Shaun Newman Podcast - #725 - Blue Collar Roundtable #6

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

This edition of the Blue Collar Roundtable we are discussing the housing crisis in Canada. I’m joined by Shane Wenzel, the CEO of Shane Holmes Group and Jocelyn Burzuik, the President of Sundance Construction. We discuss the housing crisis, the CMHC’s housing accelerator fund and the red tape that is destroying the housing industry. Cornerstone Forum ‘25 https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone25/ Clothing Link: ⁠⁠⁠https://snp-8.creator-spring.com/listing/the-mashup-collection⁠⁠ Text Shaun 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Silver Gold Bull Links: Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text Grahame: [phone]

This is Chris Sims. This is Tom Romago. This is Chuck Pradnik. This is Alex Kraner. This is Daniel Smith. And welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Thursday.

How's everybody doing today? Okay, let's get into it. Okay. Silver, gold, bull, my go-to for precious metals with complete in-house solutions, whether buying, selling, storing, or adding precious metals to your retirement accounts with the U.S. election.

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It's going through the roof. So if you haven't been, you know, it's never too late. And certainly when it comes to, you know, going, what am I going to do when all this crap comes to, you know, roost on whatever day that happens? because it feels like it certainly is. You might want to have a little bit in the old piggy bank, and Silver Gold Bull has an exclusive offer for you, the S&P listener, on quarter-ounce gold coins from the Royal Canadian Mint,

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The substack, if you haven't subscribed, it's free, totally free, Monday nights, Wednesday nights, Monday nights, you get the week in review, so you're going to, you know, I get it. Five episodes a week. You're like, man, Sean, some days, I just, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I just can't keep up. That's fair. I hear it all the time. And I also hear, you know, if I pull up, this was a great text from Sean Rue.

And I'm, forgive me, folks. I should have thought about this before I just rattle this off. But this was pretty funny. Sean Rue texted me, well, here I thought podcasts were getting stale. And then I decided to listen to your Dennis Modry podcast. Then I thought, well, I'll listen to Greg Wycliffe. Then I made the mistake of listening to Stephen Collin. Coughlin, sorry.

Then I listen to today's. My brain hurts so bad, it's great. The one he was saying in his brain hurts on was retired lieutenant colonel Stephen Murray. So there you go. I realize that everybody's busy. They're getting pulled. Hockey season started on and on. This goes.

So what is great about the week in review? Is it going to break down each podcast in roughly about two minutes or less for all five of the week. And you can decide, oh, I want that one. And you just never know. Maybe you're like Sean Rue. And it takes you down this rabbit hole of like, well, listen to one. Oh, listen to, oh, man. There's so much great content here on the SMP.

Yeah, I'm having fun today. Thursday. Happy Thursday, folks. Friday, November 29th, we still got four tables left. We're bringing in the dueling pianist of the Gold Horse Casino. There's four tables left. If you're interested, stop dragging your feet and shoot me a text. Finally, the Cornerstone Forum is returning.

Mark your calendars May 10th, 2025. Yes, we're heading to Calgary. You can expect keynote speakers and roundtable, that are engaging, provocative and profound, exploring realms of faith, politics, and liberty, will be dissecting the challenges looming in the next year's horizon and strategizing our path forward. Just think, like, man, if I'd known about X,

I would have done different things. That's the whole goal. Grock says, this isn't just an event. It's a communal think tank fostering both introspection and interactive engagement, join us as we navigate the future together. Yeah, I thought GROC, you know, pretty good. I had one person say it's like family values meets prepping.

I don't know if that's exactly the thought process, but hey, I don't mind that either. This year's forum is powered by SGB and BVCU. That's Silver Gold Bull and Bull Valley Credit Union, both hopping on to be major sponsors. And my hats off to those companies, excited to partner with them. It's going to be at the Winsport, May 10th, working on hotels, some of the keynote speakers that are confirmed, Tom Lulongo, Alex Traynor, Chuck Prodnick. We got two guest hosts confirmed. That's Chris Sims and Tom Bodrovics. So Canadian Taxpayers Federation, everybody knows Chris Sims.

And then Tom Bodrovics does Palisades Gold Radio. If you haven't tuned into that, that's fantastic. He's been on the podcast once. So that's going to be interesting. A couple of different hosts to just, we're going to see what that does in a roundtable setting. We got a trade show being added. So I'm going to, for business people out there that want to be a part of that as we unveil more details on that. I'll be sure to put those out to you as well so that, you know,

you can get a booth and be a part of that. I think that's one of the things I wanted to do last year, but it not being in a setting where it was conducive, we just kind of scrapped it. But this year, it is for sure going to be a part of it. I'm really excited about that. I think it's going to be a nice addition. And down on the show notes, you can get your early bird tickets. They are up. The first table sold and the first individual tickets sold. So, you know, That was pretty cool. So we're off at running, and if you want to grab your tickets, by all means, head there and excited for it to be heading to, you know, I don't know, Calgary. Let's roll.

So let's get on to that tale of the tape. On this edition of the Guardian Blue Collar Roundtable, I'm joined by the CEO of Shane Holmes Group in Calgary, Alberta, and president of Sundance Construction in Sandy Hook, Manitoba. I'm talking about Shane Wenzell and Jocelyn Berziak. So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to the Shaw Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Shane Wenzel and Jocelyn Berziak. So first off, folks, thanks for hopping on. Thanks for having it.

