We are very pleased to advise that Bob Reidy, P.Eng., Chair of the MHCA, was elected 2012 Chair of the WCR&HCA Board of Directors at the February 15, 2012 AGM meeting of the WCR&HCA. Barry Arnason was elected Secretary Treasurer.

Of significance, the following priorities were adopted by the Board and referred to the Canadian Construction Association (CCA) for its favorable consideration:

National Infrastructure Summit (NIS) Regina, Saskatchewan, September 2012The second NIS is taking place in Regina, Saskatchewan in September 2012. It is designed to further the debate and move public policy support for sustained investment in municipal infrastructure across Canada.

The WCR&HCA will support the NIS in ways and means which enable advocacy of our message(s) collaborating/coordinating with the Canadian Construction Association (CCA). This may mean sponsorship, seeking presentation

opportunity, participating in the shaping of the program and the promotion of the event and related positioning the WCR&HCA to be a visible, credible, contributing and supporting partner.

National Infrastructure Accord (NIA)The WCR&HCA working with the Canadian Construction Association (CCA) and related stakeholders, pursue support from the Council of the Federation, the Big City Mayors Caucus and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), in urging the federal government to implement a National Infrastructure Accord (NIA) whose elements could include:

In this issueBreakfast with Leaders 4

MHCA New Members 5

Bid Protest Bulletin 6

Weekly Tenders 10

...Continued on page 22012 WCR Chair Bob Reidy

March 1, 2012

WCR&HCA Elects New Chair and Adopts 2012 Priorities

2The Heavy News Weekly

Hourly Wages to Increase (continued from page 1)

a. A permanent transfer to municipalities of the current $2 billion annual federal Gas Tax Fund with annual increases indexed to a minimum of the annual rate of inflation and population growth.

b. Transition an increase in the GST by up to 2 points, dedicated by legislation for investment in Canada’s municipal infrastructure deficit.

c. Continue tri-level government infrastructure funding agreements to address emerging infrastructure needs and shared priority investment opportunities.

d. As part of the above, strategically encourage and support public education and advocacy which is critical to public policy evolution. Concurrent therefore with the above are the imperatives of public opinion research.

CCA - An Industry Champion for Economic GrowthThe WCR&HCA is pleased that the CCA has well established itself as a major stakeholder and influence in public policy infrastructure development and should so continue.

The WCR&HCA would support and encouraged the CCA to position itself as a public policy ‘go to’ national champion of economic growth for Canada, including becoming a major voice on the need to enhance productivity in Canada (not just our industry), competitiveness (not just in our industry) and international trade.

All of the aforementioned cannot occur without a solid foundation (i.e. state-of-the-art public infrastructure). CCA’s role should be to speak to the larger economic issues and national concerns that shape Canada’s overall economic future beyond those that simply have a direct impact on the construction industries it represents.

ImmigrationCiting the success of the Provincial Nominee Programs (PNP) The WCR&HCA supports greater latitude being given the provincial government by the federal government in the management of immigration to facilitate more efficient access to foreign workers whether temporary or permanent to fill the skills gap needs of the heavy construction industry.

Environmental AssessmentsThe WCR&HCA supports the concept of one project one environmental assessment to eliminate jurisdictional duplication and project environmental approval delays.

The above priorities were referred to the Canadian Construction Association (CCA) for consideration at its 2012 Annual Convention taking place in March 2012.

Annual Snow Route Overnight Parking Ban lifted The City of Winnipeg's Snow Route Overnight Parking Ban has been lifted effective 7:01 a.m., today, Wednesday, February 29, 2012.

The ban prohibited parking between the hours of 2:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. on all streets designated as Snow Routes.

The Snow Route Overnight Parking Ban is put in place under the terms of the Winter Parking Ban By-Law No. 76/2011, which provides for the automatic implementation of the Snow Route Parking Ban annually from December 1 to March 1 on all streets designated as Snow Routes.

More information about all winter parking bans can be found at knowyourzone.winnipeg.ca or by contacting 311.

