In our 2023 report Better Choices for Toronto, we said:
If Toronto adopted fair and open contract bidding for its construction contracts, it would likely save hundreds of millions of dollars every year. City Hall could use the freed up cash to address pressing problems, like safety on the TTC, mental health, and housing...
Rather than follow this advice, Toronto city council has recently doubled down on a policy that sees Torontonians continue to pay upwards of $347 million more per year in construction contracts while voluntarily limiting its own choices.
Toronto remains an outlier in awarding construction contracts based on specific union affiliation. Following a June 24 walk-on motion by Mayor Olivia Chow, which passed by a vote of 22-4, the City has further entrenched this regressive policy through a Voluntary Recognition Agreement (VLAs) with LIUNA Local 183 and eight other unions. Both Toronto city council members who are running for Mayor voted in favour of this motion.
As a result of this agreement, only workers or contractors affiliated with those unions would be allowed to bid or work on taxpayer-funded City of Toronto construction projects. Torontonians who choose to work with other unions, or no union, and their companies are shut out of building things that their tax dollars pay for.
This agreement isn’t the only way Torontonians are paying more for government construction projects. Toronto was the only municipality to opt out of the Ontario government’s Bill 66 in 2019, which would have opened up tendering to competitive bidding. When the City of Hamilton was deciding whether to move to open tendering following the passage of Bill 66 into law, their municipal analysts cited potential savings of 21 percent for construction projects newly subject to open tendering.
We believe contracts should be awarded on merit, not based on union affiliation, and bidding opportunities should be open to all qualified bidders. Further, we believe significant changes like this one deserve proper debate and study and should not be addressed in walk-on motions.
For a more detailed discussion of this issue, please see:
MEDIA INQUIRIES
Renze Nauta
Cardus – Program Director, Work and Economics
613-241-4500 x505
media@cardus.ca
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Cardus is a non-partisan think tank dedicated to clarifying and strengthening, through research and dialogue, the ways in which society’s institutions can work together for the common good.