Canada needs 

3.5 million more homes

 in the next five years for our fast-growing population, and one prominent developer sees a solution: purpose-built rental housing.

Fitzrovia CEO Adrian Rocca, who has 20 years of real estate experience and has led over $20 billion in transactions across Canada, U.S. and the European Union, maintains that governments need to take certain steps to incentivize more building.

Fitzrovia has nearly 9,000 purpose-built rental suites — meaning, not condos — completed or in development in Toronto and Montreal, with 3,000 new homes on track for next year. The company says about a third of Toronto’s households have the financial means to rent with them.

Fitzrovia says it is the only Canadian developer that manages and operates the full process in-house, from development, construction to asset and property management, leading to more efficient delivery.

Housing accounts for almost 

one-fifth of Canada’s GDP

, making it a key driver of economic growth. Facilitating investment in domestic housing is a catalyst for broader economic development, says Rocca. Each avoidable fee or delay represents lost opportunities for Canadian workers, subcontractors, and suppliers to benefit from that investment.

Rocca spoke to Dave Gordon for the National Post:

What inspired you to found Fitzrovia, and why choose purpose built rentals?

I saw home ownership rates are actually quite low in Germany. 70 per cent of the households rent, versus own. When I came back, it felt like there is a negative stigma around renting, and I almost felt empowered or passionate around changing that stigma.

I think the quality of rental housing could look vastly different if you put some TLC behind the design, the implementation, the programming, the quality of the materials. We could functionally make that product look uniquely different and bring a sense of pride of rentership, versus home ownership. It doesn’t mean that you’re a failure if you rent.

Why do you believe purpose built rental rather than condos is the solution?

We’re missing large parts of the demographic in the market that are active renters, that have been alienated from sale housing, like young families and downsizers.

We have made a big call as a business to build lots of two and three bedroom units that are generally 20 per cent larger than what’s being delivered in the condo market.

We create a social infrastructure in these buildings that deals with the new immigrants that are moving into the city with social programming. We have our own school … We also have a healthcare partnership with Cleveland Clinic for new immigrants living in our building. So if any of our residents are feeling sick, they come down to the Cleveland Clinic room.

So those are the types of social programs that are really important that the condo markets aren’t doing.

What are the biggest obstacles to meeting building targets?

A lot of it relates to financial incentives. The economic model is under a lot of stress. New starts, depending on the data, are down 50 to 90 per cent. There’s not many projects that are ever going to hit the presale threshold of 70 per cent or 80 per cent that’s required to get construction financing. Interest rates have really hurt that.

Price per square foot dropped by 30 per cent in a year and a half. That’s going to crush your margins. It’s got to be made up by the government stepping in, and waiving development charges and waiving property tax for 20 years.

We’ve had great engagement with all three levels of government, but we need to turn that engagement to proper policy.

When immigration and demand is growing, we’re going to have a catastrophe of a housing crisis in three to four years.

You can’t just turn on the switch, and get new supply coming on the market. Takes four years to put a high rise project into the market, and then get it fully delivered, get it designed, get it approved, pull your permits, and then construct it. If you’re fast, it’s four years. So it’s going to create an extremely tight rental market, which is not good for the end consumer.

What kind of specific policy reforms would have the most immediate impact?

About 30 per cent of our total development cost to build is municipal fees, development charges, government levies. So development charges are used to fund infrastructure. So as you’re building, the city would need the infrastructure to support that housing, which is all fair, very important. The problem is, it’s a very archaic form of funding, because that’s ultimately passed on to the developer, who’s passing it on to the end consumer.

In the U.S., they have what’s called infrastructure bonds that could get issued, or municipal bonds, to fund out that infrastructure. So you’re basically taking 15 per cent cost of financing, which is what the developer needs to earn, because it’s very risky to develop high rise rental, and you’re replacing that with a 4 per cent cost of debt through these infrastructure bonds. It’s a very effective tool. It also brings other forms of capital into the market.

We can’t do it off pure government funding. We need to partner up with the private sector, and get all forms of funding to the table. Not just institutional capital; it’s retail capital, it’s foreign capital.

What impact do American tariffs have on your project?

The tariffs, when we’ve done our analysis, add about three and a half percent of our costs.

Not all developers in Canada, especially around rental housing, are actually owned by Canadians. So we have a firm commitment to support, wherever possible, Canadian suppliers. Could be brick suppliers, brick manufacturers, that could be HVAC solutions, that could be glass, that could be elevator supply, you name it.

