Training wheels

Good morning!  🐦Avian-friendly construction in the prairies is close to being grounded. City officials are looking to scrap rules designed to help prevent birds from striking windows after developers argued they create barriers to creating more housing. But how much destruction are we talking about? Well, experts say window strikes kill as many as 25 million birds in Canada each year.

⏰ Today’s read: 5 minutes

MARKETS

Economy: Your hard work appears to be making a big difference. Canada’s purpose-built rental vacancy rate climbed to 3.1% in 2025, up from 2.2% the previous year and above the 10-year national average, driven by record housing completions and slower population growth, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s 2025 Rental Market Report.

NEED TO KNOW

The week's headlines

🏠 Temp measures: Vancouver is temporarily cutting and deferring key development charges, which could shave $75–$100 million off project costs and ease cash-flow pressure for more than 250 active housing applications. The measures include a 20% reduction to development cost levies DCLs, relaxed requirements for below-market rental projects, a home ownership pilot and proposed updates to apartment design rules.

🪨 Shifting sands: Alberta is adopting all 15 recommendations from its Sand and Gravel Task Force to streamline private land extraction approvals while maintaining environmental protections. The changes respond to longstanding concerns about slow, inconsistent processes in a sector with more than 1,000 active pits. 

⚖️ Land claim: New Brunswick’s Court of Appeal ruled that the Wolastoqey Nation can’t claim ownership of privately owned land in their land‑claim lawsuit. The court said doing so would interfere with private property rights, though the group can still seek compensation from the government for those lands. The Wolastoqey Nation may take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada.

🔌 Secret partner: Capital Power has signed a binding agreement to supply 250 MW of electricity to an unnamed, investment-grade AI data-centre developer, marking a major boost for Alberta’s emerging data-centre sector as tech companies accelerate Canadian infrastructure investments.

THE BIG STORY

Is high-speed rail picking up steam?

Canada’s high-speed rail ambitions just took a cautious step forward. Ontario’s new rail agency, Alto, has fleshed out plans to build high-speed rail in eastern Canada, starting with service from Ottawa to Montreal. At the same time, a proposed Calgary–Banff tourism rail line is now under review by Ottawa’s Major Projects Office.

Sticker shock: Alto’s full buildout carries an estimate of $60 billion or more, with no committed federal funding yet. That raises a familiar question: can Canada ever build major rail infrastructure without blowing timelines and budgets?

Small start: Alto’s first focus 200-kilometre stretch is part of a larger buildout that will eventually link Toronto and Quebec City. Officials hope this baby step can sidestep the kind of cost and complexity that doomed past HSR plans. The Calgary–Banff proposal is also being framed as a smaller, more targeted use case that could boost regional tourism and reduce traffic into the Rockies.

Expropriation equation: One wild card is Ottawa’s push to expand expropriation powers through Bill C-69 amendments. While politically sensitive, this could help future rail corridors avoid the property battles that have stalled countless infrastructure projects. It could also reduce lengthy permitting fights and de-risk early-stage investment.

Lessons abroad: Japan, Spain, and France built high-speed rail networks by standardizing design, minimizing tunnelling, and building in phases with clear ridership triggers. Experts warn that Canada’s tendency to re-engineer everything from scratch—and stack on bespoke design, deep tunnels, and complex governance—has been the downfall of past transit megaprojects.

The sweet spot: Some analysts argue the best near-term strategy is to build “fast rail,” not full HSR. That means incremental upgrades—straightening curves, improving signalling, grade separations—that can still boost speeds and frequency for cheaper. It's the approach used by Germany and the UK to blend high-speed sections with existing corridors.

PROJECT SPOTLIGHT

Top tunnel

The Wastewater Innovation Centre in Barrie, Ontario is being delivered by a team led by Stantec (with WSP Canada) as designers, and built under an Integrated Project Delivery contract by a joint venture between Bird Construction Inc. and Maple Reinders Constructors Ltd. (MBJV). The project reimagines municipal wastewater infrastructure as civic architecture — using weathering-steel cladding reminiscent of industrial piping, strategic massing and glazing to enhance street presence, rooftop solar, passive daylighting, and efficient systems.

PROJECT UPDATES

Negotiations begin for new Whitecaps stadium at Hastings Park

Calgary-Banff rail proponents lobby Major Projects Office for support

Beedie eyes developing Whistler housing project 

$10M road project nears completion in Halifax

Sleeping units arrive at transitional housing site in Fredericton

WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

🪜 VIDEO: A Vancouver builder’s epic 3 min speech on stairs

🍄 VIDEO: Why megastructures grow like fungus

🎄 PHOTOS: These holiday cement trucks glow hard

🎙️ PODCAST: Microsoft’s $7.5B expansion in Canada

👷🏻‍♀️ PHOTOS: Does this construction emoji need an update?

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Here’s to a great rest of the week!

Disclaimer: SiteNews is an independently-operated news website. Views expressed are that of the editorial team and are based on publicly available information unless otherwise noted through sponsored content.