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Economy

Taxpayers Federation: Canada’s largest city overpaying for construction $350 million a year

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From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Jay Goldberg 

Favouring unions costs taxpayers dearly

They say less is more, especially when it comes to budgeting. Apparently, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow never got the memo.

Canada’s largest city keeps overpaying on construction projects, to the tune of $350 million a year. The reason, in many cases, is that only union-affiliated firms need apply.

With modest construction contracting reform, Toronto could save a bundle and see property taxes frozen for 2025.

Over the past two years, Toronto politicians voted to increase property taxes by a whopping 18 per cent. Last year’s increase alone was 9.5 per cent.

Because of these massive property tax increases, many families were pushed to the brink.

Property tax bills for most Torontonians soared by hundreds of dollars over the past two years.

Yet so much of this pain could have been avoided with a little common-sense policymaking.

Would you refuse to even consider quotes from a non-unionized company? Or would you get quotes from everyone and then make your decision?

To nearly everyone on the planet other than Toronto’s zany politicians, the choice is obvious.

But when you’re a Toronto politician spending other people’s money, apparently open competition to find the best deal isn’t a priority.

Right now, Toronto uses a closed-tendering approach to award contracts for some of the city’s most expensive construction projects. That means only a handful of companies associated with a small group of unions can bid on those jobs.

Cardus, a non-partisan thinktank, released a report last year projecting Toronto was poised to award $1.7 billion in construction projects through a closed tendering process in 2023. Because Toronto only allows a small number of unionized construction companies to bid on those jobs, the cost goes up.

In fact, Cardus estimated Toronto taxpayers were set to overpay on construction projects in 2023 to the tune of $350 million due to a lack of competition.

Closed tendering used to be the norm in Ontario. Every city across the province overpaid on construction projects to cater to big unions.

That all changed in 2019, when the Ford government passed legislation allowing municipalities to open up the construction contracting process to real competition.

Sadly, Toronto has thus far chosen not to take advantage of the Ford government’s legislative reforms to save a boatload of cash.

But nearby cities sure have.

Consider the example of Hamilton.

Hamilton was one of the first cities in Ontario to take advantage of the Ford government’s reforms. Cardus estimates Hamilton is saving 21 per cent on its construction projects because the city opened up its contracting process. This single reform did a great deal to improve the city’s bottom line.

Yet Toronto politicians appear stuck in the past. During last year’s mayoral by-election, only two candidates, Councillor Brad Bradford and Anthony Furey, pledged to follow Hamilton in reforming construction contracts.

There has been no indication from Chow, who won that by-election, that this common-sense reform is even on the table.

Last year, Chow and council increased property taxes by 9.5 per cent, the highest property tax hike in Toronto’s history.

Had Chow implemented construction reform and saved the $350 million Cardus pointed to, last year’s property tax increase could have been wiped out entirely.

Think about that. Chow had a choice: save money through competitive bidding or hammer taxpayers with a huge tax hike.

The mayor picked the tax hike.

To break the cycle of massive property tax hikes, it’s high time Toronto looked at construction contract reform.

Taxpayers shouldn’t put up with politicians overpaying on construction contracts to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, only to see those same politicians turn around and impose record property tax hikes.

This isn’t just a problem restricted to Toronto: taxpayers from British Columbia to Quebec themselves face similar anti-competitive policies at the provincial level.

It’s time for politicians to put taxpayers, not unions, first.

Chow should implement common-sense construction contracting reforms to head off a massive property tax increase in 2025.

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Carbon Tax

Canada’s Carbon Tax Is A Disaster For Our Economy And Oil Industry

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Lee Harding exposes the truth behind Canada’s sky-high carbon tax—one that’s hurting our oil industry and driving businesses away. With foreign oil paying next to nothing, Harding argues this policy is putting Canada at a major economic disadvantage. It’s time to rethink this costly approach.

Our sky-high carbon tax places Canadian businesses at a huge disadvantage and is pushing investment overseas

No carbon tax will ever satisfy global-warming advocates, but by most measures, Canada’s carbon tax is already too high.

This unfortunate reality was brought to light by Resource Works, a B.C.-based non-profit research and advocacy organization. In March, one of their papers outlined the disproportionate and damaging effects of Canada’s carbon taxes.

The study found that the average carbon tax among the top 20 oil-exporting nations, excluding Canada, was $0.70 per tonne of carbon emissions in fiscal 2023. With Canada included, that average jumps to $6.77 per tonne.

At least Canada demands the same standards for foreign producers as it does for domestic ones, right? Wrong.

Most of Canada’s oil imports come from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria, none of which impose a carbon tax. Only 2.8 per cent of Canada’s oil imports come from the modestly carbon-taxing countries of the U.K. and Colombia.

Canada’s federal consumer carbon tax was $80 per tonne, set to reach $170 by 2030, until Prime Minister Mark Carney reduced it to zero on March 14. However, parallel carbon taxes on industry remain in place and continue to rise.

Resource Works estimates Canada’s effective carbon tax at $58.94 per tonne for fiscal 2023, while foreign oil entering Canada had an effective tax of just $0.30 per tonne.

“This results in a 196-fold disparity, effectively functioning as a domestic tariff against Canadian oil production,” the research memo notes. Forget Donald Trump—Ottawa undermines our country more effectively than anyone else.

Canada is responsible for 1.5 per cent of global CO2 emissions, but the study estimates that Canada paid one-third of all carbon taxes in 2023. Mexico, with nearly the same emissions, paid just $3 billion in carbon taxes for 2023-24, far less than Canada’s $44 billion.