This is another edition, folks, of the Blue Collar Roundtable. This is brought to you by Guardian Plumbing and Heating here at Lloyd Minster. And what we try and do on these is we try and take a look at some of the issues that are plaguing Canadian society. And certainly, housing crisis has been talked about an awful lot. like, well, I don't know. Like I understand there's a giant population and then housing metrics. And, you know, and I look at it and I'm making it a little bit probably too simplistic. But henceforth, why I reached out to the two of you.

You've both been on the show before. And I just wanted to, you know, try and cultivate a little bit of insight on this from different provinces, right? We got Jocelyn sitting in Manitoba and, of course, Shane in Alberta. So before we get into it, I guess, we'll start ladies first. If you could just give a little bit of background and anything you want to talk about, Jocelyn, with housing and maybe some of the things you've been working on. Well, my name's Jocelyn Bershick. I'm the president of Sundance Construction Safety Consulting Incorporated.

My travels, my work is taking me right from the heavy construction industry of design, build, water treatment, sewage treatment, underground pipelines, remediate. landfill, and then right into housing. So commercial housing, residential housing, and then the bigger commercial projects for municipal projects. And right now I'm in the middle of my very own design build, standalone, bareland condos subdivision,

which is lots of fun. And how, I see Shane laughing. I'm laughing because I follow you on Twitter. How has that been going? one of the things for the listeners on this side is we know we got caught up in court and on and on the saga went. Fill us all in, Jocelyn, because I haven't had you back on since I believe you won in court, I think.

I think that's what we were talking about the last time. Where does it all stand? Because, I mean, you've been, you know, drugged through the ringer. I've gone through it. Being a small-scale developer, because I'm most definitely a small-scale rural developer. Man, nobody can prepare you for what you are going to walk into. And I come from a background that is where I am familiar with every level, where with municipal, provincial, federal, environmental, design build, the engineering teams.

I have a really solid background. So for me, this should be, you know, it should be something that I can, I can handle. But it wasn't. I was actually had everything thrown at us. And in Manitoba, it's like we have this great big housing shortage. We have a problem with getting enough builds in place. We have the problem with the right type of builds getting going into place. And yet on the municipal level or even on the city level, none of these councils want building to happen.

That's the only explanation I have for it. They don't want, they don't want the building to actually happen. You could tell a council, you know, I've got nine homes sold. I need occupancy within a year and a half. Here's my sales contracts. We need to do this. I've got all of my regulatory stuff in place. I've got my approval on my subdivision.

And they throw everything at you, whether it's fee structures, delays, not happy with some aspect of a developer's agreement that they're legally bound to produce in 90 days. And mine took a year. So from the start of the subdivision process to the where I actually got my condo registered, I was just under the two year mark. And that is not cool. Like it's just when you've got homes that are that are pre-sold and you can build and you can build in good weather, I don't understand this.

So yeah, I was thrown a delay. I was thrown delay with developers agreements. I was thrown at a delay with with drainage. I was thrown a delay with getting some of my, my pawn structures done. But the crazy part of this, the engineering on all of it was signed, sealed, approved. Everybody loved the plan.

Everybody loved it. I am off-good capable. I use 46% less energy. I use 46% less water. I produce 40% less sewage. I am using traditional building methods. I am light years ahead of what we're doing in terms of efficiency. And they're all age in place.

They're all two bedrooms. They're standalone single dwellings, single family dwellings, which is what people want. And they are gated and semi-private, their own water treatment system, internal, and their own sewage treatment system. I am like a unicorn. I am like the unicorn in Manitoba because I figured out how to do the system. I figured out how to do this, got it all engineered, got the licensing in place, do all that. And yet, could I get to approval, the final approval so I could register the Barryline condo or at least start building?

No, took a year. Took a year after all the approvals. I was like, what are you talking about? And yet, what do I have? I am rural, so it's rural. The aerial photographs of my subdivision are amazing. My 10-guy crew, our seven-guy crew, depending on the time of year, we did it all. It means is that we do the roads.

We did all the underground. We did the physical building. We poured our own concrete. My guys are all talented guys, and we build well. And yet, somebody in my position, we couldn't get to that point of approval. So what does that delay do? that delay actually starves you of cash. It pulls everything out of your project,

everything you've set aside for the front end, following a schedule, everything else, build schedules, occupancy dates. It just sucks the life out of it. And it took me just like this massive effort to try and pull that out. And I did. Now I have nine houses standing. My sewer is all going in right now.

I've got my gas is going in. my primary electrical is all done and now we're just waiting for secondary services. You know, this is, this was really crazy. And everybody wanted these homes. These homes are affordable. That means is that they were all under $400,000. So they're from Manitoba. That's wonderful in terms of pricing the market. And they were freeing up that big, the larger size homes that are in our urban centers. I was pulling the 55 plus and so they could live in a smaller, gated, private, quiet, rural community and stay close to their own homes. So I was fulfilling a need for demographics in the area.

So I researched all of it. I researched demographics. I did all of it. I did all the engineering. And yet the, it was crazy. It sounds like a very good idea. And this government doesn't really respond to very good ideas. Shane, I see you laughing on the other side.

I'm going to have you hop in and tell your little bit of background. And then I'm just going to let you two riff and we'll see where this gets to. Maybe it's just our government is completely incapable of making smart decisions. Maybe there's more to it. Shane, hop in and just give a little bit of your background. Well, my name is Shane Wanzal. I'm the president, CEO and namesake of the Shane Holmes group of companies here in Calgary, Alberta.

