Addressing the Housing Shortage and Policy at Scale with the "Economic Handyman" George Benson, Vancouver Economic Commission | EP94

In this episode, James and Christian are joined by George Benson from the Vancouver Economic Commission. George, known as the “Economic Handyman,” brings his expertise in construction adjacent roles and urban planning to this wide-ranging conversation, shedding light on the complexities of the economy and the need to find gray zones in the policy. The discussion shifts to embodied carbon and specifics around refrigerant gases, the production of steel and batteries in electric vehicles, and China's efforts in battery recycling before digging into everyone’s frustrations with the carbon tax. The conversation then shifts towards the housing shortage in Canada, where there is simply a need for much more affordable housing and getting those projects to builders and subsequently to the market faster. George explores different approaches, emphasizing the importance of revisiting economic fundamentals and ensuring that the right people benefit from the allocated funds, leveraging publicly owned sites for housing and streamlining the role of policy and regulatory barriers in the overall process. Strategies for addressing the housing shortage are examined, such as expediting the permitting process, even with pre-approved components, and exploring innovative solutions like the Vancouver Special 2.0. Challenges associated with pre-permitting and pre-rezoning processes and the value of policy incentives for local businesses are discussed. The episode concludes with a conversation about finding systems that work at scale and George's final insights into his work as an economic handyman.

An urban planner by training, and an economic developer by trade, George Benson is Senior Manager, Economic Transformation at the Vancouver Economic Commission, working to decarbonize, build resilience, and increase fairness across Vancouver's massive architecture, engineering, and construction sectors.

The Vancouver Economic Commission collaborates with public-sector, economic development, industry, and academic organizations on how to best navigate Vancouver's economic transformation, particularly in the context of pressing global socioeconomic issues and trends related to the future of work.


EPISODE LINKS:
George Benson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gprbenson/
Vancouver Economic Commission LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vaneconomic/
Vancouver Economic Commission Website: https://vancouvereconomic.com

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Transcript

Christian Hamm: 0:00

Okay, so we're we're talking about DIY projects here.

James Faulkner: 0:03

Yeah, DIY in the water in the water.

George Benson: 0:06

You're seeing people build a massive boats and friend of friends. Yeah, friends they built, built in this the early 80s. I think Simon was already Yeah, well, it gets better they stole a bunch of the wood apparently to make it. There was like a lumberyard near their place. And they were like in their early 20s. It falls off the back of a truck, they pick that up. And then they they're great was the grandfather or father and a brother and they built this thing together. It was like a family project. And I've been lucky beneficial, if it's beautiful, but like, good craftsmanship. They're like, Red Seal carpenter. They've been there, like a maritime family been around that stuff for a long time. And it seems to contrast I think, to that, that tragedy with that submarine that went down as

Christian Hamm: 0:47

you were saying the stuff is a DIY.

James Faulkner: 0:49

Well, I mean, they're like they they built it themselves. I think they built the origins themselves.

Christian Hamm: 0:54

Really?

George Benson: 0:54

Oh, yeah. And it broke basically every, like submarine architecture rule you could do. And they kept flipping the birds like, hey, they'll do all the scientists send them letters, like we so recommend that you don't do this, like this is really going to be bad. And they're like, we're innovating, man. Look, it's gonna be so great. And then, you know, bad stuff happened, but it turns out like, they use like six different composite materials that shouldn't mix together. They didn't test the tensile strength. The thing only opened from the outside. Like there was like if it surfaced in the boat wasn't near. I did hear that you had no way to get out. Unless there was

James Faulkner: 1:26

Even if you made it, you didn't make it. You could still suffocate. Yes, terrible. Yeah. All right. I hope your friends you know, have a great time with the boat because this is this is a three red flags since first 80s Just a red second DIY. Okay, third, bad karma from the stolen materials. Yeah, true. Geez.

George Benson: 1:46

It's been on the water. 40 odd years. So okay,

James Faulkner: 1:49

well, let's just everyone, not everyone. Yeah, make sure that they're there. They're cool. They can live in the old decades.

Christian Hamm: 1:54

That's fantastic. Well, we got the economic handyman. We're gonna put some things back together here. Dave. Hit that intro music.

James Faulkner: 2:01

Welcome to the Site Visit podcast, leadership and perspective from construction. With your hosts, James Faulkner and Christian Hamm.

Jesse Unke: 2:13

Business as usual as it has been for so long now that it goes back to what we were talking about before and hitting the reset button and

Justin Bontkes: 2:19

You read all the books and read the E-Myth, you read Scaling up your read Good to Great. You know, I could go on.

Sebastian Jacob: 2:24

We've got to a place where we found the secret serum we found secret potion we can get the workers in we know

Cam Roy: 2:31

One time I was on a jobsite for a while and actually where to get them get added some extra concrete and I poured like broom finished patio out front of the site trailer.

John Reid: 2:39

A guy just reach out, out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard the Faber Connect platform on your guys's podcast

Zack Staples: 2:49

Own it, crush it and love it, we celebrate these values every single day.

James Faulkner: 2:57

Let's get down to it.

Christian Hamm: 3:03

All right. So yes, we are here with the economic handyman self proclaimed George Benson from the Vancouver Economic Commission. What is the economic handyman?

James Faulkner: 3:14

Yeah, what is that?

George Benson: 3:16

Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I really love the first conversation we had and really excited to be back

James Faulkner: 3:20

at the short one in Whistler. Yeah, yeah. That's too quick.

George Benson: 3:24

Doubletime.

Christian Hamm: 3:24

But that's part of the whole thing, though. Right is you have a great conversation. You, you invite them back. So are you the Yeah, you're the first one back. There's are others coming? Yeah.

George Benson: 3:35

Take that one. Take that one home with me. Economic handyman. So I have the privilege to work for the city, Vancouver's economic development agency. And when I say that people, then their eyes start to glaze over. And they're like, what does that mean? What is What does an economic developer do? The city of Vancouver has one, what's it all about? Yeah. And fundamentally, the job that I do is very weird. And so I needed a kind of metaphor to explain what that is, that makes it kind of makes sense. And so I love the metaphor of the handyman, in part, because I think people doing that work are really cool. And it's really important. But it's also helpful to describe what I do, which is that my job fundamentally is to look for problems in the economy that don't have an owner that, you know, you think of think of the metaphor of like someone in the building, the super hires a handy person to work around there. They're like, Hey, can you paint that doorway for me quickly? Hey, can you patch that wall? Hey, can you touch up that window? Hey, can you you know, what are all these little things are and individually, they're small tasks, but when you add them up and your windows are clean, your doors are actually on their hinges properly. And and and and and the washing machine works, etc. You have a comfortable space to live in, you have a place that's actually going to do right by you. And so that's what we try to do the commission, both my me and my team is to look for those problems and try to help.

Christian Hamm: 4:44

Nice, no, that's really cool. And we're going to unpack a little bit more of your background story and we were talking prior. I was in Nanaimo on the weekend. You lived in Nanaimo for a while I did.

George Benson: 4:56

No way. Oh, how long?

James Faulkner: 4:59

Three years. Okay. Yeah, three years and then I had to leave.

George Benson: 5:05

Well unpack that.

Christian Hamm: 5:07

And you're from Nanaimo? Nanaimo. So let's unpack and we can definitely dig into that and stuff because I think it ties into some of the first conversation. But yeah, a little bit background about George grew up in Nanaimo. You worked a little bit in some construction adjacent.

George Benson: 5:22

I feel like I'm like an interloper here. Like sneaking in. I was saying, I've kind of worked construction adjacent. I think a lot of my career. So my first job, then I was beautiful community, but it's small. And there's the work is certainly back in the back in late 2000s, was not plentiful. I graduated high school in the middle of the Great Recession. That's like, great, where's, where are we going to find our, where we're gonna find our jobs that are out there. And it's like, wherever you can, yeah. But a buddy of mine. His dad worked at this mill outside or Nanaimo. And I went with him every day, one day, a ferry terminal. Known RMAc, this was the 60s, they were doing Cedar Furniture. So they're actually like, they're actually building some pretty cool stuff. Unfortunately, they don't exist anymore. But my first job was working there and really got to it was so fun to like, work with the materials actually have your hands on something. To this day was like one of my favorite jobs, there's just so you know, I send a lot of emails every day. And back then it was like, Okay, you move these things around, you fix this, you do this, and you see the progress very quickly. It's a very rewarding thing. The second job I had was with a rental company that did construction equipment, yard supplies, irrigation, stuff like that. And it was this it was a window into a world that I didn't really have any access to at that time and getting to work with us a small trades, people coming in few landscapers, that kind of stuff, and just seeing how they engage with the materials, what kind of equipment they were looking for, what did what was was really phenomenal. And eventually, I went away, left Nymo did a little work in in Asia and kind of traveled around a little bit, came back here and got my master's in urban planning, and so trained as an urban planner, but really with a focus on with a focus on the economy in particular. But also, I would say on how we kind of cheesy, but like, how do we work together? Like the economy is such a complicated thing. And we often characterize it as like, okay, there's the government, which like, regulates and taxes us. And there's businesses and workers who are, you know, doing their thing, right. And I think the kind of a lot of what we talked about economic development today is how actually interwoven all of those things are, the government spends money, that can drive innovation, technology, development, whatever businesses are sometimes asking, and actually, these are a lot of businesses I work with, they're asking for particular types of regulations, or of, you know, policy changes, taxes, etc. So that they can do things more easily. So there's this, you know, these binary, these lines we draw are actually much less clear. And, you know, I go back to being a handyman, my job is to, like, look for those weird spots and see, if someone's saying, Hey, can you paint my doorframe, aka, hey, can you, you know, like, there was a company, for example, that I worked with a little while ago. It's and this is a long process, I can't say we've succeeded yet. But they asked us about, they had a structural thermal break that they were selling. And turns out that in policy world, they occupy this bizarre middle ground, the way that the PST act is written, there's certain exemptions for energy efficiency products. So if you sell like really high quality insurance, no PSD, but a structural thermal break is at first a structural product, not an energy efficiency product, so it doesn't get the PST exemption. And so what they were saying was, hey, hold on, we've got guys who are selling like things for wrapping your deck, for example, to combat bridging, and yet, our product is better. And like all of the science, everything plays this out, this is better. But because we occupy this weird, innovative niche, we can't get that PSD exemption, and people are going with the worst product, the worst product that we have. And so you know, I had to do some research had to talk with different government officials and say, Hey, we think this is actually a really important thing to consider. And it goes into this big consultation process and so on. So we don't know if it'll succeed. But the idea was to like, look for that these small companies don't have a big gr team to you know, run around and do advocacy to ministers and stuff. They're just like, hey, can you lend a hand? And that's some of the work that we do to sort of navigate those weird gray zones. But again, this was a company asking for, hey, can you change these regulations? And vice versa? We work with governments all the time they were saying you know, any companies can you help us like figure out what's going on?

James Faulkner: 9:15

Did you get that PST thing? It categorized in the right like it's still in the process? Like we said, but what does that process like when you submit that has that work? Or is it like some kind of like form a slash slash slash

George Benson: 9:27

to change that would be like seems pretty

Christian Hamm: 9:30

major change

James Faulkner: 9:33

what do you do you have a representative the like that you have a phone call with Zoom first you write a letter like what's the deal? Yeah,

George Benson: 9:40

yeah. For stuff like that. Usually, like some people go right to the minister and I usually never recommend that. Like, unless you're really articulate, you know,

James Faulkner: 9:46

But you advocate for these people.

George Benson: 9:47

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

James Faulkner: 9:48

Okay. So you have, they're like, Okay, well, it's George. Okay. So he's, he's done this a number of times. He doesn't mess around. It's always does his research first. This is not some kind of claim. That's weird. So you probably have a better year. Sorry. You have their year better than any Rando.

George Benson: 10:05

We hope so. And we try to end like, I've heard.

James Faulkner: 10:09

Why the whole organization?

George Benson: 10:10

Well, it's, for me, like, I'm always saying to my team, and all the folks we work with, we move at the speed of trust. But fundamentally, we move at the speed of trust. If I can't, you know, when I talk to that those companies that approached me, I'm very clear to say, like, look, I have to, it's very rare that I will advocate for one company at a time, because like, then I would just be, I would be a consultant for everyone to do their government relations work. And that's, that's not what you have to do. All right. But when someone comes to me and says, Hey, I have a product, or I have a process or service, or whatever, that face is a barrier. And if you could help me, you'd help a whole bunch of other companies, okay, then I get excited, then then that's an opportunity that's worth pursuing. So that's, that's, and so I'm very transparent with them. Like, I'm not just going to be your guy that's going to advocate just for you. Show me that it's a problem the sector faces are a bunch of companies face, and then I'll try to help you there. And if we establish that trust, as the company and I are companies, then I go to the government side, I'm like, Hey, okay, you know, me, you know, I don't just advocate for company 123. Because I think they're cool, or they're, you know, slipping me a few bucks. Here's my case, here's why I think it's important we talk about this issue. So another one I'll throw out is refrigeration and refrigerant gases in different things like heat pumps. Yep. We've had a number of companies approached us from other jurisdictions and a few in Canada as well, that use different refrigerants than what we use now. And I'll beg your forgiveness, not to ask me all the specifics of all the various gases that are used. But one very important one is that in Europe, they use propane as a refrigerant. It's actually in the backs of refrigerators, and heat pumps, and so on. And it's a great refrigerant, it actually works really, really well. In Canada, we're pretty nervous about using that same as the states. But we had enough companies come to us that I said, Okay, we need to take this really seriously and start to look at this more. So again, we're engaged in a process right now with in this case is actually really interesting, because the responsibility for this is spread across a whole bunch of different places. And so for the companies, they don't have time to talk to not just one person, but 30. And that's where my team can come in and say, Hey, hold on, we have to trust to pull in some of those government partners and say, Hey, we think there's a problem here. How can we solve this together, we all benefit from this, the companies are waiting, they want to lean in on this too, we can try to find a beneficial solution for everyone. And that's, you know, sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't, I want to say it's always Kumbaya, but that's the process we try to follow. And it's always built on trust.

Christian Hamm: 12:25

You talked about, okay, so the economic handyman, the Swiss Army knife, there's all these different little things that you're getting into? Or do Is there an evaluation process? Like, are you searching out things are people coming mainly to you, and then there's something like kind of strike you as like a passion project? Or no, this is a broad stroke across the industry, this is going to have the most substantial impact? This is what we need to do and priority sequence it accordingly. That kind of thing?

George Benson: 12:49

Yeah, no, that's a great question. And it's? And the honest answer is, it's a little bit of both. Like, sometimes there's projects where it's like, now we just need to like, you know, also think about it from a, like a professional development standpoint, organizational development capacity from my team and organization, if there's something we haven't done before, and we have a sense that would really benefit us to learn a lot more about it, and to just become more articulate about it, we might take on a project, that's not the most, you know, it's not going to change the world, but it's going to help us in the longer term. So we might do something like that. But by and large, we are trying to really focus on what matters. And so you know, I within in this economic handyman role, the type of problems that I'm solving in the economy have some sort of climate change dimension to them, there's climate changes in there somewhere. And so when we think about climate change in the context of Vancouver, the biggest sources of our greenhouse gases, emissions, our buildings and transportation, right, so generally speaking, we're going to be trying to touch on problems that are in there. And then you know, and then working with the construction sector, obviously comes out like is it becomes a huge priority in that. And then we start to think about, okay, well, in construction, and this is where I talk to industry, I'm just like, what, you know, what are the problems you guys are facing? Where are the big challenges? What's gonna, what's gonna get us bang for a buck? Because I have a team of four. And I think, like to think we pump out a lot of good work for the size we are, but we can't solve every problem. So we have to. So it's just through dialogue, really, that we establish, is this going to make a difference? And so we're for refrigerants, for example, it's going back to that, yeah, refrigerants are a really, really big source of climate change. So if you think we use this scale, in climate change, where we talk about carbon as as one sort of unit of climate change, if you think of it that way here, and if you get to certain types of refrigerants, they might be the equivalent of 20,000 30,000 100,000 units of climate change, let's call that and so when it's like, Okay, should we work on refrigerants while you look at those numbers and you say, yikes, like like, by way of example, the Fraser Health Authority a couple maybe a month or two ago, they did a big piece of research where they looked at the gases they put into inhalers because they distribute inhalers to people with asthma stuff like that. Okay. And there's refrigerants that are in those are tech that they're halocarbons that are in those an aerosol aerosols Yeah. And they found that those were a massive we're talking like double digits percentage of the total amount of emissions they released as an organization. And so they said...

Christian Hamm: 15:15

all these poor kids?

George Benson: 15:18

Well, the good thing is like, you don't have to use those gases, right? Like you can use, you can use other aerosols. Okay. Yeah. So it's an easy so you can insult somebody? He's like, no, no. Cardiac arrest? No,

James Faulkner: 15:29

don't use that. Yeah.

George Benson: 15:32

No, and they were like, and that's the thing is like it, you know, take concrete, for example, like just changing the limestone mixes can get you way different carbon. And so we're looking always looking for those easy solutions.

Christian Hamm: 15:43

Okay. And this is what I loved about and I don't know, if we were gonna go into the whole embodied carbon operational carbon thing, but this is what we talked about when we were in Whistler. And we've had a few of these conversations. And I love when we can start getting into like, the practicalities of it. Not taking away people's trailers.

James Faulkner: 15:56

Here we go. The practicality, the practicalities.

Christian Hamm: 15:59

Remember that? I did? Yeah. But he said he, you know, he started speaking some, like, just there's some good sense making will addressing an issue. You know, when you start talking about, okay, well, there's measured units, and there's alternatives, doesn't necessarily mean eliminate, or spend way more money to address.

George Benson: 16:18

Yeah.

Christian Hamm: 16:19

So when we talk about concrete is concrete, obviously, because we're in construction, we hear it all the time. What can we do? All this? And that would be the embodied carbon side. What is the biggest thing that the biggest nut to crack? On the body? Carpet? Yeah, on that, or even where you're going here with these units? The units...

James Faulkner: 16:36

also, it's also like it because you said there was two things there was there is transportation, and there's buildings? Yes. So when you say buildings, like what are we talking about? With buildings? We're talking about buildings that are in operation? And are sustaining their air conditioning and heat? Or are we talking about a building that is being built? And it's all the stuff going on for the construction of it? Or is it both? It's both? Okay, but which, which is the big problem?

George Benson: 17:03

There's a group called architecture 2030. And they did this really cool project with the UN looking at trying to answer exactly that question. And what they found was that it's about it's about 5050 really is the opposite. We call that operational, the, you know, turning the lights on burning your natural gas, boiler, whatever, and all the carbon that goes into the building materials that you'll construct the structure with. So it's a it's about 50/50...

James Faulkner: 17:26

the refrigerant and that's an air conditioning units at the top of buildings.

George Benson: 17:29

Yeah. And that's, that's a tricky one, because that is not the math and the stuff gets so complicated, so fast. But in short, yes, it's part of we would generally call that part of the embodied carbon of that. And we're using carbon as a shorthand for like, all of the gases, all the stuff going on. But yeah, it would be included in that. And I can't recall off the top my head where that half number comes in, but depending on the structure, it could be, it could be much more than half would be if you're including those gases in there.

James Faulkner: 17:56

Okay, so let's go back to your, your, your part, what you were saying, in terms of like the,

Christian Hamm: 18:01

yeah, like, what's, what's the big one to address? Right? If you're gonna say there's, there's a real big violator of something right now, in construction. That is something we need to address. I know having, you know, built buildings in the past, and there's so many things that get put into concrete changes the structure integrity of it, but there's different things you can do. You know, and maybe plays into going a little deeper into our conversation from Whistler.

George Benson: 18:25

Yeah, yeah, I think it's so in in terms of like, who are the what are the things we're really thinking hard about? Yeah. And in embodied carbon, it's carbon extracts carbon, it's concrete, and it's steel. Those are the That's right. You, depending on what you're, what kind of structure like there are specialty ones, obviously, where you're using some different materials. And that may raise some different questions like you're building deal take me

James Faulkner: 18:47

through the steel part. Is it the fact that steel took a lot of energy to get to the site?

George Benson: 18:51

No, it's the it's the actual manufacturing of steel but coking process, okay,

James Faulkner: 18:55

but the use, that might not be done here. It might be done somewhere else. And when you say embodied carbon, it means all the carbon that ever was created to get that to the site, and then the concrete is actually emitting as well. Yeah. But steel is not emitting

George Benson: 19:10

when it's on the site...

James Faulkner: 19:11

No, I'm just saying so some are like actively emitting. Yeah, because concrete is curing, etc. It's off gassing almost done, but Steel's not. Yeah, so if Steel's made in somewhere in China, which is mostly where it's made, no, I know. I'm just saying that that you know, that's, that's not a I, you know, I guess what I'm saying is, is that the steel has to come from somewhere. Yeah. And then we are inheriting that environmental baggage that comes with every piece of steel. So so that we does unless we make that or have that that coking process somewhere else that's done sustainably. Is that possible? Like we're like how do you look we're also steel.

Christian Hamm: 19:54

Oh, well, mid through the US and stuff like that, right? Like...

James Faulkner: 19:58

Eastern European

Christian Hamm: 19:59

Steel towns.

James Faulkner: 19:59

I mean, Ukraine situation had a steel of a huge steel problem.

Christian Hamm: 20:04

Well, I think it impacted just different supply chain things that got impacted. I think you're right. I think they did make some steel there. Yeah. Yeah. Like old Soviet industrial facility. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 20:12

But do they all make steel the same way? And they all are, as you would say, Christian, like environmental violators? Are they all just to make the same steel?

George Benson: 20:20

There'll be lots of variations. So it's like, it's kind of like the oil and gas industry in Canada was it's talking about, you know, their environmental footprint compared to someone's else's. So there's always there's always variation, okay. And it would even it would even depend on like the type of coal used certain types of coal in different parts of the world have a way higher carbon footprint and others do. But you know, the the short answer to your question is like Ken can't one can we do it differently? Yes, we have like electric arc furnaces for group so called green steel that we can use. There's a few others of those that are out there are various models of doing that

James Faulkner: 20:51

coal power plant to make the electric button that we have right rough answer like Yeah, yeah, we use coal to make the electricity to use the electric.

George Benson: 20:59

You know, it's interesting, though, I just did a piece of story for the hopefully it's gonna come up the Globe and Mail a little while about EVs. Yes. And talking about the embodied carbon of the battery in an Eevee. Yeah, what's interesting is like, I was really trying to dig into this and sort of ease some of my own concerns right about this. And one, I think, when we talk about bad, I'm jumping here, but we come back. When we talk about batteries, one, there's so new, it's not the case that there are giant piles of these, you know, electric car batteries sitting in landfills, just you know, leaking all their crap into the environment. There's going to be some cases that sadly, but by and large, these cars are so new that the batteries haven't been replaced at scale, yet. They're still in the cars. China is quickly because they're the number one battery market in the world. They make most of the batteries, they use most of the batteries. And they're also going to be the number one recycler of batteries. I was looking to start with the other day, like China is on track to be able to they think to recycle about 50% of electric car batteries by 2030. Wow, that's pretty soon. That's pretty soon, and they're already doing a commercial scale. So like that. So for one, like we worry about the batteries. I'm getting less worried about the batteries, thankfully. But the second piece is like, Well, okay, you gotta make them first, right? Like all the stuff that goes into that. What does that mean? And what's interesting, the genome isn't rivian Like, yeah, super cool, right? They and a group called Pollstar just did a big study all those posts, by Volvo. They just did a big study looking at the embodied carbon of evey there EVs compared to other cars, what they found was the difference, I think was about 15, or 20% of the total emissions have greater in terms of the manufacturing of the car, which actually is like that's not terrifying, we can tackle that. That's actually it's not like at times worse, which is sometimes kind of what you hear. But the second thing is, even if you had a car, an electric car, that was had a coal fired power plant down the street, you would still get less carbon from an electric car than an internal combustion engine car. Because of the way the catalytic converters work, the tailpipe emissions, it just there's a whole bunch of reasons why it comes out differently, right. And we've seen this kind of research fairly consistently. And so it's just one of those strange, like, unexpected outcomes. But even that, like I get excited about, I get excited about us going to electric and green hydrogen and things like that. For equipment, even if the upstream electricity is still you know, cold or something

Christian Hamm: 23:18

Fossil fuels.. because was a couple of things here. So sorry, just to clarify, you're saying 15 to 20%. More embodied, then. In the combustion? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So we're comparing the two of those.

George Benson: 23:29

But the easy, the nice thing is like, when you when you've done all your conversions in the system, you only have one point left to convert, which is the power plant? Yes, that becomes way easier.

James Faulkner: 23:39

Well, they bring it under or to bring it to even an answer

George Benson: 23:43

to bring it under like to get to a point where it becomes economical to run something else.

Christian Hamm: 23:47

I see it actually it's, it's we're seeing this a lot in the states where there's a lot of conversions, because I was I was just reading an article, I can't remember where it was. And I'm sure there's many articles that we're just talking about. There's such an influx or an uptake, rather in evey purchases, and now out there on the road, that obviously now they're like cable, you hear it in California all the time. There's other parts of the world that will have little grid shut offs, and all that kind of stuff. But it's coming to a neighborhood near you. Yeah, right. And so you have to think of like you said, the downstream grid effects and what are those going to be run by? And are those going to be fossil fuel powered? AND, and OR, like you said, that's, that's an easy single thing to address. But then that's a whole what kind of power we're using, and all that kind of stuff, right to the downstream effect of that. But it is an interesting conversation, just to see because it is so relatively new, to have to be addressing all these ideas, and

James Faulkner: 24:37

it's it seems like everything's like nuance to like the you think of all these scenarios where, you know, you're saying that the 15% variation there, or difference. But one thing is for sure, unless it's a modern car that let's say you're in gridlock, you're just it's no one's moving. An electric car at that point is emitting zero. It's not even using the power. Yeah, at all. Yeah. Whereas a car still idling. still happening, except for the newer cars turn off like your truck just right, the engine turns off and turns on again. Yeah, but most cars are running. So what's interesting is you get into the sustainability of cities and transportation, etc, where you, you start locking up streets because of bike lanes. And then all you're doing is creating more congestion. And you can't get anywhere like, there are streets that I've had to go, like, into a complete loop to get to a place I used to be able to go directly to because of bike lanes. So you're, I don't know, there's a lot of stuff that is make work projects and are antithetical to the the initial reason of doing

George Benson: 25:47

what I say yes. And so yes, there's there's moments when

James Faulkner: 25:51

James, you're a jerk?

George Benson: 25:52

No, no, no, no, no, no, I know what you're talking about. No, it is. And I think the other thing to keep in mind is yes, it can be. Those things happen. There's poor instances of planning, sometimes it's a maybe not a make work project, but it's a it's a Goldstar project, where it's like, okay, we want to say we did something so like, Hey, we've we've, yeah, we put some, you know, blockades up and cute. There's a picnic table there. Hurray, everyone we did our jobs. Right. Yeah. As opposed to thinking about what would a good place look like? And actually, you know, making those investments and building that out in a way that was going to be, you know, beloved by a community and not just caught, yeah, okay. They, they K, they rolled in and threw up some things. And now we got to live with it. So that I think that's real. And I would say that the we're in a transitional moment. So So in a lot of cases, we're doing these projects, kind of as pieces of a larger picture. And so like I'm a cyclist, I bike around a lot. I get so annoyed actually, even when I was coming to the studio today. I took I took the same thing happened to me. I took a corner, and then and then I turn around I'm like, Oh, crap. Like, this is a one way street for cyclists this way. I can't go wrong.

James Faulkner: 26:53

Even cyclists are dealing with it, too. Oh, yeah. But it's because traffic lights now you guys have traffic lights. What's that? You have traffic lights now? Yeah, we got a few. You got a few. I have like two. So let me do I read a book sometimes. I want one.

George Benson: 27:09

But I think the other thing I was gonna say though, is so it's a transitional moment. Like we're building these pieces slowly. And so you get caught partway through it being done. And you're like, I hate this. This is awful. Yeah. And then and then later, hopefully, we have the foresight to finish the thing. Like I love biking to New West. Yeah. And I'm going to name some names here. But the city of Burnaby has not dealt with one of the challenges on Boundary Road. You're like cruising along the central valley Greenway, and you hit Boundary Road, and you just come to a highway like the like, it literally stops. You're just in front of the highway. Yeah. And so you can do this whole weird, dumb, circuitous route, and some adventurous people cross the highway, but it's, it's it's a pain in the butt. And it's because they've just haven't had that gap.

