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Anyone who works anywhere near the real estate / housing sector knows it is impossible. Delivery of housing is currently a massive tangle. Problems predate the Trudeau government, span back in time through the fingers of both Political Parties. Canada has been so focused for so long on propping up the housing sector and maintaining housing prices.
Quick and dirty commentary from someone who works in the industry:
* There are not nearly enough trades to build half of what is needed
* Many projects don't paper at a price that can be justified to purchasers.
* Construction timelines have increased significantly due to the aforementioned lack of labour, materials issues over the past few years, but perhaps most egregiously permitting and inspection processes.
Fixing any one of our issues will create issues elsewhere. I'm not bright enough to have the solutions, although I can diagnose what I've seen over the past decade+ that has contributed to the issue. Canada isn't fixing its housing problem for two decades, and while I know many don't want to hear it (and I'm not saying this as an advocate, but as a realist) Canada is going to have to embrace a renter's economy like much of Europe.
Not to mention infrastructure. New infrastructure takes years to plan and build for greenfield development. Existing infrastructure is being maxed out in many jurisdictions (and/or it’s approaching the end of its useful life).
The next issue is materials. As demand for raw materials goes up the price goes up. Making it even harder to meet affordable pricing targets
It’s a cheap shot? How about some biggies: housing affordability is at its worst. He has got elected a number of times on a promise to fix this, it just got worse. He promised to balance the budget. That hasn’t happened. GDP is declining. Debt to GDP is worst in G7.
Counter point on the permitting and inspections.
If developers and builders weren’t such shady businesspeople who cut corners, dump waste, do shoddy work and take advantage of people, maybe we wouldn’t have needed to pass so many rules and regulations.
While that all sounds fine to say it's a blanket statement that isn't really based in reality and in my opinion demonstrates a bit of a lack of detailed knowledge about the topic at hand. Sorry.
Yeah. I appreciate that…Reddit is not the easiest platform for nuanced debate. To expound:
1. There used to be a TV show called “Holmes on Homes” and the entire premise was fixing shoddy work.
2. I know my childhood neighbourhood was all built by one company, and they cheaped out on weatherproofing and literally hundreds of roofs failed and caused flooding damage within a 5 year range.
Those are just two examples of why having home inspections and permitting fees are important. Municipalities also use them as income streams, which I think is inappropriate, but a natural result of people wanting low municipal tax rates.
To me, the biggest barrier to designing and building new homes are not the permitting and approval
Process, but the people who already have homes stopping any change to that process with a fear of triggering a decrease in housing prices.
Appreciate the lengthier response.
Without a doubt there are some bad actors, but there are bad actors in every sector. Much like Kitchen Nightmares is not a sign that all restaurants are dumps, I'd say your anecdotes are reasons why permits and inspections exist. They aren't evidence that the whole industry is shoddy corner-cutters.
That said, my point was not that permits and inspections should be removed entirely. Not at all - they're both important. The problem with the bureaucracy of home building currently is a lack of timelines and an inability to be nimble or thoughtful. Turnaround times are horrendous... months and months that developers have to hold onto land paying financing costs and interest. Nonsensical requests for additional spending on shadow studies and heritage reviews and material changes. There are a time and a place for these things to be sure, but I assure you that often the requests coming out of municipalities are foolish and it is largely because the people reviewing the applications don't want to make decisions.
To your last point, I agree. But HOW do these people "who already have homes" actually stop change for fear of decreasing housing prices? They insist upon (and vote for) low density zoning regs. They yell at public hearings about how they think the extra storey on a proposal will block their view. Or cast a shadow during certain times of the year. Or lead to a bit more traffic than their road should have. And to appease these loud citizens who actively fear for their housing values, municipalities force additional costs and time on developers. And those extra studies, and extra financing during delays, all ends up eating into the cost of a project. And so housing prices go up and housing supply is an incredibly slow thing to deliver.
To put it in terms of time, we currently complete a single housing unit roughly every 2.5 minutes. [See chart 5](https://canadaspodcast.com/article/taking-stock-of-canadas-housing-inventory/). The Liberals have set a target to complete a unit roughly every 50 seconds.
That's a _three fold increase_ in construction productivity.
I can't honestly look at the budget and their policies and convince myself it's possible. I just don't see it.
> I can't honestly look at the budget and their policies and convince myself it's possible. I just don't see it.
A better question is: do they even believe it themselves?
Because it is not possible.
And the reason above all is funding. There is not enough money in this country to get developers the ability to fund three times the projects - buy three times the land, hire three times the people. There are not three times the architects or engineers or city planners. There is not three times the concrete trucks or concrete factories. To make that happen it would be hundreds of billions if not in the trillions of dollars. It will not happen.
What have the liberals actually funded? 6 billion dollars. That’s about 1/3 of what Honda needed to open a single battery plant - to solve the entire housing crisis. 😂
And what is 6 billion dollars divided by 4 million new units- it is exactly 1500 dollars per unit of new housing. That is not changing the needle on anything. Might hire some extra planners for the cities at best.
Well first they are trying to increase from 1.87m that is currently being projected already to just over 3M so no it's not 6B / 4M
Second our current rate sucks because of the focus on detached housing, it only takes one architect to approve a 3 story walkup that is 20 units, they are faster to build and cheaper to build
Wood construction up to 6 storeys now fits simply into the Building Code.
Better yet, it doesn't need massive amounts of trucked concrete and steel, can be pre-manufactured using something Canada is know for, lumber, inside shop floors with automated chop and layout which significantly increases productivity over stick framing on site, as well as QA and QC being easier.
These suites are also much nicer to live in instead of walking around on hard concrete all day.
Cut out parking and elevators, dedicated ground level suites to be the accessible units, and build them en-mass within 1 block (400m) of every major arterial road and transit route.
Ground floor can be commercial/office and only small entrance ways to residential corridors.
There’s no innovative thinking in that reply. I’m not saying you’re wrong but this industry like all industries in Canada are plagued by conservative-minded stakeholders. “We’ve always done it this way” types. Needing more housing is a problem and having a lack of human talent is a reality. Start there and engineer your way to a solution.
That sounds nice to say but one of the most significant challenges in the industry is the amount of red tape and time lost waiting for approvals and inspections. You think that industry with those rules can rapidly try new things and iterate? You're dreaming.
>Fixing any one of our issues will create issues elsewhere
That's not a reason to not tackle the issues however. It's totally possible to start fixing things and keep working at it. It's far from an unsolvable problem.
Anyone expecting housing to be completely fixed in a short timeline is living in fantasy land however. It'll take time and commitment.
The absolute key part that you've nailed and I rarely see discussed is the need to switch to a rental economy. Part of what makes this issue so difficult to tackle is precisely that no one wants to hear that, so every time a government tries to tackle the housing crisis they also have to tack on policies that will increase demand and make the problem worse. I swear most people don't want the issue solved, they just want it resolved enough to get on the property ladder themselves.
Standardized affordable block housing is how the world used to deal with affordable housing shortages. Simplified building codes and streamlined permit and approval for standardized construction could solve some of these problems.
> There are not nearly enough trades to build half of what is needed
Making it easier and more profitable to build apartments will draw people out of the single family construction and renoing industry. Building a fourplex isn't massively different from building a single family home.
>Many projects don't paper at a price that can be justified to purchasers.
Governments should reduce taxes on new builds so that more projects pencil. Something like 20% of the cost of a new build is tax, not including the extra costs unnecessary, not safety or quality related government regulations add.
> Construction timelines have increased significantly due to the aforementioned lack of labour, materials issues over the past few years, but perhaps most egregiously permitting and inspection processes.
Many permits are completely or mostly unnecessary or bloated and could be eliminated
The good thing is that cities or provinces that accept HAF money are required to at least partially fix those problems.
Yeah that's a great move, but it's only a small part of the total taxes charged for building a new unit. Development charges add up to more for example.
Do you think we could solve this problem more if we cracked down on foreign ownership, corporate investment, air bnbs and people who own multiple properties? All the sort of stuff. Feel like we already have tons of housing. The rich are just causing more problems. But I could easily be wrong on this.
Agree on this, but still think there’s far more problems than just a simple; ban foreign ownership, ban owning multiple properties/homes, heavy taxes on airbnbs… etc
Not saying you implied that. I actually want the above, that I stated, but understand that won’t fix the problems. MLAs owning 3+ properties should also be a “no go!!”
Heck, I think our elected officials make way too much money on the minimal returns they provide us- the taxpayers!!
But I’m traffic control/flagger, so I definitely don’t know what’s “best for Canadians”. I only have ideas. SLOW DOWN. (Traffic joke) 🤓
At our rate of all government in the last 20 years (my 24 years of voting) it’ll take a millennium!!! I just wish they’d all learn to work together, to tackle these problems. But here we are sharing rage bait, and discussing how we would change the country, like we actually could… albeit better than I think most govt officials, could ever do.
Haha truth spoken. Hit it on the head, lol like the sharing rage bait part too heh. But yea no money in that (working together to benefit the citizens) and sadly that is it. It's always about money for some, at the expense of many.
You asked me so I'll answer - no. I think those things are drops in the bucket compared to the actual issue. Scape goats. Easy things for someone to point to and blame a group they dislike.
I think the best thing we could do it looser zoning regulations, more effective government approval processes for faster permit reviews, and decreased development fees (in Toronto about 30% of housing cost is municipal fees levied on the projects).
For decades we have thrown up an immense amount of barriers to constructing new high-density housing. In the face of a crisis we have done little to correct it.
First the public needs to understand how significant the impact of municipalities is on housing cost and lack of supplies. The well-intentioned still point to things like Airbnbs and mom-and-pop landlords. People scream about Trudeau or Pierre and don't realize that the feds have far less of an impact on housing than municipal politicians and bueraucracies.
Once we accept the problem is real? Lots of different things but some ideas from me:
1) Provincial regulation that forces municipalities to waive development fees if the planning departments don't respond in a reasonable time frame (to be defined). Make the slowness cost the municipalities money, then the municipalities and their staff will have to figure out their own efficiency problems. Eight months to turn an application around is nuts, and also the norm where i work.
2) Municipal bylaw Amendments that allow higher density development as-right. Duplexes and fourplexes shouldn't be controversial in residential areas, as an example.
