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Comment by moltar | Hacker News Reader

As I can see from living in Canada and travelling the world there can be several reasons:

- corruption, especially in QC

- over-the-top safety requirements, regardless of project size. E.g. in Toronto every road work sight has a police officer present who’s just standing there bored out of their mind. In Montreal it’d be two persons on each side holding a flag - a job in Europe replaced by a temporary semaphore.

- lack of experience and expertise. Canada is a relatively young country with very few major infra projects under its belt.

- lack of funding due to low density. You just can’t build ambitious infra projects for such sprawling city design. Every city, except Montreal to some degree, suffers from urban sprawl and low density.

- lack of care by citizens. Most Canadians aren’t well travelled outside of Americas. They don’t know what good cities look and feel like. Even when they go on vacations it’s generally cheaper destinations in southern parts like Cuba, Mexico and Dominicans.

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> - corruption, especially in QC

Québec had an inquiry¹ and found large-scale systematic corruption. Other provinces… haven't looked.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charbonneau_Commission

A very interesting article I read (can be found with a google search) was an in-depth look at the corruption with snowplow contracts. People were getting beat up and were greasing politicians palms to get these lucrative contracts in Quebec.

How very Canadian!

- corruption, especially in QC

If you think corruption is bad in Quebec, look at BC. One of the first things our current government did was to pass a law requiring that all government-funded construction must be performed by workers belonging to unions which donated to the governing party's last election campaign. A short time later, they changed the procurement rules from "lowest cost bid" to "best bid", with the rules for determining "best" explicitly including how many jobs would be created for members of the aforementioned donor unions.

Do you have any sources for reading up on this? I find it interesting but can't find much after googling. Is it related to CETA?

I think OP may be referring to this: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/premier-horgan-to-m...

I'm not convinced this is a bad thing, given only the information in your comment.

You're not convinced that it's bad for the government to deliberately overpay for projects in order to funnel money into the pockets of its political donors?

I’m not sure that’s a fair characterization. Is it clear they’re overpaying?

I’m not pro-union but unions aren’t the devil.

Assuming that comment isn't misrepresenting the issue (I know nothing about Canada and can't say), I think the main focus isn't the unions, but that only organizations that contribute to fattening politicians wallets can build anything. Those organizations just happen to be unions.

A union that is getting contracts because they contribute to the right people is the corrupt devil. A union that provides for their workers salary, safety, retirement, or whatever other good is fine, but many unions cross the line to not allowing non-union workers fair ground to compete with them and that is evil.

I'm not convinced it's because the unions are lining the coffers of the politicians. It's not like corporations are strangers to lobbying and influencing either. There have been many problems with non-union subcontractors skimping on workers protections, causing death and injury to workers. I don't know about the situation in Canada, but a few soundbites without data is not going to convince me "union bad", "big construction company good".

Is the situation clearer when you realize that it's only a subset of unions which are allowed to be involved with public construction contracts? The unions which didn't make "donations" have been shut out.

That is abhorrent.

I'd be interested to learn more about this. Do you have a source? Thanks.

Taking lowest cost bid isn't always optimal. In Germany it is required to take the lowest cost bid which leads to all kinds of failed projects as the winning bid can't hold its bid. As well, life-time of things built this way have become awfully short.

Imagine if you were forced to buy all your stuff from the dollar store. Pretty obviously the results would be hit and miss, mostly miss.

Imagine a twist on this: you have to buy from the dollar store, but they dollar store has agreed on a level of quality. They may have a separate back room with only the things you are allowed to buy because that is where items that meet your quality standard are. (They may or may not allow others into that room)

The reality is for big projects quality should always be part of the contract. Use substandard quality materials and the whole contract is void.

> the dollar store has agreed on a level of quality

The problem is that "agree on a level" and "lowest cost" are fundamentally opposite goals which require constant outside monitoring.

Not if you set the correct requirements.

The thing to keep in mind is that it is not a bid if it is determined to be unrealistic. It is imperative that the contracting office understand whether a submission is realistic or not. If they do not perform that basic step, then the project will either fail, or be subject to expensive change orders that will likely inflate the costs and schedule massively.

It's not "lowest cost bid" but "lowest cost bid that meets all the requirements". The point is that requirements have to be well specified.

The problem is that Germany lacks knowledgeable people in public service.

The underlying assumption is that Waterfall works, which is probably more problematic.

It can be very adversarial very quickly. Whichever way you turn, the public servants need to be very competent, either to direct the project themselves or to specify it very well. There's no free lunch.

>One of the first things our current government did was to pass a law requiring that all government-funded construction must be performed by workers belonging to unions which donated to the governing party's last election campaign

It's true that (a) workers must join a union when working on gov't projects and (b) The governing NDP is the "pro-union" party and thus, has received millions of donations from said unions.