In some cases, it’s more expensive, even with the tariffs, or there’s a difference in quality level. So we are actively working with a number of our suppliers, to equalize some of those items, whether it’s quality or price.

With purpose built rentals, how does Canada win?

Canada wins by creating as much new housing as possible, but the right type of quality housing. We want to provide rental housing for the masses, not just for students or young professionals, that are living in a small condo size apartments downtown.

It’s actually, in a lot of cases, a smart financial decision to rent, and keep the flexibility of being able to live wherever you want to live, and not be saddled by a large mortgage.

This interview has been edited for brevity.

This is the latest in a National Post series on How Canada Wins. Read earlier instalments here.

• Canada’s housing starts stuck at 1970s levels, while population growth has tripled, study finds
• Opinion: Why Canada’s housing crunch isn’t going away

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

OTTAWA — If your boss’s name appears on your phone, don’t assume that’s who is calling you.

In a rare joint statement issued Monday, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), part of Canada’s cyberdefence agency, said that scammers are now using artificial intelligence to impersonate senior government officials by phone or text.

Spoofing government officials’ phone numbers or voices, they contact other public sector leaders or C-suite business leaders with fake urgent requests for money transfers or asking them to open a malicious link.

The goal is to steal money, sensitive information or install malware on organizations’ computer networks, says the CCCS.

The scam is yet another way that fraudsters are harnessing AI to impersonate government officials and organizations to make their schemes more believable.

In one case, a Canadian individual received a fraudulent message purporting to come from a U.S. government official requesting a “large transfer of money under the pretence of an urgent government-related matter,” said spokesperson Cyber Centre spokesperson Janny Bender Asselin.

Asselin declined to say who the recipient was, if they were a government or business executive or if the money was ever transferred to the scammer.

Neither CCCS nor CAFC responded to questions about which government officials or C-suite executives are either being impersonated or targeted by this new malicious cyber scam.

But the advisory is clear: if you receive a message or call from someone purporting to be a high-ranking government official or even your employer’s CEO demanding you do something urgent and unusual, it could be a scam. Even if the voice sounds like them.

The warning says the latest scam appears linked to an ongoing campaign in the U.S. that was flagged by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) last month.

The FBI said that since Apri

l, scammers have been impersonating “senior US officials” and contacting other current or former top federal and state American government workers. They then purport to send a link to move the conversation to another messaging app, but the URL actually infects their device with malware.

“The malicious actors have sent text messages and AI-generated voice messages — techniques known as smishing and vishing, respectively — that claim to come from a senior US official in an effort to establish rapport before gaining access to personal accounts,” the FBI warned.

“If you receive a message claiming to be from a senior US official, do not assume it is authentic.”

For the head of the Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange, Jennifer Quaid, these types of scams have become so prevalent that she now suggests to private sector workers that they shouldn’t always believe that it’s their boss that’s calling when the number appears on their phones.

“Never assume it’s your boss,” she told National Post.

“I would give a CEO, a CFO and my 21-year-old daughter exactly the same advice: stop and think about it. Take a minute to think about what the request is, and then say, ‘I will call you back’ and reach out to that person using another known channel of communication,” she added.

“If your boss is serious about wanting you to transfer $20 million, I don’t think they’re going to object to your saying, ‘I will call you right back’.”

Just in the first three months of 2025, the Anti-Fraud Centre says it has received nearly 13,000 reports of fraud generating over $165 million in losses for 9,092 victims. But as always, that is only the tip of the iceberg as the vast majority of victims don’t report the crime to authorities.

Both the Cyber Centre and Quaid say AI has tremendously boosted criminals’ ability to make their scams more believable. But Quaid also believes that threat actors not being constrained by legal AI guardrails has allowed them to harness AI faster and more effectively than businesses trying to defend themselves.

“They’re not using it with rules. We have rules, and I want to be very clear, rules are a very good thing,” Quaid said of scammers. “But they are operating in a criminal environment without rules, without regard to due process and without regard to privacy, and that’s why they’re able to do more with some of these tools than we are.”

In recent weeks, government agencies have increasingly warned Canadians that scammers are spoofing their phone numbers to appear legitimate. Spoofing allows fraudsters display a fake number on a phone’s caller ID.

Even organizations like the Communications Security Establishment, the country’s cyberdefence agency, have not been spared.

“If you receive a suspicious call from our media number, please know it is not a legitimate call,”

the agency wrote on social media last week

.

“Spoofing lets scammers display a legitimate number, even though they have no connection to the organization. This isn’t always impersonation, but it’s still misleading and can create confusion.”

