My Last news and Updates
Construction, design, business development and international projects. Here I share ideas, experiences and insights from my work between Europe, the Canary Islands and beyond.
Calgary vs Edmonton construction costs: 2026 Data
If you’re comparing Calgary vs Edmonton construction costs in 2026, the headline number depends entirely on which type of building you’re asking about. According to Statistics Canada’s Building Construction Price Index for the first quarter of 2026, residential and non-residential construction costs in Alberta’s two largest cities are moving in opposite directions — sometimes by..
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Calgary’s Housing Supply Gap: What the Airdrie, Chestermere and Cochrane Numbers Actually Show
Population in Calgary’s satellite communities is growing faster than almost anywhere else in Canada. But a closer look at the region’s building permit and housing start data reveals a Calgary’s housing supply gap that most market commentary is missing — and it matters directly for anyone running feasibility studies, site selection, or development underwriting in..
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Alberta Prompt Payment Adjudication: 2026 Data & Guide
Would you spend $3,000 to recover a $19,459 invoice in under 60 days? A year into Alberta’s Prompt Payment and Construction Lien Act, that’s a real option — and one most companies still aren’t using. One Year Into Alberta’s Prompt Payment and Construction Lien Act Alberta’s Prompt Payment and Construction Lien Act (PPCLA) closed its..
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Alberta Construction Talent Shortage 2026 Explained
Why Alberta Construction Firms Are Losing the War for Talent in 2026 Canada is losing skilled workers at the fastest pace in 74 years — and hiring has barely kept up. For companies wrestling with the Alberta construction talent shortage in 2026, the data tells a more complicated story than “there simply aren’t enough workers.”..
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Calgary vs Edmonton: What Two Opposite Zoning Bets Mean for Alberta Feasibility Studies
In 2024, Calgary vs Edmonton made the same regulatory bet: citywide upzoning, pitched as the fix for the same problem — a population growing faster than housing supply could keep up. Two years later, the two cities are running opposite plays, and the split has real consequences for anyone underwriting a construction or development project..
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Canada’s Productivity Super Deduction: What It Means
Canada just made its biggest capital-investment tax change in a generation — and most companies evaluating a manufacturing or industrial footprint in North America haven’t fully priced it into their numbers yet. On September 15, 2026, the federal government expanded the Productivity Super Deduction introduced in Budget 2025 into what officials are now calling the..
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Alberta Continuing Care Capital Cost: What $365,000 Per Space Tells Developers
Alberta has, for the first time in this cycle, put a public number on what it costs the province to add a continuing care bed. The Alberta continuing care capital cost implied by the April 2026 funding round is roughly $365,000 per space. Almost everyone in the sector read that announcement as health policy. It..
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Calgary Construction Costs vs Toronto: What the 2026 Data Actually Shows
For fifteen years the pitch has been the same in every boardroom west of Winnipeg: build in Alberta, it costs less than Toronto. In 2026 that sentence stopped being reliably true. Calgary construction costs now run above Greater Toronto on retail, warehousing and mid-rise residential, while remaining dramatically below the GTA on institutional, educational and..
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Alberta Industrial Real Estate vs BC: The 2026 Numbers
Alberta Industrial Real Estate vs British Columbia: Where the Advantage Actually Flips in 2026 British Columbia sells industrial power at roughly half Alberta’s price. Alberta leases industrial space at roughly half British Columbia’s price. Both statements are true, both are quoted selectively, and neither one decides anything on its own. This article works through the..
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Alberta Construction Adjudication: 50 Cases, a Staggering Gap
Alberta construction adjudication — the province’s statutory fast track for payment disputes — was used 50 times between April 2025 and March 2026. The United Kingdom, running a near-identical model, recorded 2,264 referrals in its last reported year. That gap opened in a year when Alberta was the only province in Canada where business insolvencies..
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Alberta Construction Costs 2026: The Costly Escalation Mistake
Alberta construction costs rose 4.12% in Calgary this year. In British Columbia, private sector costs fell 3 to 5%. Same country, same year, same tariffs. Canadian construction costs split in two directions in 2026, and the split runs almost exactly along the line separating markets with work from markets without it. Altus Group put it..
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Alberta Construction Costs Rose 4% in 2026 While Toronto’s Fell
Alberta construction costs rose more than 4% in 2026. Over the same twelve months, Toronto’s fell. Same country, same tariff regime, opposite direction. That divergence is invisible in every national average published this year, and it is the reason most cross-border cost benchmarking produces a number nobody can build to. The comparison most people start..