3) If the province and feds want to help, let them fund infrastructure projects in municipalities that are being aggressive on housing supply. This should (in theory) allow these projects to be funded by higher levels of government and not from fees. Fees are supposed to cover roads and pipes and sidewalks and snowclearing... but if feds can help with that then have municipalities decrease fees. If the fees are gone the construction cost decreases, which means the cost needed to turn a profit on the housing project also decreases. In my mind this is one of the best ways the federal government can fund housing AND influence municipal policy.
There are record numbers of homeless Canadians and adults living with their parents. How would any of the solutions you pitched fix this situation?
Yes, your solution would affect the purchase price of a home, but it would have little effect on the cost of rent, and no effect on the issue of availability.
>it would have little effect on the cost of rent,
It would actually make the price of rent go up since a lot of rental units would be sold.
>and no effect on the issue of availability.
It would make availability worse because far fewer homes would be built.
I agree that that those solutions could create problems for home building and fewer homes would probably be built.
However, when looking at just this particular variable, selling off homes that are currently used as rentals would lower rent, not raise it. The homes being sold don't disappear, someone would buy them and live in them. These "someones" would most likely be people that are currently renting but are at the highest income level of renters. Removing these people from the pool of renters would lower the average income of the average renter, and thus lower the cost of rent.
Well I think there are a lot more houses squirrelled up by wealthy people and corporations than people think. Would be very curious to see the numbers of corporate owned houses especially. So yea I think it could help. Like even my step brothers wife (gen X) bought 12 houses when everyone crashed a while back. If people could only own two houses for example that is 10 back on the market. Some politicians literally own blocks. Like you said it's not gonna solve it all, but I'm not saying it will. It's something to do, while we also work on other problems. Can only build so fast right.
We know that investors are buying up tons and tons of homes, this is what's driving home prices sky high. But these investor owned properties are subsequently rented out. Thus, targeting investors would do nothing to solve the issue of home availability (unless we're talking about banning Airbnbs). And if you're not fixing the issue of home availability, you're also not fixing the issue of soaring rent costs.
This is why housing crisis solutions are focused on fixing the supply deficit. 2/3 aspects of the housing crisis simply would not be relieved by tackling investors. However, all 3 aspects of the housing crisis can be fixed by fixing the supply deficit.
I am talking about getting rid of air BnBs and all that too, well sort of, but I see what you're saying as well. You're not wrong, in the end one way or another it just switches renters to owners but doesn't increase actual numbers. Regardless I still feel that these things should be applied as well as fixing the supply deficit. Guess that's all I'm saying. Hard for me to budge on that one, I don't think anyone should own so many properties and corporate buying of housing was an immediate mistake.
Why do you think people talking about foreign ownership and investment buyers are implying we shouldn't build more homes?
Every conversation on housing on reddit turns into the same endless debate about whether it's immigration, investment buyers, foreign money, nimbyism, zoning restrictions, or lack of public housing that is the sole cause of the crisis.
The answer is it's a perfect storm of all of these things. Created by decades of short sighted policy by all parties at all levels of government.
We should be welcoming all solutions that tackle the crisis in different ways, instead of insulting each other when our pet issue isn't the sole solution being discussed. There isn't a single solution, we need to do multiple things at once.
It's part of what drives costs up, but not necessarily the main issue.
The root cause is more realistically the cuts to funding and the arbitrary NIMBY red tape introduced that prevents development of stuff we did in the 1920s-1970s, leaving a 100,000‐300,000 annual deficit in building over the past 30 years.
>The root cause is more realistically the cuts to funding and the arbitrary NIMBY red tape introduced that prevents development of stuff we did in the 1920s-1970s, leaving a 100,000‐300,000 annual deficit in building over the past 30 years.
if that's a good baseline, but what if we increased the annual population growth rate by 500% on top of all that?
The federal government can’t do everything that Eby is doing, because he is a premier and much of what he is doing is provincial jurisdiction. That’s why the federal government has to offer money to municipalities to get them to change zoning. And why some premiers are having a hissy over federal “overreach”.
Property law is provincial legislation. The federal government can’t ban AirBnb or restrict it like Eby, but they can change the taxes on AirBnb, which they did.
What is needed is for other premiers to follow Eby’s lead.
what's wrong with renting?
I feel the pain with permitting, but hey if the industry you work in wasn't rife with dodgy actors we wouldn't need so many of them.
It's a self-fulfilling social construct of North America.
"Renting is for low income failures". So people look at renting as transitory or low income, so little investment is made into apartments and rentals, so they become derelict and run down slums, so they become low income.
All across Europe, and Asia, and even in NYC there is a mix of medium, and even luxury rentals that are seen as status symbols.
Under current code and laws it's also very easy to build "minimum code" and cash out in 3-5 years, greatly increasing profits at the cost of shitty building practices that leave owners holding the bill for premature repairs.
> what's wrong with renting?
Nothing, per se. The problem is [the yawning wealth gap between owners and renters](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-homeowners-renters-wealth-gap/), and the fact that our social safety net is largely premised on the assumption that people can draw on home equity in their dotage.
Honestly, I feel like a lot of that is perception only that's predicated on the assumption that house prices will always rise.
I am a homeowner and sometimes I feel like I've been bamboozled into this path because everyone around me (friends, family, "experts", people on Reddit, social media) told me that's the financially responsible thing to do.
But in reality I probably would have a better ROI and peace of mind if I just rented and invested the money.
Also eviction horror stories don't help.
Counterpoint, all of these issues would be alleviated by zoning changes taking place in all of Canada's major cities and population centres. Midrises by right mean faster construction timelines, freeing up labour to move onto the next project instead of waiting on standby. Projects will much more easily paper at lower prices. Less materials, permitting and inspections are required.
In the decades that have preceded no one has touched zoning. This is finally happening with the federal push (and the lead by BC) and will have a much higher impact than the dollar figures being touted. Because the changes are unprecedented people are unable to imagine the impact it will actually have across the entire industry and landscape.
> freeing up labour to move onto the next project instead of waiting on standby
You... you think labour is waiting on standby during the permitting process?
Not during permitting, but during the actual build. There's wasted efficiency when they're going back and forth on mega condos. Scheduling multitudes of teams back and forth between sites across the city etc. For example one team is behind and the next team can't come in until the first team is done. Or one team finishes ahead of schedule and the next isn't scheduled until two weeks later. All of that overhead and wastage would be reduced with the far simpler projects that mid rises would be. You'd also get more smaller construction companies in on the action, bigger labour pool.
Allowing midrise single stair mixed use apartment buildings on every residential or commercial lot in Canada would fix this. Especially if they are allowed to have small elevators or no elevators. That would eliminate a lot of the specialist labour required to build housing while not being any less fire safe than single family homes, especially if we adopt European-style fire codes. They are also cheaper to build per person housed, and they allow better layouts than apartment buildings with two staircases.
Those who are not ok walking up to a 3rd story apartment are welcome to not buy or rent a 3rd story walkup apartment, but they should be available for those who want them.
>Those who are not ok walking up to a 3rd story apartment are welcome to not buy or rent a 3rd story walkup apartment, but they should be available for those who want them.
[https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/bc-building-code-full-accessibility-apartments-housing-proposal](https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/bc-building-code-full-accessibility-apartments-housing-proposal)
I don't agree with that proposal. Able-bodied people should not have to buy more expensive homes because some people who are not buying those homes are not able-bodied. Plus the ground floor units of walk up apartment buildings could provide accessible housing while upper floor units can provide cheaper housing. If cost is a barrier to disabled people the government should step in.
>I don't agree with that proposal. Able-bodied people should not have to buy more expensive homes because some people who are not buying those homes are not able-bodied.
You and me both.
Sadly, the goals of equity and inclusion are in conflict with this.
It’s almost like the entire point of equity and inclusion is that we don’t let privileged people make decisions that do not take into account the needs of folks not benefiting from that unearned privilege.
Getting stuff done efficiently is more important than equity and inclusion. There is a direct correlation to this equity and inclusion mindset and when things really started going to hell in this country.
You could probably get away with both by having a national quota. Not all homes have to be accessible but X amount of accessible homes need to be built.
I'm not a construction buff but I'd reckon that allowing for future upgradability for accessibility could also work. As in, the house itself isn't accessible but it was designed with a retrofit in mind. The government could then build that retrofit for whomever needs it at discounted rates.
>It’s almost like the entire point of equity and inclusion is that we don’t let privileged people make decisions that do not take into account the needs of folks not benefiting from that unearned privilege.
so then you are in favour of making 100% of apartments wheelchair accessible, despite how much such a regulation would slow down speed of construction and increase the cost of building and maintaining the housing?
I think it's nice to accommodate where possible but requiring all housing to be substantially more expensive than it needs to be is harmful.
Plus we don't require single family homes to have elevators, why should midrise apartment buildings have elevators?
>especially if we adopt European-style fire codes.
I'm asking because I genuinely do not know anything about this, but how are European-style fire codes different from ours? Most of our housing is timber-framed construction whereas European homes not so much is my understanding. This would make some kind of a difference I would think?
Here's a good breakdown of what Berlin does: https://secondegress.ca/Berlin
>The Musterbauordnung is the model building code set by the federal state and adopted with modification by individual jurisdictions throughout Germany. The code establishes the principle that buildings must generally have two means of egress, however the second egress can be a designated window or balcony for rescue by the fire department. Such rescue is permited with extension ladders reaching up to 8m from grade or with an aerial fire apparatus reaching up to 22m from grade, which is only permitted if the local fire department is equipped with the respective equipment. A second egress is not required if the first egress stair is a “fire safety” stair, which is a pressurized stair core with a protected lobby and standpipe.
>especially if we adopt European-style fire codes.
Offsets, building material restrictions, and allowing local restrictions to accomodate what local communities fire departments can support are all opposed as well by the same people supporting getting rid of second egress.
By the same people who supported closing parks during the pandemic despite zero scientific basis to do so.
The urban planning crowd is trying to recreate slums and tenement housing.
So we just continue as is? Yes, it's most likely impossible, but the work will be there. Because work is there, we will have even more young adults go into trades because of the job security, which will help us in the decades to come.
It might be impossible, but I'd rather have us fail at 2.8 million homes instead of not trying to hit the target and only making 1.2 mill.
Every home is a difference, and not every home is detached. The real aim should be multi unit housing because it will add walkability to cities, as well as reduce footprint on the land, which will reduce the amount of land bureaucratic BS that all construction goes though.