3The Heavy News Weekly

MHCA President Named Member of Winnipeg Partnership Committee

MHCA President Chris Lorenc has been named member of the Winnipeg Partnership Committee (WPC) which brings together stakeholders who can and want to contribute to Winnipeg’s long-term prosperity.

WPC’s focus is to discuss broad issues that impact economic growth in a positive way. It acknowledges that a strong economy and employment growth are essential to providing the public and private resources necessary to enhance liveability, social well-being, environmental stewardship and opportunity.

The WPC is chaired by Mary Jane Loustel , Chair of Economic Development Winnipeg and includes business, government and academic representatives.

Economic Development Winnipeg (EDW) Inc. EDW is a not-for-profit organization that leads and facilitates investment, partnership, capacity building, tourism and the management of market information. Led by a private sector board with core funding from the City of Winnipeg and Province of Manitoba, Economic Development Winnipeg Inc. promotes Winnipeg as an ideal place to live, work, invest and visit.

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4The Heavy News Weekly

MHCA Highways & Aggregate Producers Meeting/PresentationThe New Mines Regulations will be coming into effect as of April 1, 2012.

The presentation will be held on Thursday, March 8th at 12:00 noon at the MHCA office (Unit 3 – 1680 Ellice Avenue).

More info can be found at the SAFE Manitoba website at: http://safemanitoba.com/MinesReg_2012.aspx

In attendance to deliver the presentation and to answer any questions will be;Dennis Fontaine, Acting Director, Mines Safety Brandy »

Ted Hewitt, Senior Mining Engineer and District Manager »

Larry Poleschuk, Mines Inspector »

Lorne Uruski, Mines Inspector (Electrical) »

Other Topics to be DiscussedSpecial Notice that all Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation tenders and construction orders issued after July 1, 2012, Provincial Sales Tax for processing and hauling aggregate will NOT be paid by the Department on behalf of the contractor. All bid prices must include applicable Provincial Sales Taxes.

Any MHCA Member is welcome to attend this meeting. If you or someone in your company would like to attend, please notify Christine Miller by email at chrstine@mhca.mb.ca or phone at 947-1379.

BREAKFAST WITH LEADERS CITY OF WINNIPEG WATER & WASTE CAPITAL PROGRAM PRESENTATIONDate: Wednesday March 7, 2012

Location: Victoria Inn Winnipeg (1808 Wellington Avenue)

Room: Carlton Room

Registration: 7:30am

Hot breakfast: 7:45am

Presentation: 8:00am

Price: $35.00 + GST per person

Contact Christine Miller at 947-1379 or by email at christine@mhca.mb.ca to register!

There will be a Jets ticket draw for the March 14th game - must attend to win!

5The Heavy News Weekly

The MHCA Welcomes New Members!Altus Geomatics ManitobaDaniel Gautron661 Century StreetWinnipeg, MB R3H 0L9Ph: (204) 272-2600Fax: (204) 272-2620

Email: daniel.gautron@altusgeomaticsmb.comWeb: www.altusgeomaticsmb.comAdditional Information: A professional land surveying firm that provides legal surveying, construction layout, as-built surveying, 3D laser scanning, and oil & gas surveying services.

TTES Consulting Inc.Debi Barber59 Gov. Road AllowanceMacGregor, MB R0H 0R0Ph: (204) 685-3123Fax: (204) 685-2401

Email: d.barber@ttesconsulting.caWeb: www.ttesconsulting.caAdditional Information: Provides construction layout & quality surveys, data prep & modeling for GPS, laser and machine controls, project estimates and scheduling, production reports & reviews, and site inspection & quality control.

Lagace TruckingGary LagaceBox 155La Salle, MB R0G 1B0Ph: (204) 736-4519Cell: (204) 791-1801

Fax: (204) 736-4813Email: n/aWeb: n/aAdditional Information: General trucking services.

