In national news, the value of Canada-wide building permits rose to $11.2 billion in December, an increase of more than 20% since December 2020. The overall 2021 increase in the value of building permits was the strongest ever recorded at 25.6%.
In national news, the federal government announced measures intended to increase recruitment in the skilled trades, including an advertising campaign and the unveiling of a new website. The website is designed as a “one-stop national repository for information about the skilled trades”, including notices about the most in-demand trades in each region and listings of all the financial support for training currently available.
In Ontario, the coroner’s inquest into the 2009 deaths of four construction workers due to the collapse of a swing stage is now complete. Seven recommendations have resulted, including enhancing the training of supervisors of workers working at heights, accelerating the frequency of refresher courses for using safety equipment associated with working at heights, and instituting a system to better track whether construction safety education is effectual.
In Ontario, Toronto’s city council has approved an expansion in the eligibility of municipal property owners to construct garden suites, the common name for separate, secondary housing units built on the same lot as an existing house.
In B.C., Altus Group’s Canadian Cost Guide 2022 has identified Vancouver as the Canadian city with the highest residential construction costs. The index, which measures costs per square foot, also reflected a Canada-wide increase in the cost to construct a standard detached house of 3.4%, while the cost of a custom home increased by 11.1%.