February 8, 2010
Ontario Road Builders’ Association convention
McGuinty: We can’t take our foot off ‘public dollar gas pedal’ too quickly
The province must be careful how quickly it “takes (its) foot off the public dollar gas pedal,” Premier Dalton McGuinty told the Ontario Road Builders’ Association during the group’s annual convention in Toronto Feb. 1.
“If banks are reluctant to lend and the private sector is not doing that much spending and consumer confidence isn’t where it should be, we’ve got to be very careful about moving too quickly in government to remove public dollars from the economy,” said McGuinty.
He noted that his government has invested $2.4 billion to support the expansion and rehabilitation of roads and bridges, the largest investment of its kind in the history of the province.
“It seems to me you and I have a shared obligation to protect the system we’ve created and in large measure inherited and strengthen this backbone of our economy – our roads highways and bridges – so that when this global recession fully releases us from its grip, the infrastructure that we need in order to find opportunity and success is built and ready to keep our people and our province moving forward,” McGuinty said.
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.
