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The news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta. ICBA Coffee & Construction is a fast, no-spin briefing for construction and resource business owners — the projects, the politics, and the policy decisions that hit your job site and your bottom line. Hosted by Jordan Bateman of ICBA, Canada's largest construction association, from a free-enterprise point of view. Inflation, pipelines, megaproject overruns, housing, labour, red tape — we cut through the headlines and tell you what it actually means for your business. Sharp, useful, and under ten minutes. New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Subscribe, and send it to one person who builds for a living. Learn more at icba.ca. For the economics behind the headlines, subscribe to ICBA's twice-weekly EconoBot briefing at icba.ca/economics.
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Reuters says the partners in LNG Canada could approve a second $40-billion plant in Kitimat as early as October. Two days after the investment summit closed, the first real deal is on the table. Meanwhile David Eby says he's getting ready for an election, half of B.C. says it has no party worth cheering for, and Alberta's own report puts the price of leaving Canada at up to $170 billion. Episode 33 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ THE BIG ONE: LNG Canada Phase 2. Three sources tell Reuters a final investment decision could come as early as October. Two more trains, another 14 MILLION tonnes a year, and the biggest private construction decision in B.C. since Phase 1. Shell says the decision depends on "competitiveness and affordability, government support and stakeholder needs." Victoria, that's your cue. 🗳️ Eby tells his caucus to be "election ready." A one-seat majority, nine Conservative defections, and Angus Reid's new numbers: NDP 41, Conservatives 37, and 51% of British Columbians calling themselves political orphans. Plus the report card nobody in Victoria wants to talk about: B.C.'s population is shrinking for the first time in 151 years. 🚧 Three shovels in the ground. Emil Anderson gets the $119.4-MILLION Peardonville Road crossing on Highway 1 in Abbotsford, starting nine days before the byelection. Calgary Airports breaks ground on a $40-million aviation training centre. JWest starts its $234-million first phase at Oak and 41st. 💸 Alberta's government puts a price on separation: $50 billion to $170 BILLION over five years, 70,000 new civil servants, and a hardball scenario where the economy shrinks 16.2%. Finance Minister Jason Nixon says that's why the answer on October 19 is No. 👷 Ottawa puts $880 million into paid four-month trades placements, a $5,000 Red Seal bonus, and an EI top-up for apprentices. TRU adds 800 seats. Good — and here's the one ask: open it to every employer training the kid, not just union halls. 🌉 ICBA files on Roberts Bank Terminal 2: 18,000 construction jobs, a port ranked 375th of 405, and 13 years in the federal system. Chris Gardner: "Canada's permitting system is where good projects go to stall." 🎙️ Next Friday: Abbotsford-Mission votes. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics
For every dollar per worker an American business puts into machinery and equipment, a Canadian company puts in 32 cents. That's the whole Canadian productivity story in one number — and this week Ottawa finally went after it. The new Productivity Mega Deduction lets you write off the whole machine the year it goes to work instead of a spoonful a year for a decade. It applies to anything acquired on or after September 15. That's yesterday. Episode 32 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ THE BIG ONE: The Productivity Mega Deduction, explained properly. What capital cost allowance actually costs you, why the TIMING of a writeoff is the whole game, what's covered and what isn't — and the number nobody else is quoting: construction's effective tax rate on new investment drops from 18.3% to 13%, against 22.2% in the United States. We were four points ahead of the Americans. We're now nine. 💸 Nearly $500 BILLION pledged at the Canada Investment Summit — a $50-billion Maple Fund, $150 billion from TD, $100 billion-plus from Scotiabank. Nobody signs a pipeline at a conference. Here's what those pledges actually are, and why Chris Gardner's "faster, cheaper, smarter" is the next step. 🚧 613 JOBS IN WELLS. Osisko Gold's board gives the formal green light to build Cariboo Gold — $990 million, a 30-month build, first gold in early 2029. Eleven years from the first drill to a construction decision. That's the good news and the problem in one project. 🌉 Ottawa puts YVR and Calgary International in play — long-term private concessions on the two front doors for western Canadian trade. 📉 July building permits land the same morning: down 17.3% in a month, to $12.2 billion. Pledges are next year's work. Permits are this year's. 🗳️ Calgary-Shaw flips by 582 VOTES in a seat the UCP has held since 2019. A vote split, or the October 19 referendum? And what either answer means for the province asking the world to invest in it. 🛢️ Ksi Lisims LNG signs its THIRD international buyer in twelve months — 20 years, one million tonnes a year, with a final investment decision targeted before Christmas. And there's a new federal writeoff aimed squarely at it. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics
Inflation stuck at three per cent this morning, with gas still up 23 per cent and Brent back above $108. And tonight, 250 people who run companies overseeing nearly $120 trillion sit down to dinner with Mark Carney in Toronto. He wants $1 trillion of it. The pitch book has 167 projects — and a lot of them are ours. Episode 31 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ THE BIG ONE: Canada's first investment summit. Ksi Lisims LNG at US$28.5 BILLION and "shovel-ready." The West Coast Oil Pipeline — a million barrels a day, 1,250 kilometres, Bruderheim to a deepwater port in southern B.C. Edmonton–Calgary high-speed rail at $10.9 billion. Two Indigenous-owned B.C. wind farms. Danielle Smith brought 34 Alberta projects, every one $200 million or bigger. Carney says deals are already signed. Investors don't buy projects — they buy certainty. So what's David Eby selling from a province where a substation takes six years? 📉 Jock Finlayson's summit-day piece: Wanted — An Agenda to Boost Investment in Canada. Canadian companies invest 55–60 cents per worker for every U.S. dollar. A construction permit took almost 250 DAYS in 2020. A new mine, 15-plus years. Top personal tax rate 53–54 per cent. His fixes: one lower business rate with fewer carve-outs, immediate write-off of investment in every sector, and red-tape reform everywhere — not just for a handful of "national interest" projects. 💸 Breaking this morning: August inflation 3.0 per cent, unchanged. Gas up 22.8 per cent, groceries up 2.8, rent up 2.8. A three in front of inflation means no Bank of Canada cut on October 28. Rate relief is dead. 🖥️ Alberta's gas bottleneck. A leaked cabinet report says TC Energy's Nova system is full until 2029 and data centre builders could walk. The fix it floated: two Crown corporations, $54–163 MILLION. Danielle Smith's answer Saturday: "unlikely" — the private sector can build it. Meanwhile BC Hydro promised to name its data-centre winners by mid-September. It's mid-September. 🛢️ Four days. Ottawa is taking public comment on listing the West Coast Oil Pipeline as a project of national interest — deadline Friday, September 18. Email WCOPComment-CommentaireOCO@mpo-bgp.gc.ca, subject line "WCOP Comment." Ottawa's own numbers: 140,000 jobs at peak construction, 70,000 in B.C., 45,000 in Alberta. Tell them the work should go to the best bid, not the right union card. 🗳️ The kicker: polls open in Calgary-Shaw. Mike Derry for the UCP, Kyle Campbell for the NDP, three others on the ballot. Polls close at 8. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics
Wednesday, in the Canada Gazette, Ottawa took pipelines, transmission lines, oilsands projects and gas-fired power off the Impact Assessment Agency's desk. One regulator now instead of two. Then ICBA filed on the West Coast pipeline, Alberta broke ground twice in two days, and B.C.'s forest sector told the Premier it's at the breaking point. Episode 30 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ THE BIG ONE: Ottawa cuts a whole layer of federal review. Cross-border pipelines and transmission lines, offshore renewables, certain oilsands projects and gas-fired power now get reviewed by the Canada Energy Regulator ALONE. Same homework, one teacher marking it. And in Quebec, one assessment instead of two. What it doesn't touch: a single line of B.C.'s permitting. 🛢️ ICBA files with Minister Dominic LeBlanc: put the West Coast Oil Pipeline on Schedule 1 of the Building Canada Act by OCTOBER 1, and construction can start September 2027. $29–38 BILLION of construction spending in B.C. between 2026 and 2038. Up to 140,000 jobs nationally, as many as 70,000 here. One condition — every contract tendered open, competitive and labour-neutral. 📉 Why now: ICBA's 2026 Construction Wage and Benefit Survey found ONE IN FIVE member companies expect less work this year. The ones bracing for a drop forecast an average 25 per cent decline. 🚧 Two groundbreakings in two days, both in Alberta. The Origins carbon capture hub near Clive starts construction and runs by January 2027. NAIT breaks ground in Edmonton on a $779-MILLION, 625,000-square-foot Advanced Skills Centre — PCL building it, 29 trades and technology programs, room for 5,500 more students — and it went to construction a full year AHEAD of schedule. 🌉 Meanwhile in B.C.: 272 new trades seats at BCIT, and two new BC Hydro substations replacing Murrin (1947) and Dal Grauer (1952). A hundred thousand customers. In service 2031 and 2032. 🌲 "Breaking point." COFI, the BC First Nations Forestry Council and the Truck Loggers Association write David Eby asking for a forestry crisis action group and a freeze on new provincial costs. Their word for the sector's problems: HOMEGROWN. 💸 The kicker: Beedie and La Caisse put $1 billion down on Canadian industrial real estate, targeting $2 billion. Governments announce. Investors commit. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics
Canada lost 42,000 jobs in August. Or did it? Monthly job numbers bounce like a pickup on a logging road. Meanwhile, ICBA filed its pre-budget submission with Ottawa this morning: 15 recommendations, starting with the number that explains the last decade — in 2014 a Canadian company invested 87 cents per worker for every U.S. dollar. By 2024, 54 cents. We stopped building capacity before Trump showed up. Episode 28 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ THE BIG ONE: ICBA's letter to Finance Minister Champagne. Cut federal project reviews to UNDER A YEAR for everyone, not just Bill C-5 favourites. Cut 149,000 federal regulatory requirements by 10% by end of 2027. Overhaul a tax system ranked 22nd of 38 in the OECD. Fix the ports before this fall's ILWU round — 24 days of shutdowns cost $19.2 billion in cargo and delayed 79% of ICBA members' projects. And open Ottawa's $331-million training fund to the 85% of B.C. and 88% of Alberta construction workers who aren't in a building-trades union. 📉 August jobs: Canada -42,000 against a forecast of +15,000. B.C. up to 6.5%, Alberta down to 6.8%, Kelowna at 9%. Why one month is noise and the quarter is the number that matters. 🌉 Shovels in on the North Coast Transmission Line in Prince George — roughly $6 BILLION for Phases 1 and 2, $3.9 billion from Ottawa and Victoria, 1,400 workers at peak, Phase 1 done mid-2030. Co-ownership deals with five First Nations still to be signed by year-end. 🛢️ Trans Mountain files a $3.97-billion expansion with the CER — 11 pump stations, 30 km of pipe, another 210,000 barrels a day by late 2028. The line ran 94% FULL in Q2, and nearly two-thirds of tankers since 2024 went to Asia. Plus Danielle Smith on why the U.S.–Venezuela oil deal makes the West Coast pipeline case stronger, with the national-interest decision due October 1. 💸 B.C. overstated its gas royalties by $1.46 BILLION over five years — about $300 million a year — because someone treated Canadian dollars as U.S. dollars in a spreadsheet. Treaty 8 First Nations flagged it in July. 🎙️ No show Monday — it's Labour Day. Back Wednesday. And a thank-you to the 265,000 people who build for a living. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics Read more on today's stories: ICBA housing submission to Ottawa (the seven fixes): https://icba.ca/ab-blog/submission-what-we-told-ottawa-about-the-housing-pipeline-1 August jobs by province (CP/BNN): https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/economics/2026/09/04/heres-a-quick-glance-at-unemployment-rates-for-august-by-province/ August jobs by city (CP/BNN): https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/economics/2026/09/04/heres-a-quick-glance-at-unemployment-rates-for-august-by-canadian-city/ North Coast Transmission Line construction start (B.C. government): https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2026PREM0034-001026 NCTL coverage (Journal of Commerce): https://canada.constructconnect.com/joc/news/infrastructure/2026/09/construction-begins-on-major-b-c-transmission-line-aimed-at-powering-northwest Trans Mountain $3.97B expansion (Chamber of Shipping): https://shippingmatters.ca/trans-mountain-proposes-4-billion-expansion-to-boost-oil-exports-to-asia/ Smith on the Venezuela deal (Varcoe, EnergyNow): https://energynow.ca/2026/09/varcoe-u-s-oil-deal-with-venezuela-significant-competitive-threat-to-alberta-oilsands/ B.C.'s $1.5B gas royalty error (Black Press): https://saanichnews.com/2026/09/01/b-c-says-1-5b-gas-royalty-accounting-error-result-of-spreadsheet-mistake/ ICBA Coffee & Construction drops every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe, hit the bell, and send this one to somebody who builds for a living. ICBA is Canada's largest construction association — the voice of B.C. and Alberta's open-shop builders: https://icba.ca #construction #bcpoli #abpoli #cdnpoli #Budget2026 #TransMountain #PrinceGeorge #BCHydro #skilledtrades #ICBA
WorkSafeBC has proposed the biggest expansion of its own authority in a generation. A new class of hazard that covers "the design and management of work" — your crew size, your schedule, your workload, your deadlines. A written risk assessment for every one of them. And a standard nobody can define until after a complaint gets filed. Employers got eight weeks to respond, in the middle of construction season. The deadline is October 9. Episode 27 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ THE BIG ONE: WorkSafeBC's proposed Part 4.1 would make B.C. the only place in Canada where an officer can audit how you schedule your crews. Psychological-injury-only claims are already up 48 PER CENT since 2021 under the rules we have now. Construction accounted for 299 of the 28,593 violence-related claims B.C. accepted in a decade — about 30 a year, one for every 8,000 workers. This lands on 28,173 companies, 92% of which have fewer than 20 people. 