This paper concerns the role of infrastructure in Canadian economic growth in light of the recent literature in the United States on the returns to infrastructure investment, such as Aschauer (1989, 1993), and Munnell (1992). In this literature, the debate centres on the returns to public investment in infrastructure, and its role in the productivity slowdown. David Aschauer finds an elasticity of business sector output and productivity with respect to public core infrastructure investment of about 0.4, double that of private business investment of about 0.2. He argues that these high returns to both public and private investment demonstrate that all types of investment, but especially public investment, tend to be underprovided in the United States, relative to consumption, and that funds need to be moved out of consumption and into investment of all kinds. Most critically, he argues, a lack of infrastructure spending by the public sector has played a key role in explaining the productivity slowdown in the United States. In Canada, the advocacy of infrastructure investment as a lever to economic growth and productivity was key to the Liberal Party of Canada's successful election platform of 1993, and the issue was the subject of an Investment Canada conference in June 1993, the proceedings published in Mintz and Preston (1994). The growth of labour productivity in Canadian goods production slowed from an average 5.29 percent per annum, 19471972, to 1.87 percent, 1973-1991 (the productivity slowdown). The accumulation of goods sector capital per person-hour worked slowed from an average 5.84 percent per annum to 2.63 percent, and of total infrastructure capital accumulation per person-hour worked from 6.09 to 3.05 percent, in the same period. However, the largest slowdown was recorded in public infrastructure capital accumulation per person-hour worked, falling from a growth rate of 5.93 to one of only 1.21 percent per annum, between 1947-1972 and 1973-1991. The growth rate decline per