From the Canadian Broadcast Corporation.
‘We simply don’t have enough tradespeople to rebuild after an event’
David Burke · CBC News · Posted: Dec 30, 2018 7:00 AM AT | Last Updated: December 30
When flood waters recede and hurricane-force winds die down, Canadians can expect it will take longer for their homes to be rebuilt or their power to be restored if the country’s labour market doesn’t soon catch up to the realities of climate change.
More powerful and destructive storms are driving up demand for construction workers, power line technicians and even insurance adjusters.
“We simply don’t have enough tradespeople to rebuild after an event,” said Craig Stewart, vice-president of federal affairs with the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
“Presently we are three months out from the tornados hitting Ottawa and there are whole apartment units that haven’t been touched and are filled with snow now because there hasn’t been anybody available to work on them.”
Many workers are tied up with large commercial, industrial and residential projects in Ontario and British Columbia, according to BuildForce Canada, an organization that studies the construction industry and puts together long-term labour forecasts.
The demand for people who can build homes, pave streets, wire a building or practise any kind of skilled trade connected to construction is expected to increase in the coming years.
Bill Ferreira, Buildforce’s executive director, said a quarter of the construction workforce across the country is expected to retire between now and 2027. Some 42,000 new workers will need to be hired in the next 10 years.
But none of BuildForce’s labour projections even consider climate change in their workforce calculations.
“We are all familiar with what happened in Alberta a few years ago as well as in Toronto with that severe rainstorm, most recently here in Ottawa with the tornado,” said Ferreira.
“Again these are incidents, isolated incidents, [it’s] very difficult to build any sort of overall trend that we could take a look at or point to that would be driving construction demand.”
The insurance bureau sees a trend, though. And it’s a costly one.
In the 1990s, severe weather and wildfires caused about $100 million worth of damage a year. From 2008 on, that amount has surpassed $1 billion every year except for one.
This year alone there have been more than $1.8 billion in insured losses across the country.
“What we have seen right now is that it can take months or even a year for people to get back into a steady living environment after a disaster,” said Stewart.
“We now know these events are happening with increased frequency, no area of the country is immune, it is going to happen.”
Power utilities across the country are feeling that first-hand, as high winds snap power lines or wildfires turn power poles to ash, leaving thousands without electricity.
More power line technicians are going to be needed to fix that damage and more engineers will be needed to help design power grids that are better able to handle bad weather, said Sergio Marchi, the president and CEO of the Canadian Electricity Association.
“We will be needing a lot more tradespeople and certainly in our sector the kind of dedicated, experienced line workers who we call our modern day heroes.”
Much like the construction industry, many power workers are nearing retirement age and will need to be replaced. That, combined with climate change, will further increase demand for workers.
“The silver lining is that it’s not going to remove jobs because we’re going to need more crews, more people to battle more storms that are now becoming more damage-creating because they’re becoming extreme,” said Marchi. “So we’re going to need all hands on deck as they say.”
Marchi said power utilities across the country have already been relying on more help from work crews from outside their provinces, because they don’t have enough workers to repair severe storm damage in a timely manner.
Even the insurance industry, which has spent years warning people about the dangers of climate change, found itself unprepared for the demands severe weather would place on its own employees.
There’s a chronic shortage of insurance adjusters across the country to determine the cost of repairing or replacing a damaged home, said Stewart.
Without the adjuster to do the assessment, people are left waiting to get their insurance money.
“A, we need more trained adjusters in the country,” said Stewart. “B, we need better labour mobility laws so that when there’s a spike, we’re sharing adjusters across North America … so we can bring in adjusters as needed on a surge basis after an event occurs”
HT/nc
I actually think it isnt helping third world cou ntries by taking the so-called best. Better, make them stay in their own countries and help them improve their lot. But, hey, isn’t that imperialism?
“Marchi said power utilities across the country have already been relying on more help from work crews from outside their provinces, because they don’t have enough workers to repair severe storm damage in a timely manner.”
We do this in the US all the time, it makes no sense to maintain a workforce sufficient for storm rebuilds all the time. It is a planned strategy. I find it interesting that Mr. Marchi said this, because on several occasions we have had Canadian linemen here in the mid-Atlantic states doing that very thing after storms and hurricanes.
