ICBA Coffee & Construction

A million barrels a day, Bruderheim to the coast. Ottawa started the thirty-day clock on it Saturday of the long weekend — buried in the Canada Gazette, with no release and no tweet. If you believe a project is in the national interest, say so in daylight.

Episode 15 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show:

☕ THE BIG ONE: Ottawa moves to designate the West Coast oil pipeline a project in the national interest under the Building Canada Act. One millio...

Nearly $318 billion of work. 1,030 projects. That's Alberta's Major Projects registry — this morning. The question isn't whether the work is there. It's who's going to build it.

Episode 14 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. A special edition: our FIRST-EVER guest, ICBA Alberta President Mike Martens.

☕ THE BIG PICTURE: $317.9 BILLION across 1,030 projects on the province's own registry — petrochemical, oil and gas, data centres, schools, Calgary office conversions, a fire hall in Lacombe. Is it a boom, or a pipeline that looks like a boom u...

Interfor started as a coastal logging outfit in British Columbia in 1963. Sixty-three years later, its head office is packing up for Peachtree City, Georgia. Eighty-four per cent of its lumber sales are American now.

Episode 13 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show:

☕ THE BIG ONE: Interfor moves corporate functions from Burnaby to Georgia. The mills went south years ago — now the head office follows. And the numbers behind it: 15,000 B.C. forest sector jobs gone since 2022, 21 mills closed since...

She'd never set foot in Vancouver. She called into a Vancouver public hearing from Los Angeles anyway. Council asked her one real question. Six seconds of silence. Then a cough.

Episode 12 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show:

☕ THE BIG ONE: A union machine hijacks Vancouver city hall — California callers who'd never been to Vancouver, AI-written scripts, "translators" who didn't speak the language, and a hotel union president defending it all. Real Vancouver families waited until 1 a.m. for th...

Steel pipe, made in Canada, stacked in a yard in Prince George. This week, they started putting it in the ground. A pipeline actually getting built. Imagine that.

Episode 11 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show:

☕ THE BIG ONE: Enbridge kicks off the $4-billion Sunrise Expansion near Prince George — 140 km of new pipe, 2,500 workers, Canadian steel, a Lheidli T'enneh partnership at the table — and even an NDP minister showed up. Have they finally got religion on oil and gas?
...

Every premier in Canada is flying to Charlottetown. The Prime Minister joins them Thursday. What they decide about trade lands on your job site.

Episode 10 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show:

☕ THE BIG ONE: Trade week — all 13 premiers meet in Charlottetown, then sit down with Prime Minister Carney Thursday. USMCA, steel and lumber tariffs, interprovincial trade — and whether David Eby shows up with something to build
🏙️ Western Canada's TALLEST tower lands on Vancouver council's desk: Holborn's plan for 1,54...

Every new home comes with a stack of hidden fees. Nobody shows you the receipt. Ottawa might finally make them.

Episode 9 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show:

☕ THE BIG ONE: Bill C-287, the Housing Cost Transparency Act — ICBA backs MP Brad Redekopp's push to make the building code system show its work: real dollar costs, published before they land in your mortgage
⚡ Shovels go in this month on the North Coast Transmission Line — and Ksi Lisims LNG keeps...

Interest rates: frozen. Terminal 2: finally has a builder. And Beedie's moving dirt in Surrey. Episode 8 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. On today's show: ☕ The Bank of Canada holds its key rate at 2.25% — what the freeze means for your operating line and equipment loans 🏗️ THE BIG ONE: The Port of Vancouver picks TerraMarine — Aecon, FlatironDragados, Van Oord and Carlson — to build the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 landmass and wharf. A decade of paperwork, and now the biggest port build in the country is real 🛢️ Pipelin...

WorkSafeBC is holding its base rate at 1.55% for 2027 and calling it "rate stability." But the real cost of the system is 1.88% — and the gap is being covered by draining your surplus. Jordan Bateman breaks down the numbers WorkSafe doesn't want you to see, plus a break in the U.S. softwood lumber tariff and B.C.'s latest promise to speed up permits.

Alberta just landed a $13-billion Meta data centre — and built a power plant beside it so regular families don't get stuck with the bill. That's the model B.C. should copy. 

Jordan Bateman breaks down the smart way to power the AI boom, plus a fresh youth-jobs plan, and a new certification clock for crane operators.

The news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta. New every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

The Massey Tunnel price tag just DOUBLED — $4.15 billion to $8.5 billion — and Ottawa's cutting a cheque to help cover the NDP's mistake. Episode 5 of ICBA Coffee & Construction breaks down what it means for the people who build British Columbia and Alberta.

On today's show:
 ▶ Massey Tunnel: the $8.5 billion "we told you so" — how a funded, under-budget bridge became nine years, zero lanes, and double the price
 ▶ The West Coast Oil Pipeline: a million barrels a day, $35–44 billion, 140,000 jobs at peak — real, but only on paper
 ▶ The $20 billion Canada-B.C. deal: four LNG projects, the Red Chris mine expansio...

Three deadlines hit on Canada Day — and two of them land on every builder in BC and Alberta. Jordan Bateman breaks down the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta.

In this episode:

Alberta's million-barrel-a-day pipeline proposal is due July 1 at the federal Major Projects Office. Smith and Carney say they want to "get to yes" — the holdup runs through David Eby's BC.The CUSMA trade review opens the same day. ICBA Chief Economist Jock Finlayson's Mid-Year Update warns Canada is in — or on the cusp of — recession.The condo bailout: Pierre P...

ritish Columbia just hit a record pile of unsold condos. The government's big idea? Buy them — with your money. Welcome to the condo bailout.

Episode 3 of ICBA Coffee & Construction: the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta. The condo buyback, a premier racing home from China for a federal deal, and the construction-jobs number nobody wants to see.

I'm Jordan Bateman, VP of Communications & Advocacy at ICBA. New episodes Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

**Chapters**
00:00 — Cold open
00:25 — The condo bailout
03:30 — Eby cuts his China trip short for a de...

B.C. approved a big new mine last week — then took a bow for the very law that froze everybody else's mine. That's where we start.

Episode 2 of ICBA Coffee & Construction: the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta. A mine, a data-centre gold rush, and a pipeline deadline — and one question running underneath all of it: which governments actually let you build?

Hosted by Jordan Bateman, VP of Communications & Advocacy at ICBA. New episodes Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

**Chapters**
00:00 — Cold open
00:25 — Red Chris mine gets the gree...

Inflation's back, Alberta's pipeline clock is ticking, and B.C. just blew up another megaproject contract. Welcome to Episode 1.

ICBA Coffee & Construction is the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta — fast, sharp, and straight up. New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with Jordan Bateman.
On this episode:

– Inflation hits 3.2% — gas up 33%, groceries up again — and what it means on a job site

– Alberta's nine-day countdown to a million-barrel pipeline proposal, and why David Eby's "same coast, different liquid" position doesn't add up

– A $5-billion gol...