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Development Charges by City: The Full Canadian Ranking
About $1,600 at one end. About $134,400 at the other. Those are municipal charges on a single high-rise unit, across the 23 municipalities the Canadian Home Builders’ Association benchmarked with Altus Group. Development charges by city is not a marginal line in a Canadian pro forma. It is frequently the largest single variable in it,..
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Calgary vs Edmonton Building Permits: The $128,000 Gap
The number nobody publishes The average Calgary building permit was worth $476,000 last year. In Edmonton, $348,000. Three hours up Highway 2. That figure is not published anywhere. It comes from dividing two numbers that are: total permit value, and permit count. Calgary recorded $7.4 billion across 15,559 permits in 2025. Edmonton recorded $4.9 billion..
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Development Charges in Alberta: The $57,000 Calgary Gap
$93,000 in Calgary. $36,000 in Edmonton. Same province. Same building code. Same labour market. Three hundred kilometres apart. And that figure is not the cost of building the house — it is the municipal fee for permission to build it. The gap is $57,000 per unit. Development charges in Alberta differ that sharply between its..
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Alberta Business Insolvencies Rose 35.6%. The Rest of Canada Went the Other Way.
Business insolvencies across Canada fell 9.7% over the twelve months to 30 June 2026. In Alberta, they rose. That divergence is the single most useful thing in the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy’s second-quarter release, and it is almost entirely absent from the coverage — because the national headline reads like a recovery, and..
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Alberta Fixed-Price Procurement: Who Carries Escalation Risk
Most of the debate about construction procurement in Canada is framed as a question of efficiency. It is more useful to frame it as a question of allocation. Every delivery model assigns escalation risk to someone. Fixed price does not eliminate that risk — it hands it to the party that signed the bid. That..
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CCDC 32 and the New Design-Build Suite: Three Clauses Owners Should Not Sign As-Is
In spring 2026 the Canadian Construction Documents Committee released four documents at once: revised versions of CCDC 14 and CCDC 15, and two entirely new forms — CCDC 32 for progressive design-build, and CCDC 33 for the consultant agreement that sits underneath it. It is the first change to the design-build suite since 2013. Thirteen..
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Alberta’s Indigenous Loan Guarantee Is 75% Unused. That Is Not a Funding Problem.
Alberta’s Indigenous loan guarantee programme has authorised up to $3 billion in capacity. Since 2019 it has issued just over $745 million across eight transactions, benefiting 43 First Nations and Métis groups. Roughly three quarters of the capacity has never been drawn. The obvious reading is that the programme is underused, and that someone should..
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Removed the One-Year Barrier for Foreign-Trained Engineers Alberta
If you are one of the foreign-trained engineers Alberta has been trying to attract for the past decade, something changed on July 18, 2026 — and almost nobody noticed. Until that date, an internationally trained engineer applying for a professional engineer licence in Alberta had to complete one full year of Canadian engineering experience before..
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Alberta Construction Cash Flow: What Q2 2026 Insolvency Data Shows
Alberta Construction Cash Flow: What the Q2 2026 Insolvency Data Actually Says Alberta is the fastest-growing economy in Canada. It also just posted a 35.6% year-over-year jump in business insolvencies. Both statements are true, and the gap between them is where the Alberta construction cash flow story lives. Nationally, business insolvencies were essentially flat last..
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Alberta Construction Costs 2026: Where Tariffs Actually Hit
Supplies up 20%. Project costs up 4%. Same year, same market. Someone is absorbing the difference — and on most projects, it isn’t the client. Alberta construction costs rose across the board in 2026, but the headline numbers hide the part that actually matters to anyone pricing work: the increase did not spread evenly. It..
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DFW Population Growth 2026: Where Permits Aren’t Following
DFW population growth reached a point in 2026 where two datasets stopped agreeing with each other. One says the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is absorbing residents faster than almost anywhere in the United States. The other says builders are pulling back from precisely the counties doing the absorbing. Both datasets are credible. Neither is wrong. The..
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Alberta Building Code 2025: What Part 10 Means for Retrofits
Maintenance is exempt. Replacement isn’t. That distinction sits inside the 2025 National Building Code, and it is the single most consequential provision the Alberta building code is likely to inherit once the province completes its review. If it is adopted as drafted, it will change how retrofit work in this province is scoped, priced and..
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Alberta Construction Market 2026: -21% Rotation Explained
Alberta’s Construction Market Is Rotating, Not Slowing: What the 2026 Data Actually Says Minus 21% residential. Plus 6% non-residential. Same province, same decade, opposite directions. Both numbers are real, both come from credible sources, and almost every conversation about the Alberta construction market 2026 quotes only the first one. That omission is expensive, because the..
