Prior to July 2014, all qualified bidders could bid on public work projects in the Region of Waterloo in Ontario.
After July 2014, however, legislation passed by the provincial government required bidding be restricted to only firms affiliated with the carpenters’ union. This requirement remained in place for five years, until Bill 66 became law in July 2019.
Bill 66 changed the legal definition of a “construction employer” in such a way that enabled the region to return to open and competitive tendering whereby all qualified firms, regardless of the affiliations of their workers, were allowed to bid on public projects.
A new report from Cardus documents the effects this had on the bids tendered in each of these three distinct periods. It analyzes the bids of twenty-six projects tendered between 2019 and 2021 in the competitive period and compares the data to the twenty-two projects tendered from 2014 to 2017 under the restrictive regime.
The report highlights a number of findings. The first is that the overall number of bids increased dramatically, by nearly five times, once restrictions were lifted. This represents a return to the number of unique contractors bidding in a competitive environment pre-2014.
Additionally, the authors write that the increased competition has led to downward pressure on prices and increased diversity in procurement markets, resulting in price savings of at least 14 percent for the region.
“All points in the data suggest that those immediate effects are positive. The movement toward competitive tendering has returned the Region toward the ideal environment for local workers, local contractors, and, most importantly, the Region and its community of citizens.”
Ultimately, the report concludes, there is no compelling public-interest or evidence-based case for closed tendering.