James Faulkner: 27:48

Well, so from a macro perspective, in terms of all this planning, and all of the the the employed people who I mean, you advocate for people, you don't actually make the stuff. Yeah. So but the people who make stuff, it would be an interesting experiment to know. Okay, we know from being entrepreneurial, you have to, when you make things or invent things, or and you get people to invest in things, and you you take on all this risk. Yep, absolutely. And when it doesn't work out, you're still left with that risk. What I find is, is with cities city planning, you might have somebody who's like, oh, yeah, I just really want to make this change. And they get there and they do something for a year. And then they go and do another job somewhere. And they got zero impact from this thing that was half baked. And, and so I would like to know if there's ever going to be true accountability for people who are planning with their jobs, if let's just say, it's like, if this doesn't work out, your pay is going to be docked for the next seven years. Because you did this. And you thought it was a good idea at the time, and only because you're grandstanding for some point in your own life to do what you want to do at that time. So this and I find that most cities are terrible businesses, they all run a deficit no one makes a profit. So they all suck at what they do. And yet, we all have to be like okay, yeah, our tax dollars at work. And it just seems like there is I think that like when it comes to policy when it comes to all of these changes, that these these bodies of change, if you will, they need to start to get a little bit of taxpayer confidence. Do you agree with that? Like, everybody's kind of gassed out by this like, Oh, seriously, another one of these another one of those it's like, it's like that puts that frog in hot water boiling water feeling suddenly you're like, Oh, God, this is just happening everywhere. You know what I mean? But um, there's obviously the environmental stuff, which I think everybody is into. Right? So there's, but the paths we get there are kind of frustrating. As you can sense I'm

George Benson: 29:57

no and I share that frustration. I think alike. You know, we were talking before about, you know, how was I thinking about the presence of American politics in like, in our conversations about here we go. I mean, here, you know, let's let's let's go in, right. So I don't remember talking about that just getting Let's go. Well, so I had I did a panel a couple years ago and we had Lisa Raitt, who is one of the former, one of the former, she was actually the former interim head of the Conservative Party of Canada, and she works for a bank. I think she works her shinza with banks for her bank now. Works in business, right? And she said, and I think, and I don't think she's alone in this. She's like, you know, what, I kind of regret how much we politicize like the carbon tax. Because what happened? What's happened now is, it's it's a solution, not to say that it's the best solution. I think there's a lot of sense to it in certain contexts, but, you know, we turned it into this football, where a business can't plan for each government, because they're like, Okay, these guys have one is the next one gonna have right do? Are they going to do this? So they're going to do that? Right. So they're gonna do that. So like, by way of, this is a good example, I think of like, the solution to what you're identifying is we got to work together. And that again, that sounds cheesy, but like, let's make it concrete. California, worked with all of the big auto manufacturers in the states that make heavy and medium duty trucks. Like we're talking the big semis, the big kids, right? Yeah. And they said, Can we agree on a standard together that you guys can meet? We'll face it, and over time, it's not gonna hit you tomorrow. But we want you to not fight us in court to not go through this big process. Because what does that do that decreases business confidence, it decreases trust, it means everybody is, you know, waiting for the lawyers to decide who gets to do what, right? And they said, Can we skip all that? And can we just here's our target, like, we have a number we know we need to hit. Tell us how we can work together to make that happen. And I, you know, I don't think it's a perfect process. But I do think that like my colleagues at the City of Vancouver, who work in regulations, on the green building side, well, I'll just single them out for a second. Like, I think they work really, really hard with the construction association with members to say, Is this reasonable? Is this possible? Can we find ways to make this more cost effective? And listen, you know, we live in these giant systems, right? Like, running big organizations, doesn't matter if it's a company, or a city or a country is hard. And at some point, the left and the right hand are gonna have a hard time talking to each other. But they try really hard to make sure that those are not going to be disastrous, and they're not going to just walk away. If it's, oh, well, oops, we'll just see, you know, you guys lost a bunch of money, but oh, well, we'll figure it out. Like, I think they take that really seriously. And so, but I think it comes it really comes back to unless you can build those things together, then then you are going to get that point of frustration and it is going to blow up. So I think it's I think it's a legitimate critique.

James Faulkner: 32:38

Well, I mean, when you look at like the the discourse that goes on between Polly of and and Trudeau in the chamber, I mean, you're thinking like, it's, it's like a pantomime, like it is. It big, everything becomes a football because it's, it's just so crazy. Like some of the stuff that I don't want to like even say, Who here, but it's just some of the things that are said you're going what. So it's almost impossible for it to not become politicized. And they use it. thing is they're using these as tools, tools to get votes or, you know, to bolster their side. But as you say, like there should be stuff that sort of agreed upon, that isn't a political thing. Like they kind of both have to have some sort of boundary boundaries around. Yeah. You know, like,

George Benson: 33:31

that's why I love working in cities honestly, is like, as much as it's, we're not perfect, and we screw up all the time, the relationship between city council staff and the actual people of the community is so much closer than and I'm not picking them in particular, but of of Justin Trudeau or people like they, they're traveling the whole country, they're trying to woo people in every province, they're going all over the place. You can't have an intimate relationship with even the people in their constituencies, right. Like they're, you know, notionally they represent people in like one little slice of land, but they're flying all over the country all the time. And that's, that's not a Christian with them. That's just how our system works. But that's why it's so great to work at a city is because we get to talk to people every day, who are our constituents who we work for, at the end of the day, I work for the people of Vancouver, that is who I answer to, those are my those are my shareholders. Those are my employers, those that's that's who I have to derive value for. And I think that's an opinion that's shared by everybody in City Hall, even if we don't act on that perfectly all the time.

Christian Hamm: 34:25

You know, I think like, there's a lot, obviously, that we can go and go on a tangent on about all this kind of stuff. The further you get away from the people or the things that are actually tangible and meaningful, the less you can address with like, I don't know, real innovation, like if you just talk about pure construction or actually solving a problem, you can get to it because you can get to the root of it. Pretty, pretty straightforward. But the carbon by the carbon tax thing, and we don't need to go down on it too much. But like, man, it just it's it's just why not you can't get to the actual tangible side of it of like, well, maybe we could just innovate, it's so big and so high level, the only way you can address it up or down is by changing the amount of tax, or like you said, from one administration to another administration, we're gonna go up, we're gonna go down, and we're gonna go here, we're gonna go there, but it's like, Man, why can't we just get like, obviously, I know, this is not a federal government level thing, because it's impossible for them to get on the ground level. But for that's why it's great to have organizations and people that actually drive certain policies and can be very practical, and get down to the ground, ground level, and innovate. Because that's where we need to be addressing these types of things to actually make real change. It's just too ethereal and too high level and too high in the sky. Right, when we talk about just the carbon tax,

George Benson: 35:43

Well I mean attend today was, you know, and I know some of these folks who did it, but like, that was designed by economists, and the way that they think is very abstract, right? It's like, okay, the economy is GDP, and it goes up and down. And we, you know, we can maximize the efficiency of this by doing, you know, pulling this dial on this knob over here, when you guys are building projects, that that's that that 10,000 foot view is not going to be terribly helpful. And it's true. And so it's again, this is why I love working at the city level where, you know, we can say, and this is I think I said this on the podcast we talked before, but this is why I think the performance based regulations that Vancouver uses are so helpful, because you know, there was a envelope engineer I used to work with, and he would always say, you know, the great thing about the energy step code is that if you can show up to the city building department and say, hey, I want to build something out of spray foam and chicken wire, but it'll pass every test that you have, can I build this? He's like, they will say yes, like, you're gonna have to win, you're gonna have to, like do a few presentations. But they will be interested in that because their job is to look for cost effective ways to meet the regulations are setting, they don't want these things to be extra expensive. And so again, I'm not gonna sit here pretend that that's always what happens. But that's the intention of the way that it's designed is that you set a goal a number and say, You guys are the people that actually build the stuff, tell us how we could do that. And those numbers were built. They were built with industry. So again, that's what it was like, it was all these layers of collaboration, that now you can that now, a project proponent can come forward and say, I think I can build that. I want to I want to do it, but I want to do it my way. Can we make that work? And I think my, I think where we as cities need to like take a step back and ask ourselves some hard questions. And this is not specific to Vancouver, but all cities is what what questions? What are we asking of people when we want them to build something? And one, are we asking too much, too? Are we asking the right things? And three, have we engaged with those people enough to actually see if that's possible? Because like, you know, we were talking about housing earlier. Like, there's a lot of unfortunate, I think, wishful thinking and housing of like, oh, well, you know, we can we can build all the affordable housing in the world tomorrow, if we just, you know, cap, the kneecap developers, and it'll all go away. That's not the reality, right? These are very complicated projects with very complex economics. If we can sit together and ask the question of what you know, what do you need to be whole? What this is what we need? How do we get there, that's where you get really interesting projects. And I mentioned Sanok, before the Squamish nations development, because they're in the driver's seat there, they were able to do that with themselves and get what they want out of that project. And I think that's the model.

Christian Hamm: 38:21

Well, let's unpack some of that. You mentioned the housing. It's a nationwide thing. It's a North America wide thing, but we're here obviously, in Vancouver, a hub of real estate development. One of the most desired places every year to live there's no shortage of people coming here, but there's absolutely a shortage of dwelling units. Yeah. So what's what are you guys doing? Right? How often is this? The topic of conversation, actual policy that you're digging into?

George Benson: 38:50

It's it keeps me up at night, obviously, like I'm a renter in Vancouver, so I feel the crunch just like everybody else. Yeah. I've lived in some sketchy places to try to find some affordable rent over the years. But also I love the city, right. And like, and like so many people. I'm not interested in leaving. I want to stay here. I want to, you know, build a life here. Yeah. It's, I like to think of it. I think there's two dimensions to it at the very, very high level that are important for me. One, we are a growing city. We need places for people to live. We are growing faster as a country like we just closed 40 million people in this country. Yeah. That's incredible. Like that's, we're a big country and we're becoming a bigger country.

Christian Hamm: 39:27

Yeah. And we, we close that last million and a half, like really quick.

