In restarting Solitary American my ambition was to think and communicate more about community-building than politics, shedding light on what we are losing, without losing hope of regaining it. But building communities and the structures in which they thrive requires the exercise of power. Political power, and that's what this essay is about. Watching from my window in Vancouver, it's impossible to ignore the profound irony unfolding in my adopted country: the Abundance Agenda that Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson have been theorizing about in elegant essays and conference rooms? Canada just went ahead and did it.
Either through parliamentary prowess or the kind of clarity that comes only when your neighbor's house is on fire, the Liberal government just did something spectacular.
Having been in power for mere weeks, Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal-led parliamentary coalition conceived Bill C-5 and shepherded it through to bipartisan passage with the kind of speed that makes political scientists weep. What Klein and Thompson have been writing and advocating for, sweeping federal authority to fast-track infrastructure programs, is now law, born from necessity and delivered with speed and precision.
South of the 49th parallel, Trump has declared a national emergency to justify cruelty masquerading as policy: mass deportations that tear at the fabric of communities, economic warfare waged against the most vulnerable. An emergency entirely of his own making, its shockwaves spreading like ripples from a stone thrown into still water, radiating outward from American cities into the Canadian heartland, then across oceans to distant shores.
But here in Canada, the emergency is not manufactured. It is lived. Felt in the hollowing out of paychecks, measured in the empty chairs at factory tables, counted in the "For Sale" signs sprouting like weeds in towns that once thrived on cross-border trade. The theoretical became achingly personal the moment those tariffs landed.
And yet, there is the glimmer of resilience in the Canadian economy. An opportunity. The kind of opportunity that springs from the calloused hands of a friend turned foe and draws a country closer to its countermen, grasps what little seed of construction exists in what would otherwise be catastrophe and grips it so tightly that it germinates into a collective ambition seen only once in any generation, if at all.
In a stroke of uncharacteristic prescience, I recently wrote an essay for the Georgia Straight on the archaic minutia of sequential permitting, that death-by-a-thousand-cuts process where bureaucrats hold entire projects hostage, one approval at a time. Before I could even write a follow-up, the Liberals had gone and legislated the whole sorry system into oblivion, at least at the federal level.
Bill C-5 does what every frustrated builder has dreamed of: it sweeps away the regulatory labyrinth in one decisive stroke. Instead of asking whether projects should exist, it asks how they can be built safely and well. Projects designated as a "national interest" receive something approaching divine grace: guaranteed approval, subject to conditions, with a single Minister wielding the authority that once belonged to dozens of departments, each jealously guarding their tiny piece of the puzzle.
In the oft-quoted words of former Obama Chief of Staff and Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, "never let a good crisis go to waste." Prime Minister Carney has taken this lesson to heart with the fervor of a convert.
As an American watching my own country tear itself apart in slow motion, I know how this sounds. Single Minister with sweeping authority? In normal times, this would be the stuff of democratic nightmares, the kind of power grab that sends political scientists reaching for their history books. But Canada is bleeding jobs because of decisions made in Washington right now. When your neighbor sets fire to your economy, emergency powers stop being theoretical and become survival.
Proof of Possibility
There's still a ways to go. The concrete hasn't been poured, the steel hasn't been bent, the first shovel hasn't broken ground. But what Prime Minister Carney has proved is arguably more precious: that abundance politics can escape the conference room and become law. That a government can stare down the regulatory thicket that has strangled a generation of dreams and say, simply, "No more."
What Klein and Thompson articulate is a new way of thinking about how to deliver for the people. Prime Minister Carney has proven that the Liberals have the political will to transform theory into practice. The boldness of his approach shows what's possible when leaders choose action over paralysis, results over rhetoric.
There's much to be learned from the spirit of cooperation among the Canadian people and the coalition-building inherent to the parliamentary system. But there's just as much to be learned about political will, about seizing the moment you're given, about playing every card in your hand even when the odds are stacked against you.
We're witnessing something rare in the landscape of modern governance: leaders who remember that democracy is a verb, not a noun. A bravery to act with clarity even when the deck is stacked against you, when the easier path is delay and deliberation. We saw it with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who looked at the collapsed I-95 bridge and refused to accept that infrastructure takes years to build, rebuilding it instead in 12 days that felt like a small miracle. And we see it again in Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose opening legislative salvo reminds us that governments can choose to be instruments of possibility rather than monuments to process.
This is what democracy looks like when it remembers its purpose: not the grinding paralysis of proceduralism, but the swift grace of leadership that sees its moment clearly and acts with the backing of former enemies turned temporary allies.
Canada didn't just pass a bill. It demonstrated that abundance isn't trapped in think tank white papers or academic conferences. It lives, waiting to be chosen. And in choosing it, they reminded us that we've walked this path before, when the stakes demanded greatness.
We chose abundance when we rebuilt a shattered Europe from the ashes of war.
We chose it when we gathered the world's brightest minds and flung ourselves at the moon until we landed there.
Surely we can choose to build homes for families priced out of their own neighborhoods. Surely we can train doctors to heal and teachers to inspire. Surely we can care for those who spent their lives building the world we inherited.
Abundance is not a theory waiting to be proven. Abundance is a choice waiting to be made.