Articles Fabrication
WinDoor 2018 – Report from the Fabricators Council

Fenestration Canada’s Fabricators Council, a closed group for fabricator members only, has quickly become one of the more influential bodies within the organization. Gary Blad of Loewen Windows sits on the Council and gave Fenestration Review an update on what was discussed at this years’ WinDoor in Quebec City.

Steve Hopwood of Energy Star addressed the Council and heard feedback to the effect that proposed changes to the program are coming too fast. Hopwood pointed out that the goal of the changes is to disqualify as much as 80 per cent of the product presently certified, but councillors complained that most of the remaining products would be fixed windows and very few operable designs would make the cut. The council heard that only 40 sliding door designs presently qualify out of 350 registered manufacturers in the country.

Diana Charest of Natural Resources Canada bravely presented the climate change Roadmap to the Council. “We basically hijacked the agenda after that and spent the rest of the time talking about it,” Blad reports. One concern the council has is that Roapmap provisions would only apply to products that are sold across provincial borders, effectively setting up new interprovincial trade barriers in the country. Blad doubted the council would arrive at a comprehensive, unified position on the entire Roadmap, but would be able to decide on some points where everyone agrees. It was disappointing, Blad said, to find that only 15 or 20 fabricators had responded to the request for feedback on NRCan’s white paper introducing the Roadmap, and the council asked for and received a one-month extension on the comment period. The council plans to circulate Jeff Baker’s response on behalf of FenCan and some of the other responses from council members in order to stimulate discussion and response.

Fenestration Canada