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6The Heavy News Weekly

Bid Protest Bulletin | Paul Emanuelli

In a formal legally binding bidding process, bidders will typically be liable if they refuse to honour their bids. However, the following cases illustrate some exceptions to that general rule.

The City of Ottawa Non-Profit Housing Corp. v. Canvar Construction (1991) Inc. decision recognized how an obvious mistake that is apparent on the face of a tender can make that tender incapable of acceptance and can provide a defence for a bidder who refuses to honour its bid.

The case involved a City of Ottawa Non-Profit Housing Corp. construction project tender call. The bidder submitted a tender for $2,289,000. All of the other bidders bid over $3 million. The bidder claimed that it made a mistake and immediately asked the owner to withdraw its tender. The owner refused. The bidder refused to sign the contract. The owner sued. At trial, the bidder was found liable. The plaintiff owner was awarded a total of $841,000, representing the difference between the defendant bidder’s low bid and the next lowest bid. The defendant bidder appealed.

The Ontario Court of Appeal reversed the trial decision on the basis that the tender document contained an obvious mistake. A critical fact behind this decision was the amount submitted as bid security. The tender call required bid security in the amount of 5 per cent. All along the bidder had claimed that it had intended to bid $2,989,000 instead of $2,289,000. Its bid bond was for $149,450, representing 5 per cent of $2,989,000. The court found that the divergence between the amount stated in the tender and the amount provided in the accompanying bid bond reflected an obvious error on the part of the bidder.

As the court concluded, an error that is apparent on the face of a tender can relieve a bidder of its obligation to honour its tender.

In its decision in North Vancouver (District) v. Progressive Contracting (Langley) Ltd., the British Columbia Supreme Court recognized that bidders are under a duty to honour their tenders. However, it also illustrates how owners should be careful before coming to the conclusion that a bidder is refusing to stand by its bid. The case involved a municipal tender call issued for a road construction project. When the low bidder sought post-bidding clarifications about the project, the owner interpreted this as a repudiation of the tender. The owner selected the next-best tender and sued

the lower bidder. The low bidder brought an application to dismiss the lawsuit. The court noted the importance of protecting the integrity of the bidding process by ensuring that bidders honour their tenders.

However, the court dismissed the owner’s claim because it found that it was the owner, rather than the bidder, who had failed to honour the tender call rules when it incorrectly interpreted the bidder’s attempt to seek clarification as a repudiation of its tender. The owner’s improper low bidder bypass was found to be a repudiation of the owner’s Contract A obligations. The owner’s claim against the bidder was dismissed. Damages were awarded against the owner for failing to enter into Contract B with the low bidder.

The owner appealed but the British Columbia Court of Appeal upheld the judgment, finding that the bidder “was ready to perform that contract. The District repudiated it. The chambers judge was right in the disposition of the case before him.” While this case supports the proposition that bidders should honour their tenders, it also serves as a warning for owners to confirm that the selected bidder is not prepared to honour its tender prior to proceeding to select the next-best bidder.

Paul Emanuelli's procurement law practice focuses on all aspects of the tendering cycle including bid dispute resolution. Reach Paul at paul.emanuelli@procurementoffice.ca.

Court strikes down post-bid specification change

7The Heavy News Weekly 7

Canada’s Trade: Diminishing Returns? By Peter Hall, Vice-President and Chief Economist of Export Development Canada

Opinions on Canadian international trade are many and varied. Exports and international investments were battered by the global recession, and have struggled to make a comeback. But overall growth was very slow before the recession, thanks to weak US sales. Count firms that export, and you’ll find the number has tumbled. Yet trade growth is expected to lead the Canadian economy forward, with supercharged trade to non-traditional markets leading the way. What do we make of these views?

Some of Canada’s setbacks are shared by all trading nations. Others are unique to Canada, and it is these that are more critical. As such, understanding Canada’s position relative to the rest of the world is critical, especially given global turbulence. At first glance, the numbers look bad. Canada’s share of global trade declined from 4% in 2000 to 2.8% in 2010. Is there a good explanation for this, or does it confirm that our position on the global trade stage is declining?