And we're a single family, multifamily and developer here in Calgary, one of the largest home builders in the Calgary market area. And, you know, listening to Jocelyn talk, you know, that is the same story across the country. It's, you know, on one hand, you've got a government that wants housing and they want affordable housing, but they don't want it. And it's a common problem. You know, I think back to when I started in this business 35 years ago, we used to be able to build quicker and more affordable. And as time has gone on, I mean, there's just been different layers. of red tape added at every level of government that has just delayed, delayed, delayed any of your

housing projects, you know, where we went from, you know, from I guess the time, if I relate back to the early 90s, you know, we would sell a house and we would have, have that home occupied by the consumer in about five, six months. Now, the reality of that in the Calgary market area at least is nine, nine months. You know, so you're not able to. You're not able to turn it around quick enough on a single family home the way you used to and you know on the case of you know i say a multifamily site those approvals used to be about six seven eight months back in the early 90s now it might take two years before you have a shovel in the ground from your initial application and then of course you know you're looking at a couple of years to finish that project so

jocelyn i feel i feel for you right here but you're not alone we're all feeling it uh across the country and yet, you know, we've created, why I shouldn't say we, you know, there's been this housing crisis that's been created, and I would say largely because of, you know, the added immigration policy by the federal liberals that is creating even more strife. And, you know, we, Sean, you and I talk before the program. It's been flat out for three and a half years and, you know, we're no further ahead. We're just falling further behind, but yet we're working as hard. as we can with the trade base that we can or we have. And, you know, again, you're just, you're trying to bring on land here in the city of Calgary. And it's a challenge.

I had, um, uh, one of the stats I'd seen, this was, you know, we've been working on this, uh, for, for trying to get you two together for a little while. And so forgive me if the stat, I highly doubt it's that far out anymore. But I'm, you know, if it is, um, I didn't update it today, but I highly doubt I can update what this stat says. Can this top housing agency, CMHC now predicts a candle will be short up to four million houses by 2030. Four million houses. So my brain goes, wow, what an industry to be in, right?

Like, I mean, the need is there. You just start building places and away we go. But then I listen to you to and it's not, well, okay, yeah, the needs there. But the problem from getting to point from point A to point B is not only the time, but it's all the money and effort and then trying to get these, you know, like I just start to do the mental math on that. I'm like, okay, that although it looks like that's going to be a fun industry to be in, I think I hear from the two of you that it's a lot of headache, a lot of gray hair, to be honest. See that? I did not have that two years ago.

For the listener, Jocelyn's pointing her hair for, I didn't, I wasn't staring at your gray hair. Josh. So I was just, anyways, doesn't matter. It's white. So what do you like, okay, so you got this housing problem. You have this huge need, right? I mean, this is what you want. If you're in your industry, like, holy crap. We got the next seven years. We can go as hard as we can. We should be hiring people on and on and on. But obviously that isn't the case. Oh, it's a multifaceted problem and it's the approval section of that that is one portion of the the multifaceted problem the labor that's another problem with our trade base and what's going on with the trade base and the price gouging and and things like that and i had a conversation yesterday that i'll i'll go over because it was

it was it was just it just blew my mind but then the third part of that which is probably the most critical part that has to go hand-in-hand with approvals is what the the canadian banking industry has done to the construction industry. And so even though we've got money flowing from the federal government and CMHC into the bureaucracy that sits in the cities and the provinces and the municipalities, that has not translated into the lending. So what's happening with all the builders that say like a small medium builder or or somebody that does that is get is that across the problem,

the entire country is that all the big banks unless you are at a certain milestone in your business they have eliminated construction lending product products it's completely gone there's it doesn't exist anymore the banks have could you just explain that to me the banks have gotten rid of construction and they don't they don't want it like are they find it or they see it as it's like risky is that what you're saying yeah so when our our housing crisis went up and and things started happening with inflation and number of things. For some reason, the banking industry, and I can see Shane saying yes, because he knows what I'm talking about is that they eliminated an entire suite of financial products that were designed

for medium to small builders that would give you the cash flow for starting your projects. And the banks did a second thing. So banks are operating. So say, for instance, you have a buyer, you have some of you're going to build a home for. they're going to go out and they're going to get a builder's mortgage or that construction mortgage or how it's structured and that you get paid on a milestone or a progress basis. And what the banks have done, they've done two things. The first thing is done is that they have changed how they actually pay out.

So even though you have a contract that may say is that you get paid on milestone, so roof on you get paid this much. the banks are saying is that our appraiser who maybe has brain fell out last week he says is that you've only done this and i'm like i have a contract that says is that you pay me on my milestones and the rest of it how you get to that point is not my problem and because i have so many fun on things i have all the fees i have municipal fees i have approval fees i have infrastructure i have you know that's not 10 000 That's a big number. I have roads.

I have all this other stuff that has to get done so that the front end of our contracts need to be fairly heavy in order to actually get off the ground in order to get your foundations, everything else. And that is the reality of today's build. And when you add the inflation in there, that kind of creates that. So the banks in terms of CMHC construction mortgage all over the across the line, it doesn't matter if it's a credit union or a, especially since the credit union amalgamations, which is actually killing our industry as well.

