Many Canadians will remember author W.P. Kinsella, known for one of his novels Shoeless Joe that was later adapted into the movie Field of Dreams about a farmer from Iowa who builds a baseball field at his farm. The famous line from the film was, “If you build it, They will come.” It is one of those lines that lives forever in movie folklore.
Saskatchewan can take a page out of Kinsella’s novel and adapt it to say, “If we build it, they will come.”
The Saskatchewan economy is reliant on our products being exported to customers around the globe. To get what we currently produce to the market depends on reliable infrastructure. Our existing infrastructure is maintained to deliver what is needed now, but does not address the building necessary for the future.
We grow our economy by increasing our production, which in turn leads to more product for us to sell around the world. If Saskatchewan looks at its economic targets through a long-term approach, then it must also include that with infrastructure projects.
As an export-heavy province, we cannot afford to plan year to year what is required of our infrastructure network. This approach will only leave us playing catch-up. Currently, 70 per cent of our provincial gross domestic product is shipped out of our borders to customers in Canada and the rest of the world.
As the province expands economically, we must plan for the expansion by instituting long-term planning for infrastructure projects. infrastructure growth and economic growth should go hand-in-hand when it comes to forecasting where we will be economically as a province five to 10 years from today.
This becomes even more necessary when we are faced with the threat of tariffs from our largest trading partner. Our goal is to expand our markets beyond the United States, and we need to prove to new markets that we are up to the task.
Planning ahead is always the best approach to meeting challenges. We need that for our infrastructure.
If we build it, they will come.
