Vectors of change EDITORIAL GLASS CANADA February 2021 Volume 33 • Number 1 Annex Business Media P.O. Box 530, Simcoe, Ontario N3Y 4N5 READER SERVICE Print and digital subscription inquires or changes, please contact Shawn Arul, Audience Development Manager Tel: 416.510.5181 Fax: 416.510.6875 Email: sarul@annexbusinessmedia.com Mail: 111 Gordon Baker Rd., Suite 400, Toronto, ON M2H 3R1 EDITOR | Patrick FLANNERY pflannery@annexbusinessmedia.com 226.931.0545 ASSOCIATE EDITOR | Sukanya RAY GHOSH srayghosh@annexbusinessmedia.com 647.203.7031 PUBLISHER | Danielle LABRIE dlabrie@annexbusinessmedia.com 519.429.5187 NATIONAL ACCOUNT MANAGER | Amanda McCRACKEN AMcCracken@annexbusinessmedia.com 519.429.5234 ACCOUNT COORDINATOR | Barb Comer bcomer@annexbusinessmedia.com 519.429.5171 MEDIA DESIGNER | Alison KEBA VP SALES/GROUP PUBLISHER | Martin McANULTY mmcanulty@annexbusinessmedia.com COO | Scott JAMIESON sjamieson@annexbusinessmedia.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES Canada -1 Year $37.00 (plus tax) U.S.A. -1 Year $85.00 (in CDN dollars) Publication Mail Agreement #40065710 Printed in Canada ISSN 0843-7041 Occasionally, Glass Canada will mail information on behalf of industry-related groups whose products and services we believe may be of interest to you. If you prefer not to receive this information, please contact our circulation department in any of the four ways listed above. Annex Privacy Officer privacy@annexbusinessmedia.com Tel: 800-668-2374 No part of the editorial content of this publication may be reprinted without the publisher’s written permis-sion. ©2021 Annex Publishing & Printing Inc. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed in this magazine are not nec-essarily those of the editor or the publisher. No liability is assumed for errors or omissions. All advertising is subject to the publisher’s approval. Such approval does not imply any endorsement of the products or services advertised. Publisher reserves the right to refuse advertising that does not meet the standards of the publication. “All that is solid melts into air.” -Karl Marx I don’t think I’m alone in feeling the ground shifting under my feet to a degree and in directions that I never thought possible. For most of my life, it has felt like change has come fairly gradually and in the form of incremental movements along previously established trends. 9/11 was an inflection point on that journey – a sudden event that shocked the world into sharp and long-lasting realignments of previously stable dynamics. The pandemic seems to be an event of comparable impact, and it’s happening in conjunction with political events that have people questioning the very viability of democracy as we’ve understood it for the last couple centuries. Simultaneously, and working to drive change and upheaval on both of the other two fronts, the influence of social media on the way we under-stand the world continues to accelerate. I wonder if this revolution in the way we communicate could have similar unintended consequences. Let’s bring these fuzzy musings about change around to what we are seeing in our industry right now. I do think the long-term future of the office tower and high-rise condo-miniums has been put into serious question by information technology, sharply accelerated by the pandemic. Most professionals don’t need to work out of an office any more and haven’t needed to for some time. But they continued to go in mostly out of inertia – the office was already there, it’s how the company had always operated and their bosses NEXT ISSUE liked to see their smiling faces. Then the pandemic forced companies to make the change...and the results • New CCDC were not bad. Just about every company now knows • Top Glass that it can let its workers work from home and save • Xinyi glass money on office space. There are downsides in terms of plant company culture and teambuilding, for sure, but I find it hard to imagine they would overcome the hard dol-lars and cents associated with building leases, maintenance, office supplies and all the other expenses that come with maintaining a large facility. If you don’t have to go into an office every day, why live in 500 square feet in a glass ant hill when you could move an hour out of the city and have a house, yard and no traffic for about the same price? Yes, I know the kids like the lifestyle. I also know most get tired of it within a few years. I don’t predict complete abandonment of downtown cores or anything radical like that, but I do see the potential for a depressed market for new space going forward, and less maintenance and renovation work. Energy efficiency upgrades might mitigate some of that. We talk about another, much more welcome change, on page 24. Glass Canada has joined with several other construction publications to participate in Women In Construction, a special channel dedicated to celebrating the achieve-ments of women in Canada’s construction industries and promoting more inclusion. We’ve all watched as more and more women join our workforces and establish themselves in great careers. And we’ve all scratched our heads as to why there haven’t been even more and how we can get more young women to take a look at what we do. Here’s a chance to recognize a change that is already happen-ing and to drive it forward, to everyone’s benefit.• @GlassCanadaMag www.glasscanadamag.com 4 February 2021 | GLASS CANADA
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