Nation Building for Toronto: Why the City’s Decision-Making Matters

As published in The Hub, October 20, 2026

Since the launch of the Major Projects Office last summer, the term “nation building” being applied to large-scale infrastructure proposals is becoming something of a cliché. Its framing implies that there are projects of such scope and importance that they require extra government attention, funding, or expedited regulatory processes to get them to the finish line.

But the term also implies that even if the project is in Pearse Island, British Columbia or Timmins, Ontario, the importance of the project is not strictly “local,” but in the national interest, as there is a broader public implication whether or not it succeeds. This is perhaps an obvious way to look at massive infrastructure builds, but it’s one that is rarely applied at the municipal level.

Even if you don’t live in Toronto, you are likely paying for it in some way or another. The City of Toronto, received $3.5 billion in direct one-time funding from the Province of Ontario and the federal government just to help it cover the cost of COVID-era shutdowns. The provincial government even signed a “New Deal” with the City of Toronto last year to provide $1.2 billion in operating and $3 billion in extra capital funding support, including uploading the Gardiner Expressway as a provincial highway.

For someone outside of Toronto, it might feel like they are paying for Toronto’s mismanagement and mistakes. But if we accept the “nation-building” frame, even if you live in Peterborough or Woodstock, your economic future is somehow tied to the success of Canada’s largest city, so we benefit when it succeeds.

Like other municipal governments, some of Toronto’s largest expenditures are towards construction. The capital budget, which funds both new and state-of-good-repair infrastructure, is set at $5.6 billion this fiscal year and will total $63 billion over the next 10 years. That total is significantly higher than what provinces like Manitoba or Saskatchewan spend in their entire capital budget. 

Construction costs are complex. With increasing prices for materials, fuel, and supply chain problems, governments need to rein in costs where they can. There is one pretty simple way Toronto could save money on infrastructure: allowing all qualified firms to bid on work. This is how it’s done in every other municipality in Ontario.

Open tendering is a labour-neutral procurement process that invites all interested, qualified contractors to submit bids to build public projects. This open, competitive tendering process encourages contractors to be as innovative and efficient as possible in order to win a contract. It’s a system that has lowered public construction costs by an average of 14 to 21 percent in Hamilton and the Region of Waterloo since they moved from closed to open tendering.

For well over half a century, Toronto has restricted bidding on industrial, commercial, and institutional (ICI) construction projects to a group of contractors whose workers belong to select building trades unions. In 2019, when the Ontario government introduced legislation that gave municipalities the option of implementing open tendering, Toronto was the only municipality in the province to opt out and maintain the existing labour structure.

That decision, according to research by the independent Cardus think tank, has raised the cost of building public infrastructure in Toronto by as much as $347 million annually.

Regardless of the winner of this upcoming municipal election, tough choices are going to be made to keep the city running and attempt to reverse its decline. Competition in construction may be the easiest thing the City of Toronto could do to improve its bottom line. However, its leadership refused to fix the problem when it could have in 2019 and has recently moved to further limit construction competition by passing a motion that will carve out sections of its residential, civil, road, and sewer and water main contracts to designated Building Trade Union-affiliated companies. This costly decision-making pattern is not in Toronto’s interest or that of other provincial taxpayers.

In the spirit of nation building, we all share in Toronto’s decision-making whether or not we are casting a ballot.

Unfortunately, it’s becoming clear that fixing Toronto’s construction procurement process won’t happen any time soon at Toronto City Council. Provincial leaders should take note of the problem. It’s becoming too big to ignore.