George Benson: 39:32

It was it was the fastest growth rate ever for Canada, I think since like the 1800s or something like it was really, really fast. And so that, you know, that's good news for the economy in certain ways. It's a challenge for the housing crisis, because more people were not building enough housing for them. Yeah. So once we have that as a baseline, but two, we have under built our housing for decades. You know, in the 70s we look at there I kind of have a soft spot for them, but like there's all these like hideous apartment buildings and stuff like that built in the 70s you because the federal government spent billions of dollars invested in I mean, look at Falls Creek, Falls Creek, all those cooperatives that are built there, a lot of that was built with federal money. And there's other parts in the city. Similarly, the Fed spent a ton of money, debt got tight hold the oil crisis happened, like a whole bunch of stuff happened, right. And they just, they just plummeted fell off a cliff. And so the Feds weren't investing. And then I can't read the exact timing, I think was in the 90s. There were some GST rules that were changed for apartment buildings that made it way less attractive to build apartments rental apartments. So we just we've had this systemic under building probably for a good 40 years. And so not only do we need to build enough to meet the new people coming, we need to build back from that deficit, which I saw number a couple of weeks ago, I think it's about 220,000 units were short today, to meet the rental vacancy rate at the 1990s. And I would argue that the rental vacancy rate, there was probably still already in a not a great spot, we shouldn't be probably looking at the 70s or the 80s. So we not only need to build a ton to meet our just raw, organic rate of growth, we need to also make sure we build back from what we've not done. And that's critical.

James Faulkner: 41:03

Yeah, she's like this, when you're when you're talking about the affordable housing that needs to be built. It seems like we we tend to focus on like with the projects that have sort of seen that have been working anyway, of rental buildings, they're all crazy expensive. Okay, so the rentals, like, you know, two bedrooms, like, six or $7,000 a month for a nice building. I mean, there's, there's some of them around. Yeah,

Christian Hamm: 41:34

but it's huge, but super common.

James Faulkner: 41:37

But but those but those are nice units. Yeah. Okay. Like really nice units, okay, like great kitchens, great balconies, all that kind of stuff, like high end living. Yeah. Okay. But still, it's still not the highest and living, it's still not 11,000 a month. It's not like Shangri La or like some of these other bills. Sure. Okay. But and then there is low income housing, that they that there seems to be a big push on, but that kind of middle is missing. It's totally missing. The affordable 1800 to two grand a month stuff is nowhere. And it's either in a shitty building that hasn't been maintained properly. It's all bad buildings that are leaky. And they know, they need to be redeveloped the crappy carpets like it's, you know, like, it doesn't seem like we're missing. And what's interesting is, is that that middle road, are the people who are generating tax dollars. The ones at the bottom, this low income housing, they're a draw, and that's what you know, socialist programs are for socialism, I guess. I mean, depends how extreme it is social programs, right? You pay for people who are, you know, can't help themselves, which is what it's all for. But the middle there who can't even afford to live in the area that's within walking, cycling, whatever distance even for the environment to be able to like, Do These Things weren't we're missing that whole group is now going, you know what? I'm out of Canada. Yeah, I want to go because I can't do it here. Which is a shame because there's a lot of great culture, there's a lot of great. Like, it's almost like the personality leaves. Oh,

George Benson: 43:19

well, let's, I mean, let's

James Faulkner: 43:20

say that I mean, yeah,

George Benson: 43:21

well, let's put that in a business context too. Right. So you know, okay, I like a fancy coffee every every now and again and I'll zip over to a place like that. I love diners though. They're dying. There are so few diners like the city we can get a cheap cup of coffee, have eggs in a piece of toast for breakfast. Like that's, that's what I grew up in. And that's like, I I've watched those things steadily just just can't afford the real estate because they can't afford the real estate can't it's like a $2 Eggs not happening anymore, right. And so there's the there's the people dimension of that of like it like you just sort of segmented it right, you've got you know, your low income folks. They're just trying to get by, you've got your middle income folks who are the vast majority of people who pay taxes and are participating. Yeah, and then you have your high income folks. And they're, you know, they're doing just fine, right. But that's also true for businesses, you've got your your auto mechanics that are just squeaking by, you've got your diners, you've got your, your soap stores that are you know, like all these like these are these are actually our favorite businesses at the commission to work with because they don't get a lot of love. Like I have colleagues that work in the tech sector. And it's awesome to celebrate the next big AI startup, but I want to work with Jim Bob's mechanics and I want to talk to the folks that are selling cleaning supplies, like those businesses are the bedrock of our economy in so many ways. And they're also leaving, they're also dying, because they can't afford the space. And so I think we need to like really revisit what we consider to be our economic fundamentals and start to focus on those kinds of groups. Because if we don't, you know, you look at some communities like Whistler, for example. They can't find people to clean the hotels. They can't find people to work the coffee shop that can't find someone to be a custodian because nobody can afford to live there. Yeah. And what's going to happen is you're going to watch those communities if some and doesn't change they're gonna bottom out because they you can't survive without your base frontline businesses and workers and I lose a lot of sleep over that and we I tell you we that's that's a it's a huge focus of what we do at the commission. We do innovation stuff too but like that's, that's my team's bedrock. It's like thinking about that kind of stuff with the business we work with. And and it's it's I don't think as a culture, we recognize that that's probably spent a lot more time.

Christian Hamm: 45:22

Well, then we talk about that right. The last few years with things getting more expensive. People push out into more rural communities and you start to see them growing becoming more vibrant. We talked about Nanaimo and and I was on Vancouver Island, or just just more suburbs or just more suburbs. Right. Yeah. Well, it's Squamish started. Booming, like crazy. Right. But then the same effect starts to take place, because like all the developers are in Squamish. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And the home builders. Yeah. And there's just and so it's, it's what is that? I think it was Donald Davor, who we're talking about prior to this, but it's hard to go backwards, you can't go backwards, you know, all of a sudden, nothing goes backwards, you know, going back to the whole politics thing, you know, like, again, because Canadian politics, so Polly Evan, in Trudeau and whatever, but saying, you know, we'll bring lower costs back, and we'll bring lower this and lower that, that wouldn't matter which side you're on, or that or I think everyone could be down for some lower costs, Oh, for sure, getting there doing it,

James Faulkner: 46:25

it's never going back. So what I what needs to happen is, is these, the money needs to go to the right people to do the right things. And it is developers, developers need to be given contracts to be able to do meaningful work, that's actually going to affect the right things, and they'll do it, and they'll do a good job and then make a profit at it. And if the if the province and and the federal government has to pay for that, so that these developers, just because developers are making a profit, it's no different than a human being making a profit on their life, their expenses are x, and they put the rest in savings, that's no different than a business. Right, that's all a company or developers trying to do is they're trying to get some savings. And that's profit to you know, their owners, or whatever it is, and that's fine. But we've got to like push the we got to push the middle ground and figure out, as we said earlier, who is generating the revenue for the city? And it is these and it's mostly younger people. So I don't know. I mean, it should be it should be that it's $1,000 per bedroom,

George Benson: 47:41

to rent the mean, or

James Faulkner: 47:42

there should be$1,000 per month, per bedroom. As long as it's a tear, including your living room area. Something that's livable, but it's not. No, it's two grand per bedroom. Yeah. And it should be if you're lucky, but it should be 1000 bucks.

George Benson: 47:59

Totally. Well, let's end. And you know, just go back to your comment with developers like let's let's do some some segmentation there, like so, you know, there are a few big players in our ecosystem, right? They're really good at what they do. These folks are world class. And it's funny because I talk to I talk to colleagues in other cities down the coast, for example, like downtown Seattle, LA, San Francisco. And when Vancouver developers come to town, they're just like, holy shit. These guys are so slick, so sophisticated, don't say slick. Like, they're shysters. Like, no, no, they know what they're doing. Yeah, like they walk in, they say, Okay, your regs are this great, we can meet that. We need to procure this and that, boom, we got it. Oh, we have like five designers on retainer, we'll use this one and this one did it at a duck boom, done. Off we go. And they're just like, how are you guys so good at this. And I hate to say it, but in part of it because we put them through the wringer. Right. Like we have a really robust standard here we expect people to live up to I think one of the things that I think a lot of us are sitting with these days is like, we have folks who are really, really good. And and are world class and who are who, you know, do the big projects, right? They're doing Oak Ridge, they're doing Synack. They're doing Jericho, those kinds of folks. Yeah. And then we have a whole bunch of really, really small folks as well. And there's a ton of diversity. Now, some of them are world class. Some of them are just getting by. But we don't really have a mid tier. Now. I don't really have a lot of sorry, I think we have a mid tier. I don't think it's as robust as it could be.

James Faulkner: 49:24

I don't know. I think this in terms of developers and builders. Yeah. Because they're, you know, I mean, we know we know a lot of those, I mean, most of Richards Street and Yaletown here was by those guys. Do you think that they're, they're pretty good considering?

George Benson: 49:39

No, and I'm not saying that they're bad. I'm just saying like, I would love it if we had more. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 49:43

I mean, I mean, there's only so many Italians. But all those guys, and they're also moving up market to Yeah, like the stuff that they're doing on Georgia street there. I mean, that's three or $4,000 a square foot. Yeah. Maybe if more 5000 bucks. It's like the sky high. Um, so like,

Christian Hamm: 50:01

I think I could do kind of know what you're saying, though. And if we bring it back into, okay, let's bring it back into actual construction. Yeah, actual building. This, this is this is awesome conversation. In terms of economy, these are all things when we sit and talk with customers or general contractors, or developers, they're all saying the same thing. They're there. They're businessmen, they're entrepreneurs, they know the economy, right? businessmen and women, everybody. They want to be doing the same things. They want to be addressing the housing issue, they want to build a team with enough people or the right people, so they can be productive, we'll get into productivity stuff. So they can address all the shortage stuff, the housing shortage, the labor shortage, whatever the shortage happens to be, or dealing with volatility and pricing. But there is a there is a desire from that tear. I think I know, you're saying that people want to be addressing this, and not all of them are super qualified to get in there.

