Transport committee  That's a provincial law.

Transport committee  If I could quickly add one thing, this gets back to the previous question as well. This is actually not just about CLAC versus the building trades. The same construction monopoly that happens in Waterloo that the carpenters union has affects LiUNA, the labourers union, who also d

Transport committee  Correct.

Transport committee  Yes. Ultimately the sum total of this policy is that taxpayers pay more. It's particularly insulting to the tradesperson who is a taxpayer in the jurisdiction where he can't do the work.

Transport committee  First, just to clarify, are you asking what reasons these provinces are giving us for why we can't bid?

Transport committee  They don't choose to do this, in most cases. I don't want to discount what we're talking about. We're talking about $1 billion of capital budget annually, in municipalities alone, that is subject to this monopoly. None of the municipalities affected in that $1 billion willingly

Transport committee  Brendan, you might want to speak to that too. Do you want to speak first?

Transport committee  If I could just add to that, you're actually not allowed to expand.

Transport committee  We have fantastic contractors. One reason is the labour model that I talked about earlier, which has a significant productivity advantage over many of the competition, yet we have a strong labour partner that ensures our workers are well cared for, well compensated, and have a st

Transport committee  No.

Transport committee  I'm not familiar with any examples like that. We built the Port Mann Bridge. We built the Pitt River Bridge. We built 40% of the oil sands. We've built 40 water treatment plants in Ontario. We built the Centre Island airport on time and on budget. We know how to do this stuff. We

Transport committee  CLAC is well known for not using member dues or member funds to support political causes of any sort.

Transport committee  If I were selling our contractors to you today, I'd wax eloquent about all kinds of competitive advantages. But Michael is absolutely right when he says that actually this is simply the exercise of when you scale the number of bidders from ten to two you will get price inflation.

Transport committee  I'm not entirely sure I'm qualified to speak to that. I don't know that he is, because neither of us are non-union. I represent unionized contractors, and he represents a union. So I'm not sure what to tell you on that.

Transport committee  If I could jump in, I would say it's more than just all of the work. If this were just about the two workers representing the 20 carpenters who happen to be on the staff of the City of Hamilton, that would be one thing, and we can argue that wouldn't be fair either. But this is a