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

• Anti-Fraud Centre warns Canadians about scammers impersonating anti-fraud centre
• These scammers called almost everyone in Canada — and swindled millions

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

OTTAWA — As Canada approaches a critical starting point for its electric vehicle goals, pressure is building on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to rethink its plan.

Starting next year, the Liberal plan to get more electric vehicles on the road will enter its first phase: mandating sales targets for car companies, which could purchase credits, including by spending on charging infrastructure, or face penalties for not complying.

The government has set a target of 20 per cent of new passenger vehicles sold in 2026 must be either battery-powered or hybrid, which increases to 60 per cent by 2030 and reaches 100 per cent by 2035.

The goal is to reduce the country’s emissions, taking direct aim at the transportation sector, which is among the top emitters.

But with plummeting electric car sales and Canada’s auto sector under duress from a trade war with the U.S, which has abandoned its electrification goals under President Donald Trump, Carney’s government must now decide whether to forge ahead or reconsider a core climate policy.

“They’re going to have to make adjustments,” said Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association.

“I think they know that, the industry knows that. It’s really a negotiation on where those adjustments land. Is this a time for stretch goals or is this a time for reality. What’s the mix?”

He added that he had spoken to “several ministers” this week.

Brian Kingston, the president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, which represents Ford, General Motors and Stellantis and has long opposed the sales mandate, says the policy heaps on added costs at a time when keeping production in Canada has been made more difficult by U.S. tariffs

“At a time where companies are already facing tariff pressure, they are now going to face challenges selling vehicles in the Canadian market. Very difficult to make the case for Canada with this policy in place.”

Ford Canada CEO Bev Goodman was among the latest to call for the mandate to be scrapped, pointing to falling customer interest.

Statistics Canada bears that out, with the agency reporting a 45-per-cent drop in new zero-emission vehicles sold in March from the same month the year before. It said these new vehicles accounted for around seven per cent of vehicles sold in March 2025 — a figure critics point to as fuel to argue a 20 per cent sales target is unrealistic.

When the sales mandate was introduced several years ago, Volpe said the market was better. Now, he says, “we’re not going to make it.”

“The math of not making it is punishing for companies that are all currently manufacturing in Canada, employing Canadians, both directly and buying lots of volume from suppliers.”

For Joanna Kyriazis, director of public affairs at Clean Energy Canada, which, along with other stakeholders, helped the Liberals develop their zero-emission vehicle policy, she says “flexibility” has been built into the program, which recognizes the impact on industry.

The Opposition Conservatives, before the House of Commons broke for summer, also ramped up pressure on the Liberals to scrap the mandate, saying it removes “choice” from consumers.

“The urgency and the pressure that is sort of coming across in public discussions is not quite there,” Kyriazis said. “There’s some time still to ramp up.”

She said there were steps the government could take to reverse what she also notes has been a “drop” in consumer interest, which she connects to the ending of the federal rebate program for zero-emission vehicles announced earlier in the year, and that the Liberals have campaigned on reintroducing to the tune of $5,000.

British Columbia’s Energy Ministry pointed to the same drop when it fielded recent questions regarding a slide presentation that was

obtained by reporters,

showing the province to be “considering several changes” to its own program, noting how the drop in sales made it “challenging” to meet its mandated target of having 90 per cent of new vehicles sold be zero-emission by 2030.

Another factor that the B.C. government cited was the backlash against Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who was an adviser to Trump until a public falling out.

Automakers and others in the industry also warn that Tesla would stand to benefit from the sales mandate.

“The campaign that has been sort of launched against (electric vehicles) and Trump’s negativity towards (electric vehicles) has had an impact on consumer sentiment,” Kyriazis said.

Interest has not disappeared, she said, citing recent polling done for the group, that around 45 per cent of Canadians say they would be open to switching to electric for their next vehicle.

The federal government also collected feedback from Canadians. Earlier this year, Transport Canada commissioned a survey and focus groups on Canadians’ feelings about the transportation system, which included questions about the zero-emission vehicle mandate.

It reported that “no clear consensus” was found when it comes to the 2035 sales mandate, with 45 per cent of respondents saying they felt it was a “good idea,” compared to 39 per cent who said it was not. Another 16 per cent said they were not sure.

Different views also emerged, according to the focus group findings.

The report, delivered in March and disclosed as part of the government’s reporting of its public opinion surveys, found “most participants supported the idea” of a sales mandate, based on reasons that ranged from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to sending a signal to industry about the need to transition and lower costs as compared to gas-powered vehicles.

Those expressing concern cited the need for charging infrastructure, as well as worries about the possibility of battery fires and how they would fare in the extreme cold.

