ICBA Coffee & Construction

Jordan Bateman
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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.

  1. 20h ago

    C&C #33: $40 Billion On Its Way?

    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

  2. 2d ago

    C&C #32: The MEGA Deduction Arrives

    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

  3. 4d ago

    C&C #31: The World's Money Comes to Toronto

    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

  4. Sep 11

    C&C #30: Ottawa Deletes a Review Layer

    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

  5. Sep 4

    C&C #28: Build Like It's Wartime

    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

  6. Sep 2

    C&C #27: WorkSafeBC Wants To Run Your Business

    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-companyICBA'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

  7. Aug 31

    C&C #26: Mind the Investment Gap

    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

  8. Aug 28

    C&C #25: GDP, Alberta Rebound, and a Jordan Rant on the State of B.C.

    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

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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Jordan Bateman
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    32
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Jordan Bateman
  • Show Website
    ICBA Coffee & Construction