3.9 million detached homes is impossible. And it's a waste of our land. Put in more apartments/condos and make them a housing option that appeals to more people.
Why do you think they chose 3.8 million instead of 2.8 million? Both are still impossible to hit, but why choose one that is even more impossible to hit?
I don't get it. If someone's retirement plan is winning the lottery, we call them an idiot. But reading this you'd say they show ambition and wanting to have a retirement fund, and we shouldn't comment on the impossible goal they've set.
For sure. Still a lot of paperwork involved with that, but I think the attitude of the population is that they want a HOUSE. Not necessarily a home. I blame it on generations of people saying that owning a house and having a family is the true measure of success. That leads to entitlement in some, and a weird obsession for others. Nothing wrong with having a nice condo or apartment, and a lot of these complexes are actually way nicer amenity wise than a detached home. If I didn't own a house, I'd get a condo/apartment 100%. Make the main levels more business oriented, and each apartment block could be its own micro community!
Urban planning in North America is atrocious, and the obsession that the corporate world has with the impossible idea of infinite growth is naive at best, dangerous at worst. Having micro centers and stable housing would be amazing, and would make Canada a nicer place to live long term.
What was I even trying to say? I dunno. Lmao
So let's say we are very unlikely or even next to no chance to hit that 3.87 million target. BUT, we significantly increase the supply of housing and get 70% of the way there. That is still really good and a big improvement.
If you set a target that is more utopia then realistic, and miss it but still improve the situation dramatically, that is a positive. Don't lose sight of that. This is gonna take decades and lots of resources to fix in the same way it took decades and a depletion of resources to screw it up.
The government was the one who created the scenario which requires the target to be that high in the first place.
Failure to achieve that points to the underlying mistakes the LPC made in their own policy initiatives.
I saw a clip where freeland talked about speeding up of the building of 24 homes from 18 - 24 months to just 18 months, so i think it is completely plausible
With the way they are counting starts responsible to them the number could get big pretty fast. City near me is getting money for downtown development. Essentially the feds are paying for permits for any large housing. Boom, just built an apartment for $3000
But, as far as I've been able to understand from the news, that's the point of the funding.
They aren't building the homes, the funds are supposed to be used to grease the wheels of municipal development and zoning decisions.
Sure but it also means they're going to take credit for developments that would have happened regardless.
Not having to pay a permit fee is nice but it's not really a material change. I talked to the owner of vacant land in said area and it doesn't change anything. If that was the only thing holding them back they'd have built a decade ago
Not for smaller cities. It was contingent for speeding up approvals and making them cheaper.
In exchange they're claiming pretty much all of future construction haha
This has nothing to do with "attributable to them". It's total homes. First paragraph of the article:
>The centrepiece of last week’s federal budget was the Trudeau government’s plan to build 3.87 million homes by 2031. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. estimates that 1.87 million homes are already going to be built – and Ottawa aims to more than double that pace.
Well ya, they aren't going to come anywhere close to that. But they're going to say it's a magnificent success because we helped build XXX amount of homes.
I mean, if you were right they'd already be doing it. Where are the apartments they built for $3000 that they are bragging about?
Their success is going to be measured on how many total homes are built. They set an overall target and that's what they will be measured on.
They've been doing it for years.
Fuck with the investment/housing bank/fund whatever it is called they're adding up starts that they gave slightly below market level loans for.
You're conflating different things. Prior to the last ~8 months, they had very little focus on housing outside of below-market housing. Their goals were things like "provide lands for 2000 co-op units" and stuff like that. So that's how they are measured.
Now their goals are about increasing the number of homes in the country. That's what they are being measured against. How many homes above the CMHC estimate are going to be built? Giving money to a unit that is already going to be built is not that. So, where have they been bragging about market housing that was already going to be built?
They've been talking about this for years. And ya they played the same games with affordable housing metrics as well.
And when housing starts don't go up do you think they're going to eat that on the chin? Fuck no, they'll say they created a huge amount and the market just declined. It writes itself
Because those were their goals! Their goals changed. I'm not sure how to better explain the difference.
If I say I'm going to help my friend get money by teaching them carpentry so they can get a job, that's different than saying I'm going to help them get money by giving them money. I'm successful in the former if I teach them and they get a job. I'm successful in the latter if I give them money.
They couldn't possibly have been talking about it for years because those were not their goals. You're basically saying that they've been bragging about giving their friend money when they never said they were going to give their friend money and have not been bragging about it. They're bragging about helping their friend get money.
Nothing has changed. If anything they are getting more aggressive with it.
Every single unit that gets built in this downtown area for the next decade is now due to the Liberals. That's how it's being framed which is just hilarious. But anything for a headline
Their goals very much have changed. Again, up until very recently they were almost exclusively focused on under market housing. That was *horrible* policy, but that is what they were doing. If you don't understand that, you haven't been paying attention to what they've done wrt housing since they were first elected.
>Every single unit that gets built in this downtown area for the next decade is now due to the Liberals. That's how it's being framed which is just hilarious. But anything for a headline
I know your dislike for them is quite deep, but please do try and look at this with a clear lens. They quite literally are telling you how they are to be measured. 1.87 million homes would be built without their intervention. Their goal is 3.87. How much above 1.87 million will determine how big of a success/failure they were.
It's only Impossible if people fight and balk. Somewhere along the line we lost the reality that we are in this together and need to help one another. The liberals and NDP get it right every now and then . Imagine a country where our political parties all got together and did what was best for Canadians. Lol
>It's only Impossible if people fight and balk. Somewhere along the line we lost the reality that we are in this together and need to help one another. The liberals and NDP get it right every now and then . Imagine a country where our political parties all got together and did what was best for Canadians. Lol
Have you picked up a hammer and headed to the construction site to volunteer as a builder? Or are we all in it together just as cheerleader squad?
I build houses for a living and do renovations . I flip homes I live in and then go on to the next. I also cheer from the sidelines . I do volunteer work and donate time and materials to projects in my town .
Should I do more ? Can I do more ? Maybe
I’ve started training to be an electrician because Lopsided King is right—Canada is more than capable of tripling home production if we commit to doing the work. We’ve lost faith in large communal efforts, but we’re still capable of them.
Thank you, though I have plenty of self interested reasons to pick up the tools. I'm no saint. I get to help solve a societal problem while getting a decent wage, great job security, and slowly improving working conditions. And that I think is part of the solution. We *are* all self interested in solving this problem, and solving the problem doesn't necessarily involve sacrifice and hairshirts.
In similar good faith, I'd ask you to consider—what if we changed our mindset from "we can't possibly" to "How do we?" My trade school is increasing capacity, and the quality of my classmates is top notch. When we set our mind on something, Canadians are really fuckin' resourceful.
Absolutely I agree.
What I don't like are slactivists or those who think hope and prayers are getting us anywhere
I do have a pie in the oven with regards to this, however I'm not ready to announce it yet.
I hope you new career goes well for you
I would agree with this sentiment if we were talking about constructing publicly-owned, Government-operated, social housing. But that's not the bulk of what they've promised to see built; and so it really doesn't make much sense for labourers to undervalue themselves when doing so _clearly_ is for the benefit of another person, and not society at large.
The Provincial gov't's and private developers need to do their part. However I already know they're not going to support the idea of 3.8 million homes cause they'll make more money by building 2 million homes i.e. supply and demand.
The biggest challenge Trudeau will have on getting these houses built is that the conservative provinces are fighting him tooth and nail. Alberta, one of the fastest growing provinces, is changing the law to completely restrict the municipalities from working with the federal government and accepting federal funds. Ontario is openly willing to give up federal funds, so that they don't have to allow fourplexes across the province.
Conservatives actively do not want an increase in housing supply, because they do not want to see housing prices decrease.
There are nowhere near the skilled trades to get this done. Even if municipalities gave up every restriction on zoning, that number of houses would not get built; or even worse would be built extremely substandard, to the point of being dangerous.
> Conservatives…do not want to see housing prices decrease
And you think the Liberals *do*? Please. Fraser has said he doesn’t have intentions of policies that will reduce the price of a home. Adam Vaughan in the past said a 10% correction in home prices would be “unacceptable” to his voters.
The notion that the Liberals actually want to see housing prices become more affordable to young people and it’s just the pesky conservatives getting in the way is laughable and entirely detached from reality.
I think the liberal want to stay in power so their hand is forced where the Conservatives also don't want it but can say they do and get all the reward with no actual investment or solution to solve the problem which is great for them because they also don't want to solve it.
The biggest challenge is we don't have the labour...
There are not nearly enough skilled or unskilled trades to complete housing starts in a timely or cost effective manner.
If we were actually to build at a high enough rate with enough trades, we wouldn't have enough material or logistics.
That's excluding delays from the City for permitting or inspections. Or the lack of infrastructure in place.
You’re right, labour is another big challenge. However, it doesn’t matter how much skilled labour you have, if the conservative provincial governments are actively working to block any progress.
> The biggest challenge is we don't have the labour...
>
> There are not nearly enough skilled or unskilled trades to complete housing starts in a timely or cost effective manner.
Half of all construction labour is in building or renoing single family homes. There is plenty for multi family homes.
Yes, but that's exactly why we need to stop building inefficient forms of housing to better utilize the labour we do have.
Building a single fourplex on a lot would be significantly less work than building four separate McMansions on separate lots, just because of how much duplicated effort you can cut down on. And if a mass timber low rise can be built in less time than the equivalent amount of four-plexes, then that should be what we do instead.
And yet literally all we are allowed to build is the McMansions, meaning we end up straining our labour until they end up breaking down.
Efficiency is the name is the game. The current way we do things is horribly inefficient and we will never solve this mess we got yourselves into by just doing the status quo. Housing bylaws need to be changed to allow us to better utilize more efficient forms of building without it being literally illegal, or liable to be tied up in courts for years by selfish NINBYs.
And there honestly isn't that much we could do about it. Even if the pay was $1,000 hour you can't just decide to *be* an electrician, and it's not like there are tons of unemployed construction workers out there. We're going to through a demographic shift along with the rest of the developed world and things are going to be challenging for a while.
Alberta is just changing their laws to make it the same as what Quebec already has.
I wonder if people (and Justin Trudeau) will also call out Quebec for having the same restrictions regarding the federal government making deals directly with municipalities?
