Province
A jump in building permits in Metro Vancouver is ‘extremely encouraging,’ says a construction association representative. Photograph by: Ric Ernst file, The Province
Building permit values in the Vancouver area jumped almost 43 per cent between June and July, Statistics Canada said yesterday.
Permit values for the area climbed 42.8 per cent to $350.6 million in July, StatsCan said.
“The July permit values are extremely encouraging,” said Keith Sashaw, president of the Vancouver Regional Construction Association.
“While there may be some continued volatility ahead, the worst of the recession for the construction industry may be behind us.” Independent Contractors and Businesses Association president Philip Hochstein, however, cautioned that the construction industry is not yet out of the woods.
“As we finish building the backlog of projects from 2008 and 2009, there’s not a lot coming forward in 2010, so next year will be a very challenging year for B.C. contractors,” Hochstein said.
Across B.C., permit values fell 2.5 per cent between June and July.
Residential values in the province rose 19.8 per cent and non-residential dropped 24 per cent.
Nationally, a strike by Toronto civic workers was largely blamed for a surprising drop in building permit values in July, StatsCan said.
Permit values fell 11.4 per cent from June to $4.6 billion, despite economists’ forecasts of a 0.4-per-cent increase. However, excluding Toronto — which experienced a five-week halt to civic services — the national decrease was just 1.8 per cent for July.
Tuesday’s report said that municipalities issued about $2.6 billion in residential permits in July, representing a drop of 4.1 per cent. A 19.3-per-cent decrease was recorded for non-residential permits, coming in at about $2 billion.
Ontario experienced the harshest decline — down 27.5 per cent.
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