Business View Magazine - April 2024

its members. Currently, members are dealing with a cross-section of workforce issues. An ongoing shortage of skilled tradespeople is one such challenge, which affects the industry drastically. To help address this, CAHB tries to fight for the rights of employees through laws around employee discrimination, arbitration, and misclassification, among others. They also want to enact measures to expand and train the construction workforce. The idea is to make it more attractive for young people to enter and stay in the trades. Another concern from members is around new code adoptions since they always provide challenges. Sometimes codes are introduced with no consideration of the difficulty that goes into adopting those codes. CAHB tries to fight for the rights of developers so that new codes are fair and reasonably straightforward to adopt. There’s also the concern of the lengthy timelines when it comes to the government processing permits and providing plan reviews. As Ted Leighty, CEO of CAHB tells us, these processes simply take way too long. “That adds a lot of carrying costs and requires us then to bring to market a more expensive home,” he adds. Another major ongoing challenge pertains to trade issues. Most of the lumber used by CAHB members is sourced from Canada, which carries high tariffs. So, the association is trying to advocate for more domestic exploration and/or production of lumber and other materials, or at least lower the taxes on their current trade partners. CONSTRUCTION LITIGATION REFORM One overarching priority for CAHB in 2024 is to try and provide alternative avenues to resolve construction defect disputes between homeowners and construction professionals. As of now, the only means for dispute resolution is to bring these issues to court or litigation, which is costly and time- consuming. A law enacted in 2007 made it very easy to create lawsuits on such disputes, which drove the cost 28 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 11, ISSUE 04