The State of British Columbia's Construction Sector with Chris Gardner

BC can feel like a place where everything is needed and nothing gets built. Housing affordability gets worse, major infrastructure takes forever, and even when demand is obvious, shovels stay out of the ground. I wanted to understand why, so I sat down with Chris Gardner, President of the ICBA, to talk through what he’s seeing from the front lines of British Columbia’s construction industry.

We dig into the uncomfortable numbers behind BC’s finances and why deficits and exploding debt matter to everyday life: fewer dollars for roads, schools, hospitals, and the infrastructure that makes a competitive economy possible. Chris connects that fiscal reality to what contractors and tradespeople are feeling right now, from weaker housing starts to delayed capital projects. We also get specific on the policy mechanics that drive costs: constant building code changes, slow permitting, and project approvals that can take years or even decades.

From there, the conversation widens to the investment climate and the talent drain. We talk about why capital looks for regulatory certainty, why big opportunities like LNG and critical minerals can slip away, and why Alberta keeps pulling workers and businesses with lower taxes and more attainable housing. We also challenge the popular narrative that developers are the root problem, and instead trace how taxes, fees, development charges, and procurement choices can inflate prices and reduce competition.

If you care about BC construction, housing affordability, skilled trades, project approvals, and the real steps to build more, build faster, and build affordably, this one is for you. Subscribe, share this with someone who works in building or policy, and leave a review with one change you’d make first.

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Transcript

Meet Chris Gardner And ICBA

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Mr. Chris Gardner, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good. Thank you for having me on the show today.

SPEAKER_04 0:03

I feel like I've got like I have the King hat on, but I have the King here in front of me.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

I wouldn't say that, but it is a great hat.

SPEAKER_04 0:12

Prince?

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Yeah. Well, no, I just I'm not royalty.

SPEAKER_04 0:16

You're not royalty. Well, I would say that uh in Vancouver and British Columbia, you're definitely someone who a lot of people want to talk to because you are the president of the ICDA. How's that been for the Welcome to the site visit on leadership and back on construction of your house?

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Well, you know, I this is the start of my 10th year this year, yeah uh in January. Uh, you know, we've grown, we've tripled in size since I joined. Um, you know, it's our 50th year as well, which is special. You know, during that, during the last 50 years, we've expanded across the province. We've grown into Alberta. We're now the largest construction association in Canada. Do you publish your numbers of how many members you have? Are not really? Yeah, we do. Yeah. We've got about 5,000 members and clients. Okay. We have about 300,000 people on one of our health and dental plans. That's really good.

SPEAKER_04 2:00

That's been very successful.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Yeah, it's great. Business has grown a lot. Uh, and that makes this a little unique because that that funds so many of the services we provide for members that are free. So we have a mental health program. We offer that to members for free. We've had 20,000 people go through that program. It's a very comprehensive program. It's not one brochure, it's not one conversation. It it's it's a 12-month program that everybody in the company goes through. Everyone signs up and there's toolbox talks, there's posters. Each month there's a different theme. There's a big online learning module. So if you're really interested in substance abuse or addiction-related issues or financial challenges, you can go pretty deep into the information that's online. If that doesn't really apply to your interest, you don't have to spend much time on it. So it's very comprehensive. And we've built up now about three years of content. Um, so it's content-rich. Um, and so we're very happy about that. Uh, we sponsor with the largest sponsor of trades apprentices in BC, largest sponsor of women apprentices, and largest sponsor of indigenous apprentices. And so we sponsor about 3,000 uh construction apprentices in this province. We do that for free. We we give away about$200,000 in bursaries and scholarships a year to young people who are uh pursuing a career in the trades. We launched an ICBA foundation uh last year. We've now endowed it with$3.5 million from ICBA. And it's it, we we we're now approaching others to join with us in this journey to support young people who are per who made that decision to enter the trades and help offset some of the costs that they face.

SPEAKER_04 3:39

Well, I remember I'm talking to someone about uh about you. And I was I said, you know, how come the ICBA has like grown and it's popular since Chris has been there? And someone said to me, because he's actually a CEO-minded leader, not a figurehead, not just like sort of the face. Um, and because you have treated that um as more like a business business. And I know that sounds crazy.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Of course you should, but not every association does that. Yeah, the way it the way I look at this is that we are competing for membership. And what that means is that there's no entrepreneur, there's no contract who wakes up in the morning and says, Hey, what business association should I join today? Oh, I need to go to another event. And so we're focused on ensuring that the value proposition is clear and that it's compelling. And and because we know that that our the folks who are our members are businesses, and they've they they have to decide which associations to support, how they support the industry, what events they're gonna go to. So we all want to make sure that everything, if we're gonna say something about construction, it means something. It's not just some throwaway statement about, oh, construction is great. People should, you know, pay attention to the industry or consider a career in the trades. We want to make sure that all of our advocacy on public policy matters is compelling. And it and so that someone who's working in construction would read anything we say and say, yes, this is an organization that understands the industry, has my back, whether that is someone who's you know working in the trades, an entrepreneur who's starting a business, someone who's grown a business, someone who's struggling with red tape and regulation and project approvals. Um, if we're gonna have an event, it's gotta have a clear purpose. And I want people who attend our events to walk away saying, I'm glad I was here. This was worthwhile. So it's really about everything we do has to be purposeful, has to be relevant. And I think if we're successful in meeting those objectives, uh, we'll grow and uh we'll do a better job of being a voice of construction. So that's what we've been focused on. And um, we've got a great team who does a lot of a lot of the things I'm talking about, they execute on a daily basis. And uh, we're focused on continuing to grow and ensuring that we're relevant and purposeful.

SPEAKER_04 6:02

So uh and the independent part. Right. And that is that mostly because there's no funding from because it's all from government.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

From government.

SPEAKER_04 6:10

Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

So we have not in our 50-year history uh applied for a government grant, taken the government grant, sought government grants. We don't go to government and say, we've got a great idea, we just need government funding. We say the industry needs this service. How do we fund it ourselves? How do we partner with industry to make sure that the resources are and the mental our mental health program is a great example of that? We've developed that. We've consulted with owners and psychologists and experts in mental health and addiction. Um, but we put it together using our own resource, it's member funded. Uh, we didn't go to government and say there's a challenge with mental health across our economy and certainly in construction. So please give us money so we can develop a program. We've never done that. That's not our model. Um my view is that if the if you if you're focused on being relevant to the industry and you're gonna provide a program, if that program, if members turn around and say, Yeah, that's valuable, that's worthwhile, then the funding will follow. Um, so build it and they will come kind of model. Uh but if you are, if your business model is, I've got to figure out a way to go to government, understand what they want, develop a program, and then get funded to deliver this program, like really you're kind of betraying the mission of what you should be doing as an industry association.

SPEAKER_04 7:27

Right. And and I would imagine that the um beholdenness is to your member base rather than top-down.

unknown 7:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

I mean, for us, it's bottom-up. Yeah, it comes down to what's important to members. Um, and and whether that's a a service that we will provide or something we will say on our public policy advocacy uh initiatives that we we do a lot of. Um being independent is important because it gives you, if you, if you are, and there's lots of our competitors who get 60, 70, 80% or more of their funding from government. When I say those numbers in meetings, people are surprised. And I and then you then you start talking about and saying, yeah, well, that's why you have a lot of business associations that don't have a stronger advocacy voice when it comes to red tape regulation, project approval, um, taking advantage of our natural resources, funding uh more opportunities to highlight the young people getting, you know, launching a career in the trades. All of that is vitally important to us. One of the biggest challenges we face in our economy is how to build more, how to build faster, and how to build affordably. Like that is, we talk about every single that every single day in different ways. It could, it could be the conversations around uh affordable housing. It could be about we need to build more schools, uh, it could be about bridges, infrastructure, the massey tunnel, um, all of those things. It's always about building more, building faster, building affordably. And so our message to government is you're failing on a lot of that. Um, you're not delivering. And we can say that in an open, constructive way, but we're not going to hold back because we're waiting to get a check from some minister to fund the next year's activity for a program that we're running.

