The City of Toronto is facing a severe budget crunch.1 At the same time, Torontonians are understandably demanding more action on issues such as safety on the TTC subway and the growing mental health crisis. With increasing stresses on municipal services, Toronto City Council will need to find creative ways and make better choices to address these concerns in the future.

One of these choices should be to implement a fair, open, and competitive tendering process for Toronto’s infrastructure construction.

Prior to 2019, municipal infrastructure procurement in some Ontario cities was restricted to firms whose workers belonged to certain building trade unions, functioning effectively as an oligopoly on procurement in these municipalities. Previous Cardus research has demonstrated that these restrictions led to significant decreases in competition for taxpayer-funded infrastructure projects and resulted in significantly higher costs for taxpayers in these cities.2