THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2017 9
A SUPPLEMENT TO THE WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Celebrating 75 GROUNDBREAKING years in 2018
City of Winnipeg, Winnipeg in Focus fonds, 1963
Manitoba Archives, Transportation – Roads and Highways fonds, 1910
75 in 2018 The MHCA is turning 75 in 2018 and we’re telling our story. The heavy construction industry has helped build this province, its economy and foundational infrastructure: roads, highways, bridges, and water/sewer. As part of the commemoration, which will include celebratory features throughout 2018, we are asking for your memories, your photos or any archived materials that can help tell this tale in displays at our marquee events next year. Do you have something to share? Please email Katie Pfeiffer at katherine@mhca.mb.ca Thank you,
Greg Orbanski Chair, MHCA
Chris Lorenc President, MHCA
City of Winnipeg, Winnipeg in Focus fonds, 1963
HEAVY CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY TESTED BY TIME, PUBLIC BEST INTEREST MANITOBA HEAVY CONSTRUCTION ASSOCIATION CELEBRATES 75 YEARS OF PRINCIPLED ADVOCACY
BY GREG ORBANSKI, CHAIR, MHCA
I work for an industry that has the “smell of the streets” on it. Literally. And we wear that proudly. I doubt Manitobans give much thought to the heavy construction industry, except in the months when streets are barricaded, torn up and traffic is detoured and the commute is slowed. I understand that. But I think the heavy construction industry — the men and women who are in those holes building or repairing roads or installing new sewer and water mains, or building the bridges — deserves a bit of recognition. In 2018, the Manitoba Heavy Construction Association (MHCA) celebrates its 75th anniversary. So it’s a good time to talk about what the industry has done over the years for our communities, province and country.
The TransCanada as a physical asset is invaluable, and rightly now occupies the attention and investment of governments coast to coast. But for the MHCA and its western partners, it was and is the natural manifestation of our “nation-building” strategy, which placed strategic transportation policy at the centre of economic and social development. The MHCA crafts its advocacy on principles, including that the management of public budgets, such as for highways, should focus on investment, not spending, and should meet the test of public best interest. As part of that, the concept of “trade- enabling” infrastructure as deserving of a higher priority in public policy has evolved. Governments have adopted that position. Today, governments, particularly at the national level, don’t get elected without laying out their vision for cost-
• Necessity of dedicated taxes for transportation infrastructure • Public disclosure of governments’ infrastructure investment deficits — that gap between what is being invested and how much is required to bring core infrastructure assets to good condition • Collaboration among municipalities of transportation priorities and budgets, for regional benefit and economic growth • Transparent, accountable investment of public dollars , through annual and five-year budgets These principles and positions, and many others, have spawned national and regional research, task forces and reports on trade-enabling transportation investment policy and strategy. MHCA was central to the idea of “nation-building” infrastructure that sits at the core of federal cost-shared programs now. It has been said that, as an experiment in national and cultural cohesion and identity, Canada just shouldn’t work, shouldn’t exist as a country. We leave it to the philosophers to work through existential questions. Here, on the streets, our industry understands, at a practical and visceral level, how Canada was made to work despite the odds. A principled, strategic use of our collective resources united us and put us on the road to prosperity that now underpins Canada’s vaunted social programs and our quality of life. It is why MHCA’s advocacy, through the years, has always been tested by that ‘public best interest’ yardstick. Tested by time, the industry, in its 75th year, proudly measures up. ❱❱❱
THE HEAVY CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY HAS BEEN FOUNDATIONAL TO KEEPING PEOPLE AND GOODS MOVING IN AND BETWEEN OUR COMMUNITIES. IT ALSO HAS HAD A PIVOTAL ROLE IN ELEVATING THE CONCEPT OF TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE AS A GENERATOR OF PROVINCIAL AND NATIONAL ECONOMIC GROWTH.
Greg Orbanski is the Chair of the Manitoba Heavy Construction Association.
The heavy construction industry has been foundational to keeping people and goods moving in and between our communities. It also has had a pivotal role in elevating the concept of transportation infrastructure as a generator of provincial and national economic growth. Out of this industry in this province, policies and principles underpinning the idea of “nation-building” infrastructure were initiated. Those initiatives helped moved Canada to a place where, now, our highways, trade corridors, border crossings and ports are seen as feeding the heart of trade, which is the backbone of our gross domestic product. In 1943, the industry formed its own association and, working with the industry in Saskatchewan, founded a regional roadbuilders association. This was not simply a lobby group getting its voice heard at local levels for the industry. It was recognized at the time that what Canadians needed was a strategic approach, tied to defined economic return, to easing the movement of people and goods across a country that, due to its breadth and geography, defies the notion of a “nation.” In 1943, the MHCA saw the potential Canada held, but understood that some heavy lifting had to be done to tie together its peoples and communities as citizens and trading partners. It saw that Canada could up its game as a trading nation with commodities — natural resources and manufactured goods — the world was hungry to import. Far-sighted MHCA directors and chairmen moved regional support to champion the idea of a national transportation system — a transcontinental roadway. Those efforts helped propel the construction of the TransCanada Highway, launched in 1950 and completed in 1962.
shared, robust infrastructure funding, focused on economic growth. Other ideas initiated by MHCA locally and nationally over the years include: • Creation of TRIP/Canada, which became the national flagship advocacy entity of the Canadian Construction Association
Manitoba Archives, L.B. Foote, 1914
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