05-02-2023, 08:45 PM
(05-02-2023, 07:39 PM)nms Wrote: 1. Early retirements due to the double-whammy of Covid and peak of the baby boom reaching retirement age.
Are you suggesting this for physical labour jobs, or engineering position that have the expertise to keep costs low? I was always under the impression that construction jobs were filled with younger people due to the toll it takes on your body. But a quick (read: not thorough) Google search suggests the average construction worker age is in line with the average Canadian, so at the very least you wouldn't expect it to be suffering from disproportionate retirements.
(05-02-2023, 07:39 PM)nms Wrote: 2. Drops in immigration have meant less of a labour pool to tap into.
Sorry, what drop? Sure, 2020 saw some drop in the number of immigrants, but according to the government 2021 and 2022 had the highest number of immigrants in Canada's history.
I was actually curious if the combination of restrictive zoning and record high immigration putting immense pressure on land value could be affecting the cost of ION via expropriation. But it looks like $42 million was budgeted for land acquisition for phase 1, and if we assume similar amounts of land acquisition and use a worst case 4x cost of land since then, we are still looking at probably <$200 million. While substantial, it definitely doesn't come close to explaining the overall increase.