November 2010 BC Economic Fundamentals

[Ally]

Home building rebound fuels job growth

Construction workers, trades and other industries related to home building are basking in a surge of new housing starts that has added thousands of jobs in the Lower Mainland.

Metro Vancouver has recorded 12,584 home starts so far this year – nearly double what was admittedly a dismal 2009 in the depths of the recession.

This year`s new home construction is estimated to support 35,235 full-time jobs, according to Greater Vancouver Home Builders` Association CEO Peter Simpson.

That`s at 22,000 more jobs than the industry generated in 2009, he said.

"Everybody`s hiring," Simpson said. "Not just on site, but at the manufacturing facilities that produce windows, doors, flooring and the other things that go into a home."

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Maple Ridge cutting red tape

The provincial government announced this week it is giving the District of Maple Ridge a grant of $665,716 in lieu of property taxes, but the District`s director of finance said the funding is an annual grant that they budget for.

The grant is roughly equivalent to what the District would get in property taxes for government buildings within Maple Ridge, for example, the prisons.

"This is not a new item," said Paul Gill, director of finance with the District of Maple Ridge. "It happens every year (and) is part of the budget."

Senior governments don`t like to pay taxes to lower levels of government, Gill said, and therefore they give the money as a grant.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Victoria voters say yes to new bridge

Big Blue is history.

Victorians turned out in droves Saturday to give the nod to the city borrowing $49.2 million to replace the 86-year-old Johnson Street Bridge, known as the Blue Bridge.

A total of 16,542 votes were cast with 10,020 (60.6 per cent) voting Yes and 6,522 (39.4 per cent) No.

"It`s great that the city is now in a position to move forward," said Mayor Dean Fortin, who has campaigned long and hard for the project.

"We can now start on a new bridge and make sure we can deliver what was promised on time and on budget."

Ross Crockford is a director of johnsonstreetbridge.org, the group working to preserve the existing Joseph Strauss-designed bridge.

He conceded that the people had spoken.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

West rises out of recession`s ashes

OTTAWA — The West will lead Canada in 2011 and for years to come as the country`s economic strength continues to shift toward resources and away manufacturing, says the author of a new Provincial Trends report from Scotia Economics.

"With Central Canada being much more tied to the U.S. economy, we see the Western provinces outperforming mainly on the fact that the one thing that`s going to keep going in spite of decreased activity in the U.S. is our commodity exports," said economist Alex Koustas.

The divide between the East and the West is reflected in the bank`s provincial growth forecasts for 2011. While the expectation is for generally slower growth, the numbers wane when you move out of the resource-based West and into manufacturing-focused Ontario and Quebec.

Alberta will lead with growth of 3.5 per cent, followed by Saskatchewan at 3.3 per cent. In Ontario and Quebec, the forecasts drop to two per cent and 1.9 per cent, respectively.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Home prices in Greater Vancouver flatten out

Home prices in Greater Vancouver will grow slightly next year after a double-digit increase this year, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says.

The region`s average MLS house price is expected to climb three per cent in 2011, following a 12-percent jump in 2010, CMHC said Monday.

Most of the increase in 2010 took place in the early part of the year and the flattening in prices that has begun will spill into next year, the agency said.

Home sales in the area are expected to remain stable until mid-2011, thanks to attractive mortgage rates, healthy migration and job growth, CMHC said.

As the economy and job market strengthen later in 2011, sales are expected to pick up steam.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Supreme Court of Canada backs B.C. leaky-condo owners

VANCOUVER — The Supreme Court of Canada has made a precedent-setting decision that will affect thousands of leaky-condo owners in B.C., a lawyer involved in the appeal said Tuesday.

Canada`s top court unanimously ruled that an insurance company had a duty to defend legal actions for claims of water damage to suites in four Metro Vancouver housing co-ops: West Coast Community Homes, Burlington Heights, Hyland Park and Terra Nova Housing.

It opens the possibility that, for the first time, general contractors` insurance companies will have to pay for faulty work done by subcontractors.

"This is a landmark decision," Vancouver lawyer Gordon Hilliker said. "This has been the most watched insurance case for many, many years."

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Alberta`s oilsands beckon B.C. workers

World energy consumption of oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear energy, and hydroelectricity fell by 1.1 per cent last year, the first decline since 1982. But environmentalists might want to postpone their celebration. The decline was the result of recession, not conservation, mainly affecting North America and Europe. Energy use soared in developing nations; indeed, it doubled in China, with oil retaining its position as the No. 1 energy source.