Foremost in the data is the decline in our slice of US trade. Canadian exports as a share of total US imports has steadily declined from 19.5% in the mid-1990s to just over 14% in 2010. The dollar wreaked havoc with our US sales as price-sensitivity stateside was on the rise, and Chinese goods became increasingly more attractive. Recession carved away an additional 1.5 percentage points from our share. Some decline is to be expected, given the increased presence of emerging markets in the world economy, but the extent of our melt in the US market exceeds expectations.

Canada commands a much lower share of Eurozone trade. Back in 1990, our exports made up just 0.7% of Eurozone imports. That share has gently eroded over 20 years to 0.4%, but that is a decline that can easily be explained by greater European integration and the rise of emerging markets. Given the current state of the European economy, that stability may be suspect in the near term, but the free trade talks currently underway may enhance Canada’s longer-term prospects.

With the dramatic diversification of trade with emerging markets that is currently underway, are we doing better in these dynamic hot-spots? Export growth in this arena is generally spectacular, but even so, the shares here are also downward. Between 1990 and 2010, our share of

imports in Brazil went from 2.1% to 1.5%, from 2.8% to 1.1% in China, 1.3% to 0.6% in India, and 1.1% to 0.6% in Russia. While disconcerting, it highlights the growth in trade that these markets have with each other, and given their higher annual GDP growth, it makes sense that Canada’s share is lower. But Canada isn’t being cut out of the picture; we are participating, but increasingly through sales from our foreign affiliates. These sales not only outstrip export growth, but are now actually greater in volume terms.

There is one notable exception: export sales to Mexico have come under fire because at an average 8% in the past decade, they fall well below growth in other emerging markets. But as a share of total Mexican imports, the share has actually risen substantially over the past 20 years, from 1.3% to 2.9% – an impressive fact for NAFTA-bashers to consider.

The bottom line? It is too soon to lament Canada’s waning share of global exports. Part of it is natural, and part is displacement by our own foreign affiliate sales. But we do need to ensure that if the share continues dropping, it is slippage that makes good sense, not the other sort.

The Heavy News Weekly 8

By Dan Lett, The Winnipeg Free Press

The howling advocates of lower taxes will often say governments do not have revenue problems, they have spending problems. They claim if government spends less, it can lower taxes and offer good services.

Perhaps, but there is a point where spending less and taking in less money through taxation becomes less of a solution and more of a problem in and of itself. The City of Winnipeg is an excellent case in point.

As revealed in Tuesday's draft operating budget, Winnipeg collects less tax revenue from its citizens and generally spends less per capita on services than almost any other medium- to large-sized city in Canada. According to Mayor Sam Katz and Coun. Scott Fielding, the chairman of the city's finance committee, all this frugality has allowed Winnipeggers to enjoy a 14-year freeze on property taxes. The low expenditures, combined with the tax freeze, are celebrated at city hall as evidence Winnipeg is moving in the right direction.

In previous budgets, Katz and his supporters could use the carrot of property-tax freezes to distract us from the reality the number, scope and quality of city services are suffering. No doubt many citizens accepted diminished services as fair trade for lower taxes. With the decision this year to boost property taxes by a modest 3.5 per cent, however, it might be time for taxpayers to look more closely at what they're getting for their tax dollars.

(Of course, it should be noted that property-tax freeze ended last year when the city applied new levies to property frontage. It was an increase in tax on property, but not a property-tax increase, if you follow the logic. Many did not, understanding if it looks like a tax hike and smells like a tax hike then, well, you get the idea.)

Consider the 3.5-point bump in property taxes will produce a little less than $15 million for city coffers. That seems like such a paltry amount when you consider the city operating budget is about $900 million this year and there is hardly enough money now to maintain the services we currently receive. When you look at all the numbers, you realize this is most definitely a city with a revenue problem, not a spending problem.

