TECH TAKES
TECH TAKES
Infrastructure Challenges and Opportunities in Ontario
In this special edition of Tech Takes, recorded live at OACETT’s 2025 Conference in Windsor, Ontario, host Louis Savard, C.Tech, moderates a discussion on Ontario’s infrastructure challenges and opportunities—and the critical role technicians and technologists play in shaping the province’s future.
Panelists Nadia Todorova (RCCAO), Doug Jones, CET (Ministry of Transportation), Stacey McGuire (City of Windsor), and Matt Ashe, CET (GEI Consultants) explore topics ranging from tariff pressures and climate change resilience to skills development and Ontario’s record $200 billion infrastructure investment.
Their conversation highlights how major projects like the Gordie Howe International Bridge and Windsor’s Coastal Flood Protection Master Plan are paving the way for stronger, more sustainable communities, and why innovation, investment, and collaboration are essential to building a resilient province.
Have a topic you’d like to discuss or comments about the episode? Reach us at techtakes@oacett.org.
David Terlizzi: 00:00 - 00:43
Welcome to the Tech Takes podcast. This is a special edition straight from OACETT's 2025 conference in Windsor, Ontario. But we're excited to bring you our episode on infrastructure challenges and opportunities in Ontario. It's all about how technicians and technologists are shaping the future of our communities through impactful infrastructure work, like the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Our host, Louis Savard, dives into the conversation with our diverse and knowledgeable panel of experts, unpacking the issues, spotlighting the opportunities, discovering fresh insights about the infrastructure world, and even encountering a few surprises. So without further ado, sit back, listen in, and enjoy the conversation.
Louis Savard: 00:53 - 02:10
Now for my favorite part of the conference, the panel session, and I have the privilege of being a moderator today. This session is aptly named Infrastructure Challenges and Opportunities in Ontario. We'll delve into the pivotal role in infrastructure plays in fostering growth, including the importance of continued investments in infrastructure of over the next decade and beyond. If we are to improve the province's productivity and increase economic growth, it has to be built on a solid foundation. Mass transit, water, wastewater, roads, bridges, and of course, building more houses. Just look at what can be done far from here when we work together. The Gordie Howe Bridge. I'm not alone here. I have a fantastic panel who I will, I'm sure provide much needed insight into today's panel discussion. They consist of a diverse group of people who bring a wealth of knowledge and experience in various sections, all relating to, you guessed it, building. So let's dive right in by welcoming our panelists. And I would ask that once I mentioned your name, you provide a little bit of a background. You introduce yourself to the crowd and we'll start off with Nadia Tordova, who is the Executive Director of the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario. That's a mouthful or RCCAO. Over to you, Nadia.
Nadia Tordova: 02:11 - 02:55
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for having me here today. As Louis said, my name is Nadia Todorova, and I'm the Executive Director of the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario, or RCCAO for short. One of the things that makes RCCAO quite unique is that we represent both labor and management organizations from the heavy civil and the residential sectors of Ontario. Essentially, our members build the critical infrastructure that Ontarians rely on, water, wastewater, roads, bridges, and housing. And the fact that we have both labor and management across the table with us, it really adds a lot of credence to the advocacy work that we do. So thank you for having me and I look forward to the discussion.
Louis Savard: 02:56 - 03:06
Welcome, Nadia. I now ask Doug Jones, CET and Deputy Minister of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation to introduce himself to the audience.
Doug Jones: 03:06 - 03:53
Yeah, thank you. Really pleased to be here. You just said as a CET, been a proud member for coming up to 40 years, so it's been a bit a while. You can read an article about me in this once Ontario Technologists give you more background than what I'm going to tell you right now, but 20 years in the private sector, in the construction industry, and I worked at all three levels of government, provincial, municipal, and federal, and also worked in health and safety, or occupational health and safety, and just really pleased to have it all come around and get back into transportation in Ontario. see what we can do here. And in the Ministry of Transportation, we've got a few little projects underway to keep us all busy. So be happy to talk to you about that. Thank you.
Louis Savard: 03:53 - 04:02
Nice. And thank you, Doug. And next to Doug, we have Stacey McGuire-Pienge, who is the Executive Director of Engineering at the City of Windsor. Stacey.
Stacey McGuire: 04:02 - 05:17
Hi everyone, Stacey McGuire, Executive Director of Engineering for the City of Windsor. I want to welcome everybody to Windsor, number one. My team of engineers at the City here, we deal with a plethora of items including implementing GIS solutions, managing our right-of-way and permitting department. We've got a group over in the corner there. of our staff that work really hard in that area. We do road and sewer designs. We look at development from a servicing perspective to make sure that our interests are met for the city. And we have a team of project managers that implement large-scale corporate projects of significance, things like community centres, fire halls, the new city hall ice rink that's being built. If you walk outside the door, you can see it. We also built the city hall, so a wide range in our area. I'm a licensed professional engineer in the province of Ontario. I spent many years volunteering with PEO and through that have had a lot of collaborations with OSET and really value the friendship that PEO and OSET have together. And I'm happy to be here to discuss the historical investment and development that we're seeing here in Windsor and to welcome all of you here that aren't from around here and to talk about some of the experiences that we've had recently.
Louis Savard: 05:18 - 05:29
Excellent. Thank you, Stacey. And last but certainly not least, I'd like to ask Matt Ashe, CET, who is Senior Project Manager for GEI Consultants Canada, to tell us some more about himself and what he does.
