Anshu Arora LLM, MSc, PMP

We looked at hotel prices across the country via Expedia, a popular hotel booking platform. Before this deep dive, it’s important to note that two cities in particular, Edmonton and Toronto, have their respective NHL teams in the playoffs for now. But that hasn’t impacted prices, at least compared to Vancouver, as much as you might think.

In Vancouver, Expedia’s first 20 recommended hotels came to an average cost of $678.10. On the highest end of that scale, a two-night stay would cost a visitor a whopping $1,199 per night, or $3,377 total. The cheapest visit is at the Cambie Hostel for $72 per night. Some people suggested checking out Airbnb listings instead of downtown Vancouver hotels.

Throughout 2022, Vancouver’s hotel market reached a room occupancy rate of 72.9%, which is also the highest amongst major Canadian urban hotel markets. This represents a 50.4% year-over-year growth in the utility of hotel room supply. Without an adequate increase in hotel room supply, Vancouver’s hotel rooms will continue to see escalating prices, visitors will choose to travel to other Canadian destinations outside of British Columbia, and the city and region will become less competitive with landing the rights to host tourism-generating conferences, conventions, and sports events. There would be opportunity costs of economic losses in the tens of billions of dollars and significant job growth impacts.

It's time now to build more!

Arguably one of the most essential documents to ensure a construction project’s success, a material takeoff (MTO) is a comprehensive list of all materials and their quantities required to complete a project derived from the construction drawings and plans. Also referred to as a construction takeoff, quantity takeoff, or simply a takeoff, is a crucial element in accurately estimating and bidding on a construction job. Creating your material takeoff requires measuring, or taking off, the various components of a construction project in order to calculate how much material is needed for each. For example, if you’re a drywall contractor, you’ll measure the linear feet of all the walls and the height of the walls to calculate the square footage of the walls. Using those measurements, you would then calculate all the materials (drywall panels, tape, mud, screws, etc.) and quantities of each needed to install the walls. If you’re also doing the ceilings on the project, you would measure the square footage of the ceilings and calculate the materials and quantities needed to install the ceilings.

Why Material Takeoff Is So Important 

Measuring and calculating material takeoffs are a vital part of any construction project. The person or team preparing an estimate relies on the information provided to determine the total cost for materials as well as the labor, equipment, and other associated costs. With the ability to completely dislodge a project’s budget, workflow, or even completion, material takeoffs are vital for all parties involved to initiate and oversee a project from inception to completion. Your bids are only as good as your estimates, and your estimates are only as good as your takeoffs. If the initial takeoff measurements, the specific type of materials needed, and the calculated quantities of each are off in any capacity, it could negatively impact the project and its budget.

Manual Versus Digital Takeoff

For years the only option for delivering material takeoffs was by doing them manually—meaning that the general contractor or estimator had to measure and count all the components using paper and pencil from the plans or blueprints. They would then have to perform various calculations to determine the material quantities needed for each project. Once the material takeoff was complete, more calculations would be needed to accurately estimate the project. Manual takeoffs are prone to a number of errors, from inaccurate measurements to miscalculating material quantities to just missing items, either during measurements or when calculating quantities. Paper blueprints can be expensive to produce and can also cause issues regarding the ever-changing nature of projects and their demands. This is where the incredible power of digital takeoff makes its grand entrance. Digital takeoff and estimating software have made the material takeoff process extremely efficient and accurate. Digital takeoff software not only achieves the obvious perk of saving hours of time completing meticulous tasks but also allows for better collaboration, reduces errors, and allows estimators to bid on more projects.

The Digital Takeoff Process

Although the workflow of a digital material takeoff varies depending on the software you are using, the type of project, and other related factors, the MTO begins its course by uploading digital plans and documents that can then be used to start performing takeoff. After uploading the plans and setting up the projects, the user can then set the scale on the plan sheet and start using the tools to start measuring and performing takeoff on the screen. The measurements are saved, and your material quantities are calculated.

Select municipalities in Metro Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Greater Victoria, and the interior are amongst the first 10 municipal jurisdictions that will be subject to the Government of British Columbia’s new Housing Supply Act. BC Minister of Housing Ravi Kahlon made the announcement Wednesday morning, marking the first big step on the legislation since it was introduced in late 2022.

"We selected these municipalities from an objective, thorough, and measured process that factored in housing availability, affordability, and unrealized potential in delivering more homes for people,” said Kahlon during the press conference. “Today, we’re taking another important step on the path to achieving our goal for achieving more housing where it’s needed most, and providing a diversity of options so that people can stay in their communities as their housing needs evolve.” The final quotas for each of these jurisdictions will be publicly released this summer, he says. Ministry staff will meet with the selected municipalities over the coming weeks, and provide them with a 30-day window to assess the targets before making the targets public. Progress updates with the municipalities will be conducted every six months.

Kahlon notes the targets will be more than just units, such as the inclusion of prescriptions for targets on multi-bedroom housing suitable for families. He says where municipal governments have a choice is determining how to accommodate that growth, suggesting there will be some policy shifts soon in the communities. “We need all communities to be participating in the work, and I expect most communities will be cooperating fully with us,” said Kahlon. To aid cities in expediting permitting, Kahlon reiterated the measures the provincial government has put in place, such as providing funding to municipal governments to come up with their new and improved digital permitting processes.

Vancouver’s council is considering exempting newly built, but unsold, housing units from the city’s empty homes tax. A city staff report proposes a number of changes to Vancouver’s empty homes tax program. One is the widely reported suggestion to rescind a vote by the last council to increase the three per cent tax to five per cent this year.

But another recommendation proposes creating the new exemption for “vacant new inventory that is unsold.” This means the city would stop applying the tax on units that sit empty for some period of time after a developer builds a condo project. Some argue the city should not make it easier and more profitable for developers to hold completed homes vacant for an unlimited time, and that if policies push them to cut prices to sell promptly, that would be good for Vancouver’s housing market. But others maintain taxing unsold condos could impede the future supply of a greater number of new homes, by creating new costs and uncertainty for builders and, crucially, for the lenders who finance housing construction.

This was not a problem when Vancouver implemented the empty homes tax in 2017. Then, the Vancouver condo market had almost no unsold new condos. But the Urban Development Institute, a lobbying association for the developers, has been pushing Vancouver to exempt unsold inventory from the tax since it was first proposed in 2016. In a 2016 letter to then-mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision-majority council, UDI CEO Anne McMullin wrote that her organization agreed with “the city’s objective of freeing up potential housing supply for renters,” but wanted to “ask that new units be exempted from the tax until they are transferred from developer to a buyer.”

The B.C. government’s speculation and vacancy tax, introduced in 2018, is similar to Vancouver’s empty homes tax. But the province’s tax exempts unsold newly built homes. Now, city staff are recommending council approve an exemption consistent with the province’s tax.

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According to the Ministry of Transportation, Canada is updating its laws to strengthen air passengers’ rights. The federal ministry announced on Monday that the amendments proposed for the Canada Transportation Act will finally be introduced at the “earliest opportunity.”

“Protecting the rights of air passengers is a priority of the Government of Canada, and the government will continue to ensure that travellers’ rights are respected by airlines when air travel does not go according to plan,” officials wrote in a press release. Canada got its first-ever Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) in 2019, which “clarified minimum requirements and compensation.”

Canadian airports saw intense travel chaos during the pandemic, from cancellations to lost luggage and delays. Even the weather was sometimes relentless, leaving flyers in limbo for days, often with uncooperative airlines. Passengers’ rights were strengthened following all this to ensure travellers impacted got the compensation they deserved.

The new changes set to become law will help the Canadian Transport Agency make passengers’ rights a bigger priority. The agency will:

• make compensation mandatory for all disruptions unless the disruption was caused by very limited circumstances that would be specifically defined by regulations;
• remove exemptions to air carriers’ compensation obligations based on broad categories of disruptions (e.g., disruptions outside/within the control of airlines or required for safety);
• make standards of treatment, such as the provision of food and water, mandatory for all flight disruptions;
• establish requirements for delayed baggage and prescribe parameters around refund requirements as a result of a travel advisory issued by the government.

Once the Budget Implementation Act receives royal assent — expected on September 30 or later — the Canadian Transportation Agency will start resolving traveller complaints under the new system. The federal government is spending $75.9 million over three years to help reduce a massive backlog of passenger complaints. These new changes have already received criticism from the New Democratic Party (NDP). The party says new measures fall short of the standard set by the European Union.

“The minister promised to give Canadians the strongest air passenger protections in the world, but this latest attempt isn’t going to address the big issues,” said NDP MP Taylor Bachrach on Monday. “So far, the Liberals seem to be doubling down on their expensive, complex, bureaucratic approach, which has failed Canadian travellers.” The NDP pointed out that the Standing Committee on Transport recommended the government remove a loophole allowing airlines to deny travellers compensation. “By leaving the loophole intact, the minister has chosen to largely ignore the committee, consumer advocates and his own transportation agency in favour of Canada’s big airlines,” said Bachrach. “Canadians have been frustrated by this process at every turn. The government should be standing with passengers, not with big airlines.”

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