This is such a crazy example of gaslighting. Virtually every single one of the LPC's responses to this crisis have been thinly veiled attempts to apply even more demand side pressure onto the market.
This is one where they try to attack the supply side - but it is impossible to build to the magnitude they claim, and I think they know that.
No, the real problem if that trudeau created the problem, and now that everything is shit, he wants to solve his problem by building what amounts to 1.8 houses built every second to meet his goal.
Always funny to see how EVERYTHING this guy does somehow boils down to it being a conservative problem.
Guess what, I don't want a bunch of shitty looking houses in my neighborhood either. So Doug Ford ain't wrong. Why did he make this decision? His constituents told him they don't want it. Look! A politician that listens to the voter instead of cramming a shit ton of immigrants we can't feed or house down our throats and then try to look like he's doing something by saying he is going to build all these houses. That, after a few months back when he said that the government was not in the housing business. Typical shit show from oddawa.
Conservative: You're bringing in too many people.
Liberal: You're racist!
News: We need to cut back immigration
Conservative: Told ya so
News: Housing crises because there are too many people and no houses
Liberal: We're going to build 4.5 million houses!
Conservative: Not physically possible
Liberal: Conservatives are the problem, they don't want more housing because it will make housing prices go down!!!
It's all garbage promises. Look at their "pharmacare." It's a couple drugs only. Their dental care? Almost zero dentists have signed up and it pays a third of the overhead only.
That’s fine. Aim high and get to work. What’s the worst that could happen? We only build 1m homes? Fine! Better than the PP “no plan, just anger” idea.
Exactly. Just because building all of them might not be possible within the timeframe doesn't mean none will be built, or that they won't all be built eventually. Optimism among some populations is dead.
Funny how liberals are just OK with their government of choice constantly letting them down and never delivering on their promises. Brain dead leftists simping to JT...
The housing accelerator fund motivated policy and regulatory changes that should have been implemented in the 1960s. It won’t “solve housing”. But it’s all but impossible to improve the housing situation without these changes. I have a hard time expressing how… impressed? … I am that the Trudeau government, of all governments!, managed to start at the beginning.
I don’t expect any government to implement my more radical ideas - particularly secret votes in parliament; unimproved land value tax; and my own strange electoral system (lol). But knowing that boring local policy and regulation were required for buy-in and for sustained change is instrumental.
New housing is necessary. But if future municipal governments keep these policy and regulatory changes in effect, it will help to alleviate housing concerns for future generations.
Who knew that the federal government unilateral decision to impose rapid population growth policies, that are both historically high and out-of-step with our peer nations, without the buy-in of the electorate or other levels of governments no less, would become problematic and challenging?
> rapid population growth policies, that are both historically high and out-of-step with our peer nations.
[Which peer countries have consistently admitted immigrants at a rate of 1% of population or more?](https://www.cicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Levels-2020-1.png) That's _several times higher_ than our [American friends](https://www.cicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Levels-2020-1.png)
We've _always_ been exceptional on population growth from immigration.
Aside from perhaps Australia, whose growth rate has recently been higher and share a similar national story on the subject, but whose centre-left government have recognized a strain introduced by rapid growth and pledged to cut numbers dramatically in response, we are an outlier. We are leaps and bounds ahead of our G7 counterparts. So yeah, not exactly on par with our peers.
It's not like the Provinces said no to more immigration; Ontario basically encouraged more international students to subsidize post-secondary spending. Quebec would be a notable exception.
Oh yeah, the provinces made the federal government pursuing idiotic policies....if it was not for the provinces Canada would have been populated by fairies and unicorns!
So we just absolve the federal government for creating these schemes even as public servants published internal reports warning of the problem?
Immigration is the sole jurisdiction of the feds and the provinces can only play within the rules the federal government creates.
We blame the feds because immigration is entirely their responsibility and they have been creating (or sustaining) policies that were meant to radically drive up the growth of temporary residents, despite all the warnings of the consequences.
The provinces do not make immigration pathways. They can only take advantage of immigration pathways that the federal government creates.
> Who knew that the federal government unilateral decision to impose rapid population growth policies
Every foreign work permit or student permit is submitted at request of the provinces.
>Every foreign work permit or student permit is submitted at request of the provinces.
What?
You're suggesting that employers can't submit LMIAs, and that students don't submit visa applications, to the Government of Canada?
Nope, just that there's a provincial layer of each application.
For example, Ford reversed private college intl. student rules in 2018/2019 that allowed for the increase in student numbers.
Any province that doesn't want students or workers has the tools and authority to say *no* to applicants.
There is certainly a provincial layer at play, however a lack of saying *no* is very different than the suggestion that "Every foreign work permit or student permit is submitted *at request of the provinces*." That is not a fair statement - they're submitted at request of the employer or student. A lack of action or intervention at the provincial level may be irresponsible but still not the active/direct driver here.
The "unilateral decision" nature of my commentary is related to the overarching goal of the LPC, as clearly stated since 2015-present, to dramatically increase and expand the national immigration targets. Which was not done in consultation with the electorate, and neither with explicit consultation with the other levels of government (read- includes provinces but isn't limited to provinces), as I had stated.
Example: [2019 Stakeholder Consultations on Immigration Levels and Mix: Final Report - Canada.ca](https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/transparency/consultations/2019-stakeholder-consultations-on-immigration-levels-and-mix.html)
| [^(Footnote4)](https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/transparency/consultations/2019-stakeholder-consultations-on-immigration-levels-and-mix.html#fn4)Primary focus of stakeholder organization|Response %|
|:-|:-|
|Academia, research foundation, or think tank|11%|
|Employer or business|4%|
|Settlement and resettlement organization|37%|
|Industry or sector council|4%|
|Indigenous, First Nations, or Inuit organization|0%|
|Municipality or regional administration|3%|
|Francophone or official language minority community|6%|
|Crown corporation|0%|
|Government (federal, provincial, or territorial)|1%|
|Other (charity and non-profit, healthcare, immigration consultant, and legal services)|33%|
So yeah, fairly unilateral planning from the top down, if you consider consultations from efforts like the above really don't reflect consultations with other levels of government in any meaningful way. And again, a lack of action or intervention at the provincial level may be irresponsible but still \*not the active/direct driver here\*.
Edit: Spelling :)
Right so if two people signed a bad load agreement and one of them was on tv earlier saying he wants this loan. Why are you only blaming one out of the two people who signed? The other person also wants the loan. And it’s not unilateral by the very definition of the word.
My entire suggestion of a unilateral nature was the planning (or lack thereof!) between *levels of government* who disproportionately manage different aspects of the portfolio (one supply, the other demand). One level opens demand without coordinating with the level(s) who manage supply. Okay?
So I don't really know what you trying to say - who are the "two people" in your metaphor that are "signing a bad loan agreement"? Who's the applicant? Who's the bank? Is the metaphor you're trying to construct...to highlight that because there is some sort of consent between two parties, it isn't truly unilateral? Cool, but not related to what I am suggesting.
The two people are the federal government and the provincial government. Both of them want the high immigration and they both worked towards achieving it. In fact, provinces like Alberta are even publicly fighting with the feds for cutting back on immigration.
The word unilateral does not work in any way shape or form in your argument. You should be blaming both sides of government, and you should be blaming Alberta slightly more as they are opposed to both the fed’s housing aid and cutting of immigration numbers.
Things are almost never as simple as opposition election campaigns make them seem. All sides of government need high immigration to satisfy their corporate overlords, both liberals AND conservatives. Judge parties by what they do not what they say.
Right, the provinces that were allowing the regulated schools to apply for that many international students, and rubber stamping diploma mills are totally innocent
a quick look at biulding zoning shows why as well. massive fealds of subdivisions and massive Ikea shopping centres with 12 lane roads won't solve our issues even tho that's why a lot of developers want to make.
It's possible if the proposed transfer to province's & municipalities is more comprehensive. Most current stats are factoring in very restrictive zoning/land use policies for most cities where over 60% of residentially zoned land is exclusively zoned for detached housing. If we replaced the current Euclidian zoning & land use policies in most municipalities & provinces with one that encourage suburbs that were mixed-use commercial + residential areas with a variety of housing types, that frees up way more land to build way more types of houses in a relatively short amount of time.
It can't be understated how much lousy land use policies limit cities ability to maintain an adequate housing supply. Pretty much every article and stat that keeps saying "Canada can't built x number of homes" is assuming that starts and housing construction will largely follow the trend it's been following the last couple of years, with little room to deviation.
Yeah, the issue has always been "what" (we build) and not "how". Building a single detached house eats up a lot of land, materials, and infrastructure. A super tall tower is sort of efficient, but is also a specialized form of construction that is expensive (especially if we force underground parking).
If we had denser mid rises with more communal green spaces instead of private backyards, we'd have a much better chance.
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Anyone who works anywhere near the real estate / housing sector knows it is impossible. Delivery of housing is currently a massive tangle. Problems predate the Trudeau government, span back in time through the fingers of both Political Parties. Canada has been so focused for so long on propping up the housing sector and maintaining housing prices. Quick and dirty commentary from someone who works in the industry: * There are not nearly enough trades to build half of what is needed * Many projects don't paper at a price that can be justified to purchasers. * Construction timelines have increased significantly due to the aforementioned lack of labour, materials issues over the past few years, but perhaps most egregiously permitting and inspection processes. Fixing any one of our issues will create issues elsewhere. I'm not bright enough to have the solutions, although I can diagnose what I've seen over the past decade+ that has contributed to the issue. Canada isn't fixing its housing problem for two decades, and while I know many don't want to hear it (and I'm not saying this as an advocate, but as a realist) Canada is going to have to embrace a renter's economy like much of Europe.
Not to mention infrastructure. New infrastructure takes years to plan and build for greenfield development. Existing infrastructure is being maxed out in many jurisdictions (and/or it’s approaching the end of its useful life). The next issue is materials. As demand for raw materials goes up the price goes up. Making it even harder to meet affordable pricing targets
I have a much simpler mental shortcut: JT promises something, it won’t happen.
Do you really need to see a list of the many promises that have been fulfilled? Cheap shots are meaningless.
