Business
Have We Lost the Ability to Build Infrastructure?
The Empire Statue Building was, for its time, monumental. The New York landmark may not be such a big deal these days, but its construction history in often invoked as a sign that we’ve lost the capacity to do big stuff.
After all, the iconic skyscraper’s builders brought the project to completion $19 million under budget, 12 days ahead of schedule, and in just over a year.
At the height of the depression.
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By contrast, California’s High-Speed Rail project – designed to ultimately link San Diego with Sacramento – was authorized in 2008. Construction on Phase 1 didn’t being until 2015. As of now, $11.2 billion has been spent without a single train having left a single station. The total budget was originally in the $33-40 billion range, although it’s now anticipated to run past $128 billion. And no one’s expecting project completion any time in the next decade.
Closer to home, we can compare the original 7.4 kilometer Yonge Line of Toronto’s subway system (fully-functional by 1954 after just five years’ work) with its grandson, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. The Eglinton line was announced in 2007, work began in 2011 and, 13 years later, completion is still nowhere in sight. Since I live just a few blocks from what might one day become an LRT station, I’ll be sure to let you know if anything changes.
In the grand scheme of things, North America might not even have it so bad. Lately, everyone (and by “everyone” I mean everyone besides my wife, children, or even a single person I have ever met) has been buzzing about a 17,000-word article called “Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated”. I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing have ChatGPT summarize it for you.
The main takeaway from Foundations is that the UK’s excessive regulations, high energy and labour costs, bureaucratic delays, and outdated tax incentives led to an application process requiring 360,000 pages and nearly £300 million for the Lower Thames Crossing project before any work was even approved!
The rot that lies behind Britain’s paralysis has been building since the 1990’s, through both Conservative and Labour governments.
But things might not be so bad here at home. For one thing, we probably don’t have a regulatory bureaucracy that’s quite so extreme as Britain’s. I’m aware of nothing in Canada that’s analogous to the UK’s “nutrient neutrality” requirements.
And while our energy costs are certainly not cheap, they’re a whole lot better here than in the UK. Commercial electricity, for instance, costs an average of USD 0.117 per kWh in Canada, far below the USD 0.485 per kWh they’re paying in the UK. And the cost of natural gas for home heating in Canada (USD 0.038 per kWh) isn’t even close to what they shell out across the pond (USD 0.092 per kWh).
Which might at least partially explain why, despite all the delays, cost overruns, and unexpected service failures involved, some major infrastructure projects have reached a (broadly) happy conclusion.
For every expensive failure (like the Eglinton Crosstown LRT or the Ottawa Confederation Line), there have also been successes (like Confederation Bridge and Vancouver’s Canada Line). Things are far from perfect, but it’s not all doom and gloom either.
The Foundations article ends on a positive note:
We believe that Britain can enjoy such a renewal once more. To do so, it need simply remove the barriers that stop the private sector from doing what it already wants to do: build homes, bridges, tunnels, roads, trams, railways, nuclear power plants, grid connections, prisons, aqueducts, reservoirs, and more.
Removing barriers. Or even better, resisting the erection of new barriers before they’re in place. We can always hope.
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From the Fraser Institute
This year’s COP wants to fast-track the world’s transition to “clean” energy, help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change, work on “mobilizing inclusivity” (whatever that means) and “delivering on climate finance,” which is shorthand for having wealthier developed countries such as Canada transfer massive amounts of wealth to developing countries.
Every year, the United Nations convenes a Conferences of Parties to set the world’s agenda to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It’s the biggest event of the year for the climate industry. This year’s conference (COP29), which ends on Sunday, drew an army of government officials, NGOs, celebrities and journalists (many flying on GHG-emitting jet aircraft) to Baku, Azerbaijan.
The COP follows a similar narrative every year. It opens with a set of ambitious goals for climate policies, followed by days of negotiating as countries jockey to carve out agreements that most favour their goals. In the last two days, they invariably reach a sticking point when it appears the countries might fail to reach agreement. But they burn some midnight oil, some charismatic actors intervene (in the past, this included people such as Al Gore), and with great drama, an agreement is struck in time for the most important event of the year, flying off to their protracted winter holidays.
This year’s COP wants to fast-track the world’s transition to “clean” energy, help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change, work on “mobilizing inclusivity” (whatever that means) and “delivering on climate finance,” which is shorthand for having wealthier developed countries such as Canada transfer massive amounts of wealth to developing countries.
Some of these agenda items are actually improvements over previous COPs. For example, they’re actually talking about “climate adaptation”—the unwanted stepchild of climate policies—more this year. But as usual, money remains a number one priority. As reported in the Associated Press, “negotiators are working on a new amount of cash for developing nations to transition to clean energy, adapt to climate change and deal with weather disasters. It’ll replace the current goal of $100 billion (USD) annually—a goal set in 2009.” Moreover, “experts” claim the world needs between $1 trillion and $1.3 trillion (yes, trillion) in “climate finance” annually. Not to be outdone, according to an article in the Euro News, other experts want $9 trillion per year by 2030. Clearly, the global edifice that is climate change activism is all about the money.