SPEAKER_04 9:15

Yeah, and that's that's the reason that we're actually sitting here today. I mean, there's obviously other reasons because we know each other, but the main reasons, and I saw you on the Board of Trade panel, and you were talking about the budget. And I said, we got to talk about this.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Yeah. Well, the the budget is uh for those of you listeners who have been following this, what we've seen is a deterioration of BC's finances at a pace that we that that we've never seen before in in British Columbia and in Canada. And to put it in perspective, and there's lots of different metrics, but the simplest one is you know, when David E. B. became premier, he succeeded John Horgan, who stepped aside for health reasons. Uh, John Horgan left uh nearly a$6 billion surplus, an annual surplus in the budget. Um, not only has David E. spent all that, he's spent more than that. And this year they're projecting a$13 billion deficit. So that's nearly a$20 billion swing from surplus into deficit. And next year will be another deficit of$12 billion the year after$11 billion. So there's no plan. There's no focus on getting this back into balance. And so the overall debt has exploded from about$90 billion to it will be as over the next three years, about$240 billion. So these numbers are hard to put into context. But what it means is that we've got less money to spend on roads, bridges, um, schools, hospitals, the infrastructure we need to be able to build a competitive economy and provide the kind of communities that are going to ensure that families are thriving and small businesses are doing well. If we can't invest in that basic infrastructure, we're gonna have a very difficult time uh building a stronger economy and competing internationally.

SPEAKER_04 11:02

Yeah. So I mean it it it looked like it worked out to currently uh by the end of this year, it'll be$27,000 per person, um like per capita, and then it's gonna go up to$40,000. So in context, what does that what does that mean to a person individually? When when someone thinks that, does it mean that they have their somehow there's a unless they were to leave, right? There is some kind of a supposed debt that somebody owes to the province in order for it to be straight.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Well, I think the way one way you can look at it is where does the government spend its money? So number one, number one expenditure for for BC is healthcare. Number two is education. Number three is the interest they're paying on the debt. Horrible. So it's not public safety, it's not in you know, investing back into uh building facilities for the community, it's paying the interest on the debt. So that means that you if you think of it, every dollar you you give to the the province, if you know nearly half is going to um health care and another, you know, 30%, 25% to education, and then another 10-15% is going into pay the debt. Well, those that those are dollars that are being taken away from all of the other things that government could be spending uh money on to help support individuals, families, communities. And so we're really uh being we're so it's it's such an irrational, it's basically the result of poor government planning, poor government decisions. Uh the one of the international uh rating agencies that looks at at governments and says, you know, they they rank their debt. And the credit's bad. That's right. And so we just had our fifth credit down rate, downgrade in four years. So it is it's it's mind-boggling that we're in this situation. We've gone from one of the best well-managed provinces financially to one of the worst. And that is going to hurt us in all the ways we just discussed. It's it's we're on a trajectory that we need to course correct, but this government is showing absolutely no willingness to consider that. The the Minister of Finance uh has no credibility now when she sits down with the business committee, uh, investors or or uh financial advisors. Like she just has no credibility anymore because of the significant and uh very rapid deterioration in our in BC's uh fiscal position.

SPEAKER_04 13:37

So, in terms of construction in general, we had this number that came from February of 7,000, or something's like$6,900,$6,900 jobs lost in construction. Um how did we get here? Like is this just this no housing starts, it's too expensive to build, you got holes in the ground that can't turn a profit. I mean, is that where we're at? Is that the reason for teams getting smaller, you know, projects not going forward?

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Yeah. So if you, you know, the the alarm bells started ringing, you know, nearly nearly two years ago. Yeah. Uh when some large developers started, there was lots of conversations that these guys may be in financial difficulty. And it just started to cascade from there. And so, you know, now we've got to the point where residential housing in this province has in the private sector has basically collapsed. We the the high water mark uh a few years ago was about 50, a little over 50,000 starts in housing. We're projecting, ICBA is projecting this year, our chief economist Jock Finlison is projecting about 34,000. That was as in January, but now he thinks that number will be lower because because the situation continues to deteriorate so much. So it could go under$30,000 or 30,000 homes being started. Yeah. So that is a a significant contraction in construction activity in the residential sector. Um, but the other parts of construction, so infrastructure and civil and commercial industrial, uh, remain quite soft. It's not like one side is doing really well and the other side. It's it's it's softer than it should be because we we are having challenges um approving the proje projects uh to get shovels in the ground, whether that's um, you know, a new LNG pipeline, new LNG facility, um, whatever the major project is, uh it takes an awful long time to get them approved. So that's the context right now. Now, some people will say, and and we've had this in response to the budget, the budget was a construction that was good for construction. It was not good for construct construction. They've taken$7 billion out of the capital budget. They've quote unquote repaced projects.

SPEAKER_04 15:48

Yeah, I saw the repace, yeah. Repacing means just delaying.

Building Codes And Permitting Delays

SPEAKER_00 15:51

So the Burnaby uh phase two of the Burnaby hospital expansion,$1.7 project, is like indefinitely on hold. Uh, you've got the BC housing budget,$1.4 billion has been taken out of that budget. Uh, you've got delays on long-term care facilities that were supposed to be, you know, shovels in the ground. Um, when we've got a crushing need for long-term care facility beds. So that's that's the landscape. How did we get here? It's quite simple, really. It's it's building codes that don't make sense. Um, every time we change building, one of our members is involved in building three different housing projects. Okay. Um, each one of them is being built under a different building code. And as the building code changes, it gets more complicated, more expensive. Um, and so why are we changing the code so often, so frequently? And so you'll you'll have the building code, you know, the new building code comes out, let's say today. And then in the interim, another another new building code will happen, you know, come down in around year four or five. But in the interim, you'll have different uh different areas where like the mechanical, a mechanical advisory group will say, well, we're gonna update this part of the code. The electrical committee will say, we're gonna update that part of the code. And so there's always constant changes. And so that slows down the process but makes it more complicated and more costly. Um, so let's stop changing the building code. Let's freeze the building code, and let's look at the code in a way that says, how do we take costs out of construction and not add costs to construction? Because the challenge we get into is that, well, we're just going to make this one little change. But what they don't understand is that they're looking at that in isolation and not the hundred changes they've made uh over the last number of years. Um, red tape and red tape in the sense of trying to get a project approved, the approval process time. Um, you know, it shouldn't take years to approve a housing project. It shouldn't take nearly 15 years to approve a mine being built in this province. It shouldn't take a decade to approve, you know, a new bridge. Uh the Massey tunnel is a great example where we started talking about replacing the Massey tunnel in the early 2000s. Now we still don't know uh final design, final pricing. Um this was a project that was canceled by a newly elected NDP government in 2017. Uh it was going to be a bridge, and that bridge was going to be delivered for under$3 billion. Um the government has a placeholder in the budget for$4.5 billion for a new tunnel. But everybody knows that that's not the number because they haven't finalized the design. And so it's probably going to be closer to seven or eight billion. But by the time, if they go ahead with that, and by the time that opens, it will mean that somebody who was, you know, five years old when we first started talking about the new massey tunnel will be in their mid-30s by the time they use the new crossing. Three decades to replace a crossing is not what you would expect from a G7 economy, an advanced economy that's primed to compete globally to get its goods to market, to have a supply chain infrastructure that moves people and goods efficiently and effectively. So project approvals, we we have got, it's embarrassing how long it takes to approve major projects in this country, in this province. We've got to do a much better job. Um, our tax system, we punish, we we tend to, we're one of the highest tax jurisdictions in the world. And certainly if you compare BC to the 50 US states, um, we are taxed at, we would be number 44 if you ranked all the provinces and the states and the states in terms of like per capita income, but then in terms of taxation, we're we're in the we're in the very bottom of that. Like we're you know, you it it is it's another embarrassing statistic.

SPEAKER_04 19:42

As in bottom is in tax the most.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Yeah, I see. Yes. So highest taxed in terms of per capita income, we'd be at the bottom. Right. Like we're up there with we're down there with Alabama and Louisiana. Uh people will talk about, you know, if you follow US politics, how how you know California is used one of the highest taxed states in in the United States. You know, their their highest rate is 37% and kicks in at about a million dollars Canadian. A house rate's 52%, and it would kick in at just over 200,000 Canadian. Yeah, it's crazy. So so what's happening is that people leave. Or investors say, you know, we're not going to invest in British Columbia, we'll invest in Alberta or another jurisdiction. We can get projects approved where where there's just there's more regulatory certainty. There's the the tax regime attracts investment, doesn't scare it away.