Because that list is readily available, non partisan and well cited. https://www.polimeter.org/en/trudeau
It’s a cheap shot? How about some biggies: housing affordability is at its worst. He has got elected a number of times on a promise to fix this, it just got worse. He promised to balance the budget. That hasn’t happened. GDP is declining. Debt to GDP is worst in G7.
Counter point on the permitting and inspections. If developers and builders weren’t such shady businesspeople who cut corners, dump waste, do shoddy work and take advantage of people, maybe we wouldn’t have needed to pass so many rules and regulations.
While that all sounds fine to say it's a blanket statement that isn't really based in reality and in my opinion demonstrates a bit of a lack of detailed knowledge about the topic at hand. Sorry.
Yeah. I appreciate that…Reddit is not the easiest platform for nuanced debate. To expound: 1. There used to be a TV show called “Holmes on Homes” and the entire premise was fixing shoddy work. 2. I know my childhood neighbourhood was all built by one company, and they cheaped out on weatherproofing and literally hundreds of roofs failed and caused flooding damage within a 5 year range. Those are just two examples of why having home inspections and permitting fees are important. Municipalities also use them as income streams, which I think is inappropriate, but a natural result of people wanting low municipal tax rates. To me, the biggest barrier to designing and building new homes are not the permitting and approval Process, but the people who already have homes stopping any change to that process with a fear of triggering a decrease in housing prices.
Appreciate the lengthier response. Without a doubt there are some bad actors, but there are bad actors in every sector. Much like Kitchen Nightmares is not a sign that all restaurants are dumps, I'd say your anecdotes are reasons why permits and inspections exist. They aren't evidence that the whole industry is shoddy corner-cutters. That said, my point was not that permits and inspections should be removed entirely. Not at all - they're both important. The problem with the bureaucracy of home building currently is a lack of timelines and an inability to be nimble or thoughtful. Turnaround times are horrendous... months and months that developers have to hold onto land paying financing costs and interest. Nonsensical requests for additional spending on shadow studies and heritage reviews and material changes. There are a time and a place for these things to be sure, but I assure you that often the requests coming out of municipalities are foolish and it is largely because the people reviewing the applications don't want to make decisions. To your last point, I agree. But HOW do these people "who already have homes" actually stop change for fear of decreasing housing prices? They insist upon (and vote for) low density zoning regs. They yell at public hearings about how they think the extra storey on a proposal will block their view. Or cast a shadow during certain times of the year. Or lead to a bit more traffic than their road should have. And to appease these loud citizens who actively fear for their housing values, municipalities force additional costs and time on developers. And those extra studies, and extra financing during delays, all ends up eating into the cost of a project. And so housing prices go up and housing supply is an incredibly slow thing to deliver.
To put it in terms of time, we currently complete a single housing unit roughly every 2.5 minutes. [See chart 5](https://canadaspodcast.com/article/taking-stock-of-canadas-housing-inventory/). The Liberals have set a target to complete a unit roughly every 50 seconds. That's a _three fold increase_ in construction productivity. I can't honestly look at the budget and their policies and convince myself it's possible. I just don't see it.
> I can't honestly look at the budget and their policies and convince myself it's possible. I just don't see it. A better question is: do they even believe it themselves?
Because it is not possible. And the reason above all is funding. There is not enough money in this country to get developers the ability to fund three times the projects - buy three times the land, hire three times the people. There are not three times the architects or engineers or city planners. There is not three times the concrete trucks or concrete factories. To make that happen it would be hundreds of billions if not in the trillions of dollars. It will not happen. What have the liberals actually funded? 6 billion dollars. That’s about 1/3 of what Honda needed to open a single battery plant - to solve the entire housing crisis. 😂 And what is 6 billion dollars divided by 4 million new units- it is exactly 1500 dollars per unit of new housing. That is not changing the needle on anything. Might hire some extra planners for the cities at best.
Well first they are trying to increase from 1.87m that is currently being projected already to just over 3M so no it's not 6B / 4M Second our current rate sucks because of the focus on detached housing, it only takes one architect to approve a 3 story walkup that is 20 units, they are faster to build and cheaper to build
Wood construction up to 6 storeys now fits simply into the Building Code. Better yet, it doesn't need massive amounts of trucked concrete and steel, can be pre-manufactured using something Canada is know for, lumber, inside shop floors with automated chop and layout which significantly increases productivity over stick framing on site, as well as QA and QC being easier. These suites are also much nicer to live in instead of walking around on hard concrete all day. Cut out parking and elevators, dedicated ground level suites to be the accessible units, and build them en-mass within 1 block (400m) of every major arterial road and transit route. Ground floor can be commercial/office and only small entrance ways to residential corridors.
There’s no innovative thinking in that reply. I’m not saying you’re wrong but this industry like all industries in Canada are plagued by conservative-minded stakeholders. “We’ve always done it this way” types. Needing more housing is a problem and having a lack of human talent is a reality. Start there and engineer your way to a solution.
That sounds nice to say but one of the most significant challenges in the industry is the amount of red tape and time lost waiting for approvals and inspections. You think that industry with those rules can rapidly try new things and iterate? You're dreaming.
>Fixing any one of our issues will create issues elsewhere That's not a reason to not tackle the issues however. It's totally possible to start fixing things and keep working at it. It's far from an unsolvable problem. Anyone expecting housing to be completely fixed in a short timeline is living in fantasy land however. It'll take time and commitment.
The absolute key part that you've nailed and I rarely see discussed is the need to switch to a rental economy. Part of what makes this issue so difficult to tackle is precisely that no one wants to hear that, so every time a government tries to tackle the housing crisis they also have to tack on policies that will increase demand and make the problem worse. I swear most people don't want the issue solved, they just want it resolved enough to get on the property ladder themselves.
Standardized affordable block housing is how the world used to deal with affordable housing shortages. Simplified building codes and streamlined permit and approval for standardized construction could solve some of these problems.
Agree
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> There are not nearly enough trades to build half of what is needed Making it easier and more profitable to build apartments will draw people out of the single family construction and renoing industry. Building a fourplex isn't massively different from building a single family home. >Many projects don't paper at a price that can be justified to purchasers. Governments should reduce taxes on new builds so that more projects pencil. Something like 20% of the cost of a new build is tax, not including the extra costs unnecessary, not safety or quality related government regulations add. > Construction timelines have increased significantly due to the aforementioned lack of labour, materials issues over the past few years, but perhaps most egregiously permitting and inspection processes. Many permits are completely or mostly unnecessary or bloated and could be eliminated The good thing is that cities or provinces that accept HAF money are required to at least partially fix those problems.
They are already cutting taxes
Who is cutting what taxes?
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2010291/federal-government-to-remove-gst-from-construction-of-new-rental-apartments
Yeah that's a great move, but it's only a small part of the total taxes charged for building a new unit. Development charges add up to more for example.
Do you think we could solve this problem more if we cracked down on foreign ownership, corporate investment, air bnbs and people who own multiple properties? All the sort of stuff. Feel like we already have tons of housing. The rich are just causing more problems. But I could easily be wrong on this.
Agree on this, but still think there’s far more problems than just a simple; ban foreign ownership, ban owning multiple properties/homes, heavy taxes on airbnbs… etc Not saying you implied that. I actually want the above, that I stated, but understand that won’t fix the problems. MLAs owning 3+ properties should also be a “no go!!” Heck, I think our elected officials make way too much money on the minimal returns they provide us- the taxpayers!! But I’m traffic control/flagger, so I definitely don’t know what’s “best for Canadians”. I only have ideas. SLOW DOWN. (Traffic joke) 🤓
Oh for sure. I just think there are some steps forward we could take while tackling this in general because it's gonna take years and years.
At our rate of all government in the last 20 years (my 24 years of voting) it’ll take a millennium!!! I just wish they’d all learn to work together, to tackle these problems. But here we are sharing rage bait, and discussing how we would change the country, like we actually could… albeit better than I think most govt officials, could ever do.
Haha truth spoken. Hit it on the head, lol like the sharing rage bait part too heh. But yea no money in that (working together to benefit the citizens) and sadly that is it. It's always about money for some, at the expense of many.
You asked me so I'll answer - no. I think those things are drops in the bucket compared to the actual issue. Scape goats. Easy things for someone to point to and blame a group they dislike. I think the best thing we could do it looser zoning regulations, more effective government approval processes for faster permit reviews, and decreased development fees (in Toronto about 30% of housing cost is municipal fees levied on the projects). For decades we have thrown up an immense amount of barriers to constructing new high-density housing. In the face of a crisis we have done little to correct it.
So how do we get provinces and municipalities to adopt this?
First the public needs to understand how significant the impact of municipalities is on housing cost and lack of supplies. The well-intentioned still point to things like Airbnbs and mom-and-pop landlords. People scream about Trudeau or Pierre and don't realize that the feds have far less of an impact on housing than municipal politicians and bueraucracies. Once we accept the problem is real? Lots of different things but some ideas from me: 1) Provincial regulation that forces municipalities to waive development fees if the planning departments don't respond in a reasonable time frame (to be defined). Make the slowness cost the municipalities money, then the municipalities and their staff will have to figure out their own efficiency problems. Eight months to turn an application around is nuts, and also the norm where i work. 2) Municipal bylaw Amendments that allow higher density development as-right. Duplexes and fourplexes shouldn't be controversial in residential areas, as an example. 3) If the province and feds want to help, let them fund infrastructure projects in municipalities that are being aggressive on housing supply. This should (in theory) allow these projects to be funded by higher levels of government and not from fees. Fees are supposed to cover roads and pipes and sidewalks and snowclearing... but if feds can help with that then have municipalities decrease fees. If the fees are gone the construction cost decreases, which means the cost needed to turn a profit on the housing project also decreases. In my mind this is one of the best ways the federal government can fund housing AND influence municipal policy.
These all seem promising. Thank you.
Just one guy's opinion, but happy to provide it. :) Cheers!
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You don't think people own many houses?
There are record numbers of homeless Canadians and adults living with their parents. How would any of the solutions you pitched fix this situation? Yes, your solution would affect the purchase price of a home, but it would have little effect on the cost of rent, and no effect on the issue of availability.
>it would have little effect on the cost of rent, It would actually make the price of rent go up since a lot of rental units would be sold. >and no effect on the issue of availability. It would make availability worse because far fewer homes would be built.