Kyriazis said more education is needed on the range capabilities of electric vehicles, as are “more efforts from governments” to ensure charging infrastructure gets built into condominiums and apartments through changes to building codes, given that it is often young people who call these buildings home who are among the most interested in switching to electric.

Expanding public charging infrastructure is also needed, particularly outside of British Columbia and Quebec, which have their own electric vehicle mandates. That, however, is “dependent on government investment.”

Kingston agrees that demand must increase for electric vehicles, including through spending on more public infrastructure.

Still, he suggests rebate programs cannot be permanent, given how much they cost and the overarching goal to reach parity between the cost of electric vehicles and gas-powered ones, which he says is “taking longer than anticipated.”

Kyriazis said the government must announce when it intends to bring back the program to provide certainty to consumers waiting before deciding to make a purchase.

A spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Minister Julie Dabrusin said the government would “look at ways to reintroduce a purchase incentive.”

“It is important to remain focused on the fact that the real threat to the Canadian auto industry right now are the unjustified tariffs from the United States, not electric vehicles, as Conservatives would suggest,” wrote Hermine Landry.

“As the new federal government works to make Canada an energy superpower, electric vehicles and the jobs in the entire supply chains required to produce them are an important part of building an economy that is low-cost, low-carbon, and low risk for investors,” Landry said.

She said the policy was put in place to “ensure Canadians have access to affordable zero-emission vehicles,” adding it was “designed to remain effective regardless of fluctuations in (electric vehicle) sales.”

“It is worth noting that the standard for the sale of new vehicles already has flexibilities that are built in, including hybrids counting towards some of the sales targets.”

National Post

staylor@postmedia.com

• Tariffs, Elon Musk and charging headaches: Quebec is suddenly seeing trouble in its EV paradise
• EV price incentive not big enough to meet Liberal targets: PBO

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Jerusalem, 25 June, 2025 (TPS-IL) — Hamas are controlling the food supply as a tactic to garner more teenage recruits, an aid worker in Gaza and experts have told The Press Service of Israel.

In recent weeks, claims of a famine and repeated pressure on Israel to provide food for people in the Gaza strip has led to the establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an American-funded initiative that works alongside Israel to feed Gazans.

As the focus of world news shifted to the Iran-Israel conflict, TPS-IL spoke to experts and people on the ground to understand what is really happening with the food supply in Gaza.

“Hamas control aid, it’s one of their things. We see it all, Hamas act physically. This is not intelligence,” a member of Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), told TPS-IL. “…Hamas takes the aid in Gaza.”

COGAT works to get the food trucks into Gaza. GHF works alongside them, and many other security contractors to deliver meals, something the UN aid agencies are vocal in opposing, claiming that to work with Israel lacks “impartiality.”

GHF claims to have delivered more than 42 million meals to date, and continues to operate daily, despite having five of their volunteers allegedly murdered by Hamas while doing so.

One expert told TPS-IL that Hamas controls the strip with the aim of ensuring teenagers end up in their ranks. Dr. Igal Shiri, who works at the counterterrorism institute Meir Amit, said: “Hamas completely control the area (the Gaza strip).

“Even though there is the massive attack, and you can see Aza is destroyed, with most of Gaza under bombing, they continue to control the civilians. They still control the area with aggression, even under attack.

“Every little bit of food – they stole it. When they get the food, they get the power. The young people in Gaza are not working.

“There is no school, no university, and they have no effective way to earn money, so Hamas has the power.”

He went on to explain that the control starts with the food, but eventually infiltrates every aspect of life in Gaza: “It’s a problem because they still control Gaza, even after 18 months of war.”

Accurate recruitment figures for Hamas are not obtainable due to the unreliability of Hamas reporting, but Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in January that the U.S. government believed Hamas had recruited almost as many as it had lost since the beginning of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Other sources claim as many as 15,000 new recruits were added to the group since October 7.

Shiri continued to outline how Hamas use media manipulation to wildly exaggerate claims of starvation, which eventually trickles down into them controlling food supplies: “It’s a narrative that they’re starving.”

“If they really cared (about providing for their people and building a country), they would build schools and factories, but they put thousands of billions into constructing tunnels and we have to think why? For 20 years, all they thought about was October 7.

“We got pictures from inside, you can see the food. So they are not starving, but its good to say you are and show pictures of children in the hospital, because that gives them power.”

Another expert, Dr. Nesya Rubinstein- Shemer, who wrote a book on Hamas’s ideology and is a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar Ilan University, told TPS-IL that the control of food has been a tactic of terror groups even before Hamas was founded.

