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Ontario's Minister of Housing says we're facing a housing affordability "crisis".  He's right. Supply is not keeping pace with demand, and prices are soaring.

We need an "all-of-the-above" strategy that combines rent control, major investments in social housing, protections for tenants, and incentives to spur housing development, particularly affordable housing for low- and middle-class residents.

This latter part of the strategy is getting renewed attention. In a new consultation, Premier Doug Ford's government makes clear, "Government-imposed costs also make it more difficult and expensive to develop new housing…There is a need to balance efforts to lower the costs of development."

It makes sense for a Conservative government to look at finding a solution based on cutting government-imposed costs out of the system; it's part of their entire ethos.

Yet, in the previous Liberal government's "Fair Housing Plan", there was a somewhat convoluted program in which the province would facilitate a city rebating a portion of development charges and/or property taxes levied on new, affordable housing builds.  This program was shelved by the Ford government, but a simplified version could easily be brought back, allowing for municipalities themselves to defer or rebate development charges and other fees levied on new developments, where the municipality feels there are compelling public-policy goals to justify such incentives.

Indeed, this is precisely what occurred in my home town of Bradford West Gwillimbury.  The mayor and council were elected with a clear mandate from the voters to deliver housing for seniors, to address a major need in a suburbanising community where seniors were being priced out of the market, and there were no assisted-living rental options nearby.  By using a somewhat niche planning tool, a Community Improvement Plan, the town made a suite of grants available that essentially defrayed development charges for assisted-living seniors' rental housing.  In less than three years, the town exceed its goal of 250 seniors' rental units either opened or under construction.  The first such property (whose proponent is a client of mine) not only just opened — it also paid its first property tax bill, roughly $300,000 per year, a considerable figure in a small town with an annual operating budget of $24 million.  The facility also anticipates creating 130 local jobs.

Seniors' assisted-living rental facilities not only address a dire demographic need as the baby-boomers look for housing that meets their ageing needs.  They also create as many good, well-paying jobs as a small factory, with nurses, personal-support workers, custodians, cooks and leisure staff, in addition to the fact the facility pays hefty property taxes.

There is a critical need for seniors' rental housing — a city such as London, Ontario needs some 4400 units built in the north end of town alone — and satisfying this need can create a virtuous circle through job creation and new municipal tax revenue, monies that can be used to build social housing to satisfy the equally critical demand for low-income residents (to continue the exemplar city, London has a wait list of 4700 for social housing, the new mayor recently announced).

As Spacing's John Lorinc argues, there is an emerging consensus across a wide spectrum of individuals from Premier Ford to left-of-centre activists and academics in favour of using incentives to spur the kind of middle-class, mid-rise housing options we need to boost supply. He writes, "Is there a policy case for exempting or sharply reducing [development charges] on missing-middle type development in order to promote more of it? Let us count the ways."

Similarly, in its "Making Room for the Middle" housing plan, Mississauga argues, "Development charges, and property taxes represent a significant expense for building owners and developers.  For this reason, exemptions and deferrals that reduce an owner's costs can be a powerful incentive tool."

As the Ford government looks for ways to solve the housing affordability crisis, increasing supply is a key part of any strategy.  But, fittingly for a Conservative government, in order to increase supply, it would help to allow for targeted rebates for development charges, in order to spur development of new housing stock.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


In a month in which a federal budget, the Mueller report, a tragic act of global terrorism, and March Madness could have diverted attention from a most Canadian political scandal, all have failed.  Through a combination of utter incompetence in the political dark artsarrogant insistence that their worldview is gospel, and the toxicity of House of Commons culture, the governing Liberals have done so much to keep the story of LavScam alive that you'd think they were trying.

The latest jolt to the heart of LavScam is the leak of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's disagreement with former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould over her selection of Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court of Canada.  According to the leak, Trudeau believed Joyal's attitude toward recent applications of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms an attitude that other legal minds were expressing as early as 2003  made the judge distressingly right-wing.  JWR has flatly denied that she is the source of this leak.  Trudeau, tellingly, has not.  But one of his spokespeople has (sort of), too late to stop suspicions from turning the PMO's way.

While the leaker remains unidentified, all signs indicate that they set out to damage JWR's reputation.  The loyal members of #teamtrudeau, bless their little hearts, have tried their best to convince the rest of the country that Joyal is too homophonic to be trusted with the sacred Santa robe  and isn't there only one reason JWR could want him to do that?  Unfortunately for them, Joyal unexpectedly responded himself, explaining that he removed himself from contention to focus on his wife's cancer diagnosis.

That Joyal was forced into such an uncomfortable position is appalling.  So is the mere act of revealing information about judicial appointments that should have remained out of public view.  Even more astonishing than both is the fact that someone thought this would work.

REALLY?! In the face of ever-mounting accusations of dishonestycorruptionhypocrisydesperation, and contempt, their best effort at changing the channel is to try again to get us to turn on JWR for not being reliably woke?

That line of attack might have worked four years ago, when wokeness proved decisive in the matter of one Stephen J. Harper.  But opinions of the Liberals have changed since then.  They can no longer get away with simply being the antidote to Harperism, whatever that was.  They have their own record now, and Canadians are starting to find it lacking.

The only people who seem unaware of this are the Liberals.  It is that willful blindness that has led them to claim simultaneously that further investigations and representations are unnecessary, and that their own caucus is "more united than ever," when virtually all of their actions since February 7 have demonstrated the opposite.  It's that blindness that has Trudeau still spinning that 9,000 jobs yarn after more credible people have built an actual case for why it's nonsense.  Either the Liberals think we are stupid enough to believe all of this, or they are too stupid to realize that we believe none.

If nobody in the PMO is willing to give it to Trudeau straight, then I will: Canadians do not trust you anymore.  The events of the next seven months will depend almost entirely on correcting this.  Even if you manage to pull out a win in October, you will be dogged by your diminished reputation until some national catastrophe gives you the chance to be a Jacinta Ardern-level hero again.

There is only one hope of rebuilding voters' trust, and that is to remove any remaining barriers to JWR giving her complete side of the story.  If you have truly done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.  On the other hand, if you have done something wrong, your best course is to come straight out with it before someone else does.  It's going to be painful, but in the grand scheme of politics, a few days of acute pain may be better than months of a dull ache.

Photo Credit: CBC News

Written by Jess Morgan

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.