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The Better Ideas Show brought together more than three dozen guests during Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada Investment Summit to talk about nation-building projects that are practical, affordable, and ready to build the new climate economy that will diversify our trade and protect Canada’s sovereignty.

The talk of privatizing public institutions like airports and inviting private equity to invest in building Canada’s infrastructure worries David Miller, former Toronto mayor and managing director of the C40 Centre. “The first thing they target to make more money is people’s jobs, unions, and people’s wage rates,” he told The Mix.

Miller, who also speaks for the #ElbowsUp for Climate Campaign, emphasized the importance of local investments in sustainable infrastructure, such as insulating buildings, to create jobs, reduce carbon, and improve affordability. His list of nation-building projects that actually build the nation included a clean energy grid, electrification, and affordable housing, to bring down climate pollution while building more sustainable, resilient communities.

Many of the more than 300 local elected officials who’ve signed on to the #ElbowsUp campaign, “whether mayors or councillors, represent places that have had real climate impacts today,” Miller said. Earlier this month, the campaign released a study that showed nearly 60% of Canadians facing the impacts of local climate events this summer.

“The big choice we need to make is to take environmental sustainability seriously,” Miller said.

“And if we start to take it seriously, what does it look like? It looks like a clean energy grid across the country, supporting geothermal, solar, wind, huge supplies of that across the country. We can be a clean energy superpower the same way we are a dirty energy superpower today.”