Three organizations representing municipal developers say inconsistent rules across the Greater Toronto Area are making it too expensive to build, particularly in light of the trade war with the U.S.
All levels of government should develop strategies to ensure consistency across different construction projects, reduce red tape, and establish clear frameworks and timelines for the permitting processes, say the Toronto and Area Road Builders Association, Greater Toronto Sewer and Watermain Contractors Association and the Heavy Construction Association of Toronto.
Although provincial regulations are in place, municipalities can apply the rules as they see fit, resulting in hundreds of distinct requirements for building and other infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges, sewage systems and water mains. These inconsistencies raise costs and lower construction quality, they say.
Patrick McManus, the contractors association’s executive director, said there are standards created by the construction industry, governments and municipal engineers, but they are modified to a point they are not recognizable from the original form.
“Every time we … cross a municipal border, the specifications for how we build water mains, sewers, stormwater infrastructure, roads, and bridges, it changes. And it costs more money every time that we cross borders.”
More than half of the budgets of Ontario’s municipalities go to construction projects, with cities owning more public infrastructure than the federal and provincial governments combined, according to TARBA. The three associations build more than 75 per cent of the total construction portfolio across the GTA annually.
Raly Chakarova, the roads builder association executive director, said there are currently more than 300 different asphalt mix designs in the GTA, and each municipality has different road-paving requirements. "We're talking about breaking down interprovincial trade barriers, but just as important is harmonizing practices across municipal boundaries, especially in an economically significant region like the GTA.” Having standardized specifications would avoid such challenges with faster construction timelines and cost savings, Chakarova said.
Material costs
Problems associated with inter-municipal inconsistency are layered on top of the existing financial pressure from the trade war with the U.S., the builders say. Even though it’s not still clear how much Trump’s tariffs will increase material costs through the GTA, McManus said they’re already seeing price hikes from the U.S. and other suppliers responding to the tariff threats.
“We're seeing what I would call foundational elements of construction increased in price. And the things that we import that are foundational products are structural steel, which we use in construction and building construction, cement powder, which we use to produce concrete, and resin, which we use to build to manufacture water mains. And those are things that we need everywhere, and we need lots of.”
Higher costs will be widespread and affect the entire supply chain. For this reason, municipalities will face tough choices regarding which public projects to pursue.
“If your costs double for one particular project, now you have to choose, right? You can only maintain this road, and you have to push the maintenance of the other road back to next year,” Chakarova said. “That presents a serious problem because we already have a significant state of good repair backlog across all the municipalities.”
Emissions cut
Standardizing municipal guidelines for building infrastructure means also integrating sustainable construction practices that can help cities save money and reduce emissions. One type of recycled material being promoted by the road builders association is recycled crushed aggregate, a sustainable construction technique that uses asphalt pavement and concrete reclaimed from old structures to be processed and reused for new projects.
Primary aggregates like sand, gravel, and rocks are finite, non-renewable materials and much more costly to extract. Recycling has the advantage of extending the lifespan of pits and quarries and reducing the amount of demolition waste that ends up in landfills.
The decrease in carbon emissions and cost savings come from cutting back on the distance the material is transported, Chakarova said. About 60 per cent of the cost of aggregate comes from transportation.
“A recycling depot is on average about five to 10 kilometres away from the construction site, whereas a pit or a quarry is anywhere between 35 and 75 kilometres away. You can imagine the amount of tons of materials that you need as part of any project.” So, reducing the length of those long-haul trucking trips really helps, Chakarova said.
This type of planning can serve as an additional tool for municipalities to lessen the impact of tariffs. “That will offset the impact of the tariff increases that we hope to see, and it's something that we can put in place for the long term that's going to only continue to generate those savings and that value for years to come.”
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