💸 The Bank of Canada held at 2.25% this morning — a seventh straight hold. Inflation's near 3%, but strip out gasoline and it's 2.2%. Next decision: October 28. 👷 Internal trade ministers ratified a 30-DAY service standard on labour mobility applications, with free trade in services targeted by the end of the year. 🚧 Alberta designated the Greenview Industrial Gateway a Designated Industrial Zone — 75 square kilometres in the Peace, only the province's second. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics Read more on today's stories: ICBA on the WorkSafeBC proposal: https://icba.ca/bc-blog/worksafebc-wants-to-regulate-how-you-run-your-company ICBA's full submission to WorkSafeBC (PDF): https://icba.ca/hubfs/Advocacy%20items%20etc%20(Jordan)/WSBC_Psychological%20Safety_Sept%201%202026%20FINAL.pdf ICBA Coffee & Construction drops every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe, hit the bell, and send this one to somebody who builds for a living. ICBA is Canada's largest construction association — the voice of B.C. and Alberta's open-shop builders: https://icba.ca #construction #bcpoli #WorkSafeBC #WorkersCompensation #BCbusiness #abpoli #interestrates #Alberta #ICBA
Natural Resources Canada counted 504 major resource projects across the country — $633 billion of potential capital spending. ICBA Economics went and counted what's been announced since, and added another hundred billion. Call it three quarters of a trillion dollars sitting on the books. The only question that matters is how much of it actually gets poured. Episode 26 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ THE BIG ONE: $750 BILLION of resource projects on Canada's books, if they all proceed. ICBA Chief Economist Jock Finlayson on the investment gap standing between announced and built — taxes, regulation, infrastructure bottlenecks, and not enough skilled trades. 🛢️ Natural resources are 16% of Canada's GDP, 1.8 million jobs, and more than half of everything this country sells to the world. More than TWO THIRDS of the people working in it hold a degree, a diploma or a trades ticket. 💸 In 2025, more foreign money came into Canada than left — the first time in a decade. But most of it bought companies and assets that already existed instead of building new capacity. Buying the building isn't the same as building the building. 🏠 B.C. capped 2027 rent increases at 2.2%. Asking rents across the province are already down 4.5%, and down 12.4% in ABBOTSFORD. The cap isn't what's binding — and CMHC has Vancouver housing starts sliding toward the low 20,000s by 2028. 🚧 Where the work is: construction starts on BCIT's $48-MILLION South Campus renewal in Burnaby, the $130-million Highway 7 four-laning between Maple Ridge and Mission is finished, and Ottawa puts $23.5 million into six B.C. airports — Masset, Prince Rupert, Smithers, Bella Coola, Kamloops and Fort Nelson. 🌉 Highway 1 reopened through the Fraser Canyon after 50 DAYS closed. Every load to the Interior went longer and cost more, and every extra kilometre came out of somebody's margin. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics
Wednesday night, in the back of a downtown Vancouver White Spot, a couple dozen people were supposed to talk about the future of free enterprise in British Columbia. More than 60 walked in. Standing room only. Jordan Bateman was there — and he came out more optimistic than he's been in a long time. Here's the rant that came with it: the Eby record, the mess the BC Conservatives have made, and the one thing that actually matters. Episode 25 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: 📈 GDP grew 3.3 PER CENT annualized in Q2 — the fastest in more than three years, with business capital investment up 2.3% after five straight quarters of decline. The catch: that quarter closed June 30, seven weeks before the trade talks collapsed. 🇺🇸 Ottawa rewrote its counter-tariff list Thursday. Seafood came off after East Coast processors lobbied hard — and copper wire went ON at 50 PER CENT. Every wall, every panel, every service upgrade, every EV charger you rough in. Electrical contractors: your Wednesday quotes are already out of date, and September 8 is 11 days out. ☕ THE BIG ONE — THE RANT: David Eby's record laid out cold. A $7.7-BILLION deficit, the largest in B.C. history — bigger than any COVID deficit — and $13.3 billion budgeted this year. $4 BILLION of promised hospitals, schools and roads postponed; the minister calls it "slippage," contractors call it tenders that never came. 23 mills gone. Interfor running its head office out of Georgia. More people leaving B.C. for other provinces than arriving. Then the BC Conservative implosion — said with concern, not glee — and Jordan's bottom line: the brand name doesn't matter. The plan and the people do. 💸 Alberta flips a projected $9.4-BILLION deficit into a $2-BILLION surplus on US$88 oil. B.C. — sitting on gas, critical minerals and timber — is budgeting a $13.3-billion deficit. Same country. Same commodity cycle. Very different choices. 🔧 CAN'T REPLACE IT? TELL US. If a counter-tariff line will break your business — an American input with no Canadian, European or Asian substitute — ICBA is making that case in Ottawa and needs concrete examples. Write your MP, and email Jordan directly: jordan@icba.ca 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics
No deal. Late Friday night, the Canada-U.S. trade talks collapsed — and at 12:01 Saturday morning, 50 per cent American tariffs hit roughly $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Cement. Lumber, plywood, doors. Machinery. Even hockey sticks. Seventy years of building things together, and it's come to this. Episode 23 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. One story today, because it's that big — in three parts: what happened, what it does to your job sites, and where Canada goes from here. 💣 THE BIG ONE: 50% tariffs on $20 BILLION of Canadian goods, live since 12:01 Saturday morning — and this time there's no CUSMA workaround. Meeting the trade deal's rules of origin gets you nothing. 🇺🇸 THE ESCALATION: Monday morning, President Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks and auto parts — 25 to 50 per cent — starting January 1. The temperature is not coming down. 💸 THE PART SNEAKING UP ON YOU: Canada answers September 8, dollar for dollar — and the early list (American steel, appliances, agricultural equipment, electronics) walks straight onto your job site. The product-by-product schedule ISN'T FINAL yet — there's still time to tell Ottawa which American inputs your business can't replace. 🔧 THE PLAYBOOK: reprice everything that crosses the border, shorten your quote life, put a tariff clause in every contract, and pull the HS codes on your top 20 inputs so you know your exposure instead of guessing at it. 🇨🇦 WHERE CANADA GOES FROM HERE: Team Canada — no joy in this fight, and the way out is to build. Knock down the trade walls between provinces, get our resources to tidewater, and move at the speed Ottawa just showed with its $70 BILLION Labrador clean-energy backing. 👷 PLUS: ICBA Chief Economist Jock Finlayson on the $650 BILLION B.C.-Alberta project inventory — and why the coming construction worker crunch could be 3-4 TIMES bigger than official forecasts. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics ICBA Coffee & Construction drops every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe, hit the bell, and send this one to somebody who builds for a living. ICBA is Canada's largest construction association — the voice of B.C. and Alberta's open-shop builders: https://icba.ca #construction #bcpoli #abpoli #tariffs #tradewar #canadianeconomy #BCconstruction #Alberta #TeamCanada #ICBA
Two pipelines. Two LNG plants. One housing market flat on its back. The next four months decide all of it — so Jordan Bateman went to the boss. Chris Gardner, president and CEO of ICBA, Canada's largest construction association, on the decisions coming at B.C. builders this fall and what has to happen to win them. Episode 22 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ DECISION SEASON: the West Coast Oil Pipeline — 1 MILLION barrels a day, Bruderheim to Delta — sits in the Canada Gazette right now. Comment window closes September 18. A national-interest designation could come as early as October 1. Chris on whether this window is real. 🛢️ LNG Canada decides on Phase 2 by the end of 2026 — doubling Kitimat. Ksi Lisims is signing 20-year deals with German utilities. Woodfibre is past 70% built. What B.C. must do — or stop doing — before December. 🏠 Ottawa's Build Canada Homes has committed 17,000 non-market homes and has about 1,900 under construction — while the private builders who put up nearly every home in Canada park their trucks. Chris walks through what fees, taxes and delays do to the math on one house. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics
On October 1, every engineering bill in British Columbia gets seven per cent more expensive. Every architect's invoice. Every accountant's. Even the legislature's own finance committee says don't do it. In a first for the show, Jordan Bateman sits down with a guest from outside ICBA: Gavin Dew, MLA for Kelowna-Mission and the Conservative critic for Economic Development — a small-business owner who's read a payroll from both sides of the desk. Episode 21 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ THE OCTOBER 1 TAX: Budget 2026 expands the 7% PST to engineering, architecture, accounting and geoscience services — a tax on the paperwork before a shovel ever hits the ground. Dew has called it a stealth tax since spring; now the finance committee has recommended repeal. Can it be stopped in time? 🖥️ The data centre boom is one province over. Alberta is running town halls for tens of billions in proposals while B.C. is barely in the conversation. 📉 The fall file: B.C. added 2,300 jobs in the past year. Alberta added 91,000. What the jobs critic hammers when the House comes back — and what employers watching should do about it. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics
Site C. Coastal GasLink. Trans Mountain. LNG Canada Phase One. The wave of megaprojects that carried British Columbia for a decade has finished — basically all at once. A second wave is lining up behind it. But lining up isn't the same as starting, and somewhere in between is a stretch where the phone stops ringing. Episode 20 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. A special regional edition: a full sit-down with Mike Davis, ICBA's Vice President, Regional, on the two-thirds of B.C. that gets too little attention from the media and government — Vancouver Island, the Okanagan, the Kootenays, the Interior and the north. In this episode: 🗺️ THE MOOD. Mike tours this province constantly. Are people optimistic or white-knuckling it? 🌲 THE FORESTRY TOWNS. Cranbrook. Vernon. Williams Lake. Prince George. 🚧 WHAT'S QUEUED. The North Coast Transmission Line. LNG Canada Phase 2. Ksi Lisims. Cedar and Woodfibre already under construction. A run of mine permits and expansions. The work is real — the question is when it starts. 🤝 MEET THE GENERALS AND OWNERS, VICTORIA. ICBA's reverse trade show comes to the Victoria Conference Centre on Tuesday, September 15. The general contractors and owners sit behind the tables; everybody else works the room. 1,000 people. 🎟️ Register for ICBA Meet the Generals & Owners — Vancouver Island: https://events.icba.ca/2026Victoria 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics
A ten-billion-dollar pipeline just hired its first land crew — and the company is rooted in Fort St John. That's how it's supposed to work. Plus: five days to the tariff wall, Calgary builds a front door for trade, and Jock Finlayson runs the numbers on Canada's "move away" from fossil fuels. Episode 19 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ THE BIG ONE: the $10-BILLION Prince Rupert Gas Transmission project awards its first land construction agreement to Surerus Murphy — a joint venture rooted in Fort St John. The 750-km line to the proposed Ksi Lisims LNG site is owned by the Nisga'a Nation and Western LNG, with 15 of 20 First Nations along the route holding equity agreements. 🇺🇸 Five days to the tariff wall: August 19, the U.S. applies 50% duties to about $28 billion of Canadian exports . 🌉 Calgary, Rocky View County and the Canada Infrastructure Bank sign an acceleration agreement for the Prairie Economic Gateway — a rail-anchored inland port on the CPKC mainline that the Calgary Construction Association calls a multi-year runway of work. 🛢️ Jock Finlayson's reality check: fossil fuels are still more than 75% of Canada's energy supply — natural gas 41%, oil a third — while wind, solar and biofuels combined sit at 5%. Barely changed since the late 1990s. https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/finlayson-canadas-move-away-from-fossil-fuels-remains-greatly-exaggerated 🔥 And a check-in on the Okanagan, where crews are building control lines and Summerland's staged re-entry planning is underway. 🎙️ Guest week starts Monday: Mike Davis (ICBA VP of Regions), Wednesday: Kelowna-Mission MLA Gavin Dew on the October 1 PST hike, Friday: ICBA president Chris Gardner. Jordan's back live Monday, August 24.
B.C. just booked the biggest deficit in its history — $7.7 billion — and called it good news. How? One-time money, and $4 billion of hospitals and roads that simply didn't get built. Same week, Alberta swung from a $9.4-billion deficit forecast to an estimated $3.8-billion surplus. One of those is an economy. The other is an accounting trick. Episode 18 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ THE BIG ONE: B.C. closes the books on a record $7.7-BILLION deficit — propped up by $2.6 billion in one-time tobacco money and $4 billion of "slipped" capital projects. Across the Rockies, economist Trevor Tombe estimates Alberta is running a $3.8-billion surplus with oil at US$83. 🏠 Ottawa's new housing agency gets its first board chair. The scorecard so far: 17,000 units committed, about 1,900 under construction — while private builders lay off crews. 🖥️ Alberta launches town halls and an information hub for its data centre boom. That's what getting to yes looks like. 🔥 Plus a check-in on Summerland: the fire's growth is slowing, power is coming back, and a staged re-entry is in the works. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics
Twelve thousand people were ordered out of Summerland just after midnight Saturday. More than twenty thousand people across the Okanagan woke up somewhere else this morning. The people come first today — and then a July jobs report that says B.C. construction hit an all-time high, in the same month developers were laying people off. Episode 17 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ SUMMERLAND FIRST. The Bald Range fire went from 50 hectares to 5,000 in a single evening. What's confirmed, what's rumour — downtown Summerland is intact, and the fire barely grew Sunday. A lot of ICBA members build in the Okanagan. A lot of ICBA members are evacuated in the Okanagan. Same people. Right now, we just want everyone safe. 