline leaks: Many of the most talented people I’ve met in San Francisco over the last four years are from Canada.
If we want different results, we need a different reflex. Political leaders at all levels of government must absolutely make bolder, faster choices: modernize tax codes that are more competitive; unleash abundant housing; clear the runway for resource projects and next-gen infrastructure. Yet they will move only when voters demand it. And voters rarely demand what they have not seen modelled in their own lives.
Here are three things we are trying to build right now:
- High-agency communities. Join a Build Canada open source project—groups of people shipping code, campus clubs, and hosting events. Show what’s possible, then scale
- Permissionless policy ideas. At Build Canada, volunteers utilize AI tools to transform dinner-table frustrations into policy briefs, which they publish transparently on our platform. Some get ignored (fine). Others spark debate (better). A few result in change (best)
- A new national narrative. Celebrate Canadian successes loudly and immediately—especially the messy early wins. The neighbourhood kids’ lemonade stand; a pro-growth, alt-media company run by high school students that gets its first 10 thousand subscribers; a local company that reaches its first $1M in revenue; or someone who moves back to Canada to build here. Broadcast them like playoff victories. Ambition is contagious, and eventually it will start to feel normal. Canadian
My parents chose Canada because they believed it offered opportunity. I’m staying because I believe it now demands obligation. We owe our kids a country where the default answer to “Can I build this here?” is “Yes, and faster than anywhere else.”
The good news? We’re closer than we think. We already have world-class talent, capital seeking purpose, and a national instinct for collaboration. What we lack is the collective instinct to act like owners, rather than tenants.
So, with Canada Day passed, and now that the fireworks have faded, ask yourself one question: What will I build before July 1, 2026? It could be a startup idea with your kids, an office initiative, a neighbourhood club, or contributing to any number of Build Canada civic action projects. Pick something, set a deadline, and hit “publish.” Just ship it. You’ll be surprised at who shows up to help.
Nation-building isn’t a spectator sport. It’s a group project graded in generations. The marks aren’t in yet—but the clock is running.
Let’s giv’er.