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Alberta Housing Accelerator Fund: 70,000 Homes Approved
The Alberta Housing Accelerator Fund story is usually told in two headlines — one for Calgary, one for Edmonton. That framing misses the point. In under two years, the federal Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) helped fast-track close to 30,000 residential building permits — roughly 70,000 homes — across Alberta’s largest cities, and the ripple reached..
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Alberta Non-Residential Construction: The 2026 Shift to Watch
Alberta non-residential construction is quietly becoming the most important story in the province’s building sector — and it’s the one most people are still missing. While headlines fixate on housing, the data shows the money changing lanes: residential investment is set to peak in 2026, while non-residential activity keeps climbing through 2035. For any company weighing..
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Alberta Housing Infrastructure: Why $510M in Pipes Matters More Than Permit Reform
Alberta housing infrastructure just received the clearest signal in years about where the province will actually be able to build. On July 29, 2026, Canada and Alberta signed a new infrastructure agreement worth up to $510 million in federal funding, with the province contributing as much as $428 million on top of it, over eight..
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The Alberta Construction Market in 2026: Housing Is Down, But the Industry Is Booming
The Alberta construction market 2026 story that most headlines are telling is simple: things are slowing down. Housing starts are falling, buyers are cautious, and the residential engine that powered the province for years is cooling. That story is true — and it is also pointing you at the wrong market. Because while houses slow, another side..
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European Construction Is Growing Again. That’s Bad News for Alberta.
The European construction forecast 2026 points to something the market has waited two years for: growth. Investment across Europe is set to rise by 2.7% in real terms, after contracting 2.5% in 2024 and a further 2.1% in 2025. For European contractors, that’s relief. For developers and project managers building in Alberta, it’s a countdown..
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Alberta Construction Labour Shortage: 48,800 Workers Needed by 2035
Alberta’s construction market is sending two signals that look contradictory. Housing starts are down 5% year-over-year. Non-residential activity is forecast to climb through 2035. Both are true — and the Alberta construction labour shortage is what connects them. The forecast from BuildForce Canada is blunt: the province needs to add 48,800 construction workers by 2035, while 43,700..
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Alberta Housing Starts Fell 21% in 2026. Here’s Why That’s Not the Whole Story
The Alberta housing starts 2026 data tells two opposite stories at once. Starts fell 21% in the first half of the year — the sharpest drop of any province in Canada. At the same time, the province has 44,509 homes under construction, an all-time high. Both figures come from the same CMHC report. Here is..
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A Canadian EB-5: How to End the Recession Without Spending a Dollar
Canada has a supply problem it is not going to spend its way out of — and the fix may be a Canadian EB-5: an investor-immigration program that puts private capital to work building the homes the country can’t finance on its own. Here is the case, and the blueprint. The math is brutal and..
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Calgary vs Canmore Real Estate: Two Alberta Markets Moving in Opposite Directions (2025)
Look at Calgary vs Canmore real estate side by side and you would assume you are reading one story: two Alberta markets, one hour apart, both riding the same provincial economy. You are not. In 2025 they moved in opposite directions — Calgary’s benchmark price fell while Canmore’s detached homes climbed almost 10%. The numbers below show..
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Canmore Real Estate Market: Why Capital Buys Where People Leave
The Canmore real estate market did something in 2025 that looks impossible on paper: it kept setting price records while the town lost residents. One hour east, Calgary gained people yet watched prices soften. Same province, opposite logic — and the gap explains where money is really moving in Alberta. Two Alberta markets, one hour apart Most..
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Alberta Rural Entrepreneur Stream: 90 Spots, 242 Applicants, and the Towns Left Out
90 spots. 242 applicants. And not one of them can set up shop in Calgary’s fastest-growing suburbs. The Alberta Rural Entrepreneur Stream is one of the most overlooked forces shaping where investment capital lands across the province — and almost no one in development is pricing it in. Here is the mechanism, and why it..
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Canada Start-Up Visa 2026: What the Pause Really Costs
The Canada Start-Up Visa 2026 pause is the most important immigration decision almost no one is talking about. On December 31, 2025, Canada closed its flagship entrepreneur programme to new applicants. The replacement — a “targeted entrepreneur pilot” promised for 2026 — still has no criteria and no launch date. At the same time, the country..
