The nations of the world are struggling to balance growth and preservation. Canada is no exception. In less than a generation, new awareness of the environment and our limited resources has sparked a range of initiatives, including efforts to improve construction techniques. Two of the most far reaching - the Canadian Centre for Housing Technology and the Healthy Housing Initiative - are working specifically to find better, healthier and more environmentally responsible ways to build homes.
CMHC's Equilibrium Program is an excellent example of a collaboration of technologies designed to achieve net zero or net positive housing.

The people who've joined our communities need places to live, play, work and shop. That means more buildings - and an incredible demand on construction materials and labour. This demand is fueling runaway cost increases for everything it takes to construct a building and higher prices on the finished structures.

Softwood lumber supplies in Canada and the northern United States are under relentless attack by the mountain pine beetle. In British Columbia alone, this catastrophic epidemic is projected to destroy 65 percent to 80 percent of the marketable lodge-pole and ponderosa pine by 2012. The construction industry, long dependent on lumber, needs a better, sustainable solution.
(To view the government of British Columbia's Mountain Pine Beetle Action Plan and Annual Progress Report for 2006/2007, click the following link: www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/mountain_pine_beetle/)