📉 THE JOBS REPORT THAT DOESN'T SMELL RIGHT. StatCan says B.C. added 17,800 jobs in July and construction hit a record. StatCan's own margin of error on that number: plus or minus 12,100. Nearly 60% of the national gain was self-employment. And the payroll survey — the one economists actually trust — shows B.C. and Alberta construction payrolls FLAT. ICBA Chief Economist Jock Finlayson is putting questions straight to Statistics Canada. 👷 ALBERTA: THE MIRROR. Down 7,300 jobs in July — but up 91,000 on the year, the fastest growth in Canada, with construction up almost 11%. Same survey, same twelve months: Alberta up 91,000, B.C. up 2,300. That's not a gap. That's a verdict. 🚧 WHERE THE WORK IS. The Fraser River Tunnel RFPs promised for "early August" — Infrastructure BC's own page shows none issued, and the second qualification window doesn't close until tomorrow. Nine years, zero lanes, budget doubled. Plus: Ottawa's new $100-million freight rebate for Canadian steel, nine days before American tariffs are set to hit our cement, paint and plywood. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics
Not that long ago, British Columbia was an economic leader in Canada. No more. Too much debt and bloat, not enough investment and revenue. In less than a decade, B.C. has gone from leader to laggard. Episode 16 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. A special edition: a full sit-down with ICBA Chief Economist Jock Finlayson on From Leader to Laggard, the report he co-authored with consulting economist Ken Peacock. In this episode: ☕ "THIS IS NOT A CYCLICAL DOWNTURN." Jock's own line — the province is in the grip of a structural slowdown. What's the difference, and why is the second one so much harder to climb out of? From 2022 to 2024 the government side of B.C.'s economy grew 6.6% a year. The private sector grew 1%. 👷 THE 223,000 JOBS THAT DON'T EXIST. If B.C.'s private sector had kept growing the way it did before the pandemic, we'd have roughly 223,000 more private-sector jobs today. Since 2019, the province has added about 1.3 government jobs for every one private-sector job — more than double the national pace. 💸 SOMEBODY PAYS. The public-sector wage bill has gone from $26.7 billion to $53.2 billion in seven years. Taxpayer-supported debt is on track to TRIPLE in six. Jock and Ken went looking for another province that ran up debt like this — any province, any time — and couldn't find one in half a century. 🇺🇸 DON'T BLAME TRUMP. Everybody in Victoria wants this to be somebody else's fault. The report is blunt: blaming the tariffs is tempting, but B.C. was already on a weaker footing well before the trade fights started in 2025. 📊 Read From Leader to Laggard — free — and subscribe to the ICBA EconoBot briefing: https://icba.ca/economics
A million barrels a day, Bruderheim to the coast. Ottawa started the thirty-day clock on it Saturday of the long weekend — buried in the Canada Gazette, with no release and no tweet. If you believe a project is in the national interest, say so in daylight. Episode 15 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ THE BIG ONE: Ottawa moves to designate the West Coast oil pipeline a project in the national interest under the Building Canada Act. One million barrels a day from Bruderheim, Alberta to a deepwater port at Roberts Bank in Delta. Trans Mountain and Pembina are the partners. Comments close September 18; the target for designation is October 1. Plus a point-by-point answer to the "breakneck speed" crowd — because thirty-four days from public pitch to a legally required notice, on top of a six-week comment window, is not breakneck. It's the statutory process, followed to the letter. 🇺🇸 THE RISK NOBODY NAMES: Canada is the fourth-largest oil producer on earth, and we sell almost all of it to one customer — a customer scheduled to drop a 50% tariff on twenty billion dollars of our goods in two weeks. So explain the calculation where access to the entire Pacific market is the risky option and staying hostage to Washington is the safe one. 🛢️ WE ASKED. HE ANSWERED: Last show we asked whether cabinet solidarity means anything in David Eby's government, after a minister went public against her own cabinet's approval of the $2-billion Tilbury LNG expansion. Turns out the Premier already answered — he says his government is a "big tent," and that on her statement, "we worked together." He helped write it. Eleven hundred construction jobs a year, $260 million in tax revenue, a Musqueam equity stake — approved by his cabinet, then undercut by his cabinet, with his editing help. 🚧 A BILLION DOLLARS FOR PIPE IN THE GROUND: Canada and Alberta sign roughly $938 million for water and wastewater infrastructure to enable new housing. Not a tender — a funding agreement. But servicing is the most binding constraint in this business, and every builder listening has had a project die on a servicing letter. Mains, lift stations, treatment upgrades, reservoirs. Watch your council agendas. 🎙️ THIS FRIDAY — a special edition. ICBA Chief Economist Jock Finlayson, one-on-one, on From Leader to Laggard: the debt, the missing private-sector jobs, and why he says blaming Trump for B.C.'s problems is the easy answer and the wrong one. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics
Nearly $318 billion of work. 1,030 projects. That's Alberta's Major Projects registry — this morning. The question isn't whether the work is there. It's who's going to build it. Episode 14 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. A special edition: our FIRST-EVER guest, ICBA Alberta President Mike Martens. ☕ THE BIG PICTURE: $317.9 BILLION across 1,030 projects on the province's own registry — petrochemical, oil and gas, data centres, schools, Calgary office conversions, a fire hall in Lacombe. Is it a boom, or a pipeline that looks like a boom until you check the start dates? 🖥️ TWO WAVES, ONE REGION: Meta's $13-billion data centre in Sturgeon County (3,000 workers at peak) and Dow's Path2Zero restart in Fort Saskatchewan ($10.1 billion, 4,500–5,500 at peak) — same trades, same corner of the province, overlapping windows 🛢️ OIL AND GAS: Alberta, Ottawa and five oilsands producers sign the Pathways carbon capture memorandum. Is the confidence actually back — or is this still paper and not steel? 🏙️ CALGARY'S CASE STUDY: 21 downtown office conversions, 2.68 million square feet of empty office becoming roughly 2,700 homes — while provincial housing starts cool from 55,800 to 46,000 🔧 WHO BUILDS IT: The building trades unions are about 12% of Alberta's construction workforce. Open shop is everybody else. So why does federal trades money keep landing in the same 12%? 🏗️ ICBA Meet the Generals & Owners — Edmonton, Tuesday, September 29, Edmonton Convention Centre. Western Canada's best day of business development. Register: https://events.icba.ca/edmonton
Interfor started as a coastal logging outfit in British Columbia in 1963. Sixty-three years later, its head office is packing up for Peachtree City, Georgia. Eighty-four per cent of its lumber sales are American now. Episode 13 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ THE BIG ONE: Interfor moves corporate functions from Burnaby to Georgia. The mills went south years ago — now the head office follows. And the numbers behind it: 15,000 B.C. forest sector jobs gone since 2022, 21 mills closed since 2023, and a harvest running 32 million cubic metres against the province's own 45-million target. That's a 13-MILLION-cubic-metre hole. Every year. 🛢️ CABINET NIMBYISM: The Eby cabinet approved FortisBC's $2-billion Tilbury LNG expansion in Delta — 1,100 construction jobs a year, $260 million in tax revenue, a Musqueam equity stake, cleaner marine fuel at the Port of Vancouver. Then a sitting cabinet minister went public against her own government's decision. What should have happened next? She should have resigned. 🎯 WHY LNG IS THE NEW TARGET: The campaign against Canadian energy has moved off pipelines and onto LNG — and the tactics have moved too. Off the regulators, onto the banks, the pension funds and the insurers. Plus the part that complicates the story: Cedar LNG is majority-owned by the Haisla Nation, Ksi Lisims is being developed with the Nisga'a. 🚧 WHERE THE WORK IS: RFPs for the first two Fraser River Tunnel work packages hit the market in early August. Nine years, zero lanes, and a price that's gone from $4.15 billion to $8.5 billion — but the work is real and the paperwork drops next week. Go get it. 🎙️ THIS FRIDAY — a special edition. Our first-ever guest: ICBA Alberta President Mike Martens on the $318 billion sitting in Alberta's project registry, the data centre wave, Dow's Path2Zero restart, and who on earth is going to build it all. 📊 Get the ICBA Economics briefing — the most helpful email you'll get all week: https://icba.ca/economics Read more on today's stories: Interfor shifting corporate functions to Georgia: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/canadian-lumber-company-interfor-migrate-120021442.html B.C.'s forest sector and the harvest gap: https://www.biv.com/news/bc-forest-sector-faces-another-tough-year-in-2026-11793817 Canfor closing the Northwood pulp mill in Prince George: https://todayinbc.com/2026/07/15/canfor-closing-prince-george-northwood-pulp-mill-300-jobs-affected/ Jordan Bateman on cabinet nimbyism and Tilbury: https://icba.ca/bc-blog/icba.ca-op/ed-cabinet-nimbyism-yet-another-ndp-hurdle-to-b.c.-prosperity The Province's Tilbury decision: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2026ECS0043-000870 Why activists are targeting LNG: https://energynow.ca/2026/07/the-new-target-why-anti-oil-and-gas-activists-are-making-canadian-lng-not-pipelines-their-next-major-target/ Fraser River Tunnel procurement and federal funding: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2026TT0066-000796 ICBA Coffee & Construction drops every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe, hit the bell, and send this one to somebody who builds for a living. ICBA is Canada's largest construction association — the voice of B.C. and Alberta's open-shop builders: https://icba.ca #construction #bcpoli #BritishColumbia #forestry #LNG #Delta #PrinceGeorge #housing #ICBA
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