Matt Ash: 05:30 - 06:14
Yes. Thank you, Louie. And thank you for the invitation. Uh, as you noted, I'm a vice president and senior project manager with GEI Consultants Canada. We're a multidisciplinary civil engineering firm, uh, with about 400 employees here in Ontario and other 1300 in the U S. Um, like Doug, I am a CET and I've been a member for a long time, although not 40 years, uh, probably 30. So, uh, I actually started my career back in 1992 with the MTO. Of course, along came Mike Harris and he turfed a lot of us. So I went into, uh, municipal work for about 16 years. And after I left the municipal sector, I, I took up consulting, which is where I am today.
Louis Savard: 06:14 - 06:37
Thank you. Thank you, Matt. So if you please join me in welcoming our panelists. All right. Before we get to the heart of our conversations, there's a few housekeeping notes, questions. We'll have a Q&A at the end. Please keep your questions for then we'll give you ample time. And Luke, where's Luke?
Louis Savard: 06:38 - 06:40
Where's our student? Do we have a student here?
Louis Savard: 06:42 - 07:22
Ah, we have a student. Okay. We'll have mics for your, for your questions. And Luke, one of our students will run around with a microphone, so you won't have to scream. So. To my panelists, we're going to try to make this as organic as possible. Some questions are for individuals, but if you feel like you've got some value to add, just jump in there. Let's jump right in there. So we're going to start with a general question here, but we're going to start with the hometown hero, Stacey. This is something that everybody's top of mind, tariffs. With the current tariff challenges, what does it mean for innovation and infrastructure building moving forward?
Stacey McGuire: 07:23 - 08:59
Yeah, I think for us it means uncertainty and uncertainty translates to increased costs on our ends. I think for Windsor is lucky in that we have a well-established local construction industry here. And so we're seeing not a terrible impact in terms of our linear infrastructure. We're seeing prices are fairly staying steady here because we have a lot of local industry knowledge, local contractors, local materials here. Where we are seeing big impacts is in the vertical infrastructure, right? Our building construction, pumping stations, we're seeing a lot where there's uncertainty in terms of dependency on the U.S. market, so things like fleet and equipment, or where there's absolutely, you know, frankly no alternative to a Canadian product, things like IT software or even, you know, down to the chemicals that we buy for our pollution control operations are only sourced in the U.S. So that's where the big uncertainty lies. And I know our city council just this past Monday, they endorsed a procurement strategy that's going to help us attack that. A lot of it's about reducing that uncertainty for the bidders so that they know what they're bidding on and they can be assured that as things change, we'll adapt with them. And so that's been a big part of our strategy is catering our contracts. to create certainty for those bidders, trying to identify as much of that Canadian content upfront as possible. So, and you know, as part of the design rather than waiting to the end and trying to manage our risks that way.
Louis Savard: 08:59 - 09:03
All right, thank you. Stacey, Doug, Matt, anything to add?
Nadia Tordova: 09:04 - 10:11
I guess I would just say that from the construction side, it's a little bit like Groundhog Day, because a lot of the challenges that we saw during COVID-19, we're now seeing during the tariffs. A lot of the unpredictability in terms of the supply chains, like Stacey said, it's really impacting. the certainty whether or not you should be bidding on project. What does that do for the supplies that you need? But I would say because of what we went through with the pandemic, I think there's more of a recognition of what has to be done from both the public owner side but also industry side to address that uncertainty. You saw that with the budget that was just passed by the province a few weeks ago. There was quite a lot of tariff related funding that was being made available. So I think part of the reason why we're being so, I would say, welcoming. Not welcoming. Welcoming is the wrong word. But part of the reason why we're being so nimble about this is because we saw something very similar quite recently with the pandemic. And those impacts are very similar. And I think because we've gone through it, we kind of are better prepared than we would have been otherwise.
Louis Savard: 10:11 - 10:13
So there's a slight resilience.
Nadia Tordova: 10:13 - 10:14
Yes, exactly.
Doug Jones: 10:15 - 11:22
To build on that just a little bit, the, what we learned from the pandemic, you know, we had a lot of delivery models, P3 type models where we saw the risk of cost and schedule are going to go with the contractor. And then we found that that was all blown up because they just couldn't do it. The costs were going through the roof and it caused some stresses and strains and how we managed those contracts and now the profitability and, you know, money's flowing through the subcontractors and everything. And so this time around, we looked at the tariffs, we're getting the same kind of questions and we've changed that. And we've said, because some people were saying, okay, well, maybe we should just push all that risk back on the contractor again. We thought that's not fair because if you're asked to bid on something that's such an unknown, how can you possibly bid that? You're either not going to bid it or you're going to put a huge premium on it. for something that may not even happen. And so we're saying, who can best manage that risk? And so we'll say, bid on something as of this date, and then as the prices adjust or fluctuate up and down, then we'll compensate the contractors for it because we want to be fair and everybody's here to do a good job and make money and the way it takes to build it.
Matt Ash: 11:22 - 12:03
I mean, as was mentioned, uncertainty is the biggest issue, depending upon what side of bed that fellow to the South gets on. Oh, and up on, uh, the tariffs change. But, uh, I think moreover though, it's a huge opportunity. It's a huge opportunity to come up with very robust purchasing policies around Canadian products and suppliers. And it's also an opportunity to finally break down the inter-provincial trade barriers. Um, you know, speaking of PEO, why is it an engineer licensed in Alberta cannot practice in Ontario? That makes no sense to me. And that sort of stuff needs to be done away with. Well, I think as a country, we've got a great opportunity here to really take control of this.
