Transport Committee on May 21st, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I call our meeting to order.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Excuse me, I have a question for you. Do you have the list of upcoming witnesses?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Yes, we can get that to you.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

I would appreciate that. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I'd like to welcome our witnesses today, Mr. Buda and Mr. Thompson from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and Mr. Dijkema from Cardus.

Mr. Buda or Mr. Thompson, you have 10 minutes or less, please.

[Michael Buda, Director, Policy and Research, Federation of Canadian Municipalities]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of you for having us here today.

Actually, I bring regrets from Mayor Doug Reycraft of Southwest Middlesex, who was actually supposed to be here with me today. He got hung up waiting for a much-delayed plane. He isn't able to be here but he does send his greetings, and we certainly bring greetings from our president, Councillor Karen Leibovici of Edmonton.

We always welcome the opportunity to speak on these issues with this committee. On behalf of FCM's 2,000 members, I'm really pleased to share our views on the topic of how competition can make infrastructure dollars go further.

At FCM we believe there's no surer way to create jobs today and strengthen our economic foundations of tomorrow than investing in municipal infrastructure. Where federal, provincial, and territorial private and local partners bring funding and expertise to the table, no other investment, we believe, goes as far or has achieved so much. In a world of economic uncertainty, we believe Canadians want to know that we're taking action to build the conditions for a competitive economy and strong communities. Canadians want to know that all orders of government are working together to make progress on practical priorities, such as good roads, clean water, and a shorter commute.

The new infrastructure plan announced in budget 2013 is set to renew federal funding expiring in 2014. It will index the gas tax fund to protect its long-term value. It commits to a longer-term funding program for projects. It's certainly, we believe, a step in the right direction. Particularly, by protecting the purchasing power of the gas tax transfer and extending program funding for 10 years, the budget advances the principle of longer-term sustainable infrastructure funding, which is going to be a real theme of my comments today. It really responds to the question asked by this committee.

We're particularly pleased with the government's decision to review the effectiveness of its infrastructure plan within five years. This will be a real opportunity to take stock of how effectively the plan is addressing infrastructure gaps, notably in public transit and upgrades required as a result of new federal waste water regulations. Again, speaking to the question raised by this committee, it will be an opportunity to review the policies, procedures, rules, and regulations that are set into the program initially to ensure that every dollar is being stretched as far as it can be, that we're maximizing the value of every federal dollar to taxpayers.

On the specific question this committee is studying, we have the following comments.

As members will know, Canadian municipalities own and operate a little more than 60% of Canada's core economic infrastructure but collect just 8¢ of every tax dollar paid in Canada. Cities and communities are always open to innovative ideas to help address this critical gap.

I want to start on the first subject around streamlining programs and reducing red tape. I want to start by saying that one of the best and surest ways to reduce red tape and increase private sector infrastructure involvement, which means increasing competition and ensuring fairness, is through predictable infrastructure investments, like the gas tax fund, rather than lottery-style investments through application-based funds.

Let me explain why.

Application-based funding programs, like the building Canada fund, are very well-suited to building large-scale projects with exceptionally high upfront capital costs. They leverage matching investments by all orders of government on a one-time basis to make strategic priorities often of regional or even national significance. They're definitely useful in some circumstances, but they can actually make the infrastructure deficit worse unless there's a balance with predictable funding programs that enable communities to maintain or repair existing infrastructure. In fact, the combination of the building Canada fund, as an application-based program, and the gas tax fund really does provide that balance. But nevertheless, there are ways to improve these application-based funding programs.

In the short-term, setting clear priorities and ensuring a significant portion goes to municipally owned projects will improve the predictability of the fund for local governments, which is going to help them improve their own planning. Most critically, it will improve the ability of the private sector, the providers of construction and other types of services to municipalities, to adapt their own supply and resources capacity to the demand, which will almost certainly increase competition locally.

Looking at permanently adopting the economic action plan and streamlining application forms and processes would also enhance the building Canada fund by reducing the amount of time between a project's application and its approval. Again, shortening approval times and increasing the predictability of when a project will begin will encourage more and more private sector companies to bid for projects.

