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The Regional Executives Midyear Meeting in Boston, Mass on August 23rd / 24th. We have a PACKED agenda spanning two days, with an incredible networking event on the evening of the first day! We look forward to seeing all of you there and hearing what incredible initiatives our peers have been undertaking so far in 2023! 

What has CCMPA been up to this year? Happy April CCMPA Members & Friends – I hope this newsletter finds you happy, healthy and thriving in the first quarter of 2023. We’ve been a little quiet over here, but rest assured we are on the case for block!

Canada’s Concrete Masonry Industry recognizes the contributions of women to Canada’s construction industry. Today, we express our gratitude for the many talented women that work in concrete masonry, as we collectively build sustainable, resilient, healthy communities across Canada.

Over the last year, the CCMPA executive has consulted closely with The Athena Group working toward our renewed, industry- wide Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). The new version includes both GU and GUL cement, as well as data supporting carbon sequestration in dry-cast block.

Registration for our 2022 Annual General Meeting is now open! Register online for this year’s Annual General Meeting & Grimo Cup Golf Tournament. Early Bird Registration by September 1, 2022 saves $50 on the full meeting package!

We hope that this email finds you healthy and well, surviving despite the continued chaos surrounding us. The silver lining of this pandemic seems to be that it has been an outstanding couple of years for block production and sales – with a continued strong forecast for 2022.

Canada’s only national trade show serving the concrete, aggregates and construction industries is back, better and stronger, May 18-19, 2022 at The International Centre, Toronto

The Canadian cement & concrete industry is pleased to announce that a collaborative Industry Climate Ambition Statement with 2030 and 2050 targets, and a supporting net-zero road map, is currently under development for release in early 2022.

After over a year and a half in hiding – we’re back! Last week, on September 23rd CCMPA hosted our 2021 AGM at Hockley Valley Resort and thanks to our members it was a huge success! We oversold the event with a full roster for the AGM, Golf and Dinner. Our CCMPA Board and Executive sends a huge thank you to the industry for their ongoing support! We are by the members, for the members.

Take a look at the winners of the 2021 CCMPA Photo Challenge!

Resilience has long been a buzz word in construction design and is used in a variety of ways; often without clear definition.  For the purposes of this article, the definition will be derived from a paper by Norris, F.P., et al. titled “Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities and Strategy for Disaster Readiness”. Norris notes that “resilience is a process not just a result or outcome and resilience is adaptive (dynamic not static)”.

A condo development site in Langley, BC, is being considered a complete loss as the result of a fast-spreading fire from an undetermined cause. Hundreds of homes lost, a school closed and embers started fires up to an entire city block away.

This past weekend saw the devastating loss of a hotel being constructed in the north GTA, requiring over 50 firefighters to extinguish the blaze. The cause of the fire is unknown, but “resulted in the total loss of a hotel under construction on Stirling Crescent in the Highway 400 employment lands area of Bradford West Gwillimbury”.

Recent analyses of climate data, as well as climate modelling, indicate that the Canadian climate is changing and will continue to do so as part of the global phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change. These changes have both acute and long-term effects on many aspects of the Canadian economy, including our built infrastructure. As part of a review of its collection of standards to assess the need to adapt them to climate change, CSA Group identified several standards as high, moderate, or low priority for adaptation; the current report represents a portion of the efforts arising from the review.

Despite a global pandemic, 2020 remained a strong year overall for block in Canada. Typically the business world uses the word “pivot” when we demonstrate the agility to react to changing conditions; however the unprecedented changes last year required a complete overhaul in how business is done. The survival and success that block saw in 2020 was largely due to industry working together to advocate for essential businesses, an unrelenting commitment to safety and continual repositioning in our approach to customer service.

First and foremost, CCMPA would like to extend our deepest sympathies and condolences to the lives lost and families touched by all of the tragic events over the last few weeks in construction. These events have proven to be a stark reminder that we must work together in an unrelenting effort to pursue safety in the workplace.

2020 has certainly been a year for the books. Despite the challenges that have presented themselves, overall CCMPA and our partners had several key wins.

Happy Thanksgiving! Well, it’s been a trying year to say the least! But here at CCMPA we have been doing our very best to help support and navigate our membership through the calamity that has been 2020.

Download the Atlantic Canada Loadbearing Masonry Cost Study here!

“Climate change” is a term that has been so over utilized that the entirety of our population has become completely immune to the gravity that it carries. The vast majority of the West Coast of our continent is on fire, and yet we have not paused. Climate change is an intricately complex issue, and each person has a role to play, no matter how small. Further to this thought, activist Greta Thunberg states “we must change almost everything in our current societies. The bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility”.

CCMPA would like to give a shout out to our members, many of whom are actively and aggressively pursuing the reduction of their respective carbon footprints in the production of concrete block. My recent study revealed that an impressive 70% of all concrete block in Canada is now being produced with GUL (PLC) (Or other low carbon SCM blends), instead of the traditionally used GU;  this fact means that concrete block production is setting an industry-wide precedent in the utility of, and conversion to, lower carbon cement / cement blends. We are still facing logistical challenges in Atlantic and the Midwest, but we will continue until we reach 100% conversion. 

Dear Members and Industry Affiliates, We hope that this note finds you all healthy during these changing times, and that you are settling into the “new normal”. Here in Ontario, the majority of the province is entering into Stage 3 of re-opening and we are seeing a semblance of a return to normality. Production and shipping numbers look to have had a strong Q2 close, a positive start in Q3, and we are hoping to see continued increases.

Click here to download the CCMPA  Buy Canadian Ad.

By: Paul Hargest, President of CCMPA Last March, part of a floor under construction at Oregon State University collapsed after it became ‘de-laminated’ (unglued) at one end. It was a 4- by 20-foot panel of cross-laminated timber, or CLT. Ironically, it was part of a new building that will house the university’s College of Forestry. […]