James Faulkner: 50:57

Oh, that's what you mean?

George Benson: 50:58

Well, not just that they're not qualified is that I don't think we're giving them opportunities. That's that's where I'm coming from is I don't think we're giving them the opportunities that they need.

Christian Hamm: 51:06

Sorry, I'm getting that as the point that I'm trying to get to is they all talk about wanting to build these things, but they're not, right? They're not just to your point there, they don't have the opportunity, or they're not getting their foot in the door is the government not moving something fast enough, or they're not projects out for tender first, for these lower lower income housing, or whatever it happens to be? That's kind of the thing right there. So if there's more opportunities out there, then there's more of those guys that can thrive?

George Benson: 51:33

Yeah. And I think some, you know, some of those, sometimes those are policy and regulatory barriers. So that's changing zoning, like, yeah, you know, the city of Vancouver plan started that conversation here in the city of needing to go further. But I don't know if you guys saw that announcement from the province, you know, Vancouver was, you know, we got slapped on the wrist and said, You guys are not building enough housing and a number of other communities across the province, where as well, I think I'm really excited that we have a provincial government here. And I think I think this is the beautiful thing about this is I think this is actually becoming nonpartisan. I actually don't think this is something that is, is going to be you know, if it's hard to ignore, obviously, so hard to know. But I think like, everybody's kind of learned, like, we talked about foreign buyers for years, we did a bunch of stuff there and it didn't work. It just did, it helped a little bit like, you know, we have the vacancy tax in Vancouver, that helped a little bit, but it didn't cut to the root of the problem. And now we're sitting here saying, We got to build more houses, we just have to do that. So I'm optimistic that that we can create those opportunities for the folks we're talking about. But we need to shift we need to shift the policy conversation and just make it easier on that level. But then I also think we need to get creative. And so one of the examples is that there's some work that renewable cities as a think tank locally here and a few others have done on leveraging publicly owned sites, especially transit sites to build not just affordable housing, but mixed use developments with affordable housing in them. So like I used to live on the north shore for a little while. I was always going through fibs exchange. Yeah. And I'm sitting there, like, What an absolute armpit. Yeah, this site is right. Like it's on the edge of the highway. It has no connectivity. I biked there sometimes. And it's just like you're taking your life in your hands. And then you look beside it, like the district has finally, and I think they've been on the naughty list for a long time, is finally starting to build some density. But that is a publicly owned site. Yeah. You talk about entrepreneurship. Like, why don't why can't we leverage that. So leveraging all those sites around the province, there are 1000s of them on transit near good jobs near amenities, we could build on those sites. So let's make the regulations easier over here just so people can build. And then where there's a strategic opportunity,

James Faulkner: 53:30

but it's what are they building is the thing though? Because you're building? Okay, so when you look at what Concord did downtown, they had X amount of buildings they were going to do and then they had to have subsidized housing in there as well. So what's that called the says no consumption is what's it called subsidized.

George Benson: 53:50

Zoning in the zoning world, we call it inclusionary zoning, that's like, you get to build something. And we say there's a percentage, you must okay for affordable.

James Faulkner: 53:57

So that was done pretty well. But now, there is parking lots where we're putting ATCO trailers and putting beds in them and drug addicts are in them. Okay, so this isn't the same. So we are, we're essentially, we've muddied the waters in terms of what the public thinks of a housing and homelessness crisis. The path should be to have enough rentals for everybody to sustainably live to a point where they can own something. The problem is, is that renters, they keep renting and they're just churning and burning their cash the whole time, and they never get anywhere, and they can't buy anything, because it's too expensive. So there needs to be programs, which are a springboard for somebody to own something. And maybe it's like a it's a point system where if you rent for a certain amount of years, you have, you know, certain opportunities that these other places. I don't unders don't think that

George Benson: 54:52

can I pick up on pleasing. So Habitat for Humanity is really cool. I was at a conference last year and actually I met the head of habitat. Habitat for Humanity International. Yeah, as really interesting because this guy has like a bird's eye view of all the different work they do. And he was talking about how different some of the chapters of Habitat for Humanity are. And I was telling, I met with Habitat for Humanity here locally, and they do some really cool stuff. But one of the things that they do, they have a few projects here where they do this, they have a system set up with banks. So they actually partner this comes back to partnership working together, they partnered with banks and said, Hey, if we have people who pay rent to us reliably for years, could we figure out a system where to your point, they are able to then cash out on that in some way, and go use this as a springboard like, so if they're in our house, if they were like, either on the street, or they were about to be on the street, they're staying with family or something they can get into one of our houses, they pay rent for five years, can we figure out a way to make that basically a down payment, and they made that work? So they're graduating out of this. So we're actually we're building wealth, we're building supportive, like people's capacity to participate in the economy, we're keeping them safe and house like, that's like, those are the kinds of solutions that got me really excited.

James Faulkner: 56:01

So I mean, there's a perfect way to do this is that that you have for those programs, you have a 95% ownership of the property and 5% is owned by the other body that helped fund that. So everyone gets the uptick in the property value, because the property values just continue to go up. Right, so the people that had the 5%, that helped that happen, get the lift as well, it actually all works.

George Benson: 56:29

There are a few different programs that do that I get, I get a little I get a teeny bit nervous on everybody getting 100% of it. So like there's some of the programs I've seen that are cool. And this I think, like trying to keep this in construction, too. Like when you say 100%, what do you mean, exactly. So you don't get 100% of the lift on the unit. There's a cap on it. And and so you can only sell it for a certain amount. But that's what

James Faulkner: 56:51

I'm saying is if if they if the two parties share in the lift, then that doesn't need to be a cap.

George Benson: 56:57

Well, but then it becomes if if land prices are going up really fast, then if you're the first one in you win big, but then the second person who buys that unit if the left has been really high, you gotta be a high income person to buy into that unit now.

James Faulkner: 57:10

Oh, I say I'm I'm saying that these other units? They only have that from the renter. Situation each time.

George Benson: 57:18

Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah, no, then we're I think we're talking but the same thing, then where you're just you're benefiting

James Faulkner: 57:21

so they basically go to a place that's a regular building? Anywhere. They're just, they're just on this new program. So the rental thing had its it was paying into credits or whatever that yeah, it would be and there. Yeah. And then that is able to go to a place where there's that 5%.

George Benson: 57:40

And I think like I'm, I could geek out about this. So you guys got to stop me here. But I just like my thought my thought here goes to like, we just need to get like we on the government side need to get a little bit more creative about how we plan for those things. And I think you're seeing some of those changes. But like, you know, we talked about risk aversion earlier, we have to be risk averse. Because if we, if the government makes a really big mistake, it impacts a lot of people. So that's where that comes from. But we do need to take more chances and think differently. So I think programs like this, whatever they are, we need to we need to work on those. But I, for me, so much of it comes back to zoning. It's such an easy lever for us to flip and say we're going to let people build more density in different places.

Christian Hamm: 58:17

Well, that's just the thing. Right? So the problem that we talked about originally is just the housing shortage, right? There's all sorts of nuances, which I think is like, that's really good conversation around homeownership and how do more people get in there because it seems like a dream that's dying. Yeah. Or maybe it's not even a dream at all anymore. Maybe I don't think so. It's not it's not even a thought or anything, you know, and it's regardless of what you think about that? I don't know. Right. But to address the real thing of a housing shortage, you've got the builders that can build them. Yeah, right. It's not like you're lacking Okay, again, they a lot of these teams are already set up they got people they can build they can take on more I'm sure. So you're saying yes, it's from a zoning standpoint to be able to just flip a switch or again that's never the case with municipalities or or government agencies but to address it from that standpoint, then you all of a sudden have more product that's out there to go and tender and build and now put people in we got to do we got to it's to take the first next step that's the most logical thing is to be speeding up that process not that builders need to build faster they can they can do it efficiently as they need to already they just need to have the them they're ready to go and available to be building so yeah, I don't know if it's like anything magical

George Benson: 59:38

No, and that's the thing is like we you know, we can get really excited and I am excited don't get me wrong about like you know, we have companies in Vancouver like intelligence city, for example, off site manufacturing pre assembly like they're doing some really interesting stuff. And you know, BC for many years was a hub of, of off site construction and modular modular buildings of all kinds, but I think I like that stuff. And I'd like to see more of it. But we don't need all of that ready tomorrow, to your point to get building. We can do that. Yeah. And I think if we can, what I, what I would really love to see is like, the original Vancouver specials, you know, that we know and love. Yeah. Used to able to go to the planning department and buy the plans for one of those for 20 bucks. And then you and your pals could go build a house? Oh, yeah.

James Faulkner: 1:00:23

Oh, that's interesting.

George Benson: 1:00:24

So what what's the Vancouver special? 2.0? Is it a mass timber building? Is how, you know, does it have some prefab elements in it? It's, you know, we live in a world where we want to be really energy efficient. We want to be resilient. So maybe it's got heat pumps built into it. I think that's a pretty good idea with the heat these days. But what does that model? Right? And can we get to a point where we have political agreement and technical agree, we need both. We need the public to be like, Yeah, we like those. And we need the smart engineers, other folks to say it's not going to fall down. It's good to go. But what is that? What does that look like? I I have visions in my head of what that could be. But I think as a as a as a city, if we can come together and nail down a few of those models. That would be fantastic. And that would that would give us productivity increases? Because you can pre permit something like that. Right? You can say, Okay, well, you're using the standard model. We know what the electrical is, we know what the plumbing is. We know we know everything great boom, boo, boo, boo, just do that. Just do that and slap whatever coat of paint you wanted with the well.