Moving on to the second topic around increasing private sector investments and participation in local projects, FCM views P3s as one tool to consider when assessing projects. But it's important to remember that they're not a magic bullet, and they, alone, cannot address infrastructure needs. While P3s are an important tool available to municipalities to increase their financing options, whether or not to pursue a P3 option is a decision that we believe must be made at the local level.

The newly announced building Canada fund contains a so-called P3 screen, which will ensure that certain applications must consider P3s as a condition of applying for funding for projects of over $100 million. That's a provision we only support as a means to ensuring that a P3 is considered rather than forced. It is important to remember that, in rural Canada especially, P3s aren't really that effective because of the large project scale required. In fact, most of our research and what we've heard from the private sector suggest that a project value of $100 million or more is really required as a minimum floor for making a P3 project work, and most rural and remote and even small town communities really don't have projects of that size. They also have challenges around capacity in terms of assessing and managing a P3 project and even simply accessing the information required to get RFPs out.

Just as a note, since 2007 only 60% of the P3 fund has been allocated, so $715 million out of the $1.25 billion of the P3 fund.

The last thing I wanted to talk about was the procurement process that municipalities follow. I think that's most directly related to the questions of this committee. An important aspect of ensuring job creation and increasing bids for projects at the municipal level, as I said before, is stable and predictable funding over the long term to allow municipalities and the private sector to better plan their investment when it comes to infrastructure and jobs. FCM was really pleased with the additional flexibility added to the eligible project categories and the gas tax fund, for example, to allow for diversification and meeting the most pressing needs. On its own, this measure will create more opportunities for competition locally.

As an example, or an anecdote, we've spoken to several municipalities that for the last few years, up until two or three years ago, had trouble attracting more than one bid to an RFP for a local project. That was mainly because they just simply weren't putting enough RFPs out. They didn't have enough money to spend on infrastructure, essentially, to attract enough local competition for their projects. They have related that over the last few years the leadership shown by the federal government in reinvesting in Canada's infrastructure has increased not just the amount of money that's being put into infrastructure every year, but the sense, especially in the private sector, that this interest in investing in infrastructure, and the continued investment in infrastructure over the longer term, has attracted more and more private sector bidders. In small communities we've heard many examples where people have said that for years they only had one bid. Now they're getting two, three, or even four bids because companies know they're going to be investing in their local infrastructure, not just this year or next year but for the long term. Multiple bids are the very best way, actually, of reducing your costs locally.

On this score, too, I want to mention that municipal procurement processes are regulated by provincial agreements or legislation, and in some cases those provincial regulations create conditions where these types of decisions are outside of the control of local governments.

I want to underscore that any increased federal restrictions on municipal tendering will simply add red tape, additional bureaucratic hurdles, and ultimately, delays and added costs to building core infrastructure and creating jobs for Canadians.

In conclusion, our hope is that the long-term plan announced in budget 2013 can provide all governments with a model for common-sense cooperation and help tear down the silos that prevent them from delivering the very best value for taxpayers. The infrastructure plan that was announced in the budget is an important opportunity for Canada to maximize, and municipal leaders are ready to do their part.

We'd be pleased to take any questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much, Mr. Buda.

We'll now move to Mr. Dijkema for 10 minutes.

[Brian Dijkema, Program Director, Cardus]

Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for having me here.

I'd like to congratulate the committee for doing this work. I think it's very important. I'd also like to express my gratitude for your work in Parliament on all fronts.

My name is Brian Dijkema. I'm the program director for the work and economics research project at Cardus, which is a think tank. We're a public policy think tank that has a long history of studying construction, particularly the role of labour in construction. Out of that research I'd like to make two basic points with my time today.

The first is that open tendering and closed tendering should not be considered equivalent to non-union and union construction. The sector is much more complex than that. The realities on the ground are much more complex than the strict binary model presented by many people. Second, the competitiveness and the health of the construction industry depend on an open and fair tendering process. This is not only for democratic reasons—because it's a basic democratic issue—but for economic innovation in a sector that Canada is increasingly relying upon for infrastructure in municipalities across the country, and also for other reasons such as responsible resource development.