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Calgary Suburbs Growth: Where the Region Is Really Expanding
Calgary just posted the fastest population growth of any major metro area in Canada — but the most important part of that story isn’t happening inside the city. Calgary suburbs growth is quietly redrawing the map of the region, pulling tens of thousands of new residents into the collar towns of Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks and..
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Calgary vs Edmonton Property Tax 2026: Lower Rate, Bigger Bill
0.63% vs 0.76%. Those are the 2026 residential property tax rates in Alberta’s two biggest cities — and they hide a trap. When you compare Calgary vs Edmonton property tax, Calgary has the lower rate, yet the typical Calgary homeowner writes a bigger cheque to the city than their Edmonton counterpart. Same province. Lower rate. Higher bill. All three..
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Alberta Construction Market 2026: Why Growth Is Shifting, Not Slowing
If you only read the residential headlines, you’d assume the Alberta construction market in 2026 is cooling off. The numbers behind those headlines tell a more useful story — one about direction and mix, not decline. Housing starts came in at 46,064 annualized in March 2026, down 5% year-over-year. Edmonton dropped 8% and Calgary 4%…
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Alberta Industrial Heartland: A $50B Build Opportunity
Dow just committed $10B in Alberta. Who do you think is going to build it? Alberta’s Industrial Heartland concentrates: → $50B in capital investment → 40+ operating companies → 30,000 direct and indirect jobs → Canada’s only Designated Industrial Zone And the pipeline is still filling. Dow’s $10B CAD Path2Zero net-zero project is backed by..
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Edmonton vs Calgary Real Estate: The $186K Gap in 2026
$669,519 vs $483,600. That’s the average home price in Calgary vs Edmonton this June — a $186,000 gap inside the same province. Two days ago I posted that Edmonton had overtaken Calgary in interprovincial migration. The obvious next question: what is that doing to the two housing markets? The answer isn’t what the price tags..
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Alberta Construction Market 2026: Edmonton Overtakes Calgary
Alberta Construction Market 2026: Why Edmonton Just Overtook Calgary The Alberta construction market entered 2026 with a shift that most planning assumptions have not yet caught up to. Edmonton overtook Calgary as Canada’s leading destination for interprovincial migration, recording 11,742 net arrivals in 2024/25 against Calgary’s 11,195. The margin is small. The implication is not…
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Alberta Construction Market: Why -5% Hides CA$13B
Alberta Construction Market: Why -5% Hides CA$13 Billion The Alberta construction market is sending two signals at the same time, and most people are only reading one of them. In March 2026, CMHC reported 46,064 annualized housing starts across the province — down 5% year over year. In July, Meta broke ground northeast of Edmonton..
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Alberta Population Growth: Canada Shrank, Alberta Didn’t
Immigration to Alberta fell 18.2% last quarter. Alberta’s population still grew. Statistics Canada, Q1 2026: Canada lost 55,025 people. Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia each shrank 0.2%. Alberta added 8,926 — up 0.2%, the strongest growth of any province, and the only one of Canada’s four largest to grow at all. Fifteenth consecutive quarter leading..
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Calgary Office Vacancy: Why 30.3% Won’t Fix Itself
Calgary’s office vacancy is falling. Not because tenants are coming back — because we’re deleting the buildings. Downtown vacancy sat at 30.3% in Q2 2026, down from 30.4%. Progress, technically. But absorption in the same quarter was negative 110,572 sq ft. Fewer tenants. Less occupied space. And the rate still went down. That only works..
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Why Canada Is Losing Entrepreneurs to the US (2026)
The US is using tariffs to trap companies inside America. Canada? It’s gift-wrapping its own founders and handing them right back. 🎁 Look at the timing. Canada is the only G7 country in recession. Business investment has dropped five quarters in a row. There’s a once-in-a-decade chance to poach the entrepreneurs Trump’s trade war is..
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Calgary Office Conversion: Why 13 of 21 Projects Stall
Calgary has funded 21 office conversions. Only 8 are finished. That gap is the most useful number in the city right now. Most people read Calgary’s downtown story as a real estate story — 30.4% vacancy, 41 million sq ft of office space, a city with a problem. It isn’t a real estate story. It’s..
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Alberta Construction Labour Shortage: The 15,400 Gap
Yesterday everyone celebrated Meta’s $13B data centre in Alberta. Nobody asked who’s going to build it. That single project needs 3,000+ construction workers. Now zoom out. Alberta must recruit 59,000 construction workers by 2034 — mostly to replace 43,400 people retiring, 21% of the entire 2024 workforce. Even after all that hiring, the province is..
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