Québec had an inquiry¹ and found large-scale systematic corruption. Other provinces… haven't looked.
How very Canadian!
If you think corruption is bad in Quebec, look at BC. One of the first things our current government did was to pass a law requiring that all government-funded construction must be performed by workers belonging to unions which donated to the governing party's last election campaign. A short time later, they changed the procurement rules from "lowest cost bid" to "best bid", with the rules for determining "best" explicitly including how many jobs would be created for members of the aforementioned donor unions.
The reality is for big projects quality should always be part of the contract. Use substandard quality materials and the whole contract is void.
The problem is that "agree on a level" and "lowest cost" are fundamentally opposite goals which require constant outside monitoring.
It's true that (a) workers must join a union when working on gov't projects and (b) The governing NDP is the "pro-union" party and thus, has received millions of donations from said unions.
The last part of what you wrote is worded poorly IMHO. Read literally, it seems to imply that donating to the party's campaign is part of the law itself. Which it isn't.
I agree, the effect is pretty much the same (due to (a) and (b) above) but I think it's important to clarify that point.
I’m not pro-union but unions aren’t the devil.
Gawd. As if Canadians are too dumb to go to international conferences like everybody else. Maybe they wouldn't let us in because we are wearing toques and speak in funny accents.
Source: I am an American who has visited Chicago 3 times and hated it more and more each time due to prices, crime, horrible weather, and extreme lack of anything to do
It’s the original skyscraper city with an absolutely wonderful skyline and architecture. Being in the city during a blizzard is magical, and the weather on a nice summer day. Tons of parks and pristine coastline. One of the best food and shopping scenes anywhere. World class museums. Also, it’s certainly cheaper than SF/LA/NYC. There is a lifetime of things to experience in Chicago.
Source: someone's who's spent more time in Chicago than someone's who's visited a handful of times.
Of course you'd like it, you're used to the place. The city is called "the windy city" for a reason, and is certainly not known to have weather resembling southern California. If you like it, that's fine, but not everyone likes cold, windy midwestern weather.
For prices, your experiences are simply invalid. The OP was likely talking about prices he'd see as a visitor, the large part of which would include hotel rooms. Do you spend a lot of time in hotels near your home? Of course not. And if the OP is comparing various international cities, then I can see why he'd complain about Chicago: it's a large American city and would likely have extremely high hotel prices, because hotels in America are generally very expensive unless you want to stay in a roach motel. It's much cheaper, as a single traveler, to stay in most of western Europe (except probably Switzerland).
The "Windy City" thing has little to do with our weather; winds are empirically worse in New York and San Francisco. If you have almost no experience with the city, it's easy to project and extrapolate from its nickname.
But you're not allowed to say that "the wind" is why you don't like Chicago.
(Fair warning, I have our city's flag inked on my arm, so I may be a booster).
It is a kickass flag, to be fair.
Well New York isn't exactly famous for great weather either...
It’s like saying you can become a good programmer and have a good company culture by going to conferences.
It ain’t going to happen.
Once you have N years, and see and solve X problems you won’t be experienced.
When you first start, you don't even know what you don't know. All the conferences in the world aren't going to help you if you don't know which problems you need help solving.
Quebec removed a blindfold with the Charbonneau Commission.
A sincere question: have other provinces done the same recently? What did they discover?
> - over-the-top safety requirements, regardless of project size. E.g. in Toronto every road work sight has a police officer present who’s just standing there bored out of their mind.
How much does that add to a project that costs 9-10 digits?
> - lack of experience and expertise. Canada is a relatively young country with very few major infra projects under its belt.
What's your definition of "major infra projects?"
Canada is geographically enormous, with extreme climate and terrain, and clustered populations. Yet somehow they've built infrastructure for a modern, vibrant economy.
Examples:
70 years of remote hydro-electric plants and a transmission network for half a dozen provinces and states.[1]
50 years of nuclear power plants in half a dozen countries.[2]
A counter example for corruption (Canada is currently removing another blindfold), but about a century of bridges, tunnels, highways around the world.[3]
> - lack of care by citizens. Most Canadians aren’t well travelled outside of Americas.
Citation?
> They don’t know what good cities look and feel like.
Ouch.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro-Québec
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Energy_of_Canada_Limite...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNC-Lavalin
Edit: typo & clarity
Sorry to digaree but he Charbonneau Commission did very little, corruption is still a huge problem in QC, it's part of the culture ..like Italy.
Pretty sure "every road work site" cost a few digits less.
These police details are paid by the organization doing the work. Condo developers, public utilities, and municipal public works departments all pay the same rates.
This stuff is expensive. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars US during the Big Dig. Our local radio humorists Tom and Ray Maggliozi might have said, lots of police "put their boats through college" in those days.