Louis Savard: 12:04 - 12:45
Fantastic. Thank you. Doug, Bill 17, protect Ontario by building faster and smarter act. It's designed to remove unnecessary barriers to speed up the construction of vital infrastructure. I hear we're talking road building, streamline permit approvals, reducing costs and delays, all of that fun stuff. In your view as deputy minister, what additional changes or cross agency efforts could help infrastructure projects in Ontario move faster. But not only just that, how do we ensure that faster also equates smarter in terms of quality, longevity, sustainability?
Doug Jones: 12:47 - 15:25
Well, if you sit down with the premier for about a half hour, you'll get very motivated to do some things. I can tell you, when I was meeting with him at Christmas time and he was saying, we want to build things faster. And, uh, uh, he had a couple of projects in mind and he said, this is what his expectation was. How can we make that happen? And we worked on it, came up with a great plan or what we thought was a great plan. And then the election was called. And then immediately after the election and, you know, between, between December and after the election, you know, there was January 20th, new president came in the States, a lot of things changed. So we, we, uh, presented this wonderful plan to the premier's first words were, that's not fast enough. We gotta go faster again. And, uh, so it's, he's pushing us and pushing us to do more, but you know, when I look at how do, how do we do things faster? You can, uh, focus on, uh, the three things that you always look at, uh, in, in business process, people and technology. And, uh, you know, from people's side, just, uh, you know, besides what we're seeing, we're saying here, looking at mutual recognition, how do we get people moving across the country, uh, recognizing them from other countries, bringing them up from the States. Um, how do we attract and train and get people into this industry to start with? Uh, from the process side, we're looking at our delivery models. You know, traditionally we had, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, design, bid, build process, which is very linear, takes a lot of time. We've, we've experimented with the P3 design, build, finance, operate, maintain models. They are, they can actually, they can take some time too. There's benefits with them, but they take time. We're looking now more at the CMGC models where we get the contractors involved earlier on and we break these, break these projects up a little bit so that we can be a little more nimble. and we get more contractors working on projects at the same time and build them faster. But then on the technology piece, and to your question about how do we build them faster but also smarter, lots of opportunities there. We're just starting to dabble in what can AI do for us, but one of the big ones out there is just digital twin technology. And some of the larger contractors are using that. And I've been to some of their offices and they've just walked us through, you know, for example, what one of them was doing in a union station in downtown Toronto and, and the, the, how they, how they can manage risk better because they identify issues. They can build something to a higher level of quality. They can speed things up because they anticipate things where hurdles or, or complexities that they may not. see just on paper and on the two-dimensional paper. And that all leads to, you know, improvement cost, better quality, speed things up, all the things we're looking for. So I think there's a lot of consultants have said that Canada has been behind in investing in technology for a few years, and that's one area that we're focused in.
Louis Savard: 15:27 - 16:36
That's fantastic. The digital twin technology is, is, is fascinating. I actually was in Vancouver. I'm going to mess up the dates last year, um, for, for, uh, another conference and, uh, the, uh, airport replicated a digital twin and they simulated, uh, blizzard conditions. And there was a blizzard actually happened and they were one of the only airports that remained open. They have positioned their equipment in the right spot to respond. So if that's one of the tools to, to speed things up while maintaining spotting quality, that's, that's fantastic. And Nadia, Ontario's 2025 budget proposed a unprecedented $200 billion infrastructure over the next decade investment in. However, industry leaders caution that faster project tendering is needed as well to close that infrastructure gap and put that investment to good use. From your perspective at the RCCAO, what innovative funding mechanisms or procurement reforms would be best to ensure these infrastructure dollars are spent effectively and that critical projects are delivered on time and on budget?
Nadia Tordova: 16:38 - 20:24
Perfect. Thank you for that question. It's an important one. I want to start off by saying that definitely this is certainly a very exciting time for the infrastructure industry. There is so much acknowledgement by all levels of government, but particularly the province of Ontario, of how important investing in infrastructure is, which is why you've seen this incredible spend that's been dedicated in the budget, especially this last budget. But that's really been the case for this province for quite a long time. And it, excuse me, and that is really a testament to the fact that this government understands how important that core critical infrastructure is, water, wastewater, roads, bridges, and new residential housing. So that's very much welcome from our industry to see that money being being earmarked. However, this is where we have a bit of an issue. It's great to have that money earmarked and envelopes being allocated. The problem that we have right now, especially in this construction season, is the speed in which this money is getting out the door. From our perspective, this construction season is really in danger of being lost in a way. You know, my residential members, they have been struggling for quite some time. Just to give you a bit of a bit of a stat, from December to April, there were only a thousand units sold in Ontario. That's both low-rise and high-rise. That number really should be like 35 to 50,000 units being sold. So the residential sector has been struggling for quite a long time. And now we're seeing that similar slowdown in the heavy civil side as well. You know, from municipal tendering, it's down 15% in the road sector, and it's about 35% slowdown in the water. sector as well. So one of the ways that we can address that is by early tender calls, is by getting tenders out the door as quickly as humanly possible. And I'm going to quantify that because I know that's a very vague term. Ideally, we'd love to see the tenders come out by Q4 of the previous year or by Q1 of the following year. And the faster that those tenders get out the door, that much more predictability happens in terms of industry. Industry knows exactly where the projects are going to be. They know how to plan for that. They know what kind of equipment they need. They know how much manpower they need. And more importantly, they can capitalize on the construction season. When you tender projects in the summer, that really is going to push that project to be finished in the following construction season. So you really are not maximizing the time that you have. You're increasing congestion. Usually it costs more. You know, you don't really maximize your workforce as much as you can. So really, the importance of really tender calls really cannot be understated. And, you know, I want to give kudos to Doug and to MTO because MTO has really been an adopter of early tender calls and getting in and recognizing how important it is to get those tenders out the door early. This year was a bit of an anomaly because we had the rip period so things kind of stopped and I know that the government is really working to kind of get those projects back online as quickly as possible but again you really have to maximize that time as much as you can Other things that you can do is you can really throw incentives in those tenders for the faster completion of projects. And a great example of that is the Gardner Expressway. You know, that is a project that is ahead of schedule because there have been incentives thrown at the contractor. later than they should have been, but that's okay. But the work is still ahead of schedule because there's incentives now. It's not just the stake, but now there's a carrot involved for the contractor to finish earlier. Also, streamlining the process overall, I think is very important. I don't know if Doug wants to say something.