Won’t these same disasters wipe out the wind turbines, Solar panels, Solar furnace generators, etc. [most renewables.] Where is all of the electricity going to come from that the CBC is worried about restoring? Can remember only a few short outages of the local power station over my 75 years. And now we have Puerto Rico replacing all conventional generating stations with “Renewables.” Use Your Brain, a larger disaster is in the wind – globally.
Solution is simple. Train tradespeople instead of subsidizing wind and solar.
Already stated in the comments but it bears repeating.
The progressive mind can never imagine how or where the laws of supply and demand can be applied in a real world situation. Again and again we see the ‘invisible hand’ of a free market supply our wants and needs and again and again progressives continue to deny there is any such thing.
Endlessly fighting back the climate cult’s sophistry is tiring.
I think they have misinterpreted the idiom that if you debate an idiot then bystanders can’t tell who the idiot is, and took it to mean that being the idiot is the way to win all debates.
The Canadian liberal government led by Mr. Dressup is starting a carbon tax basically in a cold country which depends on fossil fuels. The CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is mainly funded by the taxpayer to the tune of 1.5 billion and year. The CBC is the PR arm of the liberal government and with this government bringing in a carbon tax the CBC regularly publishes “climate change” misinformation upto three times a week. As with this article there is never any data or proof included with the article to back up the latest C02 perceived catastrophe.
Something else this liberal government is doing, 500 million is going to be doled to so called struggling fake news MSM in Canada. The money is supposedly to be passed out by a neutral party. Here is the kicker. an election is less than a year away. neutral party my butt.
Oh sensitive people moderate CBC comments, I get put in the corner on a regular basis. No free speech in the CBC or MSM in Canada unless it follows the liberal and Mr. Dressups line.
Is total energy control total world control?
Is manmade climate change the foundation of eco-fascist world government?
Uh Oh Canada…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/17/toronto-named-as-the-heartland-of-the-radical-climate-revolution/
Toronto Named as the Heartland of the Radical Climate Revolution
“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable. Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme & architect of the UN Oil for Food Scandal
“Maurice Strong was a pioneer of sustainable development who left our country and our world a better place.” – PM Justin Trudeau
PM Trudeau is honored before his first speech at the UN…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t7QD-CKUPw
SEPTEMBER 19, 2016: Arch of Baal” erected in New York City
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/09/19/justin-trudeau-praised-un_n_12093658.html
SEPTEMBER 19, 2016: Justin Trudeau Hailed At UN in New York City As ‘Example’ To The World
Baal is back…
https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/asia/item/28339-creepy-world-government-summit-targets-america-freedom
Creepy World Government Summit Targets America, Freedom
“[T]he globalists at the summit made headlines worldwide for gathering under a replica of the infamous “Arch of Baal.” Analysts suggested that the inclusion of the bizarre monument, which once stood in front of a pagan temple to the false god Baal to whom children were often sacrificed, was extremely significant to some of the higher-ranking globalists.”
I guess California hasn’t heard of cloud seeding…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_modification
“Weather modification is the act of intentionally manipulating or altering the weather. The most common form of weather modification is cloud seeding, which increases rain or snow, usually for the purpose of increasing the local water supply. Weather modification can also have the goal of … provoking damaging weather against the enemy, as a tactic of military or economic warfare…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon
“A directed-energy weapon (DEW) is a ranged weapon that damages its target with highly focused energy, including laser,microwaves and particle beams. Potential applications of this technology include weapons that target personnel, missiles, vehicles, and optical devices.”
https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-is-ready-to-launch-a-satellite-that-shoots-lasers-at-the-earth/
“NASA is ready to launch a satellite that shoots lasers at the Earth. The satellite shoots 10,000 laser pulses at the Earth every second, taking measurements every 2.3 feet to paint a laser landscape of the planet. Space lasers are not just the domain of evil supervillains — they can help scientists map the Earth too.”
Anthony has never blocked my comments; why was my comment just blocked?
It’s probably the quirky comment software rather than a moderator, Linda.