About 30 minutes later when the lane opens we get about half a mile down the zone and saw that the cop was only able to stop this nut job after her path was blocked by machinery and materials. She was cuffed, sitting on the hood of her car completely zoned out. Her friend was still in the passenger seat. They couldn't have been older than 20. My money was on club/party drugs they couldn't handle and freaked out while waiting in traffic.
just for some context:
> The Central Artery/Tunnel Project (CA/T), commonly known as the Big Dig, was a megaproject in Boston that rerouted the Central Artery of Interstate 93 (I-93), the chief highway through the heart of the city, into the 1.5-mile (2.4 km) Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Tunnel. The project also included the construction of the Ted Williams Tunnel (extending I-90 to Logan International Airport), the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge over the Charles River, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway in the space vacated by the previous I-93 elevated roadway. Initially, the plan was also to include a rail connection between Boston's two major train terminals. Planning began in 1982; the construction work was carried out between 1991 and 2006; and the project concluded on December 31, 2007 when the partnership between the program manager and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority ended.
> The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the US, and was plagued by cost overruns, delays, leaks, design flaws, charges of poor execution and use of substandard materials, criminal arrests,[2][3] and the death of one motorist.[4] The project was originally scheduled to be completed in 1998[5] at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006).[6] However, the project was completed in December 2007 at a cost of over $8.08 billion (in 1982 dollars, $14.6 billion adjusted for inflation, meaning a cost overrun of about 190%)[6] as of 2006.[7] The Boston Globe estimated that the project will ultimately cost $22 billion, including interest, and that it would not be paid off until 2038.[8] As a result of a death, leaks, and other design flaws, Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff—the consortium that oversaw the project—agreed to pay $407 million in restitution and several smaller companies agreed to pay a combined sum of approximately $51 million.[9]
I know Worksafe programs are similar from province to province, so I would be curious to see a comparison of Canadian Worksafe safety standards to safety standards from around the world to see just how much more (or less?) onerous they are.
If so, your comment of " just constantly adds on new rules and regulations every year, and they don't care about your company's budget or productivity." could be read to acknowledge that it's not the government's job to preserve a company's budget or productivity, but rather preserve their citizens' right to a safe work environment.
In a perfect world, profit and safety could align but when they don't I'm not sure it's fair to chastise an organization for upholding their competing interest. The above can be all disregarded if Canadians don't have similar rights, it was just a thought.
EDIT to add: example of QC bidding: most companies underbid the construction work to later postpone the deadline and request more money than originally bargained, and there doesnt seem to be any (enforced) legislation to consider that
Lack of experience and expertise is not the issue.
This is due to the safety at all costs fallacy that dominates popular politics.
--
One other factor is capture by unions, although that could fall under corruption. It's a high level form of corruption involving swaying public opinion to accept union narratives about the good done by their control of labor forces.
Taking your own salary obviously isn't corruption nor even outright banditry - the intended function is personal enrichment. Nor is voting in your interest even if short sighted and likely to cause future problems.
Similarly demanding construction helmets diverts resources but keeping workers safe is a legitimate goal. Even if the demands were extreme and inefficient like demanding the development and manufacturing of power armor to paint a shed in case a piano falls on them or a moose attacks while irrational, terribly inefficient, and stupid wouldn't be corruption per se.
Now the armor demand because of kickbacks? Doing shoddy work for repeat customers or harming others directly for their own gain? Definite corruption.
No I wasn't categorizing demands for safety standards as corruption. The safety point was separate from my point about unions.
I was categorizing the misleading of the public to get a political party elected that enables one's own union to fetch above-market wages for oneself as something like high-level corruption, though maybe 'corruption' in the public policy context has a more specific definition that doesn't include this.
Nonsense. Canada is a major engineering power, building large projects the world over. One of the world's top 5 engineering firms, SNC-Lavalin, is located there.
Wait? We need to have 14th century church building experience to be considered experienced at building infrastructure?
In contrast America was the first country in the world to build subways on a mass scale. Yet today it has by far the highest subway construction cost in the world. At least an order of magnitude higher than South Korea.
I'm skeptical that aggregate experience on a national-level at decade-scale makes any major difference.
- corruption, especially in QC
- over-the-top safety requirements, regardless of project size. E.g. in Toronto every road work sight has a police officer present who’s just standing there bored out of their mind. In Montreal it’d be two persons on each side holding a flag - a job in Europe replaced by a temporary semaphore.
- lack of experience and expertise. Canada is a relatively young country with very few major infra projects under its belt.
- lack of funding due to low density. You just can’t build ambitious infra projects for such sprawling city design. Every city, except Montreal to some degree, suffers from urban sprawl and low density.
- lack of care by citizens. Most Canadians aren’t well travelled outside of Americas. They don’t know what good cities look and feel like. Even when they go on vacations it’s generally cheaper destinations in southern parts like Cuba, Mexico and Dominicans.