'We do need more people': N.S. Construction Association CEO on recent federal construction announcements
CTV
The federal government has been making their rounds across the country in recent days, announcing tens of billions of dollars worth of construction, rental units, and affordable housing.
The federal government has been making their rounds across the country in recent days, announcing tens of billions of dollars worth of construction, rental units, and affordable housing.
While these housing announcements are only coming to us now, Duncan Williams, president and CEO of the Construction Association of Nova Scotia says projects like these are often in the works for years.
“There’s a long tail on all of these projects, and all of the programming and all of the dollars that go with it, so some of these things have been in the works for seven, eight years,” Williams told CTV’s Todd Battis in an interview on Thursday.
Williams points to a number of contributing factors for the ongoing housing problems around the country, one of which being the number of people leaving the industry versus going in.
“The crisis, if you will, around it is because we’ve seen population grow so quickly, we’ve seen commercial growth, industrial growth happening right across the country,” said Williams. “So the pressure on trades after people are retiring, [compared to] the number of people who can get out and build has been just off the charts in the last few years.”
Despite the discrepancy, Williams says they’re working hard to get numbers back up.
“It took us a while to get where we’re at, it’s going to take some time to get where we need to be. What we’re seeing right now is people are retiring, we had COVID of course, which the number of people graduating and finishing apprenticeship programs, immigration, all dropped off. So we’re trying to recover from that,” he said.