when you put that all the way across the board is that so what they've done is they've sucked billions of dollars of of financial products and lending products for construction builders home builders out of the market and then so now they've made the problem even worse and then lines of credit and all those other things they're there you know if there's no such thing as a cheap line of credit for construction. You might have it for another business, but for construction, the average is 12.99%. It's, you're like, so my cost of operating a line of credit is crazy. So then you have to be really good with managing your money and things like that and all of that and being able to plan and schedule and things like that. So you could be the best planner in the world, the best

scheduler in the world. But then when you have some guy that's sitting behind a desk and he's like, my appraiser says this. And so now he's just dropped $60,000 out of your line of credit or for that month because you operate on a progress billing and you give yourself like a 30% window and carryover. But now your 30% is gone. Builders are saying is that so all, yes, all those homes need to be built. But if the builder can't get their feet off the ground,

who's building your houses? So if the federal government, you know, wanted to tackle the industry, he would have gotten rid of the bureaucracy at the city, municipal, provincial level that impedes all these builds. And they would have done something to actually open things up maybe in terms of, you know, like a guaranteed lower interest rate for a line of credit or a builder's line of credit or something. But they actually pulled that product, which used to exist out of the market. it's totally gone. So now, that's why we've gone from a $1 million house deficit to a $4 million house deficit, which is why we'll go to an $8 million house deficit,

and people are going to be living out of CCATs. That is the reality that I see on the ground right now. Jane, you're nodding your head. You know, a typical roundtable, I'm waiting for you to respond. Yeah, no, no, I'm just taking it all in, you know, and I appreciate John. comments because you know in in the early stages of our company I mean that's certainly the way that we used to operate you know we've we've grown to such a

size now we do a lot of self-funding but we do have that line of credit and it's it's sickening when you look at the interest rate that it takes to operate it but you know you do manage a lot of your work in progress all the homes under construction very very differently especially when you're when you're dealing with volumes like this you know because you there's only so much much cash in the well. And, you know, I sympathize, especially with the, the smaller and medium-sized companies who are, who are working on those draws.

And, you know, I laugh when Jocelyn said, you know, some of these appraisers, your brains fall out. You know, I sympathize with what they have to do in their job, but we've certainly had a lot of, a lot of occasions where we bash heads with these people. And, you know, it's frustrating when you're anticipating a certain cash flow and you don't get it because somebody, some obscure person has determined that your project is not at that point. And you come up short and you're forever playing the cash flow game. It's a challenge. And yet, you know, you've been throwing a bone, or at least you'd like to think, by the federal government.

And it's just not coming to fruition at this rate. You know, it's frustrating, especially when, you know, you're openly ignored by the same group that wants or says that they want to help you solve the crisis that they've created. And it's crazy. The government hypocrisy is what I think what blows my mind the most is that, and just to give you an idea is that I have such a unique project here in Manitoba. Like this, nobody's really done quite what I've done here. And to do it all standalone, I don't touch any municipal or provincial infrastructure.

So all my infrastructure is my own within this project. is 100% held within the subdivision. We own the rows, everything. It's all us. And to be able to be as efficient as we are, and to solve problems, infrastructure problems on the municipal level, I know how to solve those problems. I come from that background.

I know how to solve the municipal infrastructure problems. And I know how to take the pressure off the infrastructure that we're seeing. But would you believe that to date, since the day I put my first shovel on the ground, even through the planning process, the approval process. Not one provincial politician, bureaucrat has come to my site. Not one. Not one federal politician from my area has come to my site,

even through all of the stuff and the delay and everything else we had. Not one of them have come to the site. Well, maybe they don't want to. They would have to admit that what they're doing isn't effective anymore. even on the municipal level. Do you think that they'd want to come and see something that could solve some of the ongoing municipal problems with local municipal infrastructure and these municipalities running out of money and trying to figure out how to make the dollar go faster? I can actually give them a visual walkthrough as to how we did it. And do you think that they

would want to come? No. I would like to believe that they would, Jocelyn, but you know what? That's our experience even in Calgary. We went through it with You know, they called it the affordable housing strategy. I typically refer to it as the subsidized housing strategy where our industry wasn't even included in the conversation. We were given the plan and said, now, how do you guys want to make this work? And you kind of sit there and say, well, first off,

there's no extra labor. So I don't know how you're going to make it work. But that was their approach, spend eight months with no industry input, creating a plan. So they don't seem to want it. They seem to think that, you know, that the intelligence only, exists at their level and that everybody else is incapable that you know like uh we're starting to see

some nefarious things continue to like pop out of different things the latest one being like i mean it just keeps it you thought it was bad for the jasper wildfire and then and then just more and more and you know they i i i jest with this but they said oh that's all conspiracy theory and then it just it just keeps blowing up like how bad that was like it was is bad and when i when i listen to you talk i'm just like okay so the problem is we we were at a if i use jocelyn's numbers we were at a million right short a million okay we got we got to try and build that but as they continue to put more red tape and these weird things and then they pull the funding and they do different things all of a sudden now it's balloon to four million and jocelyn's like well at some point people are just going

going to be living in sea cans. It's like, well, they're already starting to do that. There's some actually some, you've probably both seen. There's some nice sea can designs out there where you're like, it's actually a pretty nice design. And there you go. And you're like, I mean, that's where we're, we're getting completely, we're going the opposite way of where most people want. They want to be able to, you know, I don't know, graduate, go find a good paying job, raise a family, buy a house. Like, it's pretty standard. And, you know, when I was, you know, when I was. is first looking at the housing market, right? Like, I mean, here in Lloyd Minster,

you know, I don't want to act like it was that low, but I don't know, decent house, 300,000. Yeah. You know, a really nice house, 500,000. You know, we were just, I just, I just went for a walk the other night. It was like, $800,000, $900,000. I'm like, for Lloyd Minster. Like, love you, Lloyd Minster.