Taxes And The Cost To Invest

SPEAKER_04 20:36

So you always hear this attracting investment. And can you just for listeners, because people hear this what where international investment is not coming to British Columbia, we've turned everyone away, et cetera? Most people can understand that from a speculative real estate residential real estate, as in the condo thing that we had, the condo bubble. But when it comes to other projects, what other projects are you seeing capital not coming to British Columbia because of just what you said? Like what kind of projects would it be like warehousing, would it be other real estate projects? What kind of investment are you talking about?

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Well, it it operates on different levels. So if you think of the the classic example is is the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Okay. Now that was first proposed by Kinder Morgan, and they were going to basically twin the existing uh oil pipeline that goes from roughly northern Alberta, Edmonton, down to Burnaby. And the budget there was around 8 billion, it was 9, 10 billion. And in the end, because and this province played a big part in that, they challenged the uh the project in court. They lost, they challenged it at every level, Supreme Court, BC Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court again. They they kept losing, but they kept, they had this obstructionist posture. And um, and so as a result, Kinder Morgan said, listen, We're not going to proceed with this project. The Prime Minister of the day, Justin Trudeau, said, Oh, he got very worried, very concerned. So basically, the federal government bought the project from Kinder Morgan and ended up completing it, but the costs run up somewhere around$34 billion. So we had a private sector investor at the beginning of the project, willing to make that investment, take all that risk. And we end up with the pipeline being built at 3.4 times the original cost with taxpayers taking all the risk. Gotcha. So why is that? We should have international investors lined up to invest in mining projects, to invest in LNG projects, or it's LNG pipelines or facilities. But they're not. They look at Canada as a place where it's very difficult to understand what the regulatory environment is. It's not that they nobody wants, nobody's asking for the private sector is not asking for certainty of outcome. They're not saying, well, you have to guarantee that this is going to be approved. But what they want is, well, if it's going to take you 10 years or longer to approve a project, then like, no, like we're not going to invest in that environment. So just the additional risk is just like it's not where you can invest in Australia, in the United States, in other countries, and get faster decisions in a regulatory process that's smoother. And so as a result, if you go back to 2013, Canada, neither Canada nor the United States was exporting LNG. Fast forward to today. And at that time, Canada in 2013, 14, 15, had about 19 major companies that had expressed interest in building LNG facilities on the west coast of Canada, or British Columbia. And so fast forward to today, the largest export of LNG in the world, going from exporting zero to the largest in the world, is the United States. And we have just fired up LNG Canada. So we've got one. And we will probably move into maybe number 10. But the United States, they just made decisions faster and they were more purposeful in pursuing the opportunity. And investors responded. British Columbia, not so much. And so because we're so slow, because there's such a lack of certainty, because there's a lot of red tape, because there's often court challenges, capital has responded and they're they're just investing in other jurisdictions. And we're losing opportunities. Remember, we were in an environment where the prime minister of the day, Justin Trudeau, said there's no business case for shipping LNG from Canada to Europe. I remember that. And now we're in an environment where, you know, Europeans are crying out for LNG. We've got conflict, Asians are, Asian countries like Japan and Korea and China. And now we've got conflict in the Middle East, which is underscoring the value and the advantage we have in everything we offer in British Columbia. And we're not in a position to take advantage of it. Like we just we're not responding fast enough to the opportunity. If we had put all of this in motion five years ago, boy, we'd be in be in good shape.

SPEAKER_04 25:16

So do you think that is is British Columbia just kind of like anti-free enterprise in general? Well, I like j just so when I say that, I just mean so I've got some friends of mine who their kids are sort of getting into their twenties, and they're just starting to say I should just work for the government. Because the entrepreneur just gets hammered. And there's there's there's some supports. I'm not going to say it's terrible. It's not like some of the communist country or anything like that. It's not like that. But the amount of risk that you take for the for getting hammered all the way along the path of being an entrepreneur, it doesn't square based on how many businesses fail in the first two years, I mean it's like 80 percent. It's crazy. So if you couple that with a province that is not very pro-entrepreneurial business and heavy, heavy on the public sector, jobs and they pay. I mean, I got some statistics that are crazy. I mean, between what is this here? Between uh since 2017, there have been 210,000 public sector employees extra. 55 percent. So when you say, you know, why do we need to keep making changes in uh regulations, in permitting, in um in these different kinds of plans that that you know they continuously needed adjustments, because you're filling the the things to do with all the people. Like they are like, well, what do we do today? Okay, well, we should plan some things. Well, no, we shouldn't plan some things. What we should be doing is it's like, how do we actually have you not work here? How do we get some efficiencies? But that's not what is happening. For some reason, all of the uh the coastal states like uh Washington, Oregon, California, we're all kind of the British Columbia. What is going on? It's it's a mindset. It's something to do with it's gonna sound very obscure, but I'm gonna say there's something to do with the imbued beauty that we feel we have. We think we're amazing, and we don't realize we actually show have to show up with a good personality as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

So I think there's there's a lot in in all of that. I know there is. So first, you know, the the explosion in the government hiring, uh, pri government jobs versus private sector jobs, uh, does account for um the record definitely the records we're seeing set in government deficits and and and the accumulation of debt. We have gone on a tear, both federally and provincially. Um, and it's not sustainable. And so the fact that you would have young people sitting there saying, well, maybe my my best career path is just get a job with the government, yeah, because then I'm gonna have you know a pension at some point in time. I'm gonna have better benefits. Um, that's exactly what we don't need to build a stronger, more vibrant, more competitive economy. But you know, what what's what we're seeing happen is RBC just came out with a report earlier this year that said entrepreneurship, people deciding to start a business is is been in decline now for nearly a generation. And we're getting now to a point where we haven't seen numbers this low for since you know the 1970s. Uh and so what does that signalize? Signal young people are saying they're either doing one or two things. They're saying, okay, I starting a business doesn't make sense because they would hear it if you talk to um like a every single contractor, construction contractor is an entrepreneur or a business owner. And they started, and all of all of the names that would be so familiar to so to your listeners are are going to be individuals or family members, uh, or you know, in some cases, this happened generations ago. They they gained, they learned a trade, uh, gained some experience and started a business. They took a risk. And what have they done? They've built up that business or trying to build up that business and hiring people, creating opportunities, but they're taking risk. You know, they're buying new equipment, they're dealing with the challenges of executing on projects. Um now that's exciting, but we make it so hard. I have so many people who are in their 50s and 60s say, I'm not sure like I would do this again today, or to what I did over the last, you know, 30 years. I'm not sure I could do it again today. Because we tend to view, we don't celebrate entrepreneurship, and we tend to view people who are business owners as as entities that we can tax and regulate without any sense of you know trying to help them support and grow their business. Instead, we're focused on getting more out of extracting more from them, uh, which is why our tax rates are so high. So um, so things are upside down. So, what's happening in British Columbia last year? 70,000 people in British Columbia left BC. They moved to another province. Half of them went to Alberta. And so that's about 35,000 people. Most of those people were between the ages of 20 and 40.

SPEAKER_04 30:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

These are the these are people we want to stay in British Columbia, the people who've got skills, they've got ambition, um, looking for opportunity. So why would they go to Alberta? Well, they go to Alberta because you're gonna get there's higher wages, there's lower taxes, and in Calgary, you can buy one home for the or town home, home, single family or town home for the price of three in Vancouver. And in Edmonton, it's one to four. And so if you can get through the weather and the fact that you've now got to, you know, adopt the Calgary Flames Avenue's as your favorite hockey team, then you're fine. Like, what's wrong with that deal? And there's nothing wrong with it. And then young people are seeing opportunity and they're going somewhere else. And then what we often see in technology are people start technology companies in British Columbia or Canada, but they get to a certain size and scale, and they're funded from the U.S. And they bolt and they leave. Yeah. Why is that? Well, taxation, compensation, uh, it all hangs together. And so to your point, we sort of have this narrative of, well, you know, we don't like, you know, some people might say we don't like Donald Trump, and we don't like this and that and the other thing that's happening in the United States, but that's not happening, you know. Like there's lots of, you know, great places to live in the United States, um, very attractive neighborhoods. And and, you know, if you are building a business, there's lots of opportunity because the government is less focused on regulation, less focused on taxation. There, there, they are more focused, Democrats and Republicans, on building the economy, uh less so here in Canada.

