I think, absolutely, in the city of Montreal it's a matter of public record now that there's been misappropriation, but if you take a city like Hamilton, where there's closed tendering for all city work, there was a recent waste-water project that was being tendered, and they hired outside consultants to develop a budget for the project. The outside consultants, engineers, and others in the industry decided they should budget around $29 million for the project. Then, of course, closed tendering happened, where only unionized contractors were able to bid, and the low bid on that project was $53 million. It was about 83% over budget for no other reason. No one else could describe it. It was just that there was only one union that could do the work and that's what they were charging.
They could have charged $104 million. I don't know why they only charged $53 million. There was no competition from outside to even make it $53 million. Given that it was an 83% increase, I think that this was probably what they felt maybe was reasonable—I don't know—but there are many, many projects. In the City of Hamilton alone, their staff report has suggested that their closed-tendering rules over the next 10 years would cost the city an additional $1.1 billion.
So there's a clear link, and that's why the City of Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, some other cities, are fighting certification, because once that happens and once the city's certified, they have to use that union for all their work. They know there are huge cost implications, and it means one of two things: either you cut policing, cut the amount of roads you build, cut the amount of hospitals you build, or you raise taxes.