Doug Jones: 20:26 - 21:47
Yeah, no, just, it's interesting you brought up the, the Gardner and the incentives there, because, uh, if you, years ago, a lot of our contracts used to have incentives that built into them, but there was a report written at one point in time that questioned, why were we doing that? And then all of a sudden it, you know, we stopped and I came on board here and, and I was saying, well, why, why are we doing that? It just doesn't make sense to me. So we challenged that and pushed back a little bit. And so we're now looking at putting those incentives back in for, for all the right reasons. So I think you'll see more of that because it just drives the outcome that you want, particularly if you've got the minister and the premier wanting to get things faster, that just drives everybody to a common goal. And just on early tendering, we're looking right now at getting even out the door this year so that we can take advantage of the capacity that is available. And particularly in Northern Ontario right now, we've lost a lot of this construction season for riders and it's really short. So we're putting big focus on getting contracts announced late this fall or winter so they can be ready and get going in the early spring of next year. Lots of changes to take advantage of the situation from the laboring capacity that is there. But if you look over time, any time when there's a recession and private sector investment drops, then it's a great time for government to step in and say, okay, we're going to invest more in infrastructure because the spinoff benefits are significant and you can get a lot done too.
David Terlizzi: 21:48 - 22:38
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Louis Savard: 22:40 - 23:07
Coming back to you, Stacey, on the municipal front, when we talk about climate change impacts, such as storms, flooding, how is Windsor strengthening its infrastructure? For example, by bringing stormwater, wastewater, flood defenses, and what other funding support or policy changes from the province would help municipalities to protect their communities better against these risks?
Stacey McGuire: 23:07 - 25:37
Yeah, that's very near and dear to our heart. In 2016, Windsor had a 100-year storm that affected over 2,800 of our residents in terms of basement flooding, which would have been bad enough on its own, except then the following year in 2017, we had the largest storm in our recorded history that affected over 6,000 of our residents in terms of basement flooding, caused about, they predict about $175 million in damages, insurable damages. Those were two back-to-back storms that really shone a light on our unique circumstance here and the troubles that we have with coastal and stormwater flooding and basement flooding locally. And so, as a result of that, the City of Windsor developed our Sewer and Coastal Flood Protection Master Plan. We affectionately call it our Sewer Master Plan because it's easier. in 2020, and that recommended $5 billion worth of improvements to our system over, say, a 50-year period. To address outlet capacity, sewer capacity, we modeled the whole system, identified areas where we would get the most bang for our buck out of stormwater storage facilities and things like that. We put a big onus on source control and how we can leverage our residents to do things on their own property in order to manage stormwater. We've spent $26 million to date in incentive programs between our basement flooding subsidy programs, where we offer incentives on sump pump installation, downspout disconnection, backwater valve installation on private property. We've mandated downspout disconnection in a lot of our neighborhoods. We've done a massive manhole sealing expedition through the city. So in total, we've spent $100 million towards our plan since it was developed in 2020. And we've dedicated another $420 million in our overall capital planning process, all recommendations that have come out of our sewer master plan. We've also, like you asked about funding opportunities, we were able to leverage two funds through the disaster mitigation adaptation fund that the federal government provided. In total, we got $64 million, but the total cost of our program that we submitted for was 250. So that's 25% of it. And unfortunately, the municipality has to pick up the remaining 75%. And so inflation really killed us on that project. I know a lot of other municipalities are in that boat. But, you know, we continue to have a big focus on stormwater locally.
Louis Savard: 25:37 - 25:51
It means a quick follow up to that one, because you touched on it. You got 25 percent for your program. The other 75 is you got to come up with it. How do you come up with that money? Is it tax base, other funding opportunities? Where does municipalities look for?
Stacey McGuire: 25:52 - 27:54
Yeah, so it's tax funded for the most part, but actually just this year, starting in January of this year, the city became one of a number of municipalities across Canada and the US that have implemented a stormwater financing policy. So as part of that policy, we took our existing sewer surcharge fund, which is a user-based fee that we use to fund all of our sewer construction, or a great part of it anyway, and we separated it into separate sanitary and stormwater fees with sanitary still based on water usage, which is what the old program was, but now our storm fee is based on impervious area. What that's done is basically created, we call it a fair share way of dealing with stormwater management, where the burden shifts from the residential properties to the non-residential properties, those big box properties, parking lots, things like that, that have a large impervious area and are contributing in a big way to our stormwater system, they're now paying more towards the maintenance of those systems. We've gone from prior to this system, 55% of our stormwater and sanitary water, both sewer water funding, was from residents. with 45% from non-residential, we've shifted that now to 42% residential and the remaining 58% non-residential. So that's a 13% savings on the residential side and now we've got the big contributors paying for the funding of that. It more closely aligns with the amount of impervious area that those non-residential properties have and it gives us a sustainable funding mechanism to move forward. All of our capital budgets are divided in terms of sanitary and storm and we're able to put the money where it needs to go and increase our level of service over time with a sustained funding model. It's a little bit unique. Some municipalities have started this process, but it's a lot of work to get here. I'm happy to answer questions if any of you guys are in the market for doing this. We spend a lot of time on it.