Culture Politics And Special Interests

SPEAKER_04 32:13

All right. So you brought up uh David Eby specifically, and I I what I always find is that politicians are a symptom of a culture. Like he got there for a reason, and we continue to support him or British Columbians writ large due somehow to continue to do these things to get us into the deficit we're in for some reason. And I can't quite figure out what that reason is. Like, is it a a societal problem that we have? Is it a um you could say the let's just say like even when I look at how schools are, for instance, and you can boil it down to what kids are taught even. So now, you know, my daughter, she's uh just turned 18, so she's learned all this stuff over the years. But she had to be pretty resilient in school to get over how teachers were. I know this sounds terrible, but the reality is that teachers are cut from a different cloth to some degree. Some are different, fair enough, but most are coming from this weird place where it's the oppression Olympics everywhere. And that's expensive. It costs you cannot be you can't be this Canadian kindness to a point where you have no money left. And really that's what it is. Like there was this article today where City Hall, the two counselors are arguing whether or not they want the new uh not the new, it's the original Iranian flag with the line in it, the sun line, which is to most of the people in British Columbia, that's the one they like. And we got all the good Iranians here. They all moved to North Ann and you know, like and West Vancouver, and they're they're surgeons, they're they're bright business people. Amazing. We got all the ones in 78 and 79, we're like, see ya, we're not doing this, which is fine. So it's not what the flag represents, but it's the fact that we're having a conversation about having another country's flag in our city hall. Like what? What what what are we doing? Like this if the problem is we are trying to signal more than we are actually doing. The signaling is expensive, and constant signaling and nothing getting done is is why we're burning through cash, I think. And it's probably something underneath that under the we we've we've gotten to this tribal place that is so strange that you know, you go to construction conferences and there's this this sort of bubbling underneath quiet conversations that no one really wants to have. Well, why do we not want to have them? Are we too scared if we have those conversations that the repercussions are going to be we have no business? Well, eventually we will have no business.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:18

And that's kind of where we're going now. So what are your thoughts on all that?

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Well, you know, there's first of all, I'm a proud Canadian and a proud British Columbian, and I think sometimes we forget. We we have tended to concentrate on everything that is we're not a perfect country, but we have doubled down on everything that, every conceivable injustice historically that's happened. And so we've we've forgotten that there's a lot we have to be proud of, and Canada is a great country, and we have enormous potential. And so, how do we look forward to build shared prosperity? That narrative is not as prominent as it should be. That should be front and center. How do we get better as a country? How do we create opportunity and prosperity for everyone? So everyone can participate in meaningful ways in the economy and in the communities, and and we can compete globally. And we have the talent to do that, we have the infrastructure to do that, infrastructure meeting the education system. We have the, you know, we have people who are enormously talented. But we tend to spend an awful lot of time in debates around uh, you know, so you mentioned taxation. So there's this, you know, there's a famous quote that if you're gonna rob Peter the PayPal, you will always have the support of Paul. And so, you know, that this is where we are, right? Like we have, to your point, um, we tend to govern uh special interests uh tend to have a lot of influence over public policy debates because the general interest is not really organized. The general interest is if politicians have to choose between a set of policies that are going to be good for everyone in British Columbia versus a set of policies that will be good for this sector and then that sector and then that sector, those groups will organize and come out and say, oh, the government, we should be voting for this party or the government's on the right track because it's a special interest that's being pandered to. And that that hurts the broader interest. But for those special interests, they have now got a stake in ensuring that you know the government wins the day on, you know, when we have an election. So I think we're losing sight of what is needed to compete in terms of our education system, our training system. Um, look at um the skilled trades. If you want to update curriculum and skill trades training in British Columbia, it's gonna take you four years, five years to do that. So if you think about that, think how fast artificial intelligence is moving, technology is moving. Yes, and think how quickly innovation happens on the job site. But we can't change the curriculum to reflect that in real time. Like, why couldn't we say, okay, we're gonna update, you know, the mechanical uh, you know, level one apprenticeship for, or the apprenticeship program for mechanical actual carbon, all of the construction trades, and say, come out with some drafts in the fall, review it by the spring, and then the next fall, bang, we're launching the new curriculum. We can't do that. It'll, it's it's a four to five year undertaking. So that's why sometimes when young people are pursuing an apprenticeship and they get to level two or three, they're like, well, I'm not sure that I'm going to, you know, complete the full red seal designation because I get into class, it's not particularly relevant, and it's not helping me. And we're busy, and I can, I'd rather be learning on the job than being here in class. So we need to be able to figure out how to update curriculum so that it is actually something that apprentices look at and say, yes, this is going to help me, rather than having them saying, well, it's it's it's not relevant. It's not really gonna help me in my job. So we've got to do a better job of adapting to what's happening in the real world. And that's a shift in mindset in the education community, to your point, uh, about what teachers and professors and and you know, the folks who are training young people are how they think and how they're connected into the private sector. Now, the private sector does is always ahead. They're always on the leading edge because they are focused on you know meeting schedules, uh meeting budgets, collecting a check. Yeah, yeah. So they and they're they're under pressure. Yeah. So there's accountability, there's real accountability there. Exactly. Uh the challenge with government is that they often get paid. Well, and they don't they don't have they often have very little accountability, or you know, look at the couch in the hospital. The couch in the hospital was 63% over budget. It was originally planned to be, you know, about$800 million. It's you know, coming in at$1.4,$1.5 billion, uh, and behind schedule. Well, why is that? Well, we got procurement models that are out of date. We don't have open and fair procurement in that model. It was only building trades, uh, certified contractors could work on that project. That's only 15% of all the construction workers in the profit until 85% were effectively frozen out. So, what what what does that mean? Less competition costs or just less less rigor around the whole process. And until we've got a hospital that will be great. It's just going to come in at nearly double the cost. And you know, two, three, four years late.

Developers Fees And Housing Price Myths

SPEAKER_04 40:26

So there's one thing about um developers in this city that is kind of it's a little bit distressing, is that there seems to be this narrative of housing is so expensive because the developers made all this profit. And if the developers didn't come and do this stuff and actually create an economy here, I mean, everyone has to make a profit, otherwise. So and yes, they were becoming rich, but look at the risk. The risk, it could have gone so para-shaped, but they they keep doing it and they get models that work and work and work, and then they move on. They'll do it in LA, they'll do it wherever. But what do you think of like do you find that there's this demonizing of developers? Like when you hear the word developer and the news, it's like, oh, all these guys that did all this stuff, and and they've, you know, they should be to blame for expensive housing and on all of these vectors that are. I don't know, do you do you think there's something there where that's an injustice?

Accountability Failures And Cost Overruns

SPEAKER_00 41:36

Well, I think what's happened is that as as housing markets have become as the affordability crisis, and we've been talking about this for a generation, yeah, but as it kept getting worse and worse, it's easy for politicians and and members of the public who you know, politicians do not understand how markets work. Um, and and certainly the housing market, they have no understand, they're lost. And lots of lots of folks in the public don't understand it either. And so it's easy to sort of look for a scapegoat and say, you could say, you know, well, it's you know, the developers and fill in the blank. Um, the reality is that if you if you just sort of step back and say, okay, we've got lots of businesses in Canada, um, small businesses, one employee two businesses that employ thousands of people. As Canadians and British Columbus, we should want them all to be successful. We should all want them to be profitable. Because if they're profitable, they're investing in training, they're investing in technology, um, they are paying higher wages, uh, paying better benefits. And that's what we should all want. But there seems to be a vilification of when businesses are profitable, somehow that's coming at a cost of the community, workers, and nothing could be further from the truth. Um, and so when you look at housing and housing markets, uh, over 90% of housing in a in most years will be delivered by the private sector. And construction isn't a government program. Construction is individuals who've, you know, they've started a company, they're managing a business, they're competing against the others for that work, for that job. They've got to make sure that their pricing is gonna be competitive. They've got to find value and demonstrate value to the clients. Um, and in the case of developers, they're the ones who have to purchase the land. To your point, taking risks, they got to purchase the land and then figure out how they build, you know, single-family homes or condos or town homes on that land and deliver those homes at a price people can afford, uh, given all the uncertainty around all of the costs and all the cost pressures that they face, all of the inputs into construction. And so that's lost on this on government. Um, and I think so. What government has tended to do with housing is look at every home as a little ATM machine. And we're gonna go in there, we're gonna take money out of that, out of That home. Well, we're gonna, in this case, they take money by adding taxes and fees, development cost charges. And so now you get, you know, homes, condominiums in the lower mainland, where taxes, fees, costs, charges that are levied can take up to 30 or 40 percent, can account to 30 to 40 percent of the cost of the final product. Well, who's paying for that? First-time home buyer or those who, you know, those who are faced with trying to get into the market uh are now all of a sudden paying the price of that. And, you know, and that happens at the provincial level, primarily provincial level, city hall, but we also got regional districts like Metro Vancouver. Metro Vancouver is a classic case of an entity that most people don't understand. Um, but that from 2025 to 2027, um, the development cost charges that they put on every single house built in the in the Metro Vancouver area is going to increase by about 250%, from about$6,000 a door to about$20,000 a door. Like it's an enormous amount of money. Um, so that you know, inflation hasn't gone up that much. Lurk costs haven't gone up that much. But the level of incompetence they've demonstrated by the failed building of the uh the water, wastewater facility in the North Shore that was supposed to be delivered for under a billion, which is now going to cost us four billion dollars. And every single homeowner in the lower mainland is going to pay a special surcharge to fund that for the next generation. Um, is it's appalling what's happening. And so there's a misdirected it got what government should be doing is rather than what this government's done is come up with a list and giving the list to each city and said, you've got to build these many homes. Lists aren't going to build homes. Um the reality is that government's got to do what we talked about before, reduce red tape, reduce regulation, uh um find ways to take costs out of the building code, uh, reduce those fees and charges, um, look for ways that what the province should be doing is looking for ways to work with cities to uh take on some of the costs of municipal infrastructure. Um and and you know, just stop looking at housing as an ATM machine. Um, and that's really what they've done. They've looked at housing as a source of government revenue. And who's paying for that?

SPEAKER_04 46:22

Home buyers are you aware of that school in Cole Harbor? Have you seen that one? The new one that's down at uh okay. So uh we look at that. That's part of our I've watched that thing being built for the past two and a half years, and my goodness, is that slow? And detailed. Like this is this is like a Louis Vuitton school. I mean, this is amazing. Like they have craned these um little forts on top of the uh on the deck on the top. They've got LED lighting around. I mean, it's it's someone's dream. The problem is it's not an entrepreneur's uh dream. It is a public sector's individual's passion to spend our money. And I don't get it. Like I don't understand. And the the other part is that the people who have these uh these uh jobs in the public sector, there's a uh statistic here where it's there is you are seven times less likely to lose your job in the public sector. That means that it doesn't matter really what you do on a multiple of seven of how bad you screw up, or you you know you're not quite right, or you're off on your numbers, or there's the level of accountability there is really, really low. Plus all of these the people that are in these weren't actually elected people and they have power. For instance, um I don't want to like totally throw someone under the bus, but like the city manager we have here. Like we didn't like vote that no, we didn't all go to a ballot box and and you know, check out okay, this is the right person. That was the person who was hired. And they're making changes, doing stuff, and you know, it's it's that we've got to deal with, I think. And so EB is really just this well, not the city of Vancouver, but EB is just the the figurehead of this bigger zeitgeist problem we have of our attitude as British Columbians. We have to get our act together. I don't quite understand. Like if we are yes, we can bring the prices of homes down, but what is that actually gonna do to all the people who think they have equity in a house? That's terrible. What we need to do is earn more money on the world stage. Because it's just never gonna get cheaper. I mean, sure, w we can we can create create some efficiencies that permitting is is gonna cost less. Um, all of those fees, the civil fees, they can go down. That's fine. But material costs are not gonna get any lower. And labor costs are not gonna, it's only gonna go up. So there's only so many levers we can pull here for stuff to become cheaper. And if we artificially make it cheaper, then people can't renew their mortgages because they have a negative equity in their home that they bought in 2021 or wherever. So it we can't the only thing we can actually do is support our public and support our kids and support entrepreneurs and earn more money. And we're not doing that.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

Yeah, we've we've lost the uh the plot on wealth creation, on generating wealth, which is the key to if you know, going back to my earlier point, if companies are profitable and successful and they're growing and they're expanding, they can pay higher wages and better benefits and train folks and adopt new technology, become more productive. That is the key. But we tend not to focus on that. We tend to vilify businesses and entrepreneurship. Uh, we don't celebrate it. And then in the public sector, there is a lack of accountability. So think of the Sightsea Dam, a dam that was much needed, that faced an enormous amount of opposition. We were strong supporters of building that dam. Remember going into the public hearing in Vancouver, there's 400 people, and there was only four of us speaking in favor of the project. And now we we're facing a shortage of electricity in this province. Um, but that dam was originally budgeted about$8,$9 billion. It's gonna come in probably 16 billion or more. Where's the accountability? Is anyone lose their job at like the massive cost overrun? Lack of planning? No, I don't think anyone from BC Hydro is gonna lose their job over that. Look at the the Metro Vancouver water, wastewater treatment facility on on the North Shore. Is anyone in Metro Van going to be uh fired, lose their job because of that? No. Uh they were going, they had planned to do a review. They haven't done a review, they're gonna do a review, and then they stood up, you know, and said, Well, this was last year, because we're in a court case with the previous contractor, we're not gonna do the review because it could interfere with the court case. So now, will that review ever get back on track? I don't know. I I doubt it. Politicians don't have a have a great track record of instilling accountability into the departments of government that they manage because it's embarrassing to them. Uh, and frankly, most politicians, you know, aren't don't have think of of you know the the the contractors that build big infrastructure in this country. Those people aren't at some point going into government. So when you go into government, you go into a planning department, you go into like you're not dealing with folks who built an awful lot of stuff. In most cases, these folks have not built anything. And the experience they're getting is from within government. That's why when you look at BC housing, the most expensive housing built in this province is going to be a BC housing project because it's gonna be overprogrammed, built to the highest standards, and it'll be the most expensive, even though it's being built as you know for folks who you know can't afford market-based housing. So we have um our so much of how we approach these challenges is upside down. And on the on the on wealth creation and unlocking the challenges, there's a lot of conversations in the last 18 months about our critical minerals potential, the LNG potential, um, you know, what we can do to unlock all of that, build the infrastructure required to get all of that to market. Um, still, I would say a lot more conversation than actual project approvals and let's go. Um, but we also have uh, you know, BC has an abundance of natural gas. Natural gas and LNG is a huge competitive advantage. There's a natural gas ban in Vancouver. There's a natural gas ban in Victoria. So what does that mean? If you're gonna build a new home or retrofit a building in the new home, you can't go for our place. Yeah, you you cannot put in natural gas. Yeah. If you're retrofitting, if this building we're in now is being retrofitted and it's got natural gas, you got to rip that out and put in electricity at enormous costs. And so, you know, we do things like we will send natural gas. So British Columbia right now imports about 20% of the electricity we use every year for the last three years. This has been roughly the numbers. Cost is$2 billion a year. So what do we do? We send natural gas down to the United States, to Washington and Oregon, uh, and they use the natural gas and gas-fired electric generation plants. They generate electricity, and then we they send that electricity back up to BC and we use it. Now, here's the thing: we basically send natural gas down for a dollar, and we buy the electricity back for$10. So why wouldn't we just use the gas here? Why wouldn't we be taking advantage of cheaper, abundant a cheaper abundant resource that we have to be build a competitive?

SPEAKER_04 54:03

So, what is that reason?

SPEAKER_00 54:05

Well, because we have a government that's that that is basically uh this is a political decision. It's it's it's ideological. It's basically saying we they're what they're saying to us is that, well, we're going we're lowering our greenhouse gas emissions by using electricity, but we're importing it from you know, 20% of it from primarily Washington State and Oregon State. And the source of that is gas-powered plants. So it's not what does the government think that those emissions just stay south of the border, don't come up here? Um so it's it's all under the rubric of what they call clean BC. And our our chief economist came out with a with a report. Uh, he Jock Finlison co-authored it with Ken P. Peacock, who's another uh very well-known economist in this market. And they basically said, listen, if we end up in a full-blown trade war with the United States, that's going to cost British Columbia about$43 billion every year between now and 2030. But Clean BC will cost us more than 2.5 times that. It'll cost us over$100 billion. So you got$43 billion between now and 2030. That's not annual, that's accumulative, versus$100 billion. So one is externally inflicted, that's the tariffs, the other is self-inflicted. So we do a great deal of damage. Again, it comes back to the regulatory environment, our approach to building our economy. And we will have politicians that will stand up and say all these things about the green economy and green jobs and clean jobs. And these are the this doesn't move the needle. But can we double-click on that for a second?

SPEAKER_04 55:40

Because we're what that is the window dressing, but we're not talking about the first principles of what that is. Like, why is it the green? Why is it the virtue, virtue, virtue all the time and not a you can still build things, but you can just build them in a in a in a better way. You can't just not do them though.

SPEAKER_00 56:02

Like, I I don't I I think we've lost sight of the practicality of what we're trying to do. It's not practical. And and and common sense is not very common. And and we just have politicians that um have lost sight of what we really need to do to build stronger communities, to get more affordable housing on the market, to take advantage of our of our critical minerals and our energy opportunity, uh, to build the infrastructure that we need in ways that we can build it faster and more affordably. Um and um we're not on a good trajectory.

SPEAKER_04 56:40

So let's talk about leadership for a second. So you've been able to grow ICBA because you are a visionary. You knew what you wanted to do, you knew what you had to do to get there, and you inspired people around you. That's probably why you've reached reached, it's obviously other reasons, but it's probably one of the primary reasons why you've been able to do what you what you do. When we look at um David, Mr. E B for a minute, I do not feel inspired. I don't think our children do. I don't think they look at the leader and and think, wow, I could be that one day, or or that person is inspiring me to have hope for my future. We don't have that. We actually have a narrative of one day you won't have to work. I mean, Musk is saying this stuff. Just imagine being young right now, thinking I don't know because Okay, let me just say one other thing. In order to think about where we're gonna be with AI one day, that's a crazy uh cerebral thought process to try and wrap your head around. It's kind of like talking about infinity. Explain infinity to me. Well, it just goes forever. What does that mean? Well, I don't know. It's kind of like that. It's it's so multifaceted and such a complex um paradigm to try and wrap your head around what AI will be like when people, even four years from now, going into a college um program or a university program for four years, they don't even know what it's gonna be like when they get out based on the speed that everything is going right now. So if you take that fear of, I don't know where this is all gonna go, plus we're spending all this money, plus when the leader of our province gets up and is just there's like zero energy. There is, it seems like it's sad the whole time, it's never smiling, it's never like we've achieved this. It has zero inspiration for us to have something to like clap towards and be proud of, which is a massive problem.

SPEAKER_00 59:03

Yeah, I mean listen, we we have we have forgotten um how great Canada is, how great British Columbia is, the potential that we have. Uh we've we've seemed to be focused on re-engineering large parts of society in ways that aren't going to help us compete, aren't going to help inspire the next generation of Canadians. Um and I think, you know, and we're seeing that. We're seeing that show up in so many different ways. We've got a healthcare system that's collapsing around us. Uh, we've got disorder on the streets that we haven't seen, you know, in generations. Um we've got a government that wants to be at the center of everything and has expanded at rate at a in a size and scale that we haven't seen ever, and has basically run out of money. They run out of ideas and they run out of money. And I think it's if the starting point is that government has to be at the center of everything as opposed to the individual or the family, that that's where, you know, we we should be supporting people who have ideas, ambition, um, who want to, you know, build businesses, build communities, um, rather than looking at folks who've done that and said, well, you know, we seem to be focused on how we can extract um more in terms of taxes, how we make it more difficult for them because we want them, we're not interested in just getting building a bridge or building a home. We want that company to do so much of what really is outside the scope of what the business is is is set up to do, which is, you know, you'll have the premier saying, well, when you build a bridge, we want to make sure we get more than the bridge. I'm like, no, no, when when you hire a contractor to build a bridge, what you want is like the best bridge you can get for your dollars. And um, and but we've gone off on these tangents of saying, well, no, no, we want to make sure that, you know, X percentage of workers are A, B, C, D, and E categories, and you've and all of that is important. But what governments lose sight of is that contractors do that every day. They're investing in their people, they're hiring local. I mean, no contractor is gonna be awarded a project uh up in Prince George and say, I'm gonna bring all my whole crews from Vancouver and go up to Prince George. Like, it doesn't make any sense. No one would do that. Right if they win a project in Prince George and they're not from Prince George, they're gonna go to Prince George and figure out what subcontractors they can use who are local, they've got local knowledge and expertise. But somehow the government thinks that they can engineer all that and and you know, and they've lost sight of what really they should be doing, which is, you know, looking at the ways they spend taxpayer dollars and getting the best value for that dollar. And if you don't understand the private sector, if you've never worked in the private sector, you don't respect the ability, the innovation, the leadership that takes place uh in the private sector, then you're not going to partner with them. You're gonna, you will tend to be an obstacle to them and not view them as a part. If you want to deliver more housing, it's very simple. Talk to the people who build houses. And to this day, we have not had anyone in this government convene any kind of round table that says, like, listen, James, if we sat down with 10 builders tomorrow for an hour, hour and a half, we would have a list of, and we just said to them, listen, how can we build more houses and how we can build it more affordably? They give us a long list. So if you're in government, why wouldn't you do that? Why wouldn't you go to the building community and say, hey, what can we do differently? How's the building code not working? What can we take out of the building code? Uh how do we how do we get permits approved faster for you? Um, they'll give you all the answers. Like the answers are there. But why do they not want that? Well, I think that they don't understand it. I think part of it is we don't understand. Like, we're not, you know, folks.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:00

Do they not want to feel maybe belittled that they don't know as much as the developer does or the builder does?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:05

Well, it's kind of like, you know, a natural gas ban in the city of Vancouver. Why did this council put in a natural gas ban in Vancouver? Like it doesn't make any sense. It's hard to explain why. There are people who are very ideological about some of these policy decisions that they make, um, thinking that, you know, if we ban natural gas in Vancouver, that that's going to help, you know, our our lower greenhouse gas emissions, when in reality, it's not, because we're importing so much of our electricity that's generated by natural gas from Washington State and Oregon. So they just, if you don't understand and have an appreciation for how complicated and how complex these issues are, and are willing to look beyond the way you view the world, then you're going to make poor decisions. And we can see that across pretty well every major issue that impacts your average working family in British Columbia.

Alberta Expansion And Cost Of Living

SPEAKER_04 1:04:02

So is the is the the term common sense almost become as soon as anybody says it's not common sense, they're, oh, you're right wing. How did this happen? Just any anything that sounds logical or is it seems to to be um Yeah, you're on a on this sort of different tribe, if you will. Do you find do you find like because we you said common sense and you hear that Polyev used it, that was his campaign platform that he he basically ran on. Well you hear the stuff from um you know in the States as well. I don't know if common sense is bombing around, but anyway, we'll see how that goes. But um uh so you you have a um a chapter in Calgary, in in in Alberta. Yep. Okay. Under leadership of Danielle Smith, how much of the different or other conversations between you guys?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:00

What we're seeing is that we've got an awful lot of our members in British Columbia that are establishing or considering establishing operations in Alberta. Right. Seeking, you know, to diversify their business, de-residents. Yeah, and new opportunities. Um and that is a response to the environment in British Columbia. So when we have, we just had an event in Calgary last week. We had 1,700 people come out to a big networking um uh event that we hosted. And I would say of the 1700, probably 100 were from British Columbia. And they're looking for opportunity. And uh, and I think what's interesting about Alberta is that you're generally going to have higher wages, lower taxes, more affordable housing, a government that is primed to get to yes, not start off with no, and maybe we'll get to yes, but starting to do that.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:53

So higher wages based on just the energy component to it?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:56

Uh that's part of it. Um, but it's just part. Of the, you know, at the end of the day, even if the minimum wage higher there? Uh I don't know the answer. There probably won't be much difference in minimum wage, but where it'll show up is in just lower tax rates. So your take-home pay is going to be higher. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:14

So you can spend more put in the economy.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:15

And that's right. And you've got a cheaper cost of living. Right. So um, you know, so I think business people, like, you know, there's this whole thing about Alberta's calling. Well, people, talent, and capital are answering that call. Yeah, picking up the phone, yeah. And saying, let's go. Let's and if you are in your 20s and um and you're looking for opportunity and you've got some experience and you've got some training, like if you're if you're a contractor, then let's go. Why like what what's not to like about I can, you know, here I'm, you know, you you know, someone who's 25 could say, well, I don't really have a prospect of owning a home in the Lower Mainland. But if it's one third of the cost in Calgary, and you travel just outside of Calgary and it's it's cheaper still, then what is the insurance cost vehicle-wise in Alberta? Is it a lot less? Um, we don't have any vehicles there. Um, but that would be sensor. Yeah. So I I I wouldn't know that. But but I know that uh I just, you know, we taught we've got a team of eight people there working out of our office in Calgary. We bought our office in Calgary, downtown Calgary. Yeah. And we have an our head office in Surrey. Yeah. And we roughly we bought them about a year apart. But, you know, it was 1200 bucks a square foot roughly, and sorry, 1100 bucks a square foot in Surrey. And it was 300 bucks a square foot in downtown Calgary. No way. Yeah. So it was it was two very different worlds.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:43

Um so how do people what do you think of like the the the general cost around things? So I had this this um I started getting kind of upset about how much things cost. And so I just I just I thought maybe I'm just gonna look up at how um I don't know, like good steak. So a beef tenderloin priced I started this this tenderloin like uh um vector of value from when I went to France. I was in the south of France, probably one of the most expensive areas just outside of Monaco, near Cap Ferrat. Okay, that's like that's where all the billionaire boats are. It's nuts. I went to a butcher, perfect 60-year-old guy, perfect silver hair with cream in it, perfect apron, pristine butcher. And I had the most beautiful piece of tenderloin at 22 euros per kilogram. That's a lot. It's not per kilogram. 22 euros Okay, so let's think about that for a second. So and then here it is 125 a kilogram. Okay. It's fifty fifty-five dollars per pound here. Okay, and in Texas, it's eight ninety-nine USD. So we are hurting ourselves for no reason. I don't know like why why you know, we can say we there is so when companies do things that are you know, they're maybe in a troubled spot or or they don't have a uh uh people who like showing up at work, you have a corporate self-esteem that's it's an extension of a person. We have a provincial self-esteem problem. We don't think we're worth it for some reason. Like, why don't we fight for the fact that we should be able to get maybe okay, it's not$8.99 like Texas, but it should be half of$55. It should be$25. Yep. But I don't know why we are there's some kind of a social contagion we have here of the reason we can talk about this forever, but unless we all as a group of people get together and start to support each other, and I don't mean a oppression Olympics kind of support, I mean a helping people thrive. And we don't have that. I think when you go to some of your events, you feel that. Like one of these things that you do called Meet the Generals, I think was pretty cool because you basically flip the script. It's like, okay, rather than having all the vendors, you do it the other way. Yep. And these are all the people everyone wants to meet, and all the vendors show up and then meet all the. So that's it's pretty cool. Yeah. Pretty inventive thing. But there seems to be a bit of a buzz and a vibe going on there. But on top of that, I look at how do you enable through like if there were gonna be government programs, for instance, if we're gonna go into this much debt, maybe it's for investment. And investment, if you're gonna spend this money, make it pay off at some point. But we're not really doing that. I'll give you an example. So if you want to go and you want to uh let's say you're you live downtown, you're 18 years old, going on 19, and you want to go to school. And the transit system's not that great for you to go where you need to go. It'll take you hours to get to school and back if you're taking public transit, which kind of is kind of gross if you're going through Hastings here. It's not great. And you want to get a car. Okay. Even for a lame car, it's still gonna cost you three to thirty, five hundred dollars in insurance.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:47

For that student to go and learn something. It's bananas. What we're not even trying to help our young people learn. Yeah. There's no programs for like, hey, here's a here's a a stipend for having lower insurance. Uh we're not even doing anything like that at all. We're still trying to make it difficult. And at a time where resiliency in our youth is the something that is at risk, we've made it so soft there's bubble wrap everywhere to the point where the there's no no appetite to want to take risk because there's this feeling of, well, if it doesn't work out, I'm totally screwed. But what are your thoughts around how do we change the sentiment? What what can we actually do? Um I'll just say his last thing is uh you know, I've a I've a kind of beaten up David Eby here a little bit, but it's not personal. Like I think he if he were just listen to this and think, you know what, maybe while he's shaving, he's looking in the mirror, going, you know what, I maybe I I don't know, maybe I've lost myself here. Maybe I I just I've been focusing on the wrong thing. So it you know, uh and anyone can can course correct, anyone can can do something that's gonna be different. But I just hope that it's uh there's some kind of change that we can have that otherwise I just don't think we're ever gonna make it.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:21

Yeah. So so going back to costs, think about what what people talk about the most, like airline tickets, the cost of flights, uh cell phone bills, um, you know, banking fees, but uh, cost of groceries. And and in Canada, we will always say, well, why is it so expensive? And why is it cheaper if I go to the US, or why is it cheaper if I'm in another country? And the answer to that is competition. All of those industries that I just mentioned are basically have our protected markets with very limited competition. There's only two major airlines in in this country, uh, Air Canada and WestJet. So it's really, you got there's not a lot of pricing pressure, there's not a lot of competitive forces that will drive service levels and cost. Same thing with banks. We got four major big banks. Uh, and that's those are the guys who set mortgage rates and all the banking fees. Um, you can say the thing about grocery stores. We have six or seven grocery train big chains control about 75% of grocery distribution in this in this country. Um, so every single industry is protected. And so, on the one hand, we want we want lower prices, but on the other hand, we don't create a competitive environment that will deliver better customer service, lower prices uh through a compet through the competitive market. We tend to ask government to say, okay, well, you know, it's too high, you should do something. What government should do is rather than trying to regulate two providers in the case of airlines, they should open up the market more to more competition and force them to compete. And we should do that with airlines, we should do that with banks, we should do that with with in every single industry. But we've protected them. And uh so we basically have an economy that's less free market oriented than we like to think it is.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:14

But like protected with tariffs, though, in underneath the hood. Because I mean the reason the reason our dairy is so expensive is because of the tariffs.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:21

Yeah, we've got a we've got a quota system, and uh, and and basically we are preventing uh American producers from selling into this market. Or French. Yeah.

