Following along on the Green Fund investigation, two senior appointees under investigation for ethical violations, and $150 million out of a billion was misappropriated to companies involved with the appointees.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Following along on the Green Fund investigation, two senior appointees under investigation for ethical violations, and $150 million out of a billion was misappropriated to companies involved with the appointees.
Absolutely unbelievable.
Quote:
The investigation, conducted by Ottawa accounting firm Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton, was triggered by a voluminous file of allegations presented to the government by Mr. Ahmad and his colleagues consisting of current and former SDTC employees. The report showed evidence of inappropriate funding, breaches of conflict-of-interest rules and human resources deficiencies. Mr. Ahmad said he estimates that up $150-million could have been granted improperly.
Ottawa will revamp a Second World War-era housing plan to speed up the pace of home building in Canada, Housing Minister Sean Fraser says.
Fraser on Tuesday confirmed Global News’ report from Monday that the federal government was dusting off a program nearly 80 years ago run by what was at the time known as Wartime Housing Ltd. to provide standardized housing blueprints to builders.
“In many instances, these homes were being built in a period of about 36 hours, and we intend to take these lessons from our history books and bring them into the 21st century,” Fraser told reporters in Ottawa.
“We are going to be moving forward with a catalogue of pre-approved designs at the federal level.”
Wow are we ever pathetic as a country. First housing isn't the feds responsibility, now it is. And now we need to enact war time housing acts to get #### done.
Someone should tell him the 'National Building Code' doesn't mean anything to local planning boards whose sole purpose in life is to prohibit development.
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Wow are we ever pathetic as a country. First housing isn't the feds responsibility, now it is. And now we need to enact war time housing acts to get #### done.
Someone should tell him the 'National Building Code' doesn't mean anything to local planning boards whose sole purpose in life is to prohibit development.
Are blueprints and floorplans a major contributing factor right now? It seems like home builders have that stuff figured out pretty well and a lot of the new construction is pretty cookie cutter already. I think a bigger issue might be resources (capital, materials and workers.)
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Wow are we ever pathetic as a country. First housing isn't the feds responsibility, now it is. And now we need to enact war time housing acts to get #### done.
Someone should tell him the 'National Building Code' doesn't mean anything to local planning boards whose sole purpose in life is to prohibit development.
Planning boards are generally pro-development. It's local council's who need to depend on the votes of NIMBY groups who's sole purpose is to prohibit development wherever possible. The 'preserve neighborhood character' and 'I'm not against development, but...' crowd.
Are blueprints and floorplans a major contributing factor right now? It seems like home builders have that stuff figured out pretty well and a lot of the new construction is pretty cookie cutter already. I think a bigger issue might be resources (capital, materials and workers.)
That too.
Most builders I know have a labor problem that is keeping them from building more houses.
Most homes being built are just repeat versions of the home next door. Not exactly reinventing the wheel, and once a builder has a good process figured out, I'm sure they can bang out homes quickly.
Planning boards are generally pro-development. It's local council's who need to depend on the votes of NIMBY groups who's sole purpose is to prohibit development wherever possible. The 'preserve neighborhood character' and 'I'm not against development, but...' crowd.
Unless you get the NIMBY idiots actually serving on the planning board, filling the role as inspectors, etc, etc.
There is no recourse either. Yell and scream at whoever you want, nobody gives a ####.
Most builders I know have a labor problem that is keeping them from building more houses.
Most homes being built are just repeat versions of the home next door. Not exactly reinventing the wheel, and once a builder has a good process figured out, I'm sure they can bang out homes quickly.
But you know, labour.....
I framed houses as a summer job back in high school and this is pretty accurate. Most of the plans we did were ~90% the same and a lot of the work became pretty repetitive.
There would be 3 of us (2 framers, and me, the grunt) building typical ~2,000sf, 2 storey front garage homes... We'd show up to nothing but a foundation on Monday and have the house fully framed with a sheathed roof on Friday, sometimes end of day Thursday.
I know there are a number of advances in pre-fabed materials in the last 20 years that would likely speed up the process today.
Most builders I know have a labor problem that is keeping them from building more houses.
Most homes being built are just repeat versions of the home next door. Not exactly reinventing the wheel, and once a builder has a good process figured out, I'm sure they can bang out homes quickly.
But you know, labour.....
I'd like to know what economists or industry experts have to say about building material costs if housing starts drastically increased in Canada. It isn't uncommon for us to experience dramatic price shocks in soft wood lumber or drywall or other things and we aren't far removed from recent price shocks.
It's not just houses, thoguh. It sounds like they are doing this for various scales. Getting permits and approvals can take months or years, so if this can speed that up, it's probably a win. Well, it would be if we didn't know for sure a chunk of funding is going to disappear into someones pockets.
It's not just houses, thoguh. It sounds like they are doing this for various scales. Getting permits and approvals can take months or years, so if this can speed that up, it's probably a win. Well, it would be if we didn't know for sure a chunk of funding is going to disappear into someones pockets.
I would love if a higher authority were able to streamline the permitting & approval process, but I think we're dreaming if we think that a outside power with no jurisdiction is going to tell a red tape heavy planning board to get their ass moving with approvals.
Unless they actually work with local planning boards to get project templates pre approved. Which I think is a pipe dream, because any competent engineering firm has their drawings and specifications figured out, but the planning boards still take their sweet time approving everything, asking for 143 clarifications, and then approving everything after 8 months worth of delays without a single actual change being made to the original engineered stamped drawing.
What really should happen is that the approval process should go back on the engineer who is stamping the drawings, and should be removed from the planning boards who are not engineers.
If you build as per engineered drawings, the only thing that matters is proper inspection.
The whole system is screwed up and is only there to serve the NIMBY morons and ego heavy inspectors who understand little to nothing about construction or building.
Are blueprints and floorplans a major contributing factor right now? It seems like home builders have that stuff figured out pretty well and a lot of the new construction is pretty cookie cutter already. I think a bigger issue might be resources (capital, materials and workers.)
The benefit of pre approved plans is fast tracking permit and approval processes. With custom homes, there's always a slowed down process of marking sure it fits FSR requirements, permeability, height restrictions, set backs etc.
This may be less applicable in Calgary where large builders mostly do master planned communities, but it's a big slowdown in a city like Vancouver where each build is an individual project (mostly).
We recently changed to allowing up to 6 units on a single family lot too, so this sort of idea could be beneficial in getting more of those built faster.
This guy recently did a pretty cool video on how this applied with Vancouver Specials.
I like the idea in theory, but it seems like something more important at a municipal level as it won't matter in all markets and the challenges are different in each city too.
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