Grass Roots Campaign Pushes Back Against Toronto’s Wasteful Spending

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Support a #FairandOpenTO

Over the past three years, Toronto Council has needlessly raised property taxes by a whopping 25 percent. Tax hikes of this size could have been avoided, according to the Progressive Contractors Association of Canada (PCA), which today launched a grass roots campaign aimed at turning up the pressure on Council to spend public tax dollars more responsibly.

 PCA’s campaign called FairandOpenTO urges residents and businesses to call on their councillors to stop overpaying for public construction work by supporting fair and open tendering. Open tendering is a procurement process that allows all qualified contractors and their workers to build public projects, from new community centres and libraries to splash pads.

 Toronto is the only city in Ontario that does just the opposite. Toronto only considers bids from contractors whose workers belong to a select group of American construction unions.

 “It’s astonishing that only companies who hire American building trade unions are allowed to bid on and build taxpayer funded projects in Toronto,” said Karen Renkema, VP Ontario at PCA. “Our member companies employ unionized workers that are members of a made in Canada union. For that reason, our members and their workers are shut out of local taxpayer funded projects. It’s that simple, and it’s wrong.” 

Limiting construction competition is costly for local taxpayers. According to the independent Cardus think tank, Toronto Council knowingly passes up on savings of roughly $347 million annually by sticking with a restrictive tendering process that’s been in effect since the 1970s.

The #FairandOpenTO campaign includes a video that helps illustrate Council’s decision to consciously overspend on public construction work. You can view that video here.

Join our campaign! Have your say, by going to: https://fairandopentoronto.ca