Most of my posts do not show up immediately but will take a number of minutes before they show up, after a refresh of the page. On occasion one of my posts will appear right after I post it, maybe one out of ten. That’s why I don’t think moderators are causing this delay because that one-in-ten post appears too quickly for anyone to read it and then approve it.
Ever since WUWT had a problem with their new comment software and had to revert back to the old comment software, there have been problems. A lot of features are no longer available like posting pictures in the post (which used to be available even with the old software, but alas, no more).
We do the best we can with what we have. 🙂
Given the current interest in a sort of philanthropic neocolonialism (e.g. in Africa) Canada would do well to invite Norway to serve as a colonial ruler. Rather like the ancient Russian people of Novgorod, and their legendary interaction with the Varangian (Scandinavian) prince Rurik and his fellow Norsemen. According to the legend, the people of Novgorod said to Rurik:
“Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come and rule over us.”
Maybe it’s time for a Norwegian to show Canada how not to venezuelate down the sink their fossil fuel wealth on political corruption.
We don’t need to hand Canada to Norwegians. We just need to kick out Quebec and Ontario, and the rest of the country will do fine.
If they’re lucky, we’ll even send some international aid to help them out after their economies collapse.
At the end of the day, Canada is a country of convenience: it happened because the West could dig up resources and grow food and send them to the East, who’d turn them into manufactured goods and send them back to the West in payment.
That bargain worked for decades while Canada had an industrial economy and relatively sane government. It’s completely failed today when Trudeau can’t even get a pipeline built to carry those resources from the West to the East.
So, unless he’s kicked out at the next election, I’d say the country is done. It makes no sense for most of the provinces to be told what to do by idiots thousands of miles away. Unlike construction workers, there’s no lack of idiots, so we can easily replace them with idiots at home, at a much lower cost.
Everybody wants to be rich and sharpdressed. Nobody wants to work with small salary. I there is need to do something, pay more. If bulls**t talking and writing gives more money than when you get your hands dirty, nobody wants their hands dirty.
Uh-Oh Canada…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/17/toronto-named-as-the-heartland-of-the-radical-climate-revolution/
Toronto Named as the Heartland of the Radical Climate Revolution
“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable. Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme & architect of the UN Oil for Food Scandal
“Maurice Strong was a pioneer of sustainable development who left our country and our world a better place.” – PM Justin Trudeau
PM Trudeau is honored before his first speech at the UN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t7QD-CKUPw
SEPTEMBER 19: Arch of Baal” erected in New York City
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/09/19/justin-trudeau-praised-un_n_12093658.html
SEPTEMBER 19: Justin Trudeau Hailed At UN in New York As ‘Example’ To The World
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_modification
“Weather modification is the act of intentionally manipulating or altering the weather. The most common form of weather modification is cloud seeding, which increases rain or snow, usually for the purpose of increasing the local water supply. Weather modification can also have the goal of…provoking damaging weather against the enemy, as a tactic of military or economic warfare…”
Governor Moonbeam never heard of cloud seeding? Odds are he’s heard of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon
“A directed-energy weapon (DEW) is a ranged weapon that damages its target with highly focused energy, including laser, microwaves and particle beams. Potential applications of this technology include weapons that target personnel, missiles, vehicles, and optical devices.”
https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-is-ready-to-launch-a-satellite-that-shoots-lasers-at-the-earth/
“NASA is ready to launch a satellite that shoots lasers at the Earth. The satellite shoots 10,000 laser pulses at the Earth every second, taking measurements every 2.3 feet to paint a laser landscape of the planet. Space lasers are not just the domain of evil supervillains — they can help scientists map the Earth too.”
Twice my comment was blocked, with purely factual information, nothing offensive and no alarmist drivel.
I think everyone’s comments are delayed sometimes.
Mine certainly are.
Possibly a technical not personal reason.
Likely due to the number of links within the comment.