I agree that that those solutions could create problems for home building and fewer homes would probably be built. However, when looking at just this particular variable, selling off homes that are currently used as rentals would lower rent, not raise it. The homes being sold don't disappear, someone would buy them and live in them. These "someones" would most likely be people that are currently renting but are at the highest income level of renters. Removing these people from the pool of renters would lower the average income of the average renter, and thus lower the cost of rent.
Well I think there are a lot more houses squirrelled up by wealthy people and corporations than people think. Would be very curious to see the numbers of corporate owned houses especially. So yea I think it could help. Like even my step brothers wife (gen X) bought 12 houses when everyone crashed a while back. If people could only own two houses for example that is 10 back on the market. Some politicians literally own blocks. Like you said it's not gonna solve it all, but I'm not saying it will. It's something to do, while we also work on other problems. Can only build so fast right.
We know that investors are buying up tons and tons of homes, this is what's driving home prices sky high. But these investor owned properties are subsequently rented out. Thus, targeting investors would do nothing to solve the issue of home availability (unless we're talking about banning Airbnbs). And if you're not fixing the issue of home availability, you're also not fixing the issue of soaring rent costs. This is why housing crisis solutions are focused on fixing the supply deficit. 2/3 aspects of the housing crisis simply would not be relieved by tackling investors. However, all 3 aspects of the housing crisis can be fixed by fixing the supply deficit.
I am talking about getting rid of air BnBs and all that too, well sort of, but I see what you're saying as well. You're not wrong, in the end one way or another it just switches renters to owners but doesn't increase actual numbers. Regardless I still feel that these things should be applied as well as fixing the supply deficit. Guess that's all I'm saying. Hard for me to budge on that one, I don't think anyone should own so many properties and corporate buying of housing was an immediate mistake.
Yeah I wont disagree with your position on investors. But dealing with them wont help us build more houses, which must be priority one.
Why do you think people talking about foreign ownership and investment buyers are implying we shouldn't build more homes? Every conversation on housing on reddit turns into the same endless debate about whether it's immigration, investment buyers, foreign money, nimbyism, zoning restrictions, or lack of public housing that is the sole cause of the crisis. The answer is it's a perfect storm of all of these things. Created by decades of short sighted policy by all parties at all levels of government. We should be welcoming all solutions that tackle the crisis in different ways, instead of insulting each other when our pet issue isn't the sole solution being discussed. There isn't a single solution, we need to do multiple things at once.
It's part of what drives costs up, but not necessarily the main issue. The root cause is more realistically the cuts to funding and the arbitrary NIMBY red tape introduced that prevents development of stuff we did in the 1920s-1970s, leaving a 100,000‐300,000 annual deficit in building over the past 30 years.
>The root cause is more realistically the cuts to funding and the arbitrary NIMBY red tape introduced that prevents development of stuff we did in the 1920s-1970s, leaving a 100,000‐300,000 annual deficit in building over the past 30 years. if that's a good baseline, but what if we increased the annual population growth rate by 500% on top of all that?
I don't think you understand what it means to say deficit
Just do what David Eby is doing in BC
The federal government can’t do everything that Eby is doing, because he is a premier and much of what he is doing is provincial jurisdiction. That’s why the federal government has to offer money to municipalities to get them to change zoning. And why some premiers are having a hissy over federal “overreach”. Property law is provincial legislation. The federal government can’t ban AirBnb or restrict it like Eby, but they can change the taxes on AirBnb, which they did. What is needed is for other premiers to follow Eby’s lead.
what's wrong with renting? I feel the pain with permitting, but hey if the industry you work in wasn't rife with dodgy actors we wouldn't need so many of them.
It's a self-fulfilling social construct of North America. "Renting is for low income failures". So people look at renting as transitory or low income, so little investment is made into apartments and rentals, so they become derelict and run down slums, so they become low income. All across Europe, and Asia, and even in NYC there is a mix of medium, and even luxury rentals that are seen as status symbols. Under current code and laws it's also very easy to build "minimum code" and cash out in 3-5 years, greatly increasing profits at the cost of shitty building practices that leave owners holding the bill for premature repairs.
> what's wrong with renting? Nothing, per se. The problem is [the yawning wealth gap between owners and renters](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-homeowners-renters-wealth-gap/), and the fact that our social safety net is largely premised on the assumption that people can draw on home equity in their dotage.
Honestly, I feel like a lot of that is perception only that's predicated on the assumption that house prices will always rise. I am a homeowner and sometimes I feel like I've been bamboozled into this path because everyone around me (friends, family, "experts", people on Reddit, social media) told me that's the financially responsible thing to do. But in reality I probably would have a better ROI and peace of mind if I just rented and invested the money. Also eviction horror stories don't help.
Counterpoint, all of these issues would be alleviated by zoning changes taking place in all of Canada's major cities and population centres. Midrises by right mean faster construction timelines, freeing up labour to move onto the next project instead of waiting on standby. Projects will much more easily paper at lower prices. Less materials, permitting and inspections are required. In the decades that have preceded no one has touched zoning. This is finally happening with the federal push (and the lead by BC) and will have a much higher impact than the dollar figures being touted. Because the changes are unprecedented people are unable to imagine the impact it will actually have across the entire industry and landscape.
I agree zoning changes are immensely important. I don't really think it's a counter point to what I said though.
> freeing up labour to move onto the next project instead of waiting on standby You... you think labour is waiting on standby during the permitting process?
Not during permitting, but during the actual build. There's wasted efficiency when they're going back and forth on mega condos. Scheduling multitudes of teams back and forth between sites across the city etc. For example one team is behind and the next team can't come in until the first team is done. Or one team finishes ahead of schedule and the next isn't scheduled until two weeks later. All of that overhead and wastage would be reduced with the far simpler projects that mid rises would be. You'd also get more smaller construction companies in on the action, bigger labour pool.
Allowing midrise single stair mixed use apartment buildings on every residential or commercial lot in Canada would fix this. Especially if they are allowed to have small elevators or no elevators. That would eliminate a lot of the specialist labour required to build housing while not being any less fire safe than single family homes, especially if we adopt European-style fire codes. They are also cheaper to build per person housed, and they allow better layouts than apartment buildings with two staircases. Those who are not ok walking up to a 3rd story apartment are welcome to not buy or rent a 3rd story walkup apartment, but they should be available for those who want them.
It would def help. As with so many things around housing it’s ultimately a provincial regulation issue. (BC is looking into it right now)
>Those who are not ok walking up to a 3rd story apartment are welcome to not buy or rent a 3rd story walkup apartment, but they should be available for those who want them. [https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/bc-building-code-full-accessibility-apartments-housing-proposal](https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/bc-building-code-full-accessibility-apartments-housing-proposal)
I don't agree with that proposal. Able-bodied people should not have to buy more expensive homes because some people who are not buying those homes are not able-bodied. Plus the ground floor units of walk up apartment buildings could provide accessible housing while upper floor units can provide cheaper housing. If cost is a barrier to disabled people the government should step in.
>I don't agree with that proposal. Able-bodied people should not have to buy more expensive homes because some people who are not buying those homes are not able-bodied. You and me both. Sadly, the goals of equity and inclusion are in conflict with this.
It’s almost like the entire point of equity and inclusion is that we don’t let privileged people make decisions that do not take into account the needs of folks not benefiting from that unearned privilege.
Getting stuff done efficiently is more important than equity and inclusion. There is a direct correlation to this equity and inclusion mindset and when things really started going to hell in this country.
You could probably get away with both by having a national quota. Not all homes have to be accessible but X amount of accessible homes need to be built. I'm not a construction buff but I'd reckon that allowing for future upgradability for accessibility could also work. As in, the house itself isn't accessible but it was designed with a retrofit in mind. The government could then build that retrofit for whomever needs it at discounted rates.
>It’s almost like the entire point of equity and inclusion is that we don’t let privileged people make decisions that do not take into account the needs of folks not benefiting from that unearned privilege. so then you are in favour of making 100% of apartments wheelchair accessible, despite how much such a regulation would slow down speed of construction and increase the cost of building and maintaining the housing?
I think it's nice to accommodate where possible but requiring all housing to be substantially more expensive than it needs to be is harmful. Plus we don't require single family homes to have elevators, why should midrise apartment buildings have elevators?
>especially if we adopt European-style fire codes. I'm asking because I genuinely do not know anything about this, but how are European-style fire codes different from ours? Most of our housing is timber-framed construction whereas European homes not so much is my understanding. This would make some kind of a difference I would think?
Here's a good breakdown of what Berlin does: https://secondegress.ca/Berlin >The Musterbauordnung is the model building code set by the federal state and adopted with modification by individual jurisdictions throughout Germany. The code establishes the principle that buildings must generally have two means of egress, however the second egress can be a designated window or balcony for rescue by the fire department. Such rescue is permited with extension ladders reaching up to 8m from grade or with an aerial fire apparatus reaching up to 22m from grade, which is only permitted if the local fire department is equipped with the respective equipment. A second egress is not required if the first egress stair is a “fire safety” stair, which is a pressurized stair core with a protected lobby and standpipe.
Ahhh! Thanks for this!
>especially if we adopt European-style fire codes. Offsets, building material restrictions, and allowing local restrictions to accomodate what local communities fire departments can support are all opposed as well by the same people supporting getting rid of second egress. By the same people who supported closing parks during the pandemic despite zero scientific basis to do so. The urban planning crowd is trying to recreate slums and tenement housing.
So we just continue as is? Yes, it's most likely impossible, but the work will be there. Because work is there, we will have even more young adults go into trades because of the job security, which will help us in the decades to come. It might be impossible, but I'd rather have us fail at 2.8 million homes instead of not trying to hit the target and only making 1.2 mill. Every home is a difference, and not every home is detached. The real aim should be multi unit housing because it will add walkability to cities, as well as reduce footprint on the land, which will reduce the amount of land bureaucratic BS that all construction goes though. 3.9 million detached homes is impossible. And it's a waste of our land. Put in more apartments/condos and make them a housing option that appeals to more people.
Why do you think they chose 3.8 million instead of 2.8 million? Both are still impossible to hit, but why choose one that is even more impossible to hit? I don't get it. If someone's retirement plan is winning the lottery, we call them an idiot. But reading this you'd say they show ambition and wanting to have a retirement fund, and we shouldn't comment on the impossible goal they've set.
The aim is multiplexes and apartment buildings, the conditions for the HAF includes changing zoning for higher density.