Louis Savard: 27:55 - 28:49
I might have a few after, maybe after all of this. I want to loop back with a question for, for all of the panel. Maybe now you can pick it up first, but we'll go back to labor. And really what we're looking at here is, is this infrastructure boom is really going to require a large influx into the labor and the workforce itself. So the province marked a billion dollars in a skill and skills and development fund to train more workers and expand that labor force. Based on your experience managing major projects, what additional steps can industry associations and education institutions alike take to develop and retain these skilled technologists and technicians? We need to deliver these projects and how can we make certain that the careers in infrastructures, can we make them more attractive to the next generation of talent? And Matt, don't worry, I'm coming. You're next.
Nadia Tordova: 28:52 - 32:30
Thank you for that. So certainly, you know, making sure that we have the labor force to build all this is critical. Again, I really want to emphasize what a great job the province has done in terms of spotlighting the skilled trades and how it has made it a positive to look at trying to get into the skilled trades. And they've done that through a number of ways, including the SDF funding that you mentioned. but also in terms of the different iterations of the Working for Workers Act. There are seven now. They're focusing on different aspects in terms of protecting workers, in terms of making the career a viable one and an attractive one. So with that out of the way, again, I think this is an important conversation and an important topic because we have to look at it both from the short term and the long term. So short term, one of the ways that we get these people in making sure that we have the right workforce is to have the jobs. If we don't have the jobs, then we will lose the people and we usually don't get them back. They will either change industries or they will just leave the province and go somewhere else where the jobs are. So in the immediate term, the issues that I mentioned earlier are very much relevant because we need to make sure that we're keeping the workforce that we have and we're attracting new workers. Because in the long term, we certainly are going to be needing a lot of workforce to build the infrastructure that is being earmarked. A lot of the milestone projects, such as the 413, the Bradford Bypass, the Ontario Line, you know, the Ring of Fire, that is going to take a lot of manpower. By the end of this decade, about 86,000 construction workers are going to retire. And between that and how many people we need to retain and retrain, we're looking at needing about 100,000 people in the skilled trades. So it's a big undertaking and the way we kind of make sure that we attract people into the skilled trades, there's a multitude of ways. We have to continue to kind of sell ourselves to the general public as a viable career. We have to move away from kind of thinking about it as a last resort, but rather as a first option. You know, these are incredibly well-paying jobs. You have a lot of career security. And when I say career, I really genuinely mean career. This is not a job. This is a pathway to something very much long-term. And this is something that one of my members, Leuna Local 183, always says. There's this pride in, I built that. When you drive by a piece of infrastructure, you could say, you know, you have clean water because of the pipes that I laid in the ground. You know, your road is not falling apart because I poured that asphalt there. So there's really a sense of ownership that I think we need to sell about the skill traits, which is something that's very important. Similar to that, we need to make sure that we get parents and guardians on site with having their children consider a career into the skill traits. Again, not as a last opportunity, but as a first chance at something. And then once you have that, really, the educational institutions will follow suit and they'll come on board and really kind of emphasize that. And, you know, it's really important that we get young people as early as possible. So the fact that we have shop classes again, that's really positive because the earlier you get them, the better it is. And then I think once they are in the workforce, we have to make sure that we're doing everything possible to keep them there. So again, things like the working for workers legislation, making sure that, you know, women have the proper uniforms and it's not unisex. I think things like that are very important and providing those mentorship opportunities and the careers to grow because the skilled trades, they're so vast. There's so many different facets and so many things that you can do there. So that's just some of the things that I think we should think about.
Doug Jones: 32:32 - 33:22
I'd just like to share, Skills Ontario puts together or puts on a, or sponsors a competition every spring, April, I think it is at the convention center in Toronto or the airport. I've gone there the last three years. Those kids just blow me away. Like I just, the technology that's there, the stuff that they're working on is way past what I could have imagined. And so it gives me a lot of hope that, uh, you know, we've got a generation, like I said, kids, but young adults that are coming up and going to do things bigger and better than what, what we were doing. And so, and if, if you've got an opportunity to take your own kids there or some friends do it. I've got one son, he's spent two years in university, didn't like it. And then now he's finishing up his electric, electrician apprenticeship. And he loves that. But he said, if I knew that this was available before I would have gone into it earlier. So, uh, just exposing people to the opportunities would be fantastic.
Louis Savard: 33:23 - 33:25
Perfect. Stacey, might you have anything to add?
Stacey McGuire: 33:25 - 33:46
I'm going to turn it over to Matt because he's got much more experience in this area than I do. But the only thing I wanted to add was just that projects like the Gordie Howe International Bridge that are happening here locally in Windsor, the Nexstar battery plant, you know, we've got those workers here. And I really liked what Nadia said about, you know, now we've got to retain them and keep them and keep them interested and keep the jobs flowing for them. But I'll turn it over to Matt.
Matt Ash: 33:47 - 34:35
From my perspective, I find it strange that, uh, we have a hard time attracting people to this industry. And I think part of it is, as you mentioned that is maybe seen as stodgy, you know, what people think of in particular civil engineers as being the old bearded guy cutting line up in the forest. But, you know, we do a lot of really, really high tech stuff now. And I think that needs to be emphasized. A lot of it starts in the high schools, in my opinion. I mean, this needs to be pushed as a very viable career for people, both the trades and the technological side of things. Um, I also think that it's still a very male dominated industry from my experience. And I think we need to do a much better job of attracting females into this industry. That would certainly help with our shortage. I mean, we're missing 50% of the population, so.
