Canada’s 2025 federal budget promises unprecedented, large-scale investments focused on national infrastructure.
In short, the budget outlines a $115 billion investment (over five years) for major 21st-century infrastructure, including:
- $54 billion for water, wastewater, and transit,
- $37 billion to infrastructure assets, including health and innovation,
- $19 billion to Indigenous communities and municipal infrastructure, and
- $5 billion to trade and transport infrastructure.
Budget 2025 also includes the Build Communities Strong Fund, committing $51 billion over 10 years (starting in 2026-27 and including previously committed funds) to support local housing-enabling infrastructure, such as building retrofits, health facilities, and post-secondary campuses. Also, $5 billion has been earmarked over seven years to finance infrastructure projects that strengthen supply chains and support the movement of goods, including projects like airport modernization and railway networks.
It’s not just traditional infrastructure that’s getting attention. Budget 2025 also proposed $925 million over five years “to support large-scale public AI infrastructure,” boosting AI compute availability and supporting public and private research.
In 2025, the Government of Canada announced the Major Projects Office (MPO), whose mandate is to “advance nation-building projects in Canada” by accelerating the federal decision-making and approvals process. The MPO’s focus is on large-scale, national-interest projects with high impact; projects in the MPO’s sights include New Brunswick’s Sisson Mine for critical minerals, Ontario’s Crawford Nickel Project, British Columbia’s Ksi Lisims liquefied natural gas projects, and Iqaluit’s Nukkiksautiit hydro project.
Organizations dedicated to infrastructure do need to know a few things about the budget’s allocations before navigating allocations and priorities:
- It encourages partnership with Canada’s Indigenous communities,
- It encourages collaboration among municipalities to increase their purchasing power and secure federal funds,
- Infrastructure projects will need to align with clean and net-zero objectives,
- It promotes private-public partnership opportunities,
- It encourages risk management, rather than risk avoidance, and
- In the face of supply chain and workforce constraints, it encourages building workforce supply-chain resilience and managing competition for skilled trades and contractors.
CanadaBuys is the “home for doing business with the Government of Canada,” listing tender opportunities and information on getting started. International companies with products and services serving the infrastructure sector will want to watch for these opportunities in Canada.
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