🔭 PLATFORM VIEW: Brad Bradford’s open tendering

🔗 LINK: votebradford.ca/tenderingfortaxpayersnr

🔧 DOABLE? Yes, with provincial sign-off.

💰 COSTED? Yes, though savings estimates are likely overstated.

✨ OVERALL: ⭐️⭐️½ (2.5 out of five)

When Council last debated open tendering, in 2019, Councillor Brad Bradford’s contributions were limited to:

1) Supporting a Councillor Ana Bailao motion to maintain closed tendering.

2) Trying not to laugh while sitting next to Councillor Stephen Holyday while Holyday put on a life jacket and made an extended analogy about how Toronto was a boat about to pass through rough waters.

But that was then! This is now! Politicians are allowed to change their minds.

Bradford is out today with a proposal to have the city reverse course on their decision to opt out of the province’s Bill 66, legislation that allowed municipalities to get designated as “non-construction employers” and thereby no longer bound to collective agreements requiring them to use labour from certain unions for certain projects.

Rather than get into the weeds of labour policy — which is very complex — let’s just skip to the bottom line and say that this is a doable policy. The provincial government and/or the Ontario Labour Relations Board would need to allow Toronto to make the switch, but I do not think it would be a particularly tough negotiation with the PCs at Queen’s Park.

The cost savings estimates in Bradford’s proposal appear to be significantly overstated, though.

“This will save the City of Toronto budget over $200 million annually,” his release says. But the 2019 staff report on Bill 66 notes the City only spends about $600 million a year on Industrial, Commercial and Institutional (ICI) projects that would be affected by this switch. Savings amounting to a third of that figure seem very unlikely, especially given that a supplement staff report noted that labour generally amounts to only a third of overall construction costs for city projects.

Instead, the staff report in 2019 estimated savings at between 2% and 8%, amounting to $12 million a year on the low end and $48 million on the high end.

It’s possible that the experience in other municipalities and changes to the project landscape have changed those estimates, but starting with a figure more than four times higher than the most recent high-end staff estimate seems, well, questionable.

I’d caution about making any suggestion this is a game-changer for the city facing a massive operating budget hole. Like, don’t make me tap the “the operating and capital budgets are separate things” sign. But, still, savings are savings, and this is an achievable policy proposal that evidence suggests will find some savings, so give it points for that.

PLATFORM VIEW is a new daily(ish) feature by City Hall Watcher on Substack Notes. Got a request for a candidate policy proposal I should review? Let me know.