Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Publisher Viewpoint July 2010

I started off last month with an interesting question of “Who is Cathy Latimer?”

In one of my daily searches I came across a posting in the local St. Catharines paper in the "Letters to the Editor" section that caught my interest. With a little research I found the person who works for a local masonry company and found out that her original letter was started after she found out that at the end of 2010 she would be out of a job. I spoke with Cathy and she decided to submit her letter to the GTA Construction Report for our July issue and you will see her full letter and some local responses in the paper. Dialogue between the Niagara Construction Association (NCA) and Cathy has already taken place and I am working towards getting the NCA to provide some feedback for our August issue which is covering the Niagara Construction Industry.

As a member of the Board of the Barrie Construction Association we are dealing with the same issue that Cathy brings up about out of town contractors winning local jobs. In Barrie we have started to get dialogue going with the city and inviting them to speak at events. The long term goal is to make it so local contractors can have a leg up for public tax supported projects. The best argument I have heard to date is that local projects funded by tax dollars that have the work done by local companies is a better investment for the city or a region. Local companies pay taxes and hire local employees so any investment from city councils or regional governments on new construction see a very high return of the original cost of the project. Where as out of town contractors commute to work and spend their money in their cities. More coverage on this will be coming next month so stay tuned.

News of a completely different topic is with a new partnership with Real Estate Executives Inc has added an additional 23,000 plus readers to the online versions of our publications. This addition brings our total online readers to almost 75,000 per month across Ontario and Canada. Check out the Real Estate Executives site www.realestateexecutives.ca

Chase is the Director of Marketing and Client Relations for the Construction News and Report Group as well as the Associate Publisher for the GTA Construction Report and Ontario Construction Report. Chase also serves on the Board of Directors for the Barrie Construction Association and on several committees for the Niagara Construction Association. If you have any recommendations or suggestions on changes you would like to make for the papers please contact him toll free at 1-888-432-3555 ext 211 or email him chase@cnrgp.com or visit us online at www.cnrgp.com

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