Louis Savard: 34:38 - 34:48
Oh, we're going to keep in the hot seat, Matt, because we talked about linear and vertical infrastructure earlier. Why is it that it seems harder to build linear than to build up?
Matt Ash: 34:49 - 37:07
Well, it depends on your definition of building up too. I, I think intensification when I think building up, I mean, I, I come from listable, it's a rural community. Um, for us, we would prefer to see intensification versus building out. Um, but when we talk about why is building infrastructure challenging? Well, I think it's always been challenging. If it wasn't challenging, we wouldn't need talented people like we have in this room today. Uh, but it's certainly become much more challenging. I've noticed it in a big way in my career over the 30 plus years. Um, intensification is playing a part of that. There's certainly a lot more people, a lot more houses, a lot more apartments on any one street. There's a lot more infrastructure in the ground, uh, that it's making design and construction way more difficult than it used to be. I mean, I did a co-op term in Hamilton replacing water services. We used to put the pneumatic torpedo in the ground and point it in the general direction and off it would go. I can't imagine doing that today. You know, so there's that, uh, public expectations are much higher now than they used to be. And that's, I wouldn't, wouldn't call it a bad thing. It's a good thing. I think it results in a better project overall, but it also means more time, more complications, and in some cases, more expense, but certainly more time. And lastly, why is building linear infrastructure more difficult today? Here's the part where Matt goes off script. Um, municipal approvals are somewhat out of control in my opinion. Um, yeah, sorry. But, you know, I've been doing this for 30 odd years. And like I say, we used to get approvals in short order. Now it takes a long, long time for even relatively simple things. You know, a simple site plan approval has to go through eight different apartments, uh, before it gets approved. And it, it frankly, it's. Extending timelines out and for developers in particular, time is money. And that money goes on the end person, typically a homeowner, like a new buyer, and it's driving the cost of these things up.
Louis Savard: 37:08 - 37:23
Well, thanks for going on that tangent because it's a perfect segue for my next one for Doug. And it's a simple question. Why can't we build it like we used to? Is it just that much more complicated now or are there delays that are now added and anything we can do to just make it better?
Doug Jones: 37:24 - 40:13
Well, there are a lot of reasons. If you were asking the question about linear versus horizontal infrastructure, and I was explaining this to a couple of people just a few days ago, that if you're going to build a hospital or a school or something like that, and you start off with 30 or 40 acres, You do your, your soils investigation, you dig your, your hole, put in your foundation, and then you're building an air and your contractors have built an air. They know the risks. There's not that many of them, uh, uh, you know, comparatively speaking, uh, and then they know how to do it. Well, when you get into subways, for example, we, we, we, we do about 10, but we do 10% design is what we start with. And we say, okay, well, we'll do some soil investigations, but you're taking, uh, you know, you drill your core. core samples every few hundred meters. It's not perfect. And then we'll move to 30% design, but there's still a lot of unknowns. And so I'm thinking, you know, two LRT or subway projects in Toronto recently, you know, one of the tunnel boring machines got wrapped up in some wire that nobody knew that was there. And how do you get around that now? And then there was another subway area being built and you're adjacent to a building that was, they found it was actually deteriorating and they had to stop things and then rebuild that building so it wasn't going to fall down as you went by it. So there's all these little things that are going on, but urban densification is a big issue. Like what's underneath the 1954 or 1955, the Young subway line was built. I think that's the only one in Canada that I could find that was actually built on time and on budget. Every other one, uh, it was either been delayed or cost more. Um, but nobody remembers them after they're built because, um, I was on Edmonton working in Edmonton a few years ago and same issues, you know, there were subway line or LRT line there was late. But once they got up and running, people say, oh, this is great, Joe, get to point A from point B faster and they forget about the delays and the cost and move forward. Anything that's current, there's a couple projects in Toronto that are running late and And that gets a lot of attention. But even the late part of it is, you know, we put a projected end date on it based on that 10% design that we know from a decade ago. And then all these other things come up and that you, you know, it impacts it. So you have environmental issues, technology integrations, another one like, you know, decades ago, these were all run by manual, you know, manual signals and Now it's all technology and they have to integrate with each other. And that's, that's not always easy. And then the stakeholder involvement's another one. You know, there's, everybody's got an opinion on how to do things better or differently or something like that. And so you have to take that into account, but, uh, lots of, lots of ways we can improve things. And we learned from all of them, but, uh, it was challenging projects, but when they're done, we're all proud of them.
Stacey McGuire: 40:15 - 40:47
If I could, I was going to go off on a tangent and say it's all the regulations that are in place now, you know, the excess soils, the species at risk, the archaeological assessments that we have to do as soon as you dig are all causing huge delays on projects. But I guess they're all coming from a place where we've made mistakes in the past and we're trying to right the wrong now, right? And so as much as I can complain about the process, the process is in place because we're dealing with the outfall of those past decisions. Just kind of an interesting correlation. I wasn't prepared to make until right now.
Doug Jones: 40:47 - 41:34
Yeah, but at the same time, you know, I challenged my staff, how do we do things better? Because they're, you know, They're, they're used to doing things linear, very linearly. They'll do an environmental assessment. And then we have to finish that and then we'll start, you know, preliminary design. Then we have to finish that. And now we're saying, well, if we sped up some of that, if we did either the environmental assessment on the first third of it or something, and then, you know, started your design and then start construction, break them up into chunks. And can we go faster that way? Because you want to accomplish, you know, all the benefits that you were just describing, learning from the past, don't repeat them. But we also want to go faster and have good quality product at the end of the day. So it's really. I use that question a lot with my team, say, why do we do this? Why do we do this? Can we do it differently and get things better? And it's just, there's a team of people there now, obviously just challenging themselves to continuously improve.
