The Toronto Construction Association (TCA) recently hosted its annual Members’ Day and in addition to being an interactive day to showcase products and services, it was also an opportunity to talk about the challenges facing the industry.
The 29th annual event was held at the TCA’s office in Richmond Hill, Ont. and John Mollenhauer, president of the TCA, said he was delighted with the turnout.
“The building was full all day and the feedback was excellent,” he told the Daily Commercial News.
“We had a bunch of members that set up a little display and get to interact with other members and promote their products. There seemed to be a lot of traffic around every part of the building, inside and out. It was everything it’s supposed to be and more.”
Mollenhauer spoke during the event, focusing on immigration, the workforce and the housing crisis and how they’re all connected.
“The volume of construction has been slowing down in large part because so many of the highrise residential projects have either hit pause or, in this world of high interest rates, are unable to get their pre-construction sales thresholds to trigger construction financing,” Mollenhauer noted. “We’ve seen a slowdown in the market but that could turn on a dime. My guess is interest rates will begin coming down mid-summer and when that happens, we may suddenly see a bunch of other things happen. We may see the highrise residential developers suddenly opening their sales offices again…new projects come online, some of the projects that have hit pause come back online. All of a sudden the market has picked back up again and we just don’t have the wherewithal to build them…because we don’t have the workforce we need.”
The challenges and opportunities ahead
The keynote speaker was Bill Ferreira, executive director of BuildForce Canada.
Mollenhauer said Ferreira’s keynote was well received by those in attendance.
“Bill talks about the workforce and puts some context around it, so people understand the severity of the challenge,” said Mollenhauer. “He talked about immigration and what needs to happen in terms of reform for it to make a difference. The system we have now is not bringing in skilled workers, period. It’s a system that awards points in their scoring system that attaches enormous value to education. So for example if you have a degree, that level of higher learning trumps somebody that doesn’t have a degree.
“These are things that would matter most to immigration but don’t help us address a serious workforce shortage in construction where the people are needed most.”
Mollenhauer also expressed concern over the government’s infrastructure commitments.
“The governments are promising that they will keep infrastructure as a priority but if they start cutting infrastructure because they’re all broke, they’re all hurting from COVID and all the spending flurry that’s gone on, you presume that when their revenue is so dramatically affected that ultimately some things that have a large cost attached to them suffer as well and one of them historically has been infrastructure,” explained Mollenhauer. “Even if they make promises about infrastructure spending and then the money doesn’t move very quickly then that will have the same effect because it doesn’t get the money in the hands of the people that need it to continue building.”
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