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Navdeep Bains spent most mornings during the federal election campaign at his local GO Transit station in Mississauga, Ont., handing out flyers that read: “Tired of your long commute?”

The message that his Liberals would spend billions on new transit systems resonated with stressed-out, frustrated voters.

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Justin Trudeau is now prime minister, and Bains his economic development minister, in part because Canadians bought his pitch that strategic infrastructure investments would help the economy grow, create jobs and alleviate the life-draining tedium of the daily commute.

The Liberals pledged $60 billion over the course of the next decade to fight congestion and mitigate against the effects of climate change, for the most part using borrowed money and putting the economy into “moderate” deficit.

The party’s intellectual guiding light, Harvard University’s Larry Summers, calls such public investment a “free lunch” because he believes the boost to potential growth offsets the increase in debt.