Katz is quite eloquent on this subject and righteous in his demands for a new revenue deal with the provincial and federal governments. Specifically, he wants a dedicated point of sales taxes to support infrastructure. (Of course, his continued insistence this come from existing sales tax

revenue, and not from an additional point of PST, is a losing argument when you consider the enormity of the provincial deficit.)

However, the city has contributed to its own misery with a nearly decade-and-a-half freeze on property taxes, coupled with policies to reduce and, for some, eliminate business taxes.

Katz will complain the city does not have enough sources of revenue to pay its bills; it would be nice if he acknowledged he has made decisions that have exacerbated the situation. It is simply too much to listen to him complain about not having enough money to run the city while at the same time freezing or reducing his existing sources of revenue.

Government budgets are all about priorities, and this budget is no different. The city will spend more on police, fire and paramedic services, transit, community centres and road resurfacing. However, the list of things it is neglecting is much, much longer.

The library service budget has been flatlined, which is really a budget cut when you consider inflation. The city will try to save $15 million this year by not hiring to fill vacancies in the civic service. There were no details on which positions would go unfilled, but you can assume with confidence that not hiring for these jobs will hurt service delivery somewhere.

And user fees for city recreational facilities will go up by inflation. That is a pretty galling policy when you look at decisions to cut business taxes or boost police services by much more than inflation.

Long term, the city's prospects are very grim. Unable to replace revenue lost through years of tax freezes, the city is nonetheless forging ahead with increases to police and fire services.

Police funding alone is forecast to increase by 27 per cent by 2014. Police and fire already consume about 41 cents of every dollar the city spends. Without new revenue, non-police and fire services offered by the city are likely to die a slow, horrible death.

Katz leads a city that has done a tremendous job in reducing spending and making minimal demands on property and business owners to pay for those services it still offers. But there is a day of reckoning on the horizon. A day when the city will have no choice but to spend less because it raises less and taxpayers begin to see how little they get in return for their lower taxes.

Day of reckoning on the horizon

9The Heavy News Weekly 9

Training Schedule

Rural Manitoba TrainingFebruary 11-12 COR Leadership — Morden, MBFebruary 21-25 COR Week — St. Rose, MBFeb. 27 - Mar. 2 COR Week — Brandon, MBCall the MHCA Office for more details!

MARCH 2012March 2 First Aid 1 - CPRMarch 5-6 COR™ LeadershipMarch 7 COR™ PrinciplesMarch 8-9 Train the TrainerMarch 14 WHMIS (1/2 day AM)/ TDG (1/2 day PM)

March 15 COR™ Auditor RefresherMarch 16 Excavating & Trenching (1/2 day AM)

March 16 Flagperson (1/2 day PM)

March 26 Safe Work ProceduresMarch 27 Prime ContractorMarch 28 Back Injury PreventionMarch 28 Fatigue ManagementMarch 29 Safety Administration (1/2 day AM)

March 29 Toolbox Talks (1/2 day PM)

APRIL 2012April 10 Safe Work ProceduresApril 11 Prime ContractorApril 12 Back Injury PreventionApril 12 Fatigue ManagementApril 13 Safety Administration (1/2 day AM)

April 13 Toolbox Talks (1/2 day PM)

April 16-17 COR™ LeadershipApril 19-20 COR™ Auditor RefresherApril 20 First Aid 1 - CPRApril 23-24 Train the TrainerApril 25 WHMIS (1/2 day AM)/ TDG (1/2 day PM)

April 26 COR™ Auditor RefresherApril 27 Excavating & Trenching (1/2 day AM)

April 27 Flagperson (1/2 day PM)

Register by:

Email: safety@mhca.mb.ca »

Fax: 204-943-2279 »

Cancellation Policy: The WorkSafely policy states cancellation must be made at least two business days in advance, otherwise full course fee charge will apply.

www.mhca.mb.ca

Customized training is available for your specific requirements. Call the WorkSafely office at (204) 947-1379 for more information.

REMINDER: WORkSAFELY requires at least six people

registered to deliver the course.

Construction Safety Excellence™