Let’s get to the real meat of this CBC drivel, the apparent lack of qualified trades people. Much of this stems from the belief of most of Canada that training to be merely an electrician, a plumber, a carpenter or similar occupation is no longer a honorable tradition. Rather Canadian youth should spend years in school learning to be SJWs in gender studies, the most useless undertaking on this planet. Climate change aside ( no snide remarks, I believe it is changing because the evidence is before us, but for the better and has nothing to do with mankind) if you don’t allow your children to train for useful occupations pretty soon there is no one to put a new roof on your home, fix your aging wiring or rebuild the addition that got a tree dropped upon it. My son-in-law is a millwright in training, both of my nephews are completing trades training and they will always be in work unlike the graduates in useless degrees with mountains of debt. (rant over).
You want monkeys?
then pay with peanuts.
As one of them “skilled tradesmen”I have an ever diminishing appetite for BS.
CBC is the national broadcaster of BS.
Sure there is a shortage of skilled labour at the desired price.
But to blame the lack of workers for unstarted work following a disaster is typical CBC stupidity.
The slow down starts and ends with the bureaucracies, getting permission to replace or repair a building so damaged is tedious and immensely time consuming.
Busy tradesmen simply stop responding to the endless idiocy that the “Grey’s” create.
The poor property owner is trapped in an endless loop of sheer madness,they drive the trades crazy as they seek to comply and are in turn driven crazy by the information the trades provide.
That being in short;”You poor property owner are screwed.You are now totally at the mercy of mindless morons.Call me back when you escape.If you have any money left to hire me,that is.”
Just ask those residents of Christchurch New Zealand.
I expect the same level of “efficiency” from our Ottawa experts as well.
How does any of what they said equate to blaming workers? Perhaps you can quote that bit for me?
John Robertson said:
“But to blame the lack of workers for unstarted work following a disaster is typical CBC stupidity.”
Where did they do that? Can you quote that bit for me?
“There’s big demand for tradespeople to repair the damage from stronger storms brought on by climate change, so much so some people are waiting months for repairs to get done. (Bob Wellinski/Michigan City News Dispatch/Associated Press)
When flood waters recede and hurricane-force winds die down, Canadians can expect it will take longer for their homes to be rebuilt or their power to be restored if the country’s labour market doesn’t soon catch up to the realities of climate change.
More powerful and destructive storms are driving up demand for construction workers, power line technicians and even insurance adjusters.
“We simply don’t have enough tradespeople to rebuild after an event,” said Craig Stewart, vice-president of federal affairs with the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
“Presently we are three months out from the tornados hitting Ottawa and there are whole apartment units that haven’t been touched and are filled with snow now because there hasn’t been anybody available to work on them.” ”
Reading comprehension much?
Your two comments show a severe lack of said ability.
The quoted blurb being the headpost, so did you even bother to read the article before descending to spread your “wisdom”?
You are correct. I didn’t read that properly. My apologies.
Standard building practice for houses in North America, appears to Australians, as cheap, flimsy and seemingly constructed largely of cardboard. Resistance to weather events for this sort of construction is low. That being said, it appears that weather threats are diminishing not increasing in North America. This article is more of the self-serving propaganda of CAGW.
The basic problem as I see it, and I have worked in many jobs, is that salary seems to be related to what the society thinks are highly rating jobs.
Take for example a worker in a aborotower , killing and cutting up dead animals. Its not all that well paid, yet is essential. Take a lawyer, he may be a very average lawyer, hardly all that necessary for society, yet he will expect t and get a high salary.
So let s say that salary should be related to the need for a certain occupation and pay the worker cutting up deaf animals s as much as a lawyer. Then if the lawyer cannot find employment, and he still wishes for a high salary, he too can always cut up dead animals.
If any job pays a high salary it will attract persons to do it.
As far as training is concerned these days its subsisted in one way or another . Here in Australia its the government who keep the universities going, and for lesser trades either employers are subsisted to train people or they do it via govt. organisations such as TAFE.
Where there is a need there will always be a response. To some extent the military is a way for some people to get the qualifications for the jobs society needs.
MJE
It’s kinda hard to rebuild when all the little schmucks are learning to be social justice advocates rather than valuable workers.
I still can’t get over the use of “climate change” as if it were a force. Climate change is a result, not a cause. Saying “climate change” causes more wildfires or severe storms is like saying burned tree trunks cause forest fires, or wet sidewalks cause the rain.
Then you have the construction “Do you believe in climate change?” — again, as though it were a thing, and not a result of many things happening.
