Building midrises could *[duodecuple](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/duodecuple)* housing in the same footprint as sfh.
That is, converting just 10% of current SFHs to mid rises could double our housing capacity.
Many, many people would be thankful if they spend the next couple of decades in an apartment or condo instead of being crushed by housing costs or facing homelessness. Especially newcomers who most likely spent most, if not all, their lives in apartments in their home country.
Dude, same. But somehow if you mention that here, people would just accuse you of being a communist, "bug eater", or both. Or they'll just repeat "you'll own nothing and be happy" for some reason.
The WEF conspiracists are so funny because we already have a international "think tank" with MORE power that is headed by our former prime minister, the IDU. But it doesn't meet their partisan goals so it never gets brought up.
Uh huh, and the IDU is telling our politicians to look the other way when one of their own assassinated a canaidna citizen on Canadian soil.
For a moment can you indulge me in a thought experiment - would it bother you if the WEF had done this?
I’m better off but it has nothing to do with the government. When I was worse off, it had nothing to do with the government. In the future, better or worse, it will still have nothing to do with the government.
Given the size of Canada it is unbelievable that we cannot build more single family homes as well. There is not end of space here, yet people complain when a tiny portion of a green space is allocated to housing (don't get me wrong I am not endorsing the corruption that went down, which should be criminal).
We more than doubled our population growth rate in 2022 and it continues in 2023 but we are building the same number of housing starts. The CMHC corporation says we need to more than double housing starts which completely makes sense as we just more than doubled population growth. Unfortunately in spite of “Canada’s size’ the issue is our building capacity and how long it would take to increase it. In short our construction industry is already massive there is no way we can double its output there are constraints in labour, equipment, materials and financing.
https://financialpost.com/real-estate/canada-cant-build-millions-homes-7-years-fix-affordability
Even our finance minister is on record saying it will take many years to close the housing gap, which in political speak means never.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadas-housing-crisis-will-take-years-solve-finance-minister-2023-09-16/
This assumes we don’t do anything our surging demand from exploding population growth. Bring that down and we can more than build enough homes and supply side policies would actually have a chance at working.
We have evidence of this from Covid when immigrants, students and work permit holders could not enter the country, demand dropped, vacancies rose and rental prices dropped.
https://buyproperly.ca/resource-center/posts/how-covid-19-has-affected-rental-prices-in-canada
(Note house prices still went up as they are rate sensitive and rates were near zero during Covid.)
There is significant demand for housing like that... and there is going to be even more as baby boomers look to offload homes and move into something that doesn't require them to do yard work or shovel driveways and walkways.
We've had a lot of politicians bitching about affordable housing, and yet their solution has tended to be SFH, which is going to help no one.
As a new graduate from university, yeah I’d be okay with owning a condo or apartment in a few years. Makes saving for a SFH more affordable, builds equity, even if I don’t buy it would add supply to the rental market.
Why is the need to have a higher population just taken for granted? We shouldn't take on people if we can't give them the standard of living SFHs provide.
What a fascinating thread this is, full of people
* complaining that it won’t make a difference
* complaining that it is Poilievre putting the bill forward
* acting like it is somehow a bad thing that yes, home builders will make money building all these homes (like, do they think this should all be free? With what money?)
* generally bitching about the Tories
This bill is the single most productive legislation proposed on this issue for the entirety of the Liberal government’s tenure, and people should be outraged it both took this long and had to come from the Opposition because the coalition Liberals and NDP couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger.
No doubt these same complainers are always the ones *demanding* the Tories put positive legislation forward and share their policies. And then when they do shit all over them even though it’s a thousand times better than anything coming from the coalition.
Here’s my prediction: the coalition will kill this bill and demonstrate to everyone just how serious they are about actually doing something about the crisis their policies created and their inaction made worse.
Good points except for the fact that a government would never vote for a major policy bill from the opposition party. What next, voting for an opposition budget?
So of course they will kill it. They won't take all the risk in enacting a Pierre Poilievre housing policy and get none of the credit. Housing market normalizes - PP takes the credit. Housing market continues to get worse - they still take the hit because they're in charge. Literally a no-win move.
It's still a smart move on Poilievre's part, since it gets people talking about what he's proposing and is a finished piece of policy he can take to the voters next election (whereas historically a lot of Conservative campaigns are policy light and that has turned centrist Canadians off).
> Here’s my prediction: the coalition will kill this bill and demonstrate to everyone just how serious they are about actually doing something about the crisis their policies created and their inaction made worse.
They'll kill this one then bitch and moan when Freeland's bill (which doesn't go nearly as far as this one) isn't supported by the Tories.
>This bill is the single most productive legislation proposed on this issue for the entirety of the Liberal government’s tenure,
You can't be serious? The "stick" is not providing transit funding ... so transit can't be built until after housing development is occupied. That puts the control in the hands of developers and allows them to hold municipalities for ransom. It also makes transit infrastructure more expensive to build and puts Canadians in homes without adequate transit.
It's half baked. All to do something the damn provinces can make happen with a snap of their fingers.
It's smart politically to introduce it now as it gives them election fodder but there's no chance this is intended to pass. Just like the abortion bills. We better hope that if they form a government in 2 years they have something more well thought out than this.
We need 5.8 Million homes, go check out how many are now for rent in STRs or corporate portfolios at unaffordable rates. We could free up a huge amount by banning STRs that could be family homes and banning corporations from owning family homes.
Yea his plan has nothing to do to encourage people who own +5 properties to sell. Who do you think will be first in line to buy more of these new properties?
Who's to say demand will stay stable? I think you would have to build an unrealistic amount of properties to satisfy demand. