November 5, 2009
CanaData Conference 2009
Carrick renews call for common currency, borderless crossings
As the Canadian dollar flirts with parity with the U.S. greenback, CanaData’s chief economist Alex Carrick is urging both countries to consider adopting a common currency.
“We should move to a system like they have in Europe with the euro,” Carrick said in an interview during the CanaData Construction Industry Forecasts Conference in Toronto last month.
“And as far as that goes, strive towards borderless crossings. The increase in productivity for the economies of both countries would just be enormous.”
Carrick went on to discuss the impact of a rising loonie on the Canadian construction industry, outlining the good (cheaper equipment imports from the U.S.) and the not so good (domestic building products manufacturers competing with those cheaper imports).
“You save accounting problems, you save uncertainty problems if you have a fixed relationship between the two currencies,” he said.
Check out the executive summary from the 2009 CanaData Conference.
VIDEO: B.C. Construction Association welcomes standardized contract forms
Standardized construction documents are long overdue, says the president of the B.C. Construction Association.
Port Mann Bridge under construction
Time-lapse footage shows the progress of construction of the new Port Mann Bridge in Metro Vancouver.
VIDEO: How effective has stimulus spending been?
If you want a good indication of how effective government stimulus spending has been in Canada, look at the “remarkable” institutional starts statistics for the first half of 2010, CanaData chief economist Alex Carrick says.
VIDEO: Owners must lead charge toward BIM adoption
The greatest challenge in getting the architecture, engineering and construction industries to embrace building information modeling is convincing individual players they’d be better off working collaboratively, says the chair of the Canada BIM Council.
VIDEO: Canada’s economy is slowing down
As fall approaches, the Canadian economy is slowing down, but this lower growth is due to factors that beyond the nation’s control, says CanaData Chief Economist Alex Carrick.
VIDEO: Canada should embrace rainscreen cladding systems
Canada has been too slow to embrace rainscreen cladding systems, despite the advantages they offer in terms of better performance, low-cost maintenance and longer-lasting structures, says a distributor of architectural building products.
VIDEO: Ontario General Contractors Association shows support for Gold Seal
All the directors on the board of the Ontario General Contractors Association have become Gold Seal Champions, part of an effort to help promote the national construction certification program.
VIDEO: Green building critical in triple bottom line accounting
Building design and construction standards will undergo significant changes as “triple bottom line” accounting becomes more commonplace in the industry, says a Saskatchewan-based economist.
VIDEO: Boom truck tips over at Vancouver condo project
A boom truck tipped over while delivering lumber to a low-rise condominium construction project in Vancouver’s trendy Kitsilano neighbourhood, near Vine Street and First Avenue.