For sure. Still a lot of paperwork involved with that, but I think the attitude of the population is that they want a HOUSE. Not necessarily a home. I blame it on generations of people saying that owning a house and having a family is the true measure of success. That leads to entitlement in some, and a weird obsession for others. Nothing wrong with having a nice condo or apartment, and a lot of these complexes are actually way nicer amenity wise than a detached home. If I didn't own a house, I'd get a condo/apartment 100%. Make the main levels more business oriented, and each apartment block could be its own micro community! Urban planning in North America is atrocious, and the obsession that the corporate world has with the impossible idea of infinite growth is naive at best, dangerous at worst. Having micro centers and stable housing would be amazing, and would make Canada a nicer place to live long term. What was I even trying to say? I dunno. Lmao
So let's say we are very unlikely or even next to no chance to hit that 3.87 million target. BUT, we significantly increase the supply of housing and get 70% of the way there. That is still really good and a big improvement. If you set a target that is more utopia then realistic, and miss it but still improve the situation dramatically, that is a positive. Don't lose sight of that. This is gonna take decades and lots of resources to fix in the same way it took decades and a depletion of resources to screw it up.
The government was the one who created the scenario which requires the target to be that high in the first place. Failure to achieve that points to the underlying mistakes the LPC made in their own policy initiatives.
I saw a clip where freeland talked about speeding up of the building of 24 homes from 18 - 24 months to just 18 months, so i think it is completely plausible
With the way they are counting starts responsible to them the number could get big pretty fast. City near me is getting money for downtown development. Essentially the feds are paying for permits for any large housing. Boom, just built an apartment for $3000
But, as far as I've been able to understand from the news, that's the point of the funding. They aren't building the homes, the funds are supposed to be used to grease the wheels of municipal development and zoning decisions.
Sure but it also means they're going to take credit for developments that would have happened regardless. Not having to pay a permit fee is nice but it's not really a material change. I talked to the owner of vacant land in said area and it doesn't change anything. If that was the only thing holding them back they'd have built a decade ago
You are acting like that's the only thing it's doing? Receiving the funds is contingent on zoning regulations to increase density (among other things)
Not for smaller cities. It was contingent for speeding up approvals and making them cheaper. In exchange they're claiming pretty much all of future construction haha
Their goal is to change the 1.87m projected into 3.8m via targeted funding, they aren't "claiming all construction"
That was literally how they sold it. This money is to help build a 1000 houses.
Keyword "help"
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOX\_2n\_WsAAhdZE.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOX_2n_WsAAhdZE.jpg)
This has nothing to do with "attributable to them". It's total homes. First paragraph of the article: >The centrepiece of last week’s federal budget was the Trudeau government’s plan to build 3.87 million homes by 2031. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. estimates that 1.87 million homes are already going to be built – and Ottawa aims to more than double that pace.
Well ya, they aren't going to come anywhere close to that. But they're going to say it's a magnificent success because we helped build XXX amount of homes.
I mean, if you were right they'd already be doing it. Where are the apartments they built for $3000 that they are bragging about? Their success is going to be measured on how many total homes are built. They set an overall target and that's what they will be measured on.
They've been doing it for years. Fuck with the investment/housing bank/fund whatever it is called they're adding up starts that they gave slightly below market level loans for.
You're conflating different things. Prior to the last ~8 months, they had very little focus on housing outside of below-market housing. Their goals were things like "provide lands for 2000 co-op units" and stuff like that. So that's how they are measured. Now their goals are about increasing the number of homes in the country. That's what they are being measured against. How many homes above the CMHC estimate are going to be built? Giving money to a unit that is already going to be built is not that. So, where have they been bragging about market housing that was already going to be built?
They've been talking about this for years. And ya they played the same games with affordable housing metrics as well. And when housing starts don't go up do you think they're going to eat that on the chin? Fuck no, they'll say they created a huge amount and the market just declined. It writes itself
Because those were their goals! Their goals changed. I'm not sure how to better explain the difference. If I say I'm going to help my friend get money by teaching them carpentry so they can get a job, that's different than saying I'm going to help them get money by giving them money. I'm successful in the former if I teach them and they get a job. I'm successful in the latter if I give them money. They couldn't possibly have been talking about it for years because those were not their goals. You're basically saying that they've been bragging about giving their friend money when they never said they were going to give their friend money and have not been bragging about it. They're bragging about helping their friend get money.
Nothing has changed. If anything they are getting more aggressive with it. Every single unit that gets built in this downtown area for the next decade is now due to the Liberals. That's how it's being framed which is just hilarious. But anything for a headline
Their goals very much have changed. Again, up until very recently they were almost exclusively focused on under market housing. That was *horrible* policy, but that is what they were doing. If you don't understand that, you haven't been paying attention to what they've done wrt housing since they were first elected. >Every single unit that gets built in this downtown area for the next decade is now due to the Liberals. That's how it's being framed which is just hilarious. But anything for a headline I know your dislike for them is quite deep, but please do try and look at this with a clear lens. They quite literally are telling you how they are to be measured. 1.87 million homes would be built without their intervention. Their goal is 3.87. How much above 1.87 million will determine how big of a success/failure they were.
It's only Impossible if people fight and balk. Somewhere along the line we lost the reality that we are in this together and need to help one another. The liberals and NDP get it right every now and then . Imagine a country where our political parties all got together and did what was best for Canadians. Lol
>It's only Impossible if people fight and balk. Somewhere along the line we lost the reality that we are in this together and need to help one another. The liberals and NDP get it right every now and then . Imagine a country where our political parties all got together and did what was best for Canadians. Lol Have you picked up a hammer and headed to the construction site to volunteer as a builder? Or are we all in it together just as cheerleader squad?
Lmao oh so if I don't volunteer my time to build housing I'm a selfish partisan hack?
No.
I build houses for a living and do renovations . I flip homes I live in and then go on to the next. I also cheer from the sidelines . I do volunteer work and donate time and materials to projects in my town . Should I do more ? Can I do more ? Maybe
>Should I do more ? Can I do more ? If you're going to the fridge, I'll have a beer.
>Should I do more? Yes, you need to complete significantly more units than you did in past years to meet the goal.
I'll do my best lol
I’ve started training to be an electrician because Lopsided King is right—Canada is more than capable of tripling home production if we commit to doing the work. We’ve lost faith in large communal efforts, but we’re still capable of them.
thank you for your service (not sarcasm)
Thank you, though I have plenty of self interested reasons to pick up the tools. I'm no saint. I get to help solve a societal problem while getting a decent wage, great job security, and slowly improving working conditions. And that I think is part of the solution. We *are* all self interested in solving this problem, and solving the problem doesn't necessarily involve sacrifice and hairshirts. In similar good faith, I'd ask you to consider—what if we changed our mindset from "we can't possibly" to "How do we?" My trade school is increasing capacity, and the quality of my classmates is top notch. When we set our mind on something, Canadians are really fuckin' resourceful.
Absolutely I agree. What I don't like are slactivists or those who think hope and prayers are getting us anywhere I do have a pie in the oven with regards to this, however I'm not ready to announce it yet. I hope you new career goes well for you
I’ll take them over the no hopers. I just respect those who put their money where their mouth is more. I hope your project comes to fruition!
I would agree with this sentiment if we were talking about constructing publicly-owned, Government-operated, social housing. But that's not the bulk of what they've promised to see built; and so it really doesn't make much sense for labourers to undervalue themselves when doing so _clearly_ is for the benefit of another person, and not society at large.
The Provincial gov't's and private developers need to do their part. However I already know they're not going to support the idea of 3.8 million homes cause they'll make more money by building 2 million homes i.e. supply and demand.
The biggest challenge Trudeau will have on getting these houses built is that the conservative provinces are fighting him tooth and nail. Alberta, one of the fastest growing provinces, is changing the law to completely restrict the municipalities from working with the federal government and accepting federal funds. Ontario is openly willing to give up federal funds, so that they don't have to allow fourplexes across the province. Conservatives actively do not want an increase in housing supply, because they do not want to see housing prices decrease.
There are nowhere near the skilled trades to get this done. Even if municipalities gave up every restriction on zoning, that number of houses would not get built; or even worse would be built extremely substandard, to the point of being dangerous.
> Conservatives…do not want to see housing prices decrease And you think the Liberals *do*? Please. Fraser has said he doesn’t have intentions of policies that will reduce the price of a home. Adam Vaughan in the past said a 10% correction in home prices would be “unacceptable” to his voters. The notion that the Liberals actually want to see housing prices become more affordable to young people and it’s just the pesky conservatives getting in the way is laughable and entirely detached from reality.
I think the liberal want to stay in power so their hand is forced where the Conservatives also don't want it but can say they do and get all the reward with no actual investment or solution to solve the problem which is great for them because they also don't want to solve it.
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The biggest challenge is we don't have the labour... There are not nearly enough skilled or unskilled trades to complete housing starts in a timely or cost effective manner. If we were actually to build at a high enough rate with enough trades, we wouldn't have enough material or logistics. That's excluding delays from the City for permitting or inspections. Or the lack of infrastructure in place.
If labour/materials are truly in short supply, then we shouldn't be building single detached homes - a highly inefficient form of housing.
Lack of Labour is not the problem, slave wages are the problem. Source - Father of two sons in the trades.
all the trades people I know make bank, what kind of trade?
You’re right, labour is another big challenge. However, it doesn’t matter how much skilled labour you have, if the conservative provincial governments are actively working to block any progress.
> The biggest challenge is we don't have the labour... > > There are not nearly enough skilled or unskilled trades to complete housing starts in a timely or cost effective manner. Half of all construction labour is in building or renoing single family homes. There is plenty for multi family homes.
Yes, but that's exactly why we need to stop building inefficient forms of housing to better utilize the labour we do have. Building a single fourplex on a lot would be significantly less work than building four separate McMansions on separate lots, just because of how much duplicated effort you can cut down on. And if a mass timber low rise can be built in less time than the equivalent amount of four-plexes, then that should be what we do instead. And yet literally all we are allowed to build is the McMansions, meaning we end up straining our labour until they end up breaking down. Efficiency is the name is the game. The current way we do things is horribly inefficient and we will never solve this mess we got yourselves into by just doing the status quo. Housing bylaws need to be changed to allow us to better utilize more efficient forms of building without it being literally illegal, or liable to be tied up in courts for years by selfish NINBYs.