Reportedly, COP29 is in its final section of the meta-narrative, with much shouting over getting to a final agreement. One headline in Voice of America reads “Slow progress on climate finance fuels anger as COP29 winds down.” And Argus News says “climate finance talks to halt, parties fail to cut options.” We only await the flying in of this year’s crop of climate megafauna to seal the deal.
This year’s conference in Baku shows more clearly than ever before that the real goal of the global climate cognoscenti is a giant wealth transfer from developed to developing countries. Previous climate conferences, whatever their faults, focused more on setting emission reduction targets and timelines and less about how the UN can extract more money from developed countries. The final conflict of COP29 isn’t about advancing clean energy targets or helping vulnerable countries adapt to climate change technologically, it’s all about show me the money.
Author:
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Average compensation for a federal bureaucrat is $125,300. Cutting back the bureaucracy to population growth would save taxpayers $9 billion every year
Dumb government spending doesn’t stop at the 49th parallel.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced the creation of a Department of Government Efficiency, with a mandate to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”
Those marching orders sure would sound good in a prime minister’s mandate letter to a finance minister. And here’s the blueprint they should follow.
Begin with crazy research Canadian taxpayers are forced to subsidize.
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council spends $1 billion a year supporting “research and research training in the social sciences and humanities.”
Here’s a little taste of the reports it funds with your tax dollars:
- Gender Politics in Peruvian Rock Music ($20,000)
- Cart-ography: tracking the birth, life and death of an urban grocery cart, from work product to work tool ($105,000)
- My Paw in Yours: Dead Pets and Transcendence of Species Divides in Experimental Art-Making Practice ($17,500)
- Playing for Pleasure: The Affective Experience of Sexual and Erotic Video Games ($50,000)
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Parks Canada put Mr. Magoo in charge of its hunting operations. It spent four years and $10,000 capturing a single bullfrog and dropped $800,000 hunting 84 deer on a B.C. Island. How can a simple hunt cost $10,000 per deer?
Well, hunting gets more expensive when instead of your grandpa’s old rifle, you use prohibited semi-automatic weapons, instead of a box of shells, you get a crate of ammo, and instead of your buddy’s old pickup, you rent a helicopter for $67,000.
Or how about the $8-million barn at Rideau Hall. Or $12,500 live senior citizen sex story shows. Or the $8,800 sex toy show in Germany. Or the millions wasted producing government podcasts no one listens to.
Then there’s government officials living high on the hog.
Governor General Mary Simon spent $71,000 on limo services in Iceland. Bureaucrats spend $76,000 a month renting art. Global Affairs Canada spends $51,000 on booze a month.
Now, the big stuff.
The size and cost of the government is out of control. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hired 108,000 new bureaucrats. That’s a 42 per cent increase in less than a decade.
Had the bureaucracy only increased with population growth, there would be 72,491 fewer bureaucrats today.
Average compensation for a federal bureaucrat is $125,300. Cutting back the bureaucracy to population growth would save taxpayers $9 billion every year.
It’s time to stop rewarding failure with bonuses.
The feds dished out $1.5 billion in bonuses since 2015.
And the bonuses flow despite federal departments only managing to hit half of their performance targets once in the past five years.
Government executives overseeing ArriveSCAM took $340,000 in bonuses.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation rubberstamped $102 million in bonuses amid the worst housing crisis in Canadian history.
The Bank of Canada printed $20 million in bonus cheques in 2022, as inflation reached a 40-year high.
The CBC dished out $132 million in bonuses since 2015.
The next thing on the chopping block? Corporate welfare.
Trudeau put taxpayers on the hook for $30 billion in subsidies to multinational corporations like Honda,Volkswagen, Stellantis and Northvolt.
Federal corporate subsidies totalled $11.2 billion in 2022 alone.
Shutting down the federal government’s seven regional development agencies would save taxpayers an estimated $1.5 billion annually.
True efficiency would also mean eliminating failing government operations altogether. The feds should sell any Crown corporation that can, or should, be left to the private sector.
Here are a few examples.
The CBC, which takes more than $1 billion from taxpayers annually.
Canada Post, which lost $1.2 billion in the last two years and forecasts “larger, unsustainable losses in future years.”
VIA Rail, took $1.8 billion in taxpayer cash during the past five years just to cover operating losses.
The bad news for taxpayers is we pay too much tax because the government wastes too money. The list of wasteful spending in this article is far from exhaustive.
Other examples include the multi-billion dollar gun confiscation that police officers say won’t work, the $25-billion equalization scheme and taxpayer-funded media bailouts, among others.
The good news is a champion of taxpayers could make massive cuts and barely anyone outside the Ottawa bubble would notice.
This is the blueprint to slash Ottawa’s wasteful, bloated bureaucracy. All we need now is a prime minister with the guts to pick up the scissors.
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