Resource Works also calculated that Canada alone raised the global per-tonne carbon tax average from $1.63 to $2.44. To be Canadian is to be heavily taxed.

Historically, the Canadian dollar and oil and gas investment in Canada tracked the global price of oil, but not anymore. A disconnect began in 2016 when the Trudeau government cancelled the Northern Gateway pipeline and banned tanker traffic on B.C.’s north coast.

The carbon tax was introduced in 2019 at $15 per tonne, a rate that increased annually until this year. The study argues this “economic burden,” not shared by the rest of the world, has placed Canada at “a competitive disadvantage by accelerating capital flight and reinforcing economic headwinds.”

This “erosion of energy-sector investment” has broader economic consequences, including trade balance pressures and increased exchange rate volatility.

According to NASA, Canadian forest fires released 640 million metric tonnes of carbon in 2023, four times the amount from fossil fuel emissions. We should focus on fighting fires, not penalizing our fossil fuel industry.

Carney praised Canada’s carbon tax approach in his 2021 book Value(s), raising questions about how long his reprieve will last. He has suggested raising carbon taxes on industry, which would worsen Canada’s competitive disadvantage.

In contrast, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre argued that extracting and exporting Canadian oil and gas could displace higher-carbon-emitting energy sources elsewhere, helping to reduce global emissions.

This approach makes more sense than imposing disproportionately high tax burdens on Canadians. Taxes won’t save the world.

Lee Harding is a research fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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Business

Canada’s loyalty to globalism is bleeding our economy dry

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This article supplied by Troy Media.

Troy Media By Sylvain Charlebois

Trump’s controversial trade policies are delivering results. Canada keeps playing by global rules and losing

U.S. President Donald Trump’s brash trade agenda, though widely condemned, is delivering short-term economic results for the U.S. It’s also revealing the high cost of Canada’s blind loyalty to globalism.

While our leaders scold Trump and posture on the world stage, our economy is faltering, especially in sectors like food and farming, which have been sacrificed to international agendas that don’t serve Canadian interests.

The uncomfortable truth is that Trump’s unapologetic nationalism is working. Canada needs to take note.

Despite near-universal criticism, the U.S. economy is outperforming expectations. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta projects 3.8 per cent second-quarter GDP growth.

Inflation remains tame, job creation is ahead of forecasts, and the trade deficit is shrinking fast, cut nearly in half. These results suggest that, at least in the short term, Trump’s economic nationalism is doing more than just stirring headlines.

Canada, by contrast, is slipping behind. The economy is contracting, manufacturing is under pressure from shifting U.S. trade priorities, and food
inflation is running higher than general inflation. One of our most essential sectors—agriculture and food production—is being squeezed by rising costs, policy burdens and vanishing market access. The contrast with the U.S. is striking and damning.

Worse, Canada had been pushed to the periphery. The Trump administration had paused trade negotiations with Ottawa over Canada’s proposed digital services tax. Talks have since resumed after Ottawa backed away from implementing it, but the episode underscored how little strategic value
Washington currently places on its relationship with Canada, especially under a Carney-led government more focused on courting Europe than securing stable access to our largest export market. But Europe, with its own protectionist agricultural policies and slower growth, is no substitute for the scale and proximity of the U.S. market. This drift has real consequences, particularly for
Canadian farmers and food producers.

The problem isn’t a trade war; it’s a global realignment. And while Canada clings to old assumptions, Trump is redrawing the map. He’s pulling back from institutions like the World Health Organization, threatening to sever ties with NATO, and defunding UN agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the global body responsible for coordinating efforts to improve food security and support agricultural development worldwide. The message is blunt: global institutions will no longer enjoy U.S. support without measurable benefit.

To some, this sounds reckless. But it’s forcing accountability. A senior FAO official recently admitted that donors are now asking hard questions: why fund these agencies at all? What do they deliver at home? That scrutiny is spreading. Countries are quietly realigning their own policies in response, reconsidering the cost-benefit of multilateralism. It’s a shift long in the making and long resisted in Canada.

Nowhere is this resistance more damaging than in agriculture. Canada’s food producers have become casualties of global climate symbolism. The carbon tax, pushed in the name of international leadership, penalizes food producers for feeding people. Policies that should support the food and farming sector instead frame it as a problem. This is globalism at work: a one-size-fits-all policy that punishes the local for the sake of the international.

Trump’s rhetoric may be provocative, but his core point stands: national interest matters. Countries have different economic structures, priorities and vulnerabilities.

Pretending that a uniform global policy can serve them all equally is not just naïve, it’s harmful. America First may grate on Canadian ears, but it reflects a reality: effective policy begins at home.

Canada doesn’t need to mimic Trump. But we do need to wake up. The globalist consensus we’ve followed for decades is eroding. Multilateralism is no longer a guarantee of prosperity, especially for sectors like food and farming. We must stop anchoring ourselves to frameworks we can’t influence and start defining what works for Canadians: secure trade access, competitive food production, and policy that recognizes agriculture not as a liability but as a national asset.

If this moment of disruption spurs us to rethink how we balance international cooperation with domestic priorities, we’ll emerge stronger. But if we continue down our current path, governed by symbolism, not strategy, we’ll have no one to blame for our decline but ourselves.

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Canadian professor and researcher in food distribution and policy. He is senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University and co-host of The Food Professor Podcast. He is frequently cited in the media for his insights on food prices, agricultural trends, and the global food supply chain

Troy Media empowers Canadian community news outlets by providing independent, insightful analysis and commentary. Our mission is to support local media in helping Canadians stay informed and engaged by delivering reliable content that strengthens community connections and deepens understanding across the country

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