The last part of what you wrote is worded poorly IMHO. Read literally, it seems to imply that donating to the party's campaign is part of the law itself. Which it isn't.

I agree, the effect is pretty much the same (due to (a) and (b) above) but I think it's important to clarify that point.

> lack of experience and expertise. Canada is a relatively young country with very few major infra projects under its belt.

Gawd. As if Canadians are too dumb to go to international conferences like everybody else. Maybe they wouldn't let us in because we are wearing toques and speak in funny accents.

Toronto is a larger city than Chicago, and has more construction. We hold international conferences.

Additionally, who in their right mind wants to go to Chicago for literally any reason?

Source: I am an American who has visited Chicago 3 times and hated it more and more each time due to prices, crime, horrible weather, and extreme lack of anything to do

Funny. I grew up in the city and lived there for most of my adult life and never had any issues with any of those things.

Source: someone's who's spent more time in Chicago than someone's who's visited a handful of times.

>Funny. I grew up in the city and lived there for most of my adult life and never had any issues with any of those things. >Source: someone's who's spent more time in Chicago than someone's who's visited a handful of times.

Of course you'd like it, you're used to the place. The city is called "the windy city" for a reason, and is certainly not known to have weather resembling southern California. If you like it, that's fine, but not everyone likes cold, windy midwestern weather.

For prices, your experiences are simply invalid. The OP was likely talking about prices he'd see as a visitor, the large part of which would include hotel rooms. Do you spend a lot of time in hotels near your home? Of course not. And if the OP is comparing various international cities, then I can see why he'd complain about Chicago: it's a large American city and would likely have extremely high hotel prices, because hotels in America are generally very expensive unless you want to stay in a roach motel. It's much cheaper, as a single traveler, to stay in most of western Europe (except probably Switzerland).

Just don't visit between November and March.

The "Windy City" thing has little to do with our weather; winds are empirically worse in New York and San Francisco. If you have almost no experience with the city, it's easy to project and extrapolate from its nickname.

Or visit then if you like some snow :) I'm currently in Seattle and I cannot wait to move back. Fortunately, my girlfriend gradates in 7 months and we are literally counting down the months until then so we can move back.

It's a great city. But there's lots not to like about living in a big city. I find NYC almost incredibly oppressive and confining and crazymaking, but I don't wonder why people love it; I also get why people move out to farms in Minnesota, even though I'd never do that myself.

But you're not allowed to say that "the wind" is why you don't like Chicago.

(Fair warning, I have our city's flag inked on my arm, so I may be a booster).

Yeah I'm not referencing the wind in Chicago but rather the oppressive cold which is worse than most parts of the world with a population larger than x :)

It's about the same as Boston, marginally colder than NYC, and substantially warmer than Montreal. :)

Of course, Chicago's flag is actually a windsock.

> (Fair warning, I have our city's flag inked on my arm, so I may be a booster).

It is a kickass flag, to be fair.

>winds are empirically worse in New York and San Francisco.

Well New York isn't exactly famous for great weather either...

The "Windy City" moniker comes from a reference to local politics, not the weather. In my personal experience Chicago is no more windy than any other place I've visited. Otherwise, as I heard from Norwegians, there is no bad weather, just bad clothes.

Strongly disagree with this. Chicago is one of the greatest cities (to visit or otherwise) not just in the US, but anywhere. I’ve been there over 30+ times since I was a kid and I’m going far out of my way to visit again tomorrow, it is that good.

It’s the original skyscraper city with an absolutely wonderful skyline and architecture. Being in the city during a blizzard is magical, and the weather on a nice summer day. Tons of parks and pristine coastline. One of the best food and shopping scenes anywhere. World class museums. Also, it’s certainly cheaper than SF/LA/NYC. There is a lifetime of things to experience in Chicago.

It seems like most of the construction in Toronto is condos and road repairs. The subway system is an embarrassment.

It’s one thing to go to a conf and learn theory another thing to have first hand experience.

It’s like saying you can become a good programmer and have a good company culture by going to conferences.

It ain’t going to happen.

Once you have N years, and see and solve X problems you won’t be experienced.

A big thing about getting first hand experience is learning what questions you even need to ask!

When you first start, you don't even know what you don't know. All the conferences in the world aren't going to help you if you don't know which problems you need help solving.

I can't not comment on this as well. Canada a realitively young country? I know they say don't be snarky, but what an arrogant, ignorant, very American thing to say. People have been building "infrastructure" everywhere in Canada for hundreds of years, just as they have in big brother USA.

> - corruption, especially in QC

Quebec removed a blindfold with the Charbonneau Commission.

A sincere question: have other provinces done the same recently? What did they discover?

> - over-the-top safety requirements, regardless of project size. E.g. in Toronto every road work sight has a police officer present who’s just standing there bored out of their mind.

How much does that add to a project that costs 9-10 digits?

