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.
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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.
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