I love being here. I'm sorry, $800 or $900,000. That used to be Kelona. I highly doubt that's Kelona anymore. So you look at all. the problems and you go, are they trying to fix this? Are they just trying to make this worse? And the reason why I bring it up in a freeman like that is, you know, at one point you thought Jasper, well, that was just, you know, okay, whoops, we didn't do a prescribed burn. But it gets way

worse than that. Like, it just, it just keeps going worse and worse. And you see this housing emergency. You see the fact that, well, it was always, you're always short. We're always trying to catch up. But now that number is getting insanely big to where you're like, I don't, like, I don't know, Do housing prices all of a sudden just miraculously come down? Or do you have to trim that deficit in order to make it, you know, start to be like where people can afford things? It's a combination of a lot of that, Sean. I mean, what you're seeing in the marketplace is an ideology, at least from our perspective here,

that's finally catching up to us. You know, we wanted, you know, in someone's infinite wisdom years ago, about 10, 15 years ago, we were going to go with smart city planning and we used a growth management overlay to determine what I call winners and losers in the marketplace as to where we develop. And that just has exasperated the problem now because we're not able to build as freely in areas that we normally would. You know, we have limitations on that and compounded by, you know, the growth in population. and the fact that there's only so much labor to go around in Canada. And the fact is that labor is getting older and it's retiring.

And we don't have enough young people going into the trades. And yet I keep saying this is the greatest opportunity for any generation in the last 30, 40 years. You have trades retiring out of the business, shutting down their businesses without a succession plan and simply because it's not available. But it's creating to enormous labor rates. You know, we've seen those increased by at least 50, 60% here in the province of Alberta. That's why you're not seeing the three, 500,000 floor houses anymore. You're seeing eight, 900,000 because labor's gone up. Materials have gone up.

The approval times for land for lots has gone up. And they've tacked on, you know, a layer of levies to it because, you know, growth is supposed to pay for itself. It used to be considered an investment, which is fine. I mean, you can have some additional costs based on that, but it's like it's a piggy bank available to the municipalities and they're taking full advantage of it. And every three to five years when an agreement runs out, then it's back to the well for even more. I don't pay for it. Jocelyn doesn't pay for it.

You pay for it is the end user, the end consumer. And that's created to all of it. Could you fill me in, Shane, when you, when you, say 15 years ago in their infinite wisdom they decided to do something I forgive me I don't know the exact words you use but you you were talking about zoning I think uh am I wrong could you tell me what what the idea was and and and what changed before that like what were you were you able to do before that till now well the general thought was is uh you know under smart city planning is that you you not only take longer to plan out your streets

your infrastructure uh but you also have an ideology that God we don't want to keep building out. We want to start building up. Now that used to be what we call, you know, consumer driven, but you know, the ideology is, is it's not consumer driven, that we're just, we're going to build up instead of, instead of building out. So we're going to provide those limitations. And yet here, you know, the perfect set of circumstances, it has, has caught up to all of us. You, uh, you apply that ideology and you don't want to, uh, expand out in suburbia. And now you're seeing costs go up. So it's, you, uh, you're seeing costs go up. So it's, It's compounded at every level with, you know, with every planner's, you know,

alleged dream that they, you know, they foresee this utopia in a downtown or a core of a city, and yet it's not based in reality. You had the perfect set of circumstances where you get locked down. And all of a sudden, you know, people are able to work remotely a little more often. So there's less road trips and there's less of a need to be. in the core and in a smaller condominium. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to that, but I always feel that that should be consumer driven.

It shouldn't be some planners' ideology that that's the only place where the city's going to grow. Yeah, that's 100% of what I see is that they're driving the type of housing and is forced down our throats versus the housing that actually is what people want to see and what they want to buy. And that's why I talk about is that building to the demographics, building to your infrastructure, building to your demographics, even before you put a shovel on the ground, know what's what's in your area, know what your demographics are and figure out what your market is. I did all of that work years ago in order to build and to do what I'm doing. And yet, when you talk to a municipality and you try to explain their demographics and that to them, they have blinders on.

they don't even know what you're talking about and i'm sitting there so i'm doing the job of a municipal planner um in terms of how i do my projects i think like the planner should think and yet when i go to talk to the planner it's like my god like is there anybody home who am i talking to because they don't get it and and that's that it just increases delay and costs and things like that And Shane touched on something big here on the labor shortage, but also the doubling of those rates and things like that. Yes. That is killing the housing industry, that driven labor, but also the, there is true inflation on our costs. The carbon tax has been horrible for building costs.

But there's also the secondary costs in there. The people don't see unless you're like maybe at my size. But Shane should see it too. And in terms of when he's doing his infrastructure, And as I'm talking about specialized trades, the guys that are installing the wells, the guys that are doing the, the, the, your HVAC and things like that. If I were to talk three years ago, my HVAC, an entire HVAC system, if I was going with a gas furnace, you know, a two stage variable gas furnace efficiency across the board, one 10 AC, two ton AC, the standard package. That package should have cost me about anywhere between nine to 12,000. thousand dollars yes all in but now i'm getting estimates you know with are changing constantly

and now in two years it's gone to twenty two thousand dollars yeah and i and i said i had this conversation with a what was that a drilly yesterday a well driller and so three years ago i put in a six inch well for for one of my projects um had it to go down 186 feet did the flushing of the well everything else i tapped my well myself and that well costs me a grand total of $6,100 after taxes. I just priced out one yesterday and talked to the to the driller on site. And now they're telling me that that very same well today is going to be $12,000 and there's no guarantee of that. And I said to them, you're using the same drill.

