Glass Canada • June 2025 • Building on success

Top Glass 2025 was one of our best ever with a hall full of over 60 exhibitors and over 360 glass people visiting to see them and our expert session presenters. I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to see glass people getting together like this and clearly enjoying the opportunity to meet and greet their friends. I think we’re filling a need with this show and, if the many kind words we get on the day are any indication, we are getting at least most of it right. Keep it short, keep it convenient and keep it inexpensive. One day of intensive activity rather than a drawn-out event. That seems to be what everyone wants and we’re happy to deliver it. There are too many contributors and supporters to thank here so I won’t try except to say THANK YOU to our exhibitors, sponsors, presenters, panelists, event staff, venue staff and association partners who make it all happen. I will make a special shout-out to Trulite Glass and Aluminum who really went beyond expectations hosting our plant tour the day before the show. Ray, Alicia, Joel, Hector, Amanda, Lucy, Peter, Andy, Neil, Scott, Annika, Shah, Jinu, Nathanael and everyone I’m missing...thank you for the wonderful effort.

So it’s on to the next. Top Glass West will return to Calgary for the second time on October 22, with a tour of Goldray Glass on Oct. 21. Our session details are being ironed out, but there will be presentations on wildfire-resistant glazing, vacuum insulating glass and our usual codes and standards updates. GAMA will be involved, hopefully doing their apprentice awards presentation again. Our first edition in Calgary was so encouraging...now we just have to make it grow. Mark your calendars, tell your friends and watch your inbox for more details. See you at Top Glass West!

You’ll see in our cover story that I’m using this issue to launch a conversation that I hope will bring some clarity to the future direction of sustainable construction regulation in this country. No, I have no standing or expertise with which to do this. But with major new priorities for sustainable building on the horizon, I think we need to look at the way we’re regulating and incentivizing sustainable construction and avoid taking bad routes that force us to double back or even engage in counterproductive behaviour. We need to, as business guru Steven Covey used to say, “begin with the end in mind.” That involves putting the focus back on the real objective, which is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released worldwide, and ensure that every measure we adopt serves that ultimate purpose. Because some of the things we have done have not always done that. I think there’s an opportunity at this moment in history where we are starting to introduce embodied carbon to the conversation to avoid another decade of laborious regulatory development that might take us into another cul-de-sac. It’s a topic I’m going to be writing and talking a lot about over the next while and I hope you’ll join in with your comments and arguments. And I’ll be bringing some top minds into the conversation who do have the standing and expertise to venture an educated opinion.

Summer is finally arriving and my best wishes go out to you and your teams for a successful building season. Thanks as always for reading and listening.