Barbara Carss
Canadian Property Management
Real estate primed for low-carbon vanguard
Canada's Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance suggests there is more untapped opportunity than coordinated action in a market grappling with emerging imperatives for climate-related financial disclosure and integrating ESG measures.
Facility Cleaning & Maintenance
More smokers stoke litter and fire risk
Business, professional and public interest groups are devising and deploying strategies to promote common sense and minimize risk, discord and environmental fallout.
Canadian Apartment Magazine
Medical cannabis a prescription for uncertainty
Rental housing industry advocates have been urging the Canadian government to review and modify rules governing the cultivation of plants for personal medical use.
Canadian Property Management
CDM mandate survives Green Energy Repeal Act
Selected provisions enabling some of Ontario's key energy and water conservation programs will be transferred to the Electricity Act.
Facility Cleaning & Maintenance
Cleaning products industry blasts research
The American Cleaning Institutes chastises the slate of 15 authors affiliated with health sciences faculties of six Canadian universities for overlooking the role disinfectants play in infection control.
Facility Cleaning & Maintenance
Hot weather plans get a workout in summer 2018
Workplace health and safety practitioners advise that measures to safeguard building services personnel from heat stress should be fairly straightforward.
Canadian Property Management
Energy efficiency messaging reset in Ontario
Energy efficiency advocates are working to enlist broader support and leverage existing influential backers at a time when government commitment is becoming more uneven across North American jurisdictions.
Canadian Property Management
Climate risk serves up shocks and stressors
Measures to avoid or minimize flood damage and prepare for long-term power outages now rank among the most cost-effective design decisions and capital investments that building owners/managers can make.
Canadian Facility Management & Design
Urban pressures arise in step with proptech
Toronto conference explores commercial real estate in its urban context, focusing on factors that support or threaten economic growth, investment returns, urban liveability and sustainability.
Canadian Property Management
Balancing the risks to commercial real estate
Senior ranking valuation specialists agreed that new uncertainties around fraying trade agreements, political instability and climate volatility have broadened the scope of their worries well beyond rising interest rates.
Canadian Property Management
Alberta retracts promised retrofit incentives
Despite information posted on the Energy Efficiency Alberta website for more than a month, commercial customers do not qualify for the new incentives announced in May 2018.
Canadian Property Management
Real estate vulnerable to Canada-U.S. trade war
High-rise development is expected to be the hardest hit real estate activity, but fallout across a wider range of consumer goods has potential negative implications for commercial warehouse and distribution facilities.
Canadian Apartment Magazine
Time-of-use electricity rates spark debate
The Ontario NDP's proposed plan would focus efforts to manage peak demand more narrowly on the Industrial Conservation Initiative and voluntary residential programs enabled through smart grid technology.
Canadian Property Management
Peak demand report cards imminent in Ontario
It's the the end of a rookie season for many larger commercial electricity customers participating in Ontario's Industrial Conservation Initiative.
Canadian Property Management
Ontario candidates overstate conservation costs
The upfront costs of Ontario's electricity conservation programs are lower than some candidates for provincial office are alleging.
Construction Business
LaBranche legacy entrenched in BOMA BC
Wrapping up a 25 year tenure with the Building Owners and Managers Association of British Columbia, soon-to-retire president, Paul LaBranche, characteristically looks through the lens of his organization's strategic plan to assess what he has accomplished.
Canadian Property Management
Ontario revises property assessment schedule
The launch of a new four-year cycle in 2017 spurred a wave of assessment appeals as property owners reacted to often dramatic increases in value over the previous assessment.



