Imagine a place with enough money to build just about all the public infrastructure a population of 3.2 million could possibly need, but there aren\u2019t enough tradespeople to build it. And not enough construction equipment or material, even if there were tradespeople.
Welcome to the alternative reality that is Alberta today.
Whether you\u2019re a homeowner renovating a bathroom, an oil company planning a heavy-oil upgrader or a municipal government building a school, you\u2019re faced with rocketing costs and the necessity of pleading with somebody \u2014 anybody \u2014 to take on your project.
I just had an unsafe balcony replaced on my home. The bill was 50% more than the original estimate, which is about average for construction projects large and small in Alberta now. I was happy to get it done.
Alberta has approved $1 billion in road construction, and Edmonton and Calgary are awash in infrastructure dollars \u2014 courtesy of a $3-billion municipal building program announced by the premier in 2004. A month ago, Finance Minister Shirley McClellan told the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association: \u201cIf you have a project and can build it, for God\u2019s sake, build it.\u201d
It has lots of projects. During the lean 1990s, when the Klein government slashed public spending to control an exploding deficit, putting off public building and maintenance was a way of life for municipalities.
Better days have arrived with a bang, drawing people (90,000 last year) and powering development. The result, according to most estimates, is a public works backlog of $10 billion-$12 billion that could take a decade to whittle away.
But public construction doesn\u2019t take place in a vacuum. The government is competing with the private sector for everything from labour to steel and cement. Plumbers and heavy-equipment operators are smiling all the way to the bank, while everything from schools to roads is prohibitively expensive.
Weeks away from retirement, Premier Ralph Klein is urging a slowdown in public spending to cool construction cost anarchy. \u201cI know there\u2019s a screaming demand for more infrastructure. But, folks \u2026 the prices are just going beyond belief,\u201d he pleaded.
He\u2019s right. But a retiring political leader has less influence on his colleagues, particularly those campaigning to replace him at the helm of Alberta\u2019s Conservative dynasty.
\u201cMunicipalities know what needs to be built. The province just needs to establish the funding agreements, then get out of their way,\u201d says Tory legislator and University of Calgary political science professor Ted Morton. And he\u2019s the fiscal conservative of the eight hopefuls to become premier.
The spending hawk is former provincial public works minister Lyle Oberg, who has made bridging the \u201cinfrastructure gap\u201d a major plank in his campaign. He argues increased funding could get the work done in five rather than 10 years.
\u201cWith respect to Premier Klein and his call to mothball infrastructure spending because of rising costs, I strongly disagree,\u201d he said recently. \u201cNow is not the time to delay building our roads, our children\u2019s schools and the provincial infrastructure we so desperately need.\u201d
Bold words, but the real restraint on construction in Alberta has less to do with politics than with economics. It has become just too darn expensive!\tIE<\/b>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spiralling costs, manpower shortage keep projects in check<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3013,3014],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":371044,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328799\/revisions\/371044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328799"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=328799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}