James Faulkner: 1:01:21

I mean, like AI programs, you don't even need that anymore. It's like, Here are these things. Here's the the deviations we need to make from that. And it wouldn't know. Yep, totally. So it can be. It doesn't have to be what was it an architect's land water?

Christian Hamm: 1:01:36

What was what was that called The reason the two guys could originally walk in and grab a...

James Faulkner: 1:01:40

And that was the Vancouver specials, Vancouver, special, special, specific design house.

Christian Hamm: 1:01:45

That's the wording that you use. But the to the 2.0 version of that. It's it's true. Like this just takes some innovation, some creativity and some agreement amongst a few, a few groups, a couple groups, whatever. But we did talk about this a couple pods ago, just about how slow certain things municipalities go or whatever. But like you even just said, pre permitted, like use those words like that's like a swear word that is this. Yeah, that's a total swear. It's like when you tell my colleagues, what do you what do you mean that someone's not going to do something for six to nine months now? Like...

George Benson: 1:02:18

what I'm paying it like, I'm painting the dream. We're not We're not there yet. But I think like if we can find what those are, and, and there's always going to be caveats is always gonna place for like, okay, maybe, you know, we like this 99% of the areas, we don't like it here, because we have a really good reason. But I go back to trust. Like if we have built these processes, and we have trust, then it's hopefully less of a big bugaboo. Every time we say, okay, you know what, you were in the group, we're in the green swim lane here, everything's fine. Oh, you're going to to yellow? Can we pause here for a sec, come back. Let's discuss this before you go too far. And I think, you know, one of the things the city does, that I think is interesting. And it's, I mean, it's a blessing and a curse. But it is us trying to navigate the processes we have is we have the the pre consultation submissions and stuff we do, right? Like you're you're not you're not going through development permit yet your or your pre rezoning event. You're just like thinking about something. And you can go in and say, Hey, we're spitballing What do you think? Like that's, that's an attempt to kind of defray some of that. And I think, I hope we continue to see things like that, that just ease the burden, heighten the trust, and create more confidence for folks that are trying to try to build these projects.

Christian Hamm: 1:03:23

Yeah, totally. Even bringing a few months back on the overall project timeline. Like there's lots of ways to get creative about doing this. And, and streamlining few things, permitting, planning or planning, permitting, all the pre construction time, that kind of stuff. And then we talked about it earlier, just a little bit about on the productivity side of construction. And I know you maybe want to touch on that. But the whole thing's involved in the in the entire chain of bringing a new piece of product to market. It needs to get there quicker. Yeah.

James Faulkner: 1:03:51

But you were you're talking about like, how do you make the humans more efficient? Earlier on our conversation?

Christian Hamm: 1:03:56

from you guys? Did we say that? I thought we did. Oh, I think yeah, you guys did?

James Faulkner: 1:04:02

Okay, I did deliver quicker, more efficient,

Christian Hamm: 1:04:05

quicker and more efficiently. Well, it's something that and this almost comes back to, like, we got off. We originally were talking about the body carbon thing and dealing with concrete and steel. And we had a conversation. I think it was the Victaulic. Guys, they did talk about the recycled steel. Yeah. And they started getting into like, planning for the end of a building.

James Faulkner: 1:04:26

Yeah, right. So yeah, and the builder guys too, as well.

Christian Hamm: 1:04:30

And, and builders as well, we had Adam on. But this all plays into the modular component, everything right, but just planning for the end, meaning you're designing things from a standard component point of view. Right now we're talking about yes, there's a modular component to that. Yes, you need less people, technically to put these things out. They need to be skilled, of course, but to be able to once you say okay, we've sped up a process for What we want to do here, actually, because it's kind of a kit, this Vancouver special 2.0. And again, you don't want everything to look like, you know, 19 those same Yeah, same 1980s, you know, Europe or whatever, Eastern Europe well gray or whatever, but no Western character, but to be able to say, Okay, here it is there's there. And that's how we're going to build it. And it comes together just much quicker. That kind of stuff is it's exciting. It is a dream, but it is starting to come together like there are pieces of it that are starting to take

James Faulkner: 1:05:30

It doesn't work with density.

George Benson: 1:05:32

I think I think it can,

James Faulkner: 1:05:33

How.

George Benson: 1:05:33

I think it can,

James Faulkner: 1:05:34

because when you're talking about, you can't get one person to go by a bank, you need. You need a flat police piece of land building on top of it, to do the Vancouver special model to the well, because it was a lot. And then here's the plans.

George Benson: 1:05:47

Here's the plans. I mean, yeah, when we're talking demolition and reshaping the site and everything. Yeah, you can't, it's not gonna be as perfect. But from, from the structural perspective, I think we're hoping like, can we get to 80% of that at least right? Where there's like a fair like for

James Faulkner: 1:05:59

a developer with multi units. And is it what you mean? Yeah. Or for like, someone to be I want to go get the plans to build it for my family. I think not enough land for that.

George Benson: 1:06:09

No, it's not enough land for that. And I think we've left the point at which that's that's got to non-viable Like, we just construction is more complicated than it was back then. Right. Like you could have two folks with hammers and nails go into something like that back then.

James Faulkner: 1:06:20

I'm a modular stuffs come a long way. I mean, it could be where you're getting the components from it does, it will at some point become Lego bricks. I mean, it really just just will.

George Benson: 1:06:29

I think I think it will for a bunch. I think it's going to I think labor costs are driving us that way. Obviously, I think environmental considerations are driving us that way. Obviously, there's some really cool work being done in Brussels and Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where they're designing the buildings to be deconstructed from the jump. Yeah, there's a really cool company I met with in Amsterdam called Monastir. And they have this really cool platform. Do you know, materials passports?

James Faulkner: 1:06:53

No, no,

George Benson: 1:06:54

it's it's so it's a it's a, it's a documentation process, where you take whatever your thing is your wall assembly or your roof tiles, whatever. And you have done various tests and documentation along the way of like, okay, the copper, and this came from here, the woodenness came from there, blah, blah, blah. And all you're all you're doing is you're getting each person in the value chain, to just put a stamp on it and say, yep, we made it, here are the statistics associated with it, here you go. And then when you have a composite product, like some sort of wall assembly, let's say you are, you're you're pulling in all of those in a passport for that thing. And when you build a whole structure, these Mudassar, guys, they stack all those passports together, and they can give you a picture of the value of your structure. And not just in terms of the land, right, or the or the going rate PSF for whatever you're selling. But they can actually tell you the value of all of that and the materials in it. So if you could say, oh, well, we bought super, you know, super, super high value, triple glazed windows. And we know that they're still their life, their lifespan is they still got another 10 years. And then when we plan to demo this building, great their resale, the resale value will be ABCD. And then all the copper and okay, we're not going to you know, just pull out the wires and use them again. But the value of raw copper when we melt it down is 1234, and so on, and so on, and so on. So you have this big dashboard that actually shows the value of the building and all the stuff in school. That's to me the part of the future of it, because we you know, I mentioned that we did a study at VC a couple years ago with Adam and and builders, we looked at the value of deconstructed homes, if you really sort of broadly did that across the region. And we found that there was to put in $53 million of high value old growth timber, in older buildings across the city. That's that's not just garbage. That's value, and we're throwing it away right now. And I love the idea of Adams not throwing it away, well, either way, but you think of the old think of all the owners, right? Like the the person looking at a redevelopment site and saying, Oh, God, how much asbestos we have to carve out of here and all this crap, like, you know, imagine, I'm hope we're not alone, Deb. And this is true. But someday, someone looks at a building, they say, Oh, look at all those goodies in there. Not only do I want the site, but I want the stuff too. Yeah. And that's, that's a vision of value. To me, that gets me excited.

Christian Hamm: 1:09:17

It is it is a great conversation. And in something that is incredibly thought provoking to think about the end of construction, before we even get going. It's the whole the whole chain that brings it all together. And I think that it's conversations like this, I like that we can that we can geek out about it, and that we can get into the nitty gritties because these are conversations or these are things that people are thinking often, but to actually just, you know, to go down those tangents and I know we had a whole bunch of stuff that we wanted to kind of go through I think we covered most of it. We got through I think we got through a lot.

James Faulkner: 1:09:53

So is there any other thing? No,

Christian Hamm: 1:09:55

I mean, I think we kind of we talked a little bit of the productivity talked about we covered policy. throughout the conversation, then we didn't get to some of the embodied carbon stuff. But I think that it'd be great if do you want to leave anything with our, our audience or anyone that might be listening? Kind of, yeah. painter or, you know, just anything that would be a dream for the future or like a positive or just like, just like a positive nugget, I guess just to be leaving. Economics wise, Construction wise. Yeah, with the audience