Your rig is 10 years old. You've already paid for your rig. Your labors, you're using the same guys. Yeah. You have materials may have gone up on that well casing. You tell me how when you did this one for me three years ago for 61 and it's a bigger well now you're telling me it's going to be twice the cost for smaller well i'm like i'm like you know i said i need to buy a pair shoes too i mean i need to but this is and so when i talk to some of my trades and things like that and they look at me and it's like jocelyn you know this is just the industry i'm like no no no no no this is not the industry you guys are going to piss me off and off and i said i'm going to go start to open up my own specialist trades you piss me off that much and then i said then i'll i'll

really hammer all of you and that's kind of like my how my my go-to is so those costs so if you've only budgeted in there on a bill and you have 25 000 for your sewer of your water and everything else and then you have so much for your electrical you mechanical um going into that but now all of a sudden these guys are trying to take 25 or more of your build costs that's not sustainable. And they're like, well, the housing market's going up. You know, they can afford this. No, they can't.

They're actually killing the industry. Is there some trades that are super good and some and some trades that aren't? And because I have a background in mechanical and I have a background in electrical. And my husband is a red seal electrician. And he's also trade designated in HVAC. And he's also trade designated in concrete. And my other foreman that works for the last eight years, he can do he's multi-faceted as well i'm like guys you're talking to somebody that has bid

multi-million dollar projects on every level of government i know how to price this out and i say but how many but how many don't jocelyn like you want i assume in your guys's industry that's that's that's not such a rarity what you just rattled off but i i bet there's something's just like uh if that's cost to doing business that's cost doing business like it's like it's it's a sad state of affairs when I'm listening to this go on. I'm like, oh my goodness. I, you know, like we're half an hour. Like, I'm like, this is, I don't know what I was expecting that having you two on, but I'm like, this doesn't make me feel good, you know? Like it's like, I mean, not that it should. It just you're starting to understand like, I haven't found one single industry at this point that's

like, wow, we're just doing real good. Liberal government, just great. You know, the governments, the municipalities, everybody's just doing great. Like I, I've yet to find it. I, I, In fairness, folks, text away because if you got it, I'd love to hear about it. You know, this housing accelerator fund, okay? Going around, you know, in Calgary, Shane, you've got the zoning bylaws being changed or trying to be. And I'm like, any of this going to help or is this just going to compound this even worse? It's going to make it worse in Calgary. Yeah, the, again, we talked about this earlier on, you know, I am absolutely.

opposed to it and largely because there's you know like I mentioned there's a there's a process in place you know a local area planning in LAP that you know that that takes a holistic view of a community an older community rather and you know they're able to you know concentrate their densification targets to you know to certain areas of that subdivision or that area rather and I think that you know it's it's just a reaction to to the housing crisis and the idea is that, well, we're gonna get more affordable housing within older neighborhoods,

whereas if you just concentrate it, you're able to concentrate it in certain areas where there's already transit available, there's already shopping available, and you can work on your larger infrastructure projects there. To do it sporadically throughout the neighborhoods, I can see more infrastructure failing than anything, Because when you're tying in new infrastructure to 80-year-old infrastructure, pipes crack.

And issues arise from that. And it's just a sporadic approach. So, no, I'm absolutely opposed to that new bylaw. And obviously, a lot of people are because you're taking it to court. In fact, I think it'll become an election issue in Calgary next year when it comes up. There will be candidates who run specifically on, on repealing that bylaw. Is there any argument to be made,

not from the sense of the time it takes to build things, because obviously you've both pointed out to the layers of this issue. But is there any argument to be made that is my land, I get to do whatever the heck I want to do with it. So if I want to build a giant, I don't know, fourplex or whatever the heck it is, on a single family dwelling spot, that should be my right and to hell with you all.

There's good points and bad points to that is that, but the main thing is that if you want to build that fourplexing, you're tying into creating your own infrastructure that's going to support your home, so separate wells and separate, you know, sewage tanks or field or whatever it is, and you have the land to be able to meet those requirements environmentally, and you have an aquifer to tap into you to be able to provide those types of things, well, then maybe that argument is good. Shane pointed out something that's huge. And that is the infrastructure that you are tying to is that there is no point. And I've had this conversation with people asking me in the old cottage country, Sandy Hook Gimley in the interlake here, Manitoba, I want to put like a 60 amp or 50 amp fast charger for my Tesla. I want to do it. And I'm like, oh my God, you don't have that available. You don't have that option without us doing a massive upgrade into your,

electrical and everything else. So the planning has to be is that it has to match whatever you're going to build, has to match to the infrastructure that's available unless you're creating your own like I did. So I had enough land. I could create my own infrastructure and stand alone and I should be able to build whatever it is I'm going to do and I'm doing it. But again, that house has to be supported by something. And you have to look at everything. You're looking at traffic.

You're looking at all those different things. And they're all legitimate questions that need to be asked. So, I mean, there is a legitimacy to the idea of planning. But you've got to use your brain when you're planning. And if you don't have anybody up the top, it's actually using the noodle, everything that's happening down below, unless you have an individual that steps outside the box and just it's not going to work. And it's just going to constantly cascade into this massive cascade of failure,

which is what we're seeing right now. So is the thought process then, and I don't know, you two can have your way with me being just a simpleton, is the thought process then they're just looking at one vector of a problem. That is, we don't have enough housing. How are we going to fix that? Well, what if we just allowed people to build whatever they wanted to build on every spot and we had things go up? Oh, that's a great idea. Now instead of having one family in a house, now we can have four families in a house. Yeah, that's a great idea.

That's a great idea. But they don't take into effect like all the other things that, well, you know, like, what do you have there for infrastructure? Like think about the amount of traffic that's going to cause if you all of a sudden take what's been designed for, I don't know, 20 families and turn that into 80 families. Like, have you thought that far? The parking of that. Or the sewage, the water, the electricity, et cetera.

