40
RBC urges Canada to prioritize construction skills in immigrants to tackle housing crisis
(financialpost.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
40 points (90.0% liked)
Canada
7106 readers
385 users here now
What's going on Canada?
Communities
π Meta
πΊοΈ Provinces / Territories
- Alberta
- British Columbia
- Manitoba
- New Brunswick
- Newfoundland and Labrador
- Northwest Territories
- Nova Scotia
- Nunavut
- Ontario
- Prince Edward Island
- Quebec
- Saskatchewan
- Yukon
ποΈ Cities / Regions
- Calgary (AB)
- Edmonton (AB)
- Greater Sudbury (ON)
- Halifax (NS)
- Hamilton (ON)
- Kootenays (BC)
- London (ON)
- Mississauga (ON)
- Montreal (QC)
- Nanaimo (BC)
- Oceanside (BC)
- Ottawa (ON)
- Port Alberni (BC)
- Regina (SK)
- Saskatoon (SK)
- Thunder Bay (ON)
- Toronto (ON)
- Vancouver (BC)
- Vancouver Island (BC)
- Victoria (BC)
- Waterloo (ON)
- Winnipeg (MB)
π Sports
Hockey
- List of All Teams: Post on /c/hockey
- General Community: /c/Hockey
- Calgary Flames
- Edmonton Oilers
- MontrΓ©al Canadiens
- Ottawa Senators
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Vancouver Canucks
- Winnipeg Jets
Football (NFL)
- List of All Teams:
unknown
Football (CFL)
- List of All Teams:
unknown
Baseball
- List of All Teams:
unknown - Toronto Blue Jays
Basketball
- List of All Teams:
unknown - Toronto Raptors
Soccer
- List of All Teams:
unknown - General Community: /c/CanadaSoccer
- Toronto FC
π» Universities
π΅ Finance / Shopping
- Personal Finance Canada
- BAPCSalesCanada
- Canadian Investor
- Buy Canadian
- Quebec Finance
- Churning Canada
π£οΈ Politics
π Social & Culture
Rules
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What we need is for CMHC to start building houses instead of leaving it to developers. Developers will only make the most profitable houses, which are the McMansions you see going up like crazy but no one can afford.
The CMHC isn't a constructor, they have no way of building houses themselves. They need to pay people to build it through their funding, except them providing funding comes with issues too.
I am a designer on a low-income apartment building being constructed by a non-profit organization in Niagara Region and it is 100% government funded (through CMHC I believe). The government took nearly 9 months to approve the funding after all the bids by constructors were received around April 2022 and given the rate of inflation at the time (and construction inflation was higher than the general rate) no subtrades held their price. The government refused to increase the funding to cover the extra cost due to inflation and as a result this building is being value engineered to high heaven and will probably be pretty terrible build quality.
What you're asking for is effectively a blank cheque for subtrades (and to an extent, designers... even if CMHC uses generic plans everywhere they need local professionals to take responsibility for the permitting process of each individual build, which includes regular inspections and reports) because none of these people trust that the government is competent enough to actually do it properly so they price high to account for fuck ups. (Ex. If CMHC handed me plans to be used I definitely would not blindly sign things off for the local AHJ and put my professional license at risk)
The government can be efficient and competent if it wants to be. The fact that it isn't when controlled by people who are ideologically opposed to the government overshadowing organizations with a profit motive is not an argument against the government doing things.
It's an argument for the government actually being focused on meeting residents' needs, rather than business owners'.
See, this is the problem with the typical mindsets of people who support the parties that make in into the HoC (and many people who support parties who don't): you can't count on the government (or anyone or any organization for that matter) being benelovent all the time, especially when it doesn't align with their own interests. You need to design a system where benevolence is always a byproduct of acting in one's own interest, and what is described in the comment I replied to isn't it.
I mean that's the problem with corporations too except when they're publicly traded you also have to contend with fiduciary obligation making sure they always design for the minimum viable product.
Look no further than our Telecom industry to see how that works out.
The main issue with our telecom industry is that it's heavily protected by government regulation.
I just had to read through the crtc governance on telecommunications providers do you mind pointing out which subsections in particular are protectionist?
Barring the case where companies reneged on a quote and still earned further business, is it illegal to say "$15million plus inflation of 0.x%/mo" or "$20mil which is $15mil plus adjustment for inflation over typical 9mo review process" ?
One of those two have to give.
Not sure it's illegal but I've never seen it done. Every front end specification I've seen says the contractor must hold their price for 30/60 days and many of them stipulate by what date the contract is expected to be awarded.
If the type of pricing you say was submitted when it wasn't asked for the bid would be tossed for not conforming to the required format. If that type of pricing was asked for you'd have pricing all over the place and you'd probably end up with a shitty contractors who bud extra low and bank on a drawn out approval process getting the job for less than they can actually do it for (and cutting corners like crazy)
The issue is that nobody really expected the approval to be that drawn out.
I work on the linear infrastructure side as a consultant - any particular reason that they took so long to award the tender? That seems extreme given that I regularly work with municipalities and tendering processes, and its a pretty well oiled machine - 1 month is about as long as I've ever seen the award be stretched, unless the engineering cost estimate was waaaay below the bids and they had to secure additional funding.
They needed the government funding approved in order to award the contract and the approval process (which required all bids to be submitted, not just the planned awarded one) unexpectedly took 9 months with the feds. It wasn't a municipal project either, it was a local nonprofit org.
I work a lot with the architect that is overseeing the project and not once did they complain about having to submit extra info to the fed (and I have a pretty solid relationship with them so while not completely professional to complain like that it's the type of thing that would have come up in side conversations in-person when meeting up for other projects)