Christmas comes early? Ottawa agrees to make National Building Code (online version) FREE

Well, we guess Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau reads Canadian Contractor.

One of the Top 10 topics on contractors’ minds on these boards – going back almost a DECADE – has been the simple question:

If governments want us to follow their (expletive) codes, why don’t they allow us to access them for free? Starting with that incredibly expensive tome, the National Building Code of Canada!

Most apprentices and many small family business contracting firms cannot afford several hundred dollars for the National Building Code. Even for the online version, the price tag was high.

Now Bill Morneau, in his recent Fall Economic Statement, has said that the National Building Code will be offered FREE for the online version.

Read the official announcement here.

Of course, it is NOT helpful to contractors that the bureaucrats who wrote this couldn’t give a timeline for when this act of tremendous generosity common sense will actually happen.

Anyone know?

Editor’s Note:

THANK YOU to Brian McIsaac, Holland College, Charlottetown, PEI, who tipped us off to this news. It’s not like Ottawa could find the dough for paid PR people to tell us this directly, is it? No, of course not.