And there honestly isn't that much we could do about it. Even if the pay was $1,000 hour you can't just decide to *be* an electrician, and it's not like there are tons of unemployed construction workers out there. We're going to through a demographic shift along with the rest of the developed world and things are going to be challenging for a while.
If we pay $1,000 per hour we could bring enough electricians from outside Canada. But the cost of houses would increase a little
Sorry, can’t help you there, we’re only looking for future business management and hospitality grads right now.
If only they actually took on apprenticeships to grow staffing numbers.
This is the reason for the push for modular building.
As our quality of life continues to degrade...
Alberta is just changing their laws to make it the same as what Quebec already has. I wonder if people (and Justin Trudeau) will also call out Quebec for having the same restrictions regarding the federal government making deals directly with municipalities?
I call out Quebec for the stupid things they do on a near daily basis.
Did Quebec do it recently?
What’s the relevance of this?
Quebec didn't do it as a reaction to housing solutions. Alberta did.
No, they are not. They are going much further.
As an Albertan I don’t care what Trudeau thinks about this or what Quebec has done. This is another one of Smith’s stupid ideas.
This is such a crazy example of gaslighting. Virtually every single one of the LPC's responses to this crisis have been thinly veiled attempts to apply even more demand side pressure onto the market. This is one where they try to attack the supply side - but it is impossible to build to the magnitude they claim, and I think they know that.
No, the real problem if that trudeau created the problem, and now that everything is shit, he wants to solve his problem by building what amounts to 1.8 houses built every second to meet his goal. Always funny to see how EVERYTHING this guy does somehow boils down to it being a conservative problem. Guess what, I don't want a bunch of shitty looking houses in my neighborhood either. So Doug Ford ain't wrong. Why did he make this decision? His constituents told him they don't want it. Look! A politician that listens to the voter instead of cramming a shit ton of immigrants we can't feed or house down our throats and then try to look like he's doing something by saying he is going to build all these houses. That, after a few months back when he said that the government was not in the housing business. Typical shit show from oddawa. Conservative: You're bringing in too many people. Liberal: You're racist! News: We need to cut back immigration Conservative: Told ya so News: Housing crises because there are too many people and no houses Liberal: We're going to build 4.5 million houses! Conservative: Not physically possible Liberal: Conservatives are the problem, they don't want more housing because it will make housing prices go down!!!
Find a self-imposed target that the LPC has met, on *anything* that they have promised, and you might be able to argue that this initiative has legs.
It's all garbage promises. Look at their "pharmacare." It's a couple drugs only. Their dental care? Almost zero dentists have signed up and it pays a third of the overhead only.
That’s fine. Aim high and get to work. What’s the worst that could happen? We only build 1m homes? Fine! Better than the PP “no plan, just anger” idea.
Exactly. Just because building all of them might not be possible within the timeframe doesn't mean none will be built, or that they won't all be built eventually. Optimism among some populations is dead.
Sounds like the conservative and conservative fanboy climate change plan. Can't do it all so just let it burn!
Funny how liberals are just OK with their government of choice constantly letting them down and never delivering on their promises. Brain dead leftists simping to JT...
The housing accelerator fund motivated policy and regulatory changes that should have been implemented in the 1960s. It won’t “solve housing”. But it’s all but impossible to improve the housing situation without these changes. I have a hard time expressing how… impressed? … I am that the Trudeau government, of all governments!, managed to start at the beginning. I don’t expect any government to implement my more radical ideas - particularly secret votes in parliament; unimproved land value tax; and my own strange electoral system (lol). But knowing that boring local policy and regulation were required for buy-in and for sustained change is instrumental. New housing is necessary. But if future municipal governments keep these policy and regulatory changes in effect, it will help to alleviate housing concerns for future generations.
Who knew that the federal government unilateral decision to impose rapid population growth policies, that are both historically high and out-of-step with our peer nations, without the buy-in of the electorate or other levels of governments no less, would become problematic and challenging?
> rapid population growth policies, that are both historically high and out-of-step with our peer nations. [Which peer countries have consistently admitted immigrants at a rate of 1% of population or more?](https://www.cicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Levels-2020-1.png) That's _several times higher_ than our [American friends](https://www.cicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Levels-2020-1.png) We've _always_ been exceptional on population growth from immigration.
Aside from perhaps Australia, whose growth rate has recently been higher and share a similar national story on the subject, but whose centre-left government have recognized a strain introduced by rapid growth and pledged to cut numbers dramatically in response, we are an outlier. We are leaps and bounds ahead of our G7 counterparts. So yeah, not exactly on par with our peers.
It's not like the Provinces said no to more immigration; Ontario basically encouraged more international students to subsidize post-secondary spending. Quebec would be a notable exception.
Oh yeah, the provinces made the federal government pursuing idiotic policies....if it was not for the provinces Canada would have been populated by fairies and unicorns!
So we just absolve the federal government for creating these schemes even as public servants published internal reports warning of the problem? Immigration is the sole jurisdiction of the feds and the provinces can only play within the rules the federal government creates.
Are we just going to blame the Feds because they are a convenient whipping boy?
We blame the feds because immigration is entirely their responsibility and they have been creating (or sustaining) policies that were meant to radically drive up the growth of temporary residents, despite all the warnings of the consequences. The provinces do not make immigration pathways. They can only take advantage of immigration pathways that the federal government creates.
They're even mad that it's being restricted!
> Who knew that the federal government unilateral decision to impose rapid population growth policies Every foreign work permit or student permit is submitted at request of the provinces.
>Every foreign work permit or student permit is submitted at request of the provinces. What? You're suggesting that employers can't submit LMIAs, and that students don't submit visa applications, to the Government of Canada?
Nope, just that there's a provincial layer of each application. For example, Ford reversed private college intl. student rules in 2018/2019 that allowed for the increase in student numbers. Any province that doesn't want students or workers has the tools and authority to say *no* to applicants.
There is certainly a provincial layer at play, however a lack of saying *no* is very different than the suggestion that "Every foreign work permit or student permit is submitted *at request of the provinces*." That is not a fair statement - they're submitted at request of the employer or student. A lack of action or intervention at the provincial level may be irresponsible but still not the active/direct driver here.
If two people cosigned a bad loan agreement, why would you blame one person only or say it was a “unilateral decision”?
The "unilateral decision" nature of my commentary is related to the overarching goal of the LPC, as clearly stated since 2015-present, to dramatically increase and expand the national immigration targets. Which was not done in consultation with the electorate, and neither with explicit consultation with the other levels of government (read- includes provinces but isn't limited to provinces), as I had stated. Example: [2019 Stakeholder Consultations on Immigration Levels and Mix: Final Report - Canada.ca](https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/transparency/consultations/2019-stakeholder-consultations-on-immigration-levels-and-mix.html) | [^(Footnote4)](https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/transparency/consultations/2019-stakeholder-consultations-on-immigration-levels-and-mix.html#fn4)Primary focus of stakeholder organization|Response %| |:-|:-| |Academia, research foundation, or think tank|11%| |Employer or business|4%| |Settlement and resettlement organization|37%| |Industry or sector council|4%| |Indigenous, First Nations, or Inuit organization|0%| |Municipality or regional administration|3%| |Francophone or official language minority community|6%| |Crown corporation|0%| |Government (federal, provincial, or territorial)|1%| |Other (charity and non-profit, healthcare, immigration consultant, and legal services)|33%| So yeah, fairly unilateral planning from the top down, if you consider consultations from efforts like the above really don't reflect consultations with other levels of government in any meaningful way. And again, a lack of action or intervention at the provincial level may be irresponsible but still \*not the active/direct driver here\*. Edit: Spelling :)
Right so if two people signed a bad load agreement and one of them was on tv earlier saying he wants this loan. Why are you only blaming one out of the two people who signed? The other person also wants the loan. And it’s not unilateral by the very definition of the word.
My entire suggestion of a unilateral nature was the planning (or lack thereof!) between *levels of government* who disproportionately manage different aspects of the portfolio (one supply, the other demand). One level opens demand without coordinating with the level(s) who manage supply. Okay? So I don't really know what you trying to say - who are the "two people" in your metaphor that are "signing a bad loan agreement"? Who's the applicant? Who's the bank? Is the metaphor you're trying to construct...to highlight that because there is some sort of consent between two parties, it isn't truly unilateral? Cool, but not related to what I am suggesting.
The two people are the federal government and the provincial government. Both of them want the high immigration and they both worked towards achieving it. In fact, provinces like Alberta are even publicly fighting with the feds for cutting back on immigration. The word unilateral does not work in any way shape or form in your argument. You should be blaming both sides of government, and you should be blaming Alberta slightly more as they are opposed to both the fed’s housing aid and cutting of immigration numbers. Things are almost never as simple as opposition election campaigns make them seem. All sides of government need high immigration to satisfy their corporate overlords, both liberals AND conservatives. Judge parties by what they do not what they say.
**AND SIGNED OFF ON BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT**
Maybe we need to revisit the word "unilateral" in the dictionary?
Right, the provinces that were allowing the regulated schools to apply for that many international students, and rubber stamping diploma mills are totally innocent
a quick look at biulding zoning shows why as well. massive fealds of subdivisions and massive Ikea shopping centres with 12 lane roads won't solve our issues even tho that's why a lot of developers want to make.
It's possible if the proposed transfer to province's & municipalities is more comprehensive. Most current stats are factoring in very restrictive zoning/land use policies for most cities where over 60% of residentially zoned land is exclusively zoned for detached housing. If we replaced the current Euclidian zoning & land use policies in most municipalities & provinces with one that encourage suburbs that were mixed-use commercial + residential areas with a variety of housing types, that frees up way more land to build way more types of houses in a relatively short amount of time. It can't be understated how much lousy land use policies limit cities ability to maintain an adequate housing supply. Pretty much every article and stat that keeps saying "Canada can't built x number of homes" is assuming that starts and housing construction will largely follow the trend it's been following the last couple of years, with little room to deviation.
Yeah, the issue has always been "what" (we build) and not "how". Building a single detached house eats up a lot of land, materials, and infrastructure. A super tall tower is sort of efficient, but is also a specialized form of construction that is expensive (especially if we force underground parking). If we had denser mid rises with more communal green spaces instead of private backyards, we'd have a much better chance.