On the first point, Cardus has several research publications charting the construction industry in Canada's economy from the 1970s to the present. One of the most profound changes during that time is the changing face of the way labour has interacted with construction owners, purchasers, and buyers. The construction industry labour force is unique, because the large-scale projects involved in infrastructure create cyclical demands for a highly skilled workforce. There was a time when only one type of union—the traditional building trades unions, the craft unions—were able to provide and manage those labour cycles and demands. Today that is no longer true. Today a variety of labour pools exist and work effectively in the industry across the country in most places. Many Canadian jurisdictions now have a competitive labour pool on the ground, but public policy is not yet developed to recognize this reality.

In 2003, we produced a paper called, “Competitively Working in Tomorrow’s Construction”, which noted the diverse character of the workforce. Far from construction being neatly divided between non-union and union shops, we noted that there are at least seven different ways to organize the construction workforce. There was, of course, the traditional building trades craft union. There were unions that had multiple crafts within one building trades union. There were craft unions that had expanded their jurisdictions via multiskilled tradespersons. There was the movement of maintenance unions into construction work. There was the development of industrial unions, such as the CEP, taking on construction work, so industrial unions taking on construction work that would not traditionally have been part of their jurisdiction. There was the development of alternative unions such as CLAC and others, and there were various unions organizing under project agreements.

The binary presumption that work in construction is either union or non-union is not an accurate portrayal of what's happening on the ground in the construction sector. This is an important shift. These different organizing models, these ways of organizing the workforce and how they adapt to openness or restrictions across the spectrum, will determine how this industry succeeds or fails in the medium term.

In 2005, Cardus organized a “Stepping Forward” conference in Calgary that brought together the full range of employer and labour organizations involved in this sector. The conference was co-sponsored by the building trades, Merit, CLAC, CLRA, and PCAC—all of whom came together to discuss the various challenges facing the industry. The conference and report addressed a range of issues including labour supply, apprenticeship training, and quality of life as it applied to working models in the sector.

It's important to note that not only is there diversity within the sector itself in the construction workforce, but that the construction workforce, and therefore the construction sector, is increasingly national in scope. We conducted two studies for the Construction Sector Council called, “Working Mobile” and “Working Local”, in which we surveyed construction workers regarding the motivations and obstacles they faced working in different jurisdictions, for instance, Newfoundlanders working in Fort McMurray or something along those lines. We looked at why they made those choices, some of the obstacles to that, and the benefits and drawbacks for the sector. It became clear that there are a variety of barriers for workers to move across jurisdictions. We've dealt with that elsewhere, too.

In 2008, at a presentation at the Economic Club of Canada, my colleague Ray Pennings highlighted some of the economic dimensions of the challenge posed by the gap between policy and realities on the ground. The paper entitled “Why is Construction so Expensive in Ontario?” highlighted the fact that Ontario's labour relations regime has virtually ignored the development of new models of organizing labour, which are more prevalent in western Canada and are increasingly prevalent in other places in the country.

This leads to my second point. In Ontario—but also across the country—closed tendering practices are a key example of the lag between policy and reality on the ground. Canada's construction organizing laws need to catch up to the better options available today, or at least to the multiple options available today. This will greatly help our economy as public procurement budgets rise and rise, and as more and more money is needed, as my colleagues pointed out here. But it will also bolster our democracy as Canadian workers are looking for a freedom of choice that moves beyond the choices offered to them in the past.

Economically speaking, our Cardus construction competitiveness monitor has found that restrictive bidding adds up to a surcharge for public purchasers ranging from 2%, if you accept the model used by the City of Toronto and most frequently cited by representatives of those who tend to be beneficiaries of restrictive bidding, i.e., the building trade unions, to the City of Hamilton's estimate of 40%, which was provided to it by consultants and also confirmed in the city's report on the issue of closed tendering when it became subject to closed tendering.

Stephen Bauld, who has authored legal texts on public procurement produced by LexisNexis, suggests that not only is the matter relevant in terms of who is eligible to bid and the cost strictures under which they operate, but that the number of bidders has an impact on the price. Bauld's research and much other research by economists suggest that cost decreases range from 20% to 25% as the number of bidders rises from two to 15. Bauld suggests three reasons for greater competition in construction bidding, and I quote here:

First, as the number of bidders increases, each participant in the process has an incentive to offer a better price, because it becomes harder for the bidders participating in the process to anticipate each other’s behaviour. Second, a higher number of bids can increase the chance of receiving a bid from a party who will place a high value on securing the contract. Such a party is likely to offer the most competitive price. Third, an increase in the number of bids makes it more difficult for the bidders to organize on a collusive basis.

