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I’m traditionally very anti-millitary, but with the increased pressure from Russia and the war in Ukraine I think this is a good call. If we make ourselves look like too easy a target, or make our allies feel like we are not willing to pull our weight, we are undermining ourselves.
Wonder how many houses we can build with that money.
Construction labour in Canada is near 100% utilization in Canada. There is no glut of qualified construction tradespeople just sitting around waiting for funding. So on its own without qualification the answer to your question is approximately zero more homes than would otherwise be built.
We should prioritise immigrants with construction skills then. There should be some within the hundreds of thousands of applicants.
Why are we not training more construction workers? Do they expect the immigration growth will bring the houses with them?
If you look here, you’ll see that all the trades involved in housing construction are on the list for fast-track immigration already.
As for training, we may find that it’s more the number of people leaving the trades that is the problem. It’s not that the pay is bad, exactly, but it’s an industry extremely prone to boom/bust cycles. People leave for jobs with some sense of stability. Increasing unionization and enhancing EI might be more cost effective than funding more training.
Having done it m youth it is also very hard on your body. Not everyone can do it for decades on end as injuries can pile up. My father was an electrician for 30 yrs but eventually his knees gave out on him and his hands. He used to have forearms like Popeye but now has difficulty gripping anything because of repetitive injury to his thumbs.
Thats interesting, wasn’t aware of the cyclical nature! I thought that construction happens all year round? Or is it due to poor staffing?
Construction is heaaaavily influenced seasonally. Thats obviously largely dependent on the field of construction (ie residential, commercial, heavy construction, underground, factory, etc)
A large number of the contractors I work with either lay everyone off, or fully shut down over the winter. As soon as things start freezing, construction costs skyrocket. Daylight hours mean fewer working hours (unless you want to provide sufficient lighting, which is another expense), quarries and pits close, concrete requires winter heat and heating for the first 3 days to sufficiently cure, etc.
Additionally, construction is very boom/bust, where the rest of the economy impacts how much work is available for them. Right now, theres a huge demand. But go back and theres been two or three big slow downs in the residential construction industry in the last 15 years, which pushes people to other jobs (as mentioned by the other poster). When the economy is slow, there’s less investment in infrastructure by corporations, meaning there’s less demand for factory/commercial construction, and the host of trades that go with it.
Trades are a specific job that often have lots of working experience, so when a good quality tradesperson leaves, its hard to get the experience and knowledge to replace them effectively.
Very interesting! Seasonality is interesting, I assumed construction could still happen in winter, but higher cost definitely makes sense in terms of effectively reducing it to a minimum level.
Sad that economy plays a big role in terms of essentially laying off a lot of workers (forcing some to quit the industry). I wonder if that also applies to the manufacturing and car industry too
Wouldn’t that be due to the weather?
Construction labour in Canada is near 100% utilization in Canada.
True but there are other ways to spend money that doesn’t involve having more construction happening at once. For example, buying land to be used for non-market housing. This one taken seriously would dry up the whole 73B already. Buy already built properties, give more financial incentives for multi-family housing, etc. There’s a long list of things of expensive solutions waiting.
Send that money to provinces tied to strict usage rules towards transit oriented development and non-market housing. For example, Translink needs funding and expanding mass transit is one way to improve the housing crisis.
Arguably one of Canada’s greatest contributions to WW2 was our production of the CanPat trucks.
“Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics” was the quote from Gen. Omar Bradley IIRC, and I imagine in any conflict we become embroiled in (or wish to dissuade someone else from becoming embroiled in) we can contribute greatly to the logistics side.
I’d like to see a Canadian version of the US’ Army Corps of Engineers. Right now, it could help with natural disasters, and could also help with infrastructure projects. In a conflict, they could prove invaluable in actually getting fuel and supplies to the conflict zone.
Coastal patrol and Arctic patrol are two other areas where I think Canada has to stand alone to some extent.
Alright, it’s funny how a similar post on investing in public compute for AI got comments on “what about housing” upvoted to the top, while this comment gets downvoted with very little “discussions”.
Now that it’s the military all of a sudden there’s nothing to criticize, guess it’s a good investment that will not end up in the pocket of the military?
Again, not saying the military shouldn’t be getting that money; clearly arctic defense is not off the table with how Russia has been acting. What I’m saying is how differently people here react to doing something crucial like building a national AI strategy that could hedge against private-held automation technology, vs spending on the military to potentially defend against Russians.
Yes, housing needs more money (and better planning), but so does public AI infrastructure (used to benefit Canadians) and military.
Definitely some. I’m sure they’ll be building housing for the staff on site at the “Arctic satellite ground station” and “northern operations hubs”.
Just join the army. Free room and board.
preparing for war.
just what we needed, great!
Better than not preparing for war. I can’t see how Trudeau would be responsible for Russian aggression and Israel antagonizing every Islamic country around them and just goading them to strike back, or China’s ambition to retake Taiwan…
We don’t need war but it would stupid to just stick our heads in the sand. It’s not like we can send out diplomats and pray for world peace.