George Benson: 1:10:27

No, well, I gotta gotta thank you guys. This is so much fun to just let me come in and throw my stuff on the table and geek out with you guys. Yeah, no, I think for that, you know, for your listeners, like if you're a Vancouver based business, and I say Vancouver in a general sense, if you're doing business in Vancouver, you don't need to have a head office here. And you're trying to figure out how to navigate stuff. And it's getting confusing. I can't stamp your permit for you. But we'd love to talk to you. Yeah, if you're looking for help. I think where Vc really thrives like me and my team, we'd like to help folks who are trying to bring a new product to market that are trying to navigate something new and novel, like they're in the thinking phase right now. So for I'll just give you one example. We're working with a company right now. I can't name who they are, but their local GC, and they're really starting to think about electrifying some of their construction equipment. And so we're asking some early questions with them about like, okay, Are you guys serious? Like, do you want to do this? What would it mean? There's actually a few policy incentives that are baked into what city Vancouver's doing so you could get some, you could get some benefits if you decided to actually go for that electrified equipment. So they're thinking about that they're very savvy business folks who are like, yep, we like that. There's money on the table. Let's get it. But we're working on with them right now to figure out okay, do we need to do some research first? Do we need to go do some market sounding and figure out who's offering this equipment? And what's of interest to you? What's cost effective? Do we need to build a buyer's club of other GCS and start to get them to ask the same questions? Who knows? We're just in that early exploration phase. But we love talking to companies that are really trying to figure something like that out at the early stages. That's a lot of fun. Nice. The other one I'll name is workforce, workforce, workforce workforce. That's something we I just spend a huge amount of my days on. We just brought a new person on my team that's working on it. We're actually building right now our regional workforce development coalition, and that is that we're bringing together employers, we've got local governments, we've got training institutions, we've got unions, we've got industry associations, and we're sitting here gone. Okay, folks, the pie is getting pretty tight here. If we're all scrambling for our own piece of it, we're not going to forget the pie metaphor. But you know what I mean, that there's like, we're, we're running around, I will, I can't forget it. Okay. We're running running across purposes, right. Like, we're not we're not leaning in, in the ways that we need to. We've got lots of associations building one off little trainings, we've got companies investing in their own training, doing their own headhunting. Yeah, can we find systems that work at scale? Because we don't want companies to feel like they need to do everything, right. You want to focus on your core business. So if you're struggling with workforce stuff, you're trying to think about how do I hire new folks? How can I be an attractive employer? Something I talked about this at the BRCA event, but we're always trying to get people to tell their story. Yeah, we actually think it's amazing how many companies do incredible work. And you know, the only people that know about that are their immediate customers, right? You got to tell your story, because of some great stuff while we do the podcast, you know, so that would be another one. And then I guess the last one is, if folks are thinking about what they need the sector to do, you're like, Okay, I think there's actually a standard we need to or, you know, when you have a conversation as the industry about something, doesn't matter what it is, could be ESG could be

James Faulkner: 1:13:27

What?

Christian Hamm: 1:13:29

That's another one there

George Benson: 1:13:30

could be about, like, you know, how you're thinking about investment and how you're thinking about being green, doesn't matter. If you're thinking about that stuff. And you think that that's a conversation needs to happen at a higher level than just your company? Yeah, yeah, I'm talking to us. That's stuff that we love to do, we try to lend a hand with it. And otherwise, come and talk to us. We're fun. We like to we like to try to help people as best we can. And it's just so fun to engage with the sector. It's been it's been really one of the thrills of my career to get to work with folks in construction. And I have no intention of changing that anytime soon.

Christian Hamm: 1:13:56

Oh, that's fantastic. Well, okay, now a little bit more of George we're going to end with a little rapid fire round I don't think we got to put you on the spot when we did our first micro pod with you but I hope he didn't have a chance to look at these Okay, okay. All right. It's glance but I want it but we're gonna go through George What is something that you believe in or that you do that someone else would think is insane?

George Benson: 1:14:20

I love winter camping. Oh, I love to camp on glaciers. That's pretty sweet. You know, negative last time I did it was really cold about negative 35 the fuel and our stove actually froze when my buddy and I were we were in gear baldy. So we were just you know which mountain Yeah, I don't know but okay, so we were just camping the recovering of the Burg front like the very top of the glacier basically on big mountain and it got real cold

Christian Hamm: 1:14:47

middle of winter

James Faulkner: 1:14:47

middle of wintethat's pretty cool though.

Christian Hamm: 1:14:49

Sheesh. that's cool is those are like survivalists the stuff are you well equipped and you're gonna be fine no problem.

George Benson: 1:14:55

I mean, it's cold it's it's like it's this is why people go crazy like wait, you go you want to like lug 60 pounds on your back and climb up a mountain and then camp in the snow. Yeah, like Yeah, absolutely. So that's the thing that people

Christian Hamm: 1:15:06

I wouldn't. I wouldn't say the

James Faulkner: 1:15:07

what's the network connection out there zero?

George Benson: 1:15:11

No, actually, if you got to the top of Wedge, you'd have a great signal because you'd get it from you'd get it from Whistler. Okay.

James Faulkner: 1:15:17

Right. So what what do you guys do? Is this planning? No, no, no, no, I'm just I'm just curious. I'm thinking what are you guys doing in there me playing cards? Like, just walking? Camping, though?

George Benson: 1:15:27

I mean, we don't sit still for very long. Like we're usually hauling around and we were just chatting. Just shooting the breeze.

James Faulkner: 1:15:34

So there's no like, K tents up. Not tired yet. What do you want to do? Is that happening or not?

Christian Hamm: 1:15:41

Sit around the cancer on the fire? It's yeah, it's like it's it's the culture of everything that goes with it. You're just out yatse?

James Faulkner: 1:15:48

What about yatse?

George Benson: 1:15:49

Yeah, you don't know you're right. You actually do do is know, scary stories. Will like will like download a bunch on like a Kindle or print them off and bring them with us. And we'll just read to each other around the fire.

James Faulkner: 1:16:01

Flashlight underneath the chin.

George Benson: 1:16:04

Yeah.

Christian Hamm: 1:16:06

That's cool, man. All right, if you weren't doing what you're doing right now, which you clearly love. What would you be doing?

George Benson: 1:16:14

You know, I'll actually I'll take it to construction, something I've thought about for I wanted to do it and I lost out on the apprenticeship actually, like or not the credit, but I was I was gonna go do some shadowing. When I was in a teen I wanted to be a bricklayer actually like, and there was a guy that was a local, he was like one of our main guys in Nanaimo who did it. And I never got the chance to work with him. And I was like, really? I just wonder what my life would be like if I'd done that. But it's something something like that, where you get to work with your hands. So I missed that a bit. Sending a lot of emails every day.

Christian Hamm: 1:16:40

Okay, absolutely. Oh, it's fun being able to see something come together. And with the bricks, you can. It's like painting or landscaping, you can make something change from nothing to something pretty quick. Yep. All right. Now, from your construction experience, or from your middle experience, what is your favorite or most memorable story from the job site? God being out there in the world?

James Faulkner: 1:17:04

Make it a good one, George.

George Benson: 1:17:06

I know I'm trying

James Faulkner: 1:17:07

to try to think of center center that and give it to like, give it your all. Let's turn the lights down. Is it a scary story?

Christian Hamm: 1:17:15

It better be? Yeah.

George Benson: 1:17:18

I got a funny one. Let me tell this one first and see if it see if it lands. So for a while, when I was working at the mill, one of my jobs was to go to the backyard and they had all these old pallets of wood. And these things had been sitting in the yard for like, god knows how long, probably 10 years, and so much them were rotten, right? They were wraps wrapped in Saran Wrap, all that kind of stuff. But they were just they're just sitting there. And so for a couple of months, my job was to go to the backyard. Take one of these pallets, they zip it over on a forklift to me, and I'd unwrap it. And then I would just go through piece by piece. And I would look at the assess the wood 20 knots. Chuck it in the thing to rotten chuck it in a tub and then they pop it. And if it wasn't, then I would just re stack it into a new palette. And it did this eight hours a day for months. Oh yeah. And you know what, honestly, it was one of my favorite jobs. It was just like, because again is like quick you see the transition from this to that you watch the thing change. But it was so meditative. Like got super strong, just like doing this every day. I was like emptying a dishwasher. I was also a dishwasher for

James Faulkner: 1:18:23

So was it that place on the old highway?

George Benson: 1:18:27

On the old highway? Yes. It was in it was just outside of coons

James Faulkner: 1:18:30

Yeah, that place. Yeah, work there with the head. All the windows is stacked on the front. Like it's a huge yard.

George Benson: 1:18:35

It was a huge yard.

James Faulkner: 1:18:36

Yeah. What's that place called?

George Benson: 1:18:38

I think it's called center island. Cedar

James Faulkner: 1:18:40

Oh OK OK. But what was that other scrap yard? You remember that place? I had all that stuff hanging around?

George Benson: 1:18:46

I can't remember. But I know like it with the cars and stuff too. Like it wasn't

James Faulkner: 1:18:50

No, no, no, no. It's all construction materials.

George Benson: 1:18:53

Oh, no, no, I know you're talking about...

James Faulkner: 1:18:56

Just past goats on the roof. Yeah, no, I know what you're talking about. I can't think of any goats on the river. They get those goats in the shed on your head. Yeah, pants everywhere.

George Benson: 1:19:04

It's kind of like restore, right like they sell all the old all the old titles are like that. Old materials. I can't what it's called. But yeah, my mom used to shop there all the time. Because we might first actually first Playhouse my mom, your mom used to shop there all the time? Oh, yes. She loved it. My mom loves kids. She's like an amateur.

James Faulkner: 1:19:19

My mom used to shop there.

Christian Hamm: 1:19:20

She's a real handyman. Handy woman...

James Faulkner: 1:19:23

Person.

Christian Hamm: 1:19:25

All right...

George Benson: 1:19:25

But she did that. Yeah. And we used to go there all the time. And as a kid,

James Faulkner: 1:19:28

Nice.

Christian Hamm: 1:19:29

Cool. Well, that is definitely a memorable story. Maybe Maybe memorable, because you're like, I never want to do that again.

George Benson: 1:19:34

I mean, not for the rest of my life. But you know, month at a time every year or so. It's like, get strong. Get outside do something meditative.

Christian Hamm: 1:19:41

Right on. Cool. Okay. Well, the economic handyman, George Benson. It's fantastic to have you awesome conversation. I feel like this would be like a good that'd be like a recap of what's going on in the in the market, what's going on in the economy, Vancouver, Canada, everything like that from time to time. So we'd love to have you back on but thank you so much for joining

George Benson: 1:20:00

Thank you both so much.

James Faulkner: 1:20:03

Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit, thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystems.com/thesitevisit where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the Site Visit podcast and SiteMax, the jobsite and construction management tool of choice for 1000's of contractors in North America and beyond. SiteMax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building!