You're saying, am I right in catching, I think what both of you were laying down? Or is there more to it than that? No, that's exactly it, Sean. I don't think there is a lot of consideration with that. Again, it's something that I felt was very reactionary to what's happening in today's world. And yet you have the perfect planning process in place, and you just threw that out the door, simply because, you know, we have people screaming at us telling us to do something. Well, you want to do something?

open up the land holdings of the city of calgary for example uh you know and there's thousands and thousands of acres of it open it up for set you know that would be an easier solution because at least then you can you can plan correctly what the neighborhood is going to look like and uh and the why won't they do that chain why wouldn't they do that i i have no idea what uh what goes through corporate properties mines uh you know they uh they have air where they've opened it up for bid. They don't get their bid and then they go and they put it back on the shelf for 10 years and hopes that they'll get a new price for it.

It's absolutely ridiculous and yet they hold the keys to one of the best solutions around. That's a big corporate landowners that are even around Winnipeg. It's exactly the same thing. I don't know if people realize this, but Winnipeg's, Winnipeg probably runs out of land within this year or next year. Yes. Wow. you know so and yet you look at the big the big guys that own all these holdings and the deals that

happen in order to make those holdings pass from from city to to to developer and i've seen some stuff i'm going to tell you i've been in a lot of a lot of rooms i've seen some stuff and it's it's really jaded me in terms of of my i don't know how i feel about about any level of of politics or planning or bureaucracism is that I'm really jaded and there's no line line about that is so i've seen some stuff and i've seen is that where they're just shooting themselves on the foot so open up holdings is terrible it was the right idea and not doing it is terrible what jocelyn did i hear you correctly and then i think i saw shane nodding going wow that winnipeg could run out of land did i hear that correctly yes it's been on the can won't they just about it won't they just annex more land like

What do you mean they'll run out land? I mean, Winnipeg's in the middle of, no offense, Manitoba. But like, I mean, isn't there land everywhere? Like, this is Canada. This isn't, you know, like, I mean, there's some spots out in the mountains maybe where you're like, well, man, we got to, you know, how are we going to build up there? Fair enough.

But like, Manitoba's like Saskatchewan for Pete's sake. It's privately held. So those developers, those speculators, we're able to scoop up on the outlying edges of Winnipeg especially scoop up those areas and you have the big developers and everybody knows who I'm talking about and they have scooped up landholding after land holding after landholding and now it's like a pick and choose as to which one you're going to open up for new development and how you're going to do that and where you're going to see that. So if you look at Winnipeg right now is that the outlying edges of Manitoba are just in Winnipeg. You see all these brand new developments.

like Sage Creek and everything else are going up and they're right along the edges right along that that outskirts of where they've extended the infrastructure out to and they're just row housing like and these homes are selling for $500,000 a piece or they're the apartment buildings but they are the cheapest built things that I've ever seen and I have worked on those job sites and they are cheap and I'm if anybody's spending their money on those you are getting hooped you have no idea the problem you're going to run into later on down the road my God molding the drywall that's kept outside and not covered and then installed and the wrong types of drywall and no clean vapor barriers and framing that makes me want to go vomit. It's crazy. So it just I look at it

and I'm like, oh, this is like I just and I see people spending the money and these homes, they look beautiful from the outside and they look beautiful from the from the gecko and gorgeous landscaping and and everything looks wonderful but the problem that you're inheriting when you're working through that not having enough labor to complete or are not investing the money in order to cover your build or to be able to to get it to weather tight to a certain degree and cutting corners and it doesn't matter which builder it is i see the same thing all the time i drive when i drive into winnipeg and i'm looking and i drive through all these developments i'm looking at at the stage of construction and everything that and i'm just park and i look and i'm like

Okay. And I just, you know, it's really disheartening to see that. And you know that there's not enough labor. You know that it is not enough skilled labor. And so then you're trying to deal with that. And so you know that some of these guys are doing the best they can with what they've got on the ground. But at the end of the day, you're not getting a product that is going to last, like our older homes that lasted 40, 50 years. You're going to run into a problem about seven years down the road. You're going to start getting mold issues. You're going to get problems that have just developed because during the build. stage is that that it didn't go to the way together it should have question for both of you do you see any positivity possibly coming in the near future on this you know like with an election and and the fact that you know in calgary shane you know they they they're in court and people are like we ain't doing this do you see any positivity for people in the future where they're like well you know it's going to take time but these things if they get done like is there any of that thought process? I would like to believe that.

I mean, I'm probably a little more skeptical than a lot of people. Yeah, because really, you know, with an election coming up, well, at every level, you know, you would need to see a change in the federal government because, you know, as we've seen so far, especially from our industry's perspective, you know, this, this level liberal government just kind of is very insular. They don't want to talk to anybody outside of it. They have their own plan and it's just. Even at the city of Calgary, you know, there's challenges with planning where we used to have a terrific partnership.

And we could work through these issues together and they've almost done the same thing. You know, so really what you need at a municipal level is you need a council that is prepared to listen and they're prepared to go in and start making some changes with personnel and get the right attitude in there is that we are. a city on the grove and you know we have to we have to allow this rather than just picking away in little pieces that might help the issue about at the federal level you know again a wholesale change i think would would open the doors to conversation again and you know we could actually you know provide some feedback that that'll be listened to and maybe acted on yeah i kind of feel the same way is that there is such a big problem like this the idea of the accelerated front i'd like to see the accelerator front completely scrapped 100% tossed at the door and i'd like to see

instead of feeding bureaucracy i'd like to see that open up into something that translates into kickstarting um kickstarting actually actual physical builders and kickstarting the industry down at that level inflation is going to call is going to reducing that inflation is going to help maybe reset things to a certain point um but there has to be something that some some realization within the industry as well is that maybe we have to start looking at things and a little planning out a little bit better right now because the industry is just killing itself as well, you know, in terms of how they do their pricing schedules and everything else. I mean, they really are shooting themselves on the foot because eventually the money does run out for everybody. And you cannot,

you have to have an industry-wide buy-in to actually doing things a little bit better. and so that this is this should there should be a partnership between government and builders where we're planning together and bureaucracy needs to go you just need to you need to eliminate as much of that as you possibly can or invest in good smart planners and I agree the planning process used to be even for our municipality used to be really good but then when councils would come in and start to change those things up it it It can take things sideways. I mean, as an example for us, is that with the year that I started, I think there was five or six subdivisions that were approved the year that I started on our build.

