Most Canadian cities regulate small food vendors like they do restaurants. The result is high upfront costs, limited permits, and very few new entrants.

Provinces could update public health regulations to reflect a risk-based framework; including a “low-risk food vendor” category for items like baked goods, coffee, pre-packaged foods, and simple hot foods with limited handling risk.

The policy could include: no caps on the number of vendors, low-cost registration instead of full permitting, permission to operate in public space (subject to basic rules), no requirement for a commercial kitchen. Higher-risk food categories (e.g. raw meat preparation) would continue to require stricter standards.

The objective: make it easy to start small.

Federal Cost: ~$10M one-time
Public Good: Vibrancy

Canada doesn’t just have a shortage of housing. It has a shortage of the people who build them.

Training pathways for skilled trades are slow, fragmented across provinces, and often difficult to access for adults who want to switch careers. At the same time, experienced workers face long delays in getting recognized or certified.

A coordinated national approach to accelerate this process would work with provinces to standardize requirements, expand recognition of prior learning, and create accelerated pathways for adults (like intensive training programs). Mobility across provinces would be simplified.

The goal: remove unnecessary delays, improve accessibility to well-paying careers, and strengthen the country’s capacity to build what it needs.

Federal Cost: ~$300M one-time
Public Good: Prosperity

Canada’s ability to respond to emergencies is increasingly strained. At the same time, there are few structured ways for individuals to build skills, contribute to their communities, or participate in national service outside of full-time roles.

A Civil Defence Corps is a voluntary, nationally supported, locally organized system for training and mobilizing civilians in times of need. The model is inspired by countries like Sweden and Finland.

Participants would receive training (think first aid, evacuation, critical infrastructure protection) and units would be organized at the community level alongside existing services – augmenting them without increasing staffing.

The fed would provide funding; provinces would oversee implementation.

Federal Cost: ~$250M per-year
Public Good: Resilience

Intercity bus service in Canada has become practically nonexistent. Private service has thinned due to regulatory issues, limited access to terminals, and the economics of low-density routes. As a result, many communities lack reliable connections without a car, limiting access to jobs and services.

The federal government can define a minimum level of regular bus service where private operators bid on the right to operate defined routes and indicate the level of subsidy required, if any. Stronger routes could be bundled with weaker ones to ensure coverage.

Structural barriers could be reduced in collaboration with provincial and municipal governments. The objective: not create a publicly operated bus system, but establish the conditions for a national network delivered by the private-sector.

Federal Cost: ~$250M per-year
Public Good: Prosperity

Parking minimums are one of the most consistent blockers to new housing. On smaller urban lots, a single required stall can add cost, slow things down, and even kill a project.

It gets in the way of adding density. Just ask a builder! And the logic behind these rules is outdated. Not every household needs a car anymore, especially in urban areas.

The federal government doesn’t control zoning, but it does control funding. It can make this simple: if cities want housing or transit dollars, they need to allow homes to be built without mandatory parking.

This isn’t about banning parking. It’s about stopping the government from requiring it everywhere. The payoff: more homes per lot and more Canadians living in dense walkable cities car-free.

Federal Cost: ~$5M one-time
Public Good: Prosperity

Overview

The Minor Projects Office (MiPO) is a new grassroots initiative to serve as a contrasting mirror to the federal Major Projects Office launched under Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Where the MPO accelerates large, resource-intensive projects often tied to the oil and gas industry, the MiPO highlights more humble, fiscally realistic, community-oriented projects that advance a low-carbon economy and strengthen the public realm and most importantly showcase how a low-carbon society can be fun, prosperous and positive-sum.

Context

Canada’s climate narrative has swung between two poles:

• Scarcity politics of the carbon-tax era, where climate action felt punitive.

• Carney’s “abundance” agenda, which links prosperity to extraction and large infrastructure.

The opportunity now is to redefine abundance around public abundance — thriving communities, shared infrastructure, and climate-safe prosperity and importantly an economy that doesn’t require problematic resource initiatives to thrive. The MiPO intervenes at a critical moment and gives this vision tangible shape through story-driven, ready-to-launch policy ideas connected with the community organizations advancing them.

Purpose

1. Reframe nation-building. Present a credible, popular, community-scale alternative to the extractive model.

2. Mobilize a new coalition. Unite NGOs, advocates, and voters around small projects with big civic impact.

3. Shift the narrative. Make climate ambition feel hopeful, practical, exciting and locally grounded.

The Audacious Vision

To see the Government of Canada establish a Minor Projects Office: a permanent public institution dedicated to identifying, piloting, and scaling small, high-impact projects that strengthen communities, advance climate resilience, and expand public abundance.

Campaign Objective

Build a durable, cross-sector coalition around the idea of public abundance — uniting organizations, advocates, creators, and voters around small projects with outsized civic impact.

This includes:

• Reframing abundance away from extraction

• Demonstrating credible, affordable alternatives

• Organizing disparate movements under a shared positive vision

Phase One: Listening, Relationship-Building, and Design

In the short-term, MiPO aims to convene 100 structured conversations with some of Canada’s most creative, rigorous, and practical thinkers, beginning with trusted collaborators and expanding outward.

Our goal is to generate ideas, build relationships, create momentum, and start to attract an online audience who are equaly passionate about public abundance.

We will share excerpts and clips from these conversations publicly, illustrating the vision as it develops and inviting others into the process.

From these discussions, we will curate a focused slate of minor projects — prioritizing ideas that are:

• Feasible and fiscally responsible

• Resonant and broadly popular

• Backed by credible champion organizations or public figures

These ideas will be compiled into a formal public document directed at federal decision-makers — and supported by a growing coalition prepared to advocate for their adoption.

Conclusion

Canada, through the choices we’ve made over the last three decades, has painted itself into a corner. The problem is not that we’re talking about building a pipeline today; it’s that we spent decades making sure we didn’t have other options.

The Minor Projects Office is an attempt to help build those options.

We are starting with conversations, small projects, and coalition — not because they solve everything overnight, but because abundance is built through thousands of small, aligned acts that make Canada’s future tangible again.

If we want more buttons to press tomorrow, we have to start installing them today.