Once the economic recovery gains momentum, energy-consumption growth should resume its vigorous ascent.

This is good news for Canada, and particularly for Alberta and British Columbia, which are blessed with bountiful reserves of oil and natural gas. Of course, the main repository of wealth is Alberta`s oilsands, which have drawn global energy companies en masse to Fort McMurray and environs.

Their plans include hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, generating an estimated $1.7 trillion in economic activity and 465,000 direct and indirect jobs over the next 25 years.

From the past decade through the next, the oilsands are expected to contribute $800 billion to gross domestic product and $123 billion to provincial and federal governments through royalties and taxes.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

King Coal: Old-schoo fuel gains new life in growing markets

VANCOUVER — Coal might seem old school, a last-century fuel, but it is once again king on British Columbia`s waterfront, with miners and terminals scrambling to fill resurgent demands in Asia, particularly from new customers in China.

Westshore Terminals, for example, has ramped up the capacity at its Roberts Bank coal terminal in Delta in response to expanding production of its key customers and has reached the point of turning away potential new customers.

"If you had asked me this time last year would I have closed the door and be turning away people on a regular basis and have more coal coming at us than we could handle, I wouldn`t have anticipated it," Denis Horgan, Westshore`s vice-president and general manager said.

The main differences that have been "the big change in our lives" have been increasing U.S. exports of thermal coal — the fuel for steam-powered electric generating plants — and China`s shift from being an exporter to a big importer of the higher-value coal used in steelmaking.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Doubts cast on feasibility of West Coast pipelines

Some of Canada`s top oil-industry players are casting doubt on the possibility that substantial volumes of Alberta crude will one day flow to the Canadian West Coast for delivery to Asian markets.

Opposition from First Nations groups – as well as regulatory issues that are increasingly hurting Canadian industrial projects – have already dealt a near-fatal blow to the Mackenzie Valley gas project, and may block development of a Pacific export market for some time, former TransCanada Corp. (TRP-T36.35-0.04-0.11%) chief executive officer Hal Kvisle said Friday.

Both Enbridge (ENB-T56.65-0.25-0.44%) with its $5.5-billion Northern Gateway project, and Kinder Morgan (KMP-N69.78-0.26-0.36%) with plans to expand an existing West Coast pipeline called Trans Mountain, are working to give oil sands companies access to refineries in China and Asia. Enbridge has calculated that Asian exports could be more profitable than exports to the U.S., and has spent $250-million, including $100-million sourced in part from Asian refineries, to develop a project it says can be built safely and with substantial local benefits.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Owning a home becoming more affordable in Canada: RBC

OTTAWA -- Owning a home in Canada became more affordable in recent months, according to the Royal Bank of Canada.

RBC Economics Research released a report Monday saying the proportion of pre-tax household income it takes to own a home declined in the third quarter of 2010 after a full year of deteriorating home-ownership affordability. Lower home prices and mortgage rates were the reasons for the recent improvement.

"The improvement in affordability during the third quarter has relieved some of the stress that had been mounting in Canada`s housing market over the past year," said Robert Hogue, senior economist for RBC. "After appreciating rapidly during the strong rebound in resale activity last year and early this year, national home prices recently came off the burner and retreated modestly as market conditions cooled considerably through the spring and summer."

RBC said it took 40.4 per cent of household income, on average across the country, to own a bungalow between July and September. That was 2.4 percentage points lower than the second quarter.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Princeton welcomes return to mining riches with open arms

To get a sense of Princeton`s status as a revived boom town, Mayor Randy McLean advises you to take a stroll down the town`s main street and the bustle makes it pretty obvious.

The 340 construction workers building Copper Mountain Mining Co.`s $458-million copper and gold mine some 20 kilo-metres out of town are keeping motels full and restaurants busy long past the traditional end of Princeton`s tourism season.

And the influx of mine workers (140 of its eventual 267 operating employees have been hired to date) has set off a flurry of real estate speculation and surge of new building.

"A couple of years ago, Friday and Saturday could be pretty busy with people coming in to do their shopping or get their mail and stuff," McLean said, and the town of 2,600 would be relatively quiet for the rest of the week.

Read the full article here.