In short, closed bidding costs our public budgets immensely.

But there is a more fundamental argument, which is a democratic one. Disqualifying potential bidders from public works because of choices they make or workers make as private citizens runs contrary to Canadian principles. Closed tendering not only costs taxpayers more money, but it embeds one particular labour model to the detriment of other worker organizations and to the detriment of workers' choice. In short, it squelches the tremendous innovation and diversity taking place within the sector on the ground.

Workers should be free to choose between these competing models of labour organizations without being arbitrarily disqualified from public works because of their choice as private citizens. The public should also be able to benefit from the innovations that are taking place within these competitive pools by seeing the full range of qualified labour models competing for public work paid for by public dollars.

There is an ancient principle of governance that says, “What touches all must be approved by all”. I would suggest to this committee and to the government that a similar principle should be applied to the tendering of publicly funded infrastructure projects. That which is funded by all should be accessible to all. In other words, open tendering is about fairness. In a free and democratic society, there should be no restrictions that limit otherwise qualified companies from bidding on publicly funded work because of the private affiliation of their employees. It's simply not fair.

I submit to this committee that the onus should not be placed on those asking for public tenders to be open to all Canadians, but the onus should be on those who wish to close public tenders to a select group, whoever that group might be. What public policy goal is served when bidding is restricted? I've not yet found out.

This is not simply a municipal or provincial issue. It's a national issue. Significant amounts of federal funding are subject to closed bidding, including $263 million in Ontario alone, according to our review of federal infrastructure expenditures. Union Station in Toronto—most of us have had a chance to visit that—and the Pan Am Games stadium in Hamilton, my town, are two of the more high-profile examples of federal funds being restricted.

In Manitoba, the Red River floodway expansion project and the East Side Road project are subject to project labour agreements with certain unions, which effectively bar companies affiliated with other unions and non-union companies from bidding on public infrastructure projects under the labour relations model chosen by their employees. These projects have received $324 million of federal funding and a significant portion of this work has been subject to restrictive project agreements. So it is a national issue.

British Columbia, too, has their law structured in a manner that allows restricted worker choice and reduced competition. Unions there—whatever union or any group—may apply to the minister for the right to bargain collectively and enter into project collective agreements for the duration of major projects. This effectively allows a given union or labour pool to petition the minister for exclusive rights on major projects. This politicizes public works in unhelpful ways.

We recognize that there are significant interests at play in this discussion. My colleague Ray Pennings noted in our 2003 “Competitively Working” paper that, “Given the significant dollars, organizational reputations, and market shares at stake for the various companies, unions, and associations involved in Canadian industrial construction, sorting through the spin is an inevitable necessity for any publicly held discussion about labour relations” and the role of infrastructure funding.

Governments have a significant task to sort through the spin and recognize that open tendering is a strategic concern for the country. It is connected to the heart of the country's jobs and training program, a program that has been laid out by this government. It will help engage diverse communities such as aboriginals. Open tendering will assist responsible resource extraction and it will ensure that Canada's infrastructure deficit is brought back to surplus in an affordable and fair manner, combined with increased funding.

This is a question of whether we're going to live up to our reputation as a country that recognizes diversity, encourages innovation, and promotes excellence. As such, we have three recommendations.

The first is that a study be commissioned to examine the cost savings that the federal government stands to gain from open tendering or making open tendering a requirement.

The second is that the government make reception of federal infrastructure funds conditional on opening public tenders to all qualified bidders regardless of the labour affiliation of their employees, except in jurisdictions that are prevented by provincial law from doing so. Places where it's a voluntary signing on to a project labour agreement that would close bidders out should not receive federal funding. Jurisdictions that are currently handcuffed by that because of provincial labour law should still be eligible.

The third is that the government initiate meetings with provincial counterparts to determine ways to ensure fair, open, and transparent bidding on projects receiving federal funds with a particular emphasis on removing barriers to multiple labour pools.

Thanks for your attention. I welcome your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move to questioning. Ms. Chow, you have seven minutes.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Thank you.