She explained: “The history of Hamas goes back further than it’s establishment in 1987; their roots began as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in Egypt.

“The Muslim Brotherhood was founded on the (Islamic ideological) basis of ‘dawah’ – the concept of conquering the hearts of the people and reaching for a firm basis in the population, before trying to achieve a role in the state.

“Muslim Brotherhood belongs to political Islam. The end goal is to gain political power, but they believe that to do that, they first have to gain control over the population.

“Muslim Brotherhood did this first, because the population had it very hard from a social point of view, so they established social structure to help society and provide places to eat, food for the poor, medical treatment, summer camps for youth – a whole kind of social engagement with the population to gain control and support.

“The main aim was to achieve ideological support, to achieve help from the population in whatever they need.

“After eight years, they established 150 branches all over Egypt, because this is what the population needed, so this is how they gained influence.”

This, she said, is where Hamas garnered it’s food-control tactics: “Hamas did the same in Gaza, before it was established.

“Ahmed Yassin was the establisher of Hamas, but before they were established in 1987, in 1973, Yassin established another organization El Mujjma El Islami – this organization gained control of the population through the establishment of institutions like mosques, kindergartens, schools, and he offered aid in clothes, and food.

“Then came the Hamas movement. Hamas now has perfect control over the population because they control food and humanitarian aid. Many people from Hamas worked in UNWRA.

“The message put out by Hamas to the people, over time was that ‘if you are loyal to Hamas, you can get what you need like fuel, medical supplies, food’ – basically everything Israel gave them over the years.”

She went on to detail how Hamas continue to use food to maintain control: “Hamas are acting as a gatekeeper to the food supply. Additionally, if you (regular Palestinians) resist Hamas, you will be the last in line (for food).”

Finally, she told TPS-IL how Hamas use the image of starvation to maintain control: “Now what they’re doing is perpetuating the narrative of hunger in the world.

“They have Al Jazeera in six languages, which works 24/7 in supplying pictures. Hamas don’t care if the population die and suffer – on the contrary, it serves them, because then the world sees and it is translated into political pressure on the world to step in.

“Jihad also means fighting through media. This makes all the countries isolate Israel because it is demonized in the world media. This is very problematic.

“Hamas presents the idea of liberation and people don’t understand they are a terror organization. People don’t know the meaning of ‘the river to sea’.

“Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization, which pretends to fight for the liberation of Palestine…

“Since 2005, there wasn’t a single (Israeli) soldier in Gaza – they (Hamas) chose to take money and make tunnels and to buy missiles in order to attack Israel. They are not freedom fighters, and there is no solution (to be made with them).

“Now the situation is very problematic because they use world media to create a bad image of Israel and it’s challenging.”

GHF was contacted for comment.

• Ronen Itsik: Israel’s strategy of conquering Gaza to destroy Hamas is the right one
• Alan Kessel: Carney hands Hamas the propaganda victory it was hoping for

OTTAWA — Even before it hits the 2014 NATO target of two per cent, Canada is committing to a new NATO target of boosting its defence and military spending to five per cent of its GDP — or $150 billion each year in total — within ten years.

Following a two-day NATO summit in the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed Wednesday that the alliance of European countries, the U.S. and Canada had agreed to significantly increase the sizes of their military and boost defence infrastructure spending within a decade.

The new target, which was the product of significant pressure by U.S. President Donald Trump, will be split in two portions: 3.5 per cent dedicated to military spending and 1.5 per cent on defence infrastructure investments.

During an interview with CNN Tuesday evening, Carney said the new target — should Canada ever hit it — means the government will eventually be spending roughly $150 billion per year on defence. “It’s a lot of money,” he acknowledged.

During a press conference Wednesday, Carney said that the target is designed to respond to current and growing threats from Russia and other hostile countries. But he said the target could be adjusted in years to come and the geopolitical situation evolves.

“We are protecting Canadians against new threats. I wish we didn’t have to… but we do have to and it is our core responsibility as government,” Carney said.

“The fact that we’re united, the fact the United States is fully behind this, the fact that we’re working together is going to reduce the threat environment 10 years from now,” he added.

Earlier this month, Carney promised that Canada would hit its 2014 NATO commitment of dedicating two per cent of its GDP to defence spending by the end of the 2025-2026 fiscal year.

More to come.

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

• Carney’s office retracts claim that U.S. wanted to ‘water down’ G7 statement on Ukraine
• Carney says Canada, India to reappoint high commissioners in apparent diplomatic thaw

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our politics newsletter, First Reading, here.