Louis Savard: 41:36 - 42:00
Perfect. So about seven minutes, I'm going to try and skip, go through these questions. But I have a really important one for Nadia though, because this all ties so well together from a municipal standpoint, right? You've got the public saying, just get it done. We just, we want this building built. We want the sewer fixed, the road fixed, just get it done. Then you've got the private sector that wants to make money. Right. They just, they want to do it.
Nadia Tordova: 42:00 - 42:01
And build.
Louis Savard: 42:01 - 42:08
And build. And then you've got counsel that's saying, don't raise taxes, provide more services for less. How do you square all that up?
Nadia Tordova: 42:10 - 44:12
Well, that's really interesting question. So I would say, again, a lot of the items that we've already talked about really fit in really well here, right? Make it as predictable, make things as early as possible so industry can really get going as early as they can. Because when you have predictability into the system, that is crucial for industry. We know what we're dealing with. We know exactly how to address it. We know how to plan for it. So that's really important. The other thing that I would say, and this is a very shameless plug for another association that both OCET and RCCO are part of, and that's the Construction and Design Alliance of Ontario, and we're going to be coming out with a procurement guide in the next few weeks that talks about exactly this. How do we procure infrastructure in a way that, you know, gets it done faster? You know, what are some of the procurement methods that can be used? How can we really look into all the pros and cons of each of them? So that guide is going to be out in a few weeks, so we'll make sure that it's circulated to everyone here. But just in terms of some really quick elements, make sure that the procurement model is right for the project that you're looking at, right? Like some projects which are too big. Then you need to look at the different procurement model. Look at P3s. How do you designate that risk? How do you download it to the right party? Not every party should handle risk the same way. It doesn't live with all of them. You know, proper pre-planning, like Doug was saying, if you catch a mistake in the pre-planning phase, it's $1,000. If you catch a mistake when it's construction, It's $100,000, it's a million dollars, right? So that pre-planning phase is really important. And then lastly, I know we're pressed for time, is standardization. So how do we make sure that standards across Ontario with municipalities are as similar as they can be? Using OPS road specs across municipalities would be important. And again, it would provide that predictability for industry. Why do we have so many standards when we're building the exact same thing, right? with geographical differences, of course, but for the most part, we really need to look at that standardization.
Louis Savard: 44:12 - 44:22
I see you looking at your watch. No, no, it's all good. You're good. You're good. But I'm going to go to Stacy, though, because it sounds like Windsor did make some generous investments. How did you do it?
Stacey McGuire: 44:24 - 45:41
Yeah, so they were kind of driven by outside of our purview. The Gordie Howe International Bridge was probably the first one. I just like interesting facts. The Windsor-Detroit Gateway carries nearly a third of all of Canada's road trade with the U.S. It was before tariffs happened, it was predicted that we've got about a billion dollars worth of trade going across our border every single day. So the investment in that infrastructure to help with the trade was a huge first factor for us. And then there was two other big ones, the regional acute care hospital that's coming to our area, as well as the Nexstar battery plant that's under construction right now. and due to open in the next few months to full operation. So those things really transformed Windsor in a big way and kudos to our mayor and council for having sort of the foresight and the willingness to take the chance on those and put some money into it and take the risk. The result has been a huge increase in growth that we haven't seen in Windsor in decades. And we're now faced with the challenge of trying to fund the infrastructure to support that growth. It's a problem. It's a good problem, but it's a problem nonetheless when we're dealing with potentially raising taxes for people that are struggling to put food on the table right now.
Louis Savard: 45:42 - 45:50
Absolutely. And Matt, just to follow up with you, what would you change in terms of the funding mechanisms to support these generational investments?
Matt Ash: 45:51 - 46:32
It's interestingly, this question was posed, I kind of was wondering what really is a generational investment. And I think the Gordie Howe Bridge is a very good example. I think there are things like the subway in Toronto or Bruce Nuclear. These are things that don't come along very often and they have huge societal benefits. I think one thing is we need to look at prioritizing at the very highest level and stopping the competition between municipalities for the relatively small pots of money that are out there. Really looking at what the infrastructure needs are in the province in a holistic sense and targeting those with the money would be my take on it.
Louis Savard: 46:33 - 46:36
More funding questions. The gas tax.
Louis Savard: 46:38 - 46:47
So it's used by municipalities to fund a lot of investment, a lot of, a lot of the construction projects. Layer in mandating electric vehicles. No more gas. What happens?
Doug Jones: 46:48 - 48:37
So we've been talking about this for a couple of years. I'll give you two perspectives. One will be more of a European one, and then I'll come back to Ontario. But if you look at other parts of the world, they're grappling with it all over the place. In Europe, the EVs have taken off a little bit faster than they have here in recent years. But those are looking at things like road uses, charges, tolls, EV-specific funds, like if you're doing a charge on their vehicle registration, for example. and also carbon pricing. So if, you know, it's not in the gas, it's in the registration or something like that. But all of those things, if you look in Ontario, those aren't things that this government is promoting. So they're active, you know, it's something that they don't want to do. But in reality, when we look at it, gas tax, it's just another source of revenue. And the province, the government is committed to supporting the municipalities, and they're very aware that gas taxes are going to be reduced. But at the same time, they took off a good portion of the gas tax recently just to support hard-working people that are struggling to make ends meet. We've got a strong economy. If you look at the population growth that's going to occur in Ontario for the next number of years, the GDP increase is going to be significant, tax revenues are going to be significant, and gas tax is a small portion of that. I don't know what the exact solution is going to be. The Minister of Revenue and Minister of Finance will be figuring that out. Just the comments that have been made so far, I don't think the municipalities have to worry about it too much. The support will be there in the future. And you can see that the federal government's coming up with some programs too to support transit and other things like that. So lots of opportunities to do all the right things.