My question is to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. FCM has asked for dedicated funding. That didn't happen. We're still in a grant lottery situation. You requested a $2.5 billion direct transfer. Then the gas tax has been indexed, but because of the $100 million incremental, really, municipalities won't be seeing the first nickel until 2016.

Having said that, my question is very specific. The Obama team did a red tape reduction initiative. They managed to halve the time that it now takes them to approve an application. There are examples. I believe with the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement, the approval process was cut by three years. Another project was cut by six months—that was the Red Line rail transit corridor. It looks like what they're doing is looking at the best practices from all the different applications and municipalities. They have a very sophisticated IT tracking system. They were able to reduce the approval time by at least 50%.

Is that something the FCM has been pushing for? Would you be interested in the federal government going in this direction?

[Michael Buda]

Thank you for the question.

Certainly one of FCM's interests in working with the federal government in the design of the new programs is to take the best of what we learned in the economic action plan and apply those lessons to the new programs. This essentially means reducing approval times so they are as limited as possible while at the same time allowing for sufficient review, and simplifying application forms.

The best way to accomplish that is to focus the federal government's accountability mechanisms, which are built into the new plans, to ensure there is value for money in the outcomes produced by those investments. So rather than focusing on the inputs on what kind of concrete to use or what shape the bridge should be or procurement rules, the government should be ensuring and testing and auditing to ensure every dollar it invests in local infrastructure through municipalities is used as efficiently as possible.

The best way to do that is to look at outcomes not at inputs. That means identifying clear priorities for the programs, improving the predictability of the funds, making sure that approval processes at provincial, territorial, and federal levels are transparent, and then tracking everything as mentioned.

Certainly what's happening in the States is laudable, although I should mention I think the federal government has learned a tremendous amount over the last decade. Canada is still well ahead of the United States, but that doesn't mean we can rest on our laurels. We have to keep going because they are catching up. The more efficient and the more streamlined we can make our programs, the more attractive it will be for the private sector to bid on and participate in projects here.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Do you support the federal government putting conditions on funds? I know you prefer the gas tax, which is a direct transfer, but would you prefer to see various conditions attached to the grant program that was just reannounced? I've always heard from my friends on the other side that they want the local municipalities to have full autonomy to make their own decisions, because when planning, the local municipalities have the direct say.

I noticed they are now drifting toward applying conditions where there are P3 screenings or whatever other conditions might be applied. Is that something you support?

[Michael Buda]

Obviously the building Canada fund is intended to be a three-way, cost-shared program, which means in our view three partners are involved. I think our members would say it's absolutely fair for each partner to ensure its own accountability is met through various restrictions or limits or strings or whatever you want to call them.

We certainly understand that there needs to be restrictions. The federal government has its own objectives it needs to ensure are met. We think the money will be best spent if we try to minimize and limit the restrictions that are placed on the funds by each order of government to those that will maximize the outcomes the investments will bring. In other words, trying to do too much using regulation is another word for adding red tape.

Let's focus on maximizing outcomes and then holding every order of government accountable for doing so. That means any time a process is added to an approval process, for instance for a new program, we need to make sure that's going to produce outcomes greater than the costs of carrying out or meeting those restrictions. Really, it comes down to a cost-benefit analysis.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

The Parliamentary Budget Officer reported two weeks ago that there is a reduction of up to $2 billion of infrastructure funds per year for the next two years for the municipalities.

Is that also your analysis?

[Michael Buda]

Not entirely. This is a silly, complex issue in that the budget reports on the funds that leave Ottawa and are sent to the project partner, in our case municipalities, but the way the federal government administers its application-based programs it doesn't send the cheque to the receiving municipality until an original receipt is submitted here in Ottawa from the municipality.

Municipalities typically don't pay off their contractors until the project has received final approval, which includes after final engineering assessments. It could be three years after the project is finished. This means there's a massive delay between when a project is approved and when the money leaves Ottawa. You'll see that in the budget; $6 billion in funds have been reprofiled from programs that go back all the way to 2004.

So in our mind the budget profile that's seen in the budget isn't as important as how the program is developed and designed, and that will happen in the next six or eight months. This will give an indication of the pace of project approvals the government will be following.

