Soft costs come in very different areas. In the jurisdiction I work in, we usually start by meeting with the local conservation authority to see what effect we may have on drainage. There's the conservation authority, and there are sound studies, emission studies, soil studies, tree studies. We are off of the grid, so to speak, in terms of sewage here, so we have to have septic system studies. You have a fleet of engineers that you hire to start doing these studies. We have to do traffic management studies, too. You have to invest a huge amount of money before you can even see if the project is feasible. Each time you do a project, this happens, so the soft costs keep adding up and adding up.
Then you apply for planning permission. You might have a site-plan application that you make, and there's a very heavy fee when you make that application. If you get through that hurdle, then you run into the site-plan agreement, coming up with an agreement that satisfies you and the city and the local conservation authority. Then you apply for the building permit. Each stage takes a long period of time, and you don't know until you pass one stage whether you're even going to get to the next stage, so you're incrementally putting out more and more money before you even know if the project is feasible.
It's just uncertainty. Business people don't like uncertainty. We like certainty, and obviously it's not feasible all the time. Unfortunately, many governments can't make any exemptions. Everything has to go by a particular rule, whether it makes sense or not. There's no common-sense clause in legislation.