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Provincial governments aren’t immune, either: a brand new bridge over Ontario’s Nipigon River recently buckled, severing the country’s road network in two. Crown corporations are in the same boat: the Toronto Transit Commission recently announced that a six-stop extension to the Spadina subway line is now $400 million over budget and well behind schedule.

Why can’t Canada — a country with a solid, export-class civil engineering industry — build public infrastructure on-time, on-plan and on-budget?

The most popular villain right now is budget trickery. Critics — ranging from urbanist activists to Toronto Mayor John Tory — blame politicians for understating the cost of infrastructure projects, in order to get them approved. And this certainly happens. For example, in 2006, the Winnipeg mayor’s office asked civil servants why budgeted construction costs hadn’t been adjusted upward for inflation. The reply: previous councils ordered them not to, since it was easier to squeeze in extra projects if inflation wasn’t soaking up budget room.

But taking this explanation at face value is too convenient. It accepts the idea that all expensive construction problems are inevitable. In truth, many are preventable, especially since so many can be attributed to a common problem: departmental ego.

In the private sector, senior construction managers normally need a trio of core skills, known as EPC (engineering, procurement and construction). Across Canada, stubborn municipal departments frequently assume that having the skills to cover zero, one or two of these skill sets internally is enough.