Competing Globally With Faster Approvals

SPEAKER_04 1:15:31

I mean, or yeah, like French cheese versus um what's the the um qualicum cream cheese or the armstrong? There's armstrong, but yeah, yeah. But I mean, we we don't even even the stuff that's grown or made here or produced here is is not even good value. I can understand if like the the imports should be more expensive, but I don't know. I think we're going we're probably gonna speak to nauseum on that. Um so lastly, um how do we how do we compete on the world stage? How do people look at British Columbia and go, that's a place of opportunity? What do we need to do?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:11

Well, we've got to the first starting point is we've got to have a premier in the like you know, David Eby goes to Asia. He's been on a couple of trips to Asia. And I always kind of laugh, I go, what what what is he saying to them? Like, is he saying we're open for business? Because the reality is when those investors come to British Columbia and they understand, they start to understand how long it takes to approve a project, uh, we're not open for business. So the first thing we can start and say, okay, we want to create a competitive environment for people uh to invest in this in this province, um, to, you know, so so to invest and build businesses, like locally want businesses to thrive and grow and become stronger, more competitive and and compete around the world. So, how do you do that? Well, a regulatory environment that's going to support that, a tax environment that's gonna support that, a project approval and permitting uh system that's going not take 10 years or 15 years, but get that down to a year or two. Um, and on the permitting side, like once the project's approved, those permits should flow very, very quickly. So take wood fiber LNG. Wood fiber LNG is a$10 billion LNG facility that's under construction right now in Squamish. Yeah. I went and spoke to 600 pipeline workers.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:21

So that boat keeps going. Well, the boat, well, there's Have you seen that boat with the neon orange strip on the top? What the service boat, I think. Yeah, it looks like the uh Hello Ferry.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:30

Yeah. So they're they're basically taking work pipeline workers from the North Shore and shipping and dry taking them up to Squamish every day. Because the the the the two flotels, the cruise ships they have there, aren't aren't enough to accommodate all the workers. But that that that's a story.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:45

Uh that's an entrepreneur doing that, right? He's doing the servicing of the boats.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:49

Yeah. Who's putting the boats in?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:51

Pretty smart person.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:52

Yeah, which is great.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:52

Good at branding, apparently. Because they got this orange strip on everything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:56

So but think about think about this: that that project, the this the district of Squamish has fought that project every single step of the way. So much so that last fall, Wood Fiber MBC Supreme Court, is launched a lawsuit against the District of Squamish for being obstructionist and and costing them hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars. And so it's a$10 billion investment. It's going to help this province. It's a nation-building project. And we still have a council that has never voted to support the project in any meaningful way. So we've got to, we've got to, we've got to, if if that's if that's the welcome map we're putting out to international investors, a lot of them are going to say, no, I'm not interested. I'll go to Australia, I'll go to the United States, I'll go to another jurisdiction where my my you know, my initiative, my capital, my skill, my talent, my willingness to build and invest in something will be appreciated. And we don't do a good job of that in Canada and British Columbia.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:58

What do you think the the the fear is of the, let's say the squamished example? What do you think the fear is of the people who want to sort of add molasses to everything and slow everything down? What do you think the uh maybe the reason is the fear of something. Is it the fear that um let's say it's uh a natural beauty thing? Maybe it's the the fear that suddenly if you fire too much Botox in something, suddenly their face is gonna fall in ten years. Is that what this is? Is it is it is it the fear that they're going to be responsible for something um that generations later is going they wish they hadn't have done it?

Youth Trades Demand And Closing

SPEAKER_00 1:19:40

Well, I think there's a fear of change. And so whether it's an LNG pipeline or facility or a new road, a new bridge, a new subdivision, a new condo tower, you know, I've I've gone to an awful lot of public hearings. And at pretty well every public hearing I've gone to, those who come out and say no, yeah, uh, not in my neighborhood, not here, maybe somewhere else, but not here. And the the list of reasons is as long as you're on traffic, views, noise, you know, too many people, crime, you you name it, and there's a there's a reason to not build something new. And um, and it it and it depends on the neighborhood, the community, the location in the province. There's always a reason to say no. There's always a reason to not do something. And the challenge, this is where political leadership is vitally important. You need politicians to say, we understand that. And to the extent that we can, we're gonna address these concerns. But we have to move ahead. We've got to move forward, we've got to create opportunity, we've got to build our province, build this community. And um and that's but most times, well, too often, politicians will turn in the other direction and say, okay, it's easier. Let's go do another study. And oh, we understand what you're saying, and we'll delay this for another year or two. And but the cost is enormous because we lose opportunity. So just think of all the infrastructure projects that are delayed. We lose the ability to use that infrastructure, whether it's a new bridge like Massey Tunnel, or whether it's a new hospital, um, whether it's a new Sytrain, the SkyTrain expansion from Langley, uh, from Surrey to Langley, it's two years delayed. It's gone from$4 billion to$6 billion. Um, all of that is denying the opportunity for us to take advantage of uh new infrastructure, which will improve our quality of life. So if you've if you have driven over the new Patella Bridge, so I drove, I drove over it for the first time a few weeks ago. And I thought, wow, this is like compared to the old Patella Bridge, this is great. Wider lanes, looks nicer, it's perfect. It's if there's an earthquake, it's not gonna fall into the Fraser River. But you think about the delays, you know, two years delay, cost overruns, and two years delayed of the original construction schedule. Should feel bad for for forgetting the fact that it should have been built, you know, 20 years ago and not and opened up then. But that's the story we see we hear that story too many times in this province. We we get to yes, it takes a long time, it's painful to get to yes, we get to know very easy. Uh, and um it hurts, it it denies us opportunities um to build a stronger, more competitive economy. Um, you know, think of our promise to going back to construction, to young people who are pursuing a career in the trades, to people who are contractors who are working on these projects and want to build these, have the skill, are taking risk, they deserve better. They deserve more from government than what we're getting, what we're giving them. So we're letting them down. And for some of those people, they decide, okay, I'm gonna move, I'm gonna leave this province, I'm gonna go to Alberta or somewhere else. And we can't afford to lose our talent, the people with ambition, people with skills, people who want to build, the builders, like our country, our province was built by people who have ambition, who have initiative, want to work hard. And um, we're doing them a great disservice by putting, you know, roadblock after roadblock, red tape, regulation, taxes, codes that don't make sense, just the delay after delay of getting projects approved. And that means that we can't answer the biggest one of the biggest challenges we're facing is build more, build faster, and build affordably. We're falling down on that.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:30

Yeah, and and and at the time of this podcast, we um, you know, there's this uh tragedy that happened in New York, and um you know, we lost like two young pilots. And I I kind of see this as a learning lesson, as a metaphor. You know, two young people's lives are gone because of a mistake somewhere at air traffic control. They had they could not move that plane, no matter how much talent or whatever could have happened, they're going a hundred kilometers an hour landing and a fire truck goes in front of them based on a miscommunication. And then the communication you hear from the tower is that was tough. I messed up. It's like this that is like if you that metaphor of our youth are like these pilots. And we've got people driving fire trucks across runways. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:46

Listen, you know, that's a story of lack of like governments not investing enough in air traffic control. They've got, you know, I think the the reports that are coming out is across the country in the United States, they they could be there's short thousands of air traffic controllers. So it's an enormous amount of pressure being put on those who are doing the job. Uh, lack of you know, investing in infrastructure to improve airport runways and and and how things flow on the runway. Um, and you know, we've we've got to do better and in Canada. Uh, we've got to invest more in how we build the infrastructure so that we can compete and we can move goods and people more effectively. Um and we can provide, there's no point in saying we need more skilled tradespeople and we can't get the projects approved to put them to work. Uh and so that's you know, we're we you know, Build Force is projecting that we're gonna need 700,000 tradespeople between now and over the next decade. Yeah. And uh we're nowhere near um putting that many tradespeople to work. Um, so our whole system is upside down. We've got great up great potential, great opportunities. Uh, we've just got to kind of we've got to get out of our own way.

unknown 1:26:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:02

Well, you're you're doing an amazing job about what uh what you're doing with the ICBA and and I think everyone uh in British Columbia thanks you for everything that you're you're doing for them. Your membership base is all over uh supporting Chris.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:18

Well, you know, listen, we um construction, it's 10% of our economy. Uh it's about 250,000 men and women who woke up today in BC and went to work. Um the work they do is me, you see it around us every single day. And we've got to do more to support them and give them reasons to stay in British Columbia, to start contracting businesses, to help build more homes and more infrastructure, more energy projects. Uh, what could be more exciting than mobilizing all that energy, uh, the skill, the expertise, the equipment, the people? Um, construction's outstanding. So, what's not to like about construction?

SPEAKER_04 1:26:55

It's very, very cool. All right, Chris. Well, this has been awesome. Um, thank you for coming downtown to the studio here. It's great. It's great to be here. Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Yeah, you're very welcome. Okay, thank you. Well, that does it for another episode of The Slide. 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 Slipnexystems.com slash the Slipwitch, where you'll get industry insights, protests, and everything you need to know about Slight Business Podcast and Skype. The job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond it. SlipNecks is also the engine and how it is populated. All right, let's get back to the city.