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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

- 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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

>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.

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.

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

That is abhorrent.

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