It’s a terrible disadvantage to allow one’s opponent to define the terms. They get away with calling CO2 “carbon,” and now using “climate change” as though it were a fundamental force of nature. We have to do a better job of forcing the conversation back onto the real science, and not projections and modeling.
Some of the comments here seem to suggest that Texas and Florida are oblivious to hurricane risk when it comes to their building codes. Living on the Texas coast I can assure you that is not the case. But a big problem, as seen with Hurricane Michael, is that many old houses, built prior to code modernization, still exist. Remodeling projects will get put off because the required storm upgrades make the expense prohibitive. When the storm comes the damage is severe and the upgrades become required just at the time the owner is under the most severe financial pressure. It sucks, but they should have known the risk. Personally I invested in upgrades just two years before Hurricane Ike. It was lucky timing and I was real glad I did it. And it lowered my insurance costs.
Trudeau will come to the rescue. There will be a forced distribution of male and female places in trade schools to cope with the massive wave of females wanting to work in the non airconditioned sector. Add a mandatory unit of Lesbian Dance Studies to the course and Justin will ensure it fully funded. Problem solved.
But you’re lucky, not I need for more medics.
People tend to think medics are men’s best friend but medics are as greedy as the rest of the gang.
So the vast Russia or Ukraine of course needed
lots of medics and qualifies them just to loose them to better paid jobs in say the US, Saudi Arabia. ..
Contrary to the allegations of the CAGWers, who allege an increase in “extreme weather events”, I would think that increased greenhouse gasses should REDUCE cyclone energy and extreme weather events. Specifically, the second law states that the energy for heat engines comes from temperature DIFFERENCES, not just from high temperatures. In the case of tropical cyclones it’s the water being warmer than the air that supplies the energy.
But with global warming, the air wouldn’t be getting as cold as quickly in the fall, so the energy for tropical cyclones should be reduced (first order effect, anyway). This is counter-intuitive to folks who don’t know physics, but it’s why refrigerators consume electricity instead of produce it, and why tornadoes tend to be associated with cold-fronts.
Based on these stories, it looks like I’m right, and those who cry about warming increasing the frequency of extreme weather are wrong.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/2015GL064929
“Recent review papers reported that many high-resolution global climate models consistently projected a reduction of global tropical cyclone (TC) frequency in a future warmer climate, although the mechanism of the reduction is not yet fully understood. Here we present a result of 4K-cooler climate experiment. The global TC [tropical cyclone] frequency significantly increases in the 4K-cooler climate compared to the present climate. This is consistent with a significant decrease in TC frequency in the 4K-warmer climate.“
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X06009186
“Our record demonstrates that the frequency variability of intense landfalling cyclones is greatest at centennial scale compared to seasonal and decadal oscillations. [T]he period between AD 1600 to 1800 [Little Ice Age] had many more intense or hazardous cyclones impacting the site than the post AD 1800 period.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379115301335
“A comparison with North Atlantic and Western Mediterranean paleoclimate proxies shows that the phases of high storm activity occurred during cold periods, suggesting a climatically-controlled mechanism for the occurrence of these storm periods. … Periods of low storm activity occurred from 560 cal yr BC to 140 cal yr AD (SP9 and SP8, Roman Warm Period) and from 820 to 1230 cal yr AD (SP4, Medieval Warm Period).”
http://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/30_january_2015?folio=540&pg=98#pg98
“Our work illustrates a major constraint on the large-scale global atmospheric engine: As the climate warms, the system may be unable to increase its total entropy production enough to offset the moistening inefficiencies associated with phase transitions. … On a warming Earth, the increase in perceptible water has been identified as a reason for the tropical overturning to slow down, and studies over a wide range of climates suggest that global atmospheric motions are reduced in extremely warm climates.“
So those who blame “extreme weather” on global warming are fools or liars. COOLING has caused more extreme weather in the PAST, and would continue to do so in the future, while WARMING has caused LESS extreme weather in the past, and would continue to do so in the future.
If the global climate warms, weather conditions in general for Canada should improve and the growing season will be longer. That is all good news for Canada. If additional labor is needed Canada can always get it from across the border from the USA.