> - lack of experience and expertise. Canada is a relatively young country with very few major infra projects under its belt.

What's your definition of "major infra projects?"

Canada is geographically enormous, with extreme climate and terrain, and clustered populations. Yet somehow they've built infrastructure for a modern, vibrant economy.

Examples:

70 years of remote hydro-electric plants and a transmission network for half a dozen provinces and states.[1]

50 years of nuclear power plants in half a dozen countries.[2]

A counter example for corruption (Canada is currently removing another blindfold), but about a century of bridges, tunnels, highways around the world.[3]

> - lack of care by citizens. Most Canadians aren’t well travelled outside of Americas.

Citation?

> They don’t know what good cities look and feel like.

Ouch.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro-Québec

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Energy_of_Canada_Limite...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNC-Lavalin

Edit: typo & clarity

> How much does that add to a project that costs 9-10 digits?

Pretty sure "every road work site" cost a few digits less.

>Quebec removed a blindfold with the Charbonneau Commission.

Sorry to digaree but he Charbonneau Commission did very little, corruption is still a huge problem in QC, it's part of the culture ..like Italy.

They said it removed a blindfold, they didn't say it solved the problem.

The US State of Massachusetts, for what it's worth, also uses police officers to control and supervise traffic around all worksites involving streets or roads.

These police details are paid by the organization doing the work. Condo developers, public utilities, and municipal public works departments all pay the same rates.

This stuff is expensive. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars US during the Big Dig. Our local radio humorists Tom and Ray Maggliozi might have said, lots of police "put their boats through college" in those days.

> Big Dig

just for some context:

> The Central Artery/Tunnel Project (CA/T), commonly known as the Big Dig, was a megaproject in Boston that rerouted the Central Artery of Interstate 93 (I-93), the chief highway through the heart of the city, into the 1.5-mile (2.4 km) Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Tunnel. The project also included the construction of the Ted Williams Tunnel (extending I-90 to Logan International Airport), the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge over the Charles River, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway in the space vacated by the previous I-93 elevated roadway. Initially, the plan was also to include a rail connection between Boston's two major train terminals. Planning began in 1982; the construction work was carried out between 1991 and 2006; and the project concluded on December 31, 2007 when the partnership between the program manager and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority ended.

> The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the US, and was plagued by cost overruns, delays, leaks, design flaws, charges of poor execution and use of substandard materials, criminal arrests,[2][3] and the death of one motorist.[4] The project was originally scheduled to be completed in 1998[5] at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006).[6] However, the project was completed in December 2007 at a cost of over $8.08 billion (in 1982 dollars, $14.6 billion adjusted for inflation, meaning a cost overrun of about 190%)[6] as of 2006.[7] The Boston Globe estimated that the project will ultimately cost $22 billion, including interest, and that it would not be paid off until 2038.[8] As a result of a death, leaks, and other design flaws, Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff—the consortium that oversaw the project—agreed to pay $407 million in restitution and several smaller companies agreed to pay a combined sum of approximately $51 million.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig

You'll regularly see a those cops hanging out in front of a construction site (doing nothing) or sitting in their cars (doing nothing). They could just as effectively be replaced with an orange cone.

They certainly are needed. I was snared in late night construction traffic near Baltimore waiting for a crane to lift a beam. I was in the middle lane preparing to merge over and was at an angle along with another two guys in a car to our right from the right lane. Suddenly there's this beeping coming from a car that's trying to get between us. We then hear a young woman asking to let her pass. "Excuse me, can you please move?" My friend leans out the window and asks, "You can't pass, the road is blocked by construction" she again asks the same thing but a little distressed. My friend responds "Is everything okay? do you need help?" she just kept begging "please move we have to get through." The guys next to us again ask them "Do you need help?" The girl again begged for one of us to move this time nearly crying. The other driver responds "You can't pass. There's nowhere to go" The woman responds by leaning on the horn while inching up until she nearly hits the other car forcing him to pull off the road. She then speeds off into the very active construction zone. Within seconds, out of the darkness comes lights and sirens and gives chase.

About 30 minutes later when the lane opens we get about half a mile down the zone and saw that the cop was only able to stop this nut job after her path was blocked by machinery and materials. She was cuffed, sitting on the hood of her car completely zoned out. Her friend was still in the passenger seat. They couldn't have been older than 20. My money was on club/party drugs they couldn't handle and freaked out while waiting in traffic.

Daily I walk past a street that is a dead end, and there is construction being done at the far end of this dead end. Every day there are 2-3 police officers standing at the top of the street. It's a gross misuse of time and funds.

Over-the-top safety requirements are spot on I think. Here in BC Worksafe BC just constantly adds on new rules and regulations every year, and they don't care about your company's budget or productivity.

I know Worksafe programs are similar from province to province, so I would be curious to see a comparison of Canadian Worksafe safety standards to safety standards from around the world to see just how much more (or less?) onerous they are.

Well if we can't afford to build things without killing people, we shouldn't be building things. Construction safety rules act as a check on liberal capitalism's growth obsession.

You’re assuming new rules and regulations actually prevent injury and death. That isn’t necessarily so.

Top four safest countries for construction are usually UK, Australia, NZ, Canada. They also have the most regulations on safety and a generally strong safety culture. Correlation may equal causation.

I guess we better just live without anything then. You can’t build anything without there being a risk of injury or death. Just like how you can’t walk down the street without risk of injury or death.

We can afford to manage risk, but not eliminate it. If we allow safety to rule us completely, we invite regulatory capture and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws

How does Canada compare to the U.S.? United States citizens have a legal right to a safe work environment which is what drives many of the safety requirements. The others are generally best practices stemming from past lessons learned. Do Canadian workers have similar rights?

If so, your comment of " just constantly adds on new rules and regulations every year, and they don't care about your company's budget or productivity." could be read to acknowledge that it's not the government's job to preserve a company's budget or productivity, but rather preserve their citizens' right to a safe work environment.

In a perfect world, profit and safety could align but when they don't I'm not sure it's fair to chastise an organization for upholding their competing interest. The above can be all disregarded if Canadians don't have similar rights, it was just a thought.

Agreed with the corruption and over-legislation, which in my experience coincide. Bidding on governement projects in QC is very painful to do and corruption is sky high so competition cant set in

EDIT to add: example of QC bidding: most companies underbid the construction work to later postpone the deadline and request more money than originally bargained, and there doesnt seem to be any (enforced) legislation to consider that

Sounds like Germany...

Sounds like any government procurement in France… especially construction works that is budgeted for 5 years and strangely ends up lasting 10,15 years…

Extremely strict regulations can function as an asshole filter[1] where only people who intend to bypass the rules somehow get involved in bidding.

[1]https://siderea.livejournal.com/1230660.html

Unrelated: as a non-native English speaker with CS background it's the first time I learned the original meaning of "semaphore". Took me some time to find https://www.uvm.edu/landscape/dating/road_signs_and_traffic_... to explain what is a semaphore (the search results were heavily biased to the word's use in computer science).

For what is worth, in Italy traffic lights are still called 'Semaforo'.

Same in Brazilian portuguese (depending on where you live, we have at least 5 words for the same thing: Sinal, Farol, Semáforo, Sinaleira, Sinaleiro)

FYI Canada has 3 engineering firms in the world top 10, SNC-Lavalin with 50k employees, WSP with 44k employees, and Stantec with 22k.

Lack of experience and expertise is not the issue.

>>over-the-top safety requirements

This is due to the safety at all costs fallacy that dominates popular politics.

One other factor is capture by unions, although that could fall under corruption. It's a high level form of corruption involving swaying public opinion to accept union narratives about the good done by their control of labor forces.

I would call that broad special interests as opposed to corruption per se - corruption implies that they are abusing or perverting something for personal gain when it shouldn't be.

Taking your own salary obviously isn't corruption nor even outright banditry - the intended function is personal enrichment. Nor is voting in your interest even if short sighted and likely to cause future problems.

Similarly demanding construction helmets diverts resources but keeping workers safe is a legitimate goal. Even if the demands were extreme and inefficient like demanding the development and manufacturing of power armor to paint a shed in case a piano falls on them or a moose attacks while irrational, terribly inefficient, and stupid wouldn't be corruption per se.

Now the armor demand because of kickbacks? Doing shoddy work for repeat customers or harming others directly for their own gain? Definite corruption.

>>Similarly demanding construction helmets ... wouldn't be corruption per se.

No I wasn't categorizing demands for safety standards as corruption. The safety point was separate from my point about unions.

I was categorizing the misleading of the public to get a political party elected that enables one's own union to fetch above-market wages for oneself as something like high-level corruption, though maybe 'corruption' in the public policy context has a more specific definition that doesn't include this.

> lack of experience and expertise. Canada is a relatively young country with very few major infra projects under its belt.

Nonsense. Canada is a major engineering power, building large projects the world over. One of the world's top 5 engineering firms, SNC-Lavalin, is located there.

- lack of experience and expertise. Canada is a relatively young country with very few major infra projects under its belt.

Wait? We need to have 14th century church building experience to be considered experienced at building infrastructure?

Yeah, this doesn't make sense to me either. 60 years ago South Korea was one of the poorest countries on Earth. Today it manages to build world-class infrastructure at very low cost.

In contrast America was the first country in the world to build subways on a mass scale. Yet today it has by far the highest subway construction cost in the world. At least an order of magnitude higher than South Korea.

I'm skeptical that aggregate experience on a national-level at decade-scale makes any major difference.

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