And I was the first one to get building permits two years down the road, the first one. And of that, only one other one is building and the rest of them are all at standstill. They are just, they're just ground to a halt. And yeah, they've got finally now all those proofs in place, but now their projects are cash poor and it can't build. So in our area alone, and we're talking about just in cottage country, that was probably 100 homes that have been impacted and the projects were robbed of all of their startup capital. So before I let you guys out of here, I just want to make sure that I get this correct.

Housing Accelerator Fund that the government is saying is like, this is going to fix everything. This is going to be great. We're going to go to the municipalities, everything. We're going to give you some money. We're going to get, well, let's go. Both of you who are in this industry for a very long time, I might add, both are like, that thing needs to disappear. Oh, yeah, blow it up. Yeah.

Okay. Well, I mean, I kind of was, you know, like where I sat as a probably, I figured maybe that's going to be the answer. answer, but you know, neither one of you're saying, well, there's a couple nice things in there. You're saying at the end of the day, it's not going to work. And that, I find that very fascinating when you have two people from the industry talking about this isn't addressing the problem whatsoever. Like, is it even putting a ban? To me, I don't know, I've always told the analogy of a bandaid on a bullet hole or bullet

wood. Is it even that? Or is it, it's not even that. Jocelyn's shaking her head of me. It's just awful. It is. Anytime you add more money into the bureaucracy pot, you are just, you are doing everything in that. And Shayna talked earlier about about levies and things like that and these capital lot and development levies and things like that.

And they, that pisses me off to no end. Because when you look at a project that I did where I took on all the infrastructure, the road, the maintenance, the underground infrastructure, the sewer, the water, the drainage, we're zero discharge. and there are no chemical use. Oh, you name it. I'm the unicorn. And yet, was I still charged those cap a lot levies and drainage fees? Yes. I hold water for the province of Manitoba.

I hold water. I don't discharge. I hold and I put all my water back to aquifer. I should be paid for solving a problem for the municipality. I have taken a load off of their sewer and their water system. I've gone into different aquifers in order to prevent, you know, interfering with an aquifer. And I always put, again, I'm replenishing the aquifer through the system that I've created. So to take those fees and to dump them onto developers like myself that are

solving problems and not creating a cost for the RM because we are doing our own snow clearing. We are doing our own grass cutting. We are doing our own road maintenance. The only thing they do is eventually they'll come and they'll pick up our garbage at the compound that I build for them where they can come in at the gates and never enter my development because I don't want their equipment in our throughout our our are on our roads so when you look at that is that here I am I'm solving a problem and I'm allowing infrastructure to develop in other areas of the RM and yet there was no recognition of of that whatsoever and and and that that really really bothers me so that, yes, they think that I'm the piggy bank,

even though not only am I contributing to wages and labor within the community, buying local within local building products, opening up existing housing inventory on the larger size, providing a place for our seniors to retire to that is age in place and priced out for a surviving partner. I mean, I think about those things. I think about what happens when I build a house and have I priced it in a way and built that house and designed that house in a way that if my husband dies, am I able to maintain this house? Am I going to be able to live in this house? Am I going to be able to afford this house?

I'm going to be able to afford energy poverty? Those are all the things that run through my head when I'm building, whether I'm building a single family or I'm building multifamily, that's what I'm thinking about. And I'm thinking about is, am I going to be. going to be able to keep a widow or a widower, am I going to be able to keep them in their home in terms of affordability when one of them does pass on? And that was my, I was kind of like how I looked at this in terms of demographics and all those things for building in the industry. And yet, I feel like there's so few people out there that are actually thinking along those

lines. I mean, we're not utilizing our existing inventory. We're not upgrading our existing inventory. We're not upgrading our existing infrastructure. And we're not planning on demographics. It's like nobody is, is there's nobody home up top. I want to I want to say thank you to both you for joining me. Shane, any final thoughts before I let you both out of here. Appreciate you both giving me time today. Well, I think again it goes back to you know just reducing those those layers of red tape within all the bureaucracies from you know the federal level, at the provincial level, but mostly at the the municipal level, quite honestly. I guess the

the simple way of stating it is that government just get the hell out of the way. You know, we've got a problem. We're trying to help fix it. And you're just, you're standing in the way to us completing the goal or completing the task. Thanks again for joining me, both you. It's never a dull moment when I, when I get either one of you on here. And I appreciate you coming on and doing this. And hopefully, you know, for people listening, it kind of helps maybe paint a picture of where we're at with this.

Accelerator Fund and housing because, you know, I just hear housing. Everything is a crisis these days, right? Climate crisis, you know, crisis, crisis, crisis. But this housing one, when I look at the numbers, I'm like, holy mac, like this ain't, and I appreciate you just, you know, making it simple for this guy on this side and hopefully for a few others. Either way, thanks for hopping on today, guys. Thanks for having me, Sean.

Thanks, Sean.