Louis Savard: 48:38 - 48:53
That's a good word, opportunity. I like that one. We're going to finish up with one simple question for all the panelists. We'll start with Nadia. I think the crowd here probably heard over and over why, but I'm going to ask it again. Why is it important to invest in infrastructure?
Nadia Tordova: 48:54 - 50:19
That's a great question. It really underpins our whole conversation, as you said. It's absolutely essential for economic growth. And Doug touched upon the multiplier effect, which is almost one and a half in terms of how much you invest and how much you get back from infrastructure investment. It also creates jobs, again, like as it was mentioned, every time you kind of have a downturn in the economy, one of the best ways to stimulate it is to invest in that infrastructure. These are really well-paying jobs as well, and really they facilitate that growth. The other thing is Ontario is going to need a lot more infrastructure. The population growth that we have already experienced and we were projected to experience is going to put huge demand on all sorts of assets that we have right now. And it's so important that we're building for the future today. I know it sounds very cheesy and I'm so sorry. But it's so true because we've all sat, I mean, most of us have sat on the DVP, which was a highway that was built in the 50s and the 60s for the 50s and the 60s. So we really have to be building that infrastructure for the future. And if we want to stay competitive, one of the first things that any sort of investor looks at when they're trying to invest in a new place is what does the infrastructure look like? Can I get my goods to business? Can I get my my goods to the endpoint through that infrastructure? Can my staff find housing? And if the answer to that is no, nobody's going to be investing in Ontario. So it's really, it's a multitude of reasons why we need to be investing in infrastructure.
Doug Jones: 50:21 - 51:40
I was having a bit of a discussion with a gentleman here earlier, and we were talking about how things are changing globally. And we saw a picture earlier from one of the earlier speakers about how climate change is going to affect different countries and how Ontario is in this unique position. And that's going to drive more and more immigration and I show my age again, but I was, I was with a contractor working on the 407 back in the mid to late nineties. And I remember looking, I said, why are we building this thing? Because like there's, you know, highway seven, there's right beside it wasn't even that capacity, but the people that are doing the planning population projections and the valleys and there's thinking, okay, what's, what, uh, what, what do I need to build out to support? for the next 25 years, they've got a lot of that information. They're thinking about things that I would never have thought about before. And so when we talk about the population growth in the greater Toronto area is going to see 50% more people in the next 25 years. Well, you don't build your highways and infrastructure overnight. You've got to be planning for that because it's going to take 10 or 15 years. And so it's just to have that, uh, that growth theory and then the knowledge, then the businesses and people are going to come, but we've got to find a way to effectively move goods and people, uh, wherever we are. And if you don't, um, they're going to go somewhere else.
Stacey McGuire: 51:41 - 52:00
My colleagues make some excellent points. For me, it's very simple. It's one sentence and it's, I want to be able to avoid driving down a residential road and seeing people's cherished belongings at the curb because we haven't accounted for climate change and we haven't built our infrastructure correctly and we haven't addressed the needs of residents.
Matt Ash: 52:01 - 52:47
Why is it so important? Well, in some ways it's, it's obvious to me. I mean, you have clean water on your table. You didn't get stuck in the elevator because the power went out. I mean, of course it's important to invest in. I think it's vitally important to invest in the infrastructure we have because once the decay cycle sets in, it's very, very difficult to reverse it. And, you know, I was in Cuba and I didn't stay on the resort. So, you know, I went into the city and, and their infrastructure has decayed so badly that it rarely functions. And it's too bad, beautiful people, beautiful island. But once you get to that point, it's so hard to bring it back. And we can't forget about that part. I wonder if I worked on the same part of the 407 as you did. I worked on the good part, but I don't know where you were, sir.
Doug Jones: 52:49 - 53:22
But just the point about investing, one of the discussions I've been having with my minister is just investing in rehabilitation. Because for highways, for example, it's not really obvious all the time when things start deteriorating, you have to put that investment in resurfacing or whatever. And I think you can go to any province over the last 20, 30 years, and they've all gone through these stages where they haven't invested in the road infrastructure and the potholes and you know, people complaining about things and you don't want to be there. So it's just investing that infrastructure is just critically important.
Louis Savard: 53:23 - 53:44
Well, there you have it, folks. I don't know about you, but you can, you can feel the passion. The passion is here. And I think we could have been here for another two, three hours, days and not run out of topic. So thank you for a great, fulsome discussion. And I must say, and I would like to ask everyone in this room, thank you. Give me a big round of applause for our panelists.
David Terlizzi: 53:47 - 54:35
Well, there you have it. Another powerful episode of Tech Takes. Today's conversation cut right to the core of Ontario's infrastructure story. These systems don't just keep our communities running, but define how they grow, adapt, and thrive in a rapidly changing world. From smarter roads and resilient bridges to future-ready water networks, power grids, buildings, and housing, we explored why infrastructure isn't just an investment in concrete and steel, it's an investment in innovation, sustainability, and the people who call this province home. Hey, got a hot topic you want us to explore, or a guest you think would totally blow our minds? Drop us a line, would you, at techtakes@oacett.org Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and keep pushing boundaries. Bye for now.