Our expectation is, and our position is, that the new building Canada plan should be maintaining investments roughly at the average, if not more so, of the past seven years, which is $1.25 billion. The new program allows for about $1.4 billion on average over the next 10 years, so it will be really important to see that project approvals are maintaining that pace as we move through the first few years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

Ms. St-Denis, you have seven minutes.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you.

You say that the federal government should not impose too many restrictive policies. How do you feel about the cost overruns? The project costs are always twice what you asked for. What solutions are you considering to solve this problem of cost overruns?

[Michael Buda]

Thank you for the question.

To clarify, on a cost overrun on a three-way, cost-shared project through the building Canada fund, for example, 100% of the cost overrun will be borne by the municipal government. Even if the cost overrun is a result of delays in approving the project—so between when an application is submitted, with a cost estimate of the project's cost, and when the project is approved—sometimes those delays can be two or three years. Of course, over that time construction costs increase because of inflation and the rest. One hundred per cent of those cost overruns are borne by the municipality. So for cost-shared programs like the building Canada fund, there's a tremendous amount of accountability on the municipality to stick to the budget required because they're not going to get a dollar more from the federal or provincial government than was promised originally. In that regard, there's really not a lot of room or a need for restrictions around that because the cost overruns are borne by the municipal government.

Of course, if the project comes in under budget, the federal contribution is in fact scaled back. It's kind of a ratchet effect. If the costs go up, it's a municipal responsibility. If the costs go down, the savings are shared among all three partners.

I hope that answers your question.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Dijkema, you referred to unionized and non-unionized employees. Are there any studies that demonstrate that the efficiency of unionized employees is greater or lesser than that of non-unionized employees?

What makes you say that it would probably be better that workers not be union workers?

[Brian Dijkema]

Thanks very much. I actually never said that if people were not unionized things would be better. What I said was that there are a variety of ways of organizing labour, including new unions, and various ways of organizing even unionized workforces. What I said was that it was not fair to restrict bidding to only one type of the seven options available.

As I said at the very beginning, this is not a question of union versus non-union. It's very clear that unionized contractors in this country do very fine work and do good work, and build it well. It's also very clear that non-unionized companies do the same. It's also very clear that companies whose workers are affiliated with different ways of unionizing do work, and that's demonstrated on the ground across the country. Various ways of organizing labour do good work, so it's not a question of union versus non-union.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

You said that people had adopted new models and abandoned the old way of doing things.

Can you give us some examples that prove that the work performed in the context of P3s is much better in terms of the lifespan of the infrastructures built than those built under the old system, without P3s?

[Brian Dijkema]

Again, and I'm sorry if I'm not being clear, but it's not a matter of using P3s or using traditional procurement methods. Our concern as a think tank is to ensure the variety of ways in which Canadian workers choose to organize themselves on the ground in the construction workforce, whether that's in publicly procured projects without P3s or with P3s, so that they are able to bid and to work on projects that their tax dollars pay for.

There are many examples of P3s that work well. There are examples of P3s that don't work well. There are P3s that use unionized labour of the traditional building crafts. There are P3s that use other labour. What we're saying is that the reality on the ground in terms of the way workers organize themselves has changed from the time that the laws were originally set up. What needs to happen is that policy needs to recognize that there's a spectrum of ways in which workers choose to organize themselves, and those workers should not be disqualified from working on projects their tax dollars pay for.

It's not a question of P3s or not. We are not taking a position on P3s here. It's simply a question of whether or not publicly funded projects should be available to the full spectrum of Canadians who pay for them.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Very well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You still have a minute and a half, Madame St-Denis.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Fine.

How do you control the overpricing problems?

You more or less said that federal rules should be abolished, for instance. We will limit our discussion to the federal government, even though a large part of the funding for construction projects does come from provincial and municipal governments. You say that the rules should be abolished because there are too many, they are too complicated, they take too much time, and so forth. How are you going to solve the overpricing issues, and the collusion problem, among others?

I am from a province where it is clear that this exists. Was everything brought into play, in my province? Whether through P3s or union rules, rules were applied at all levels.

What solutions are you considering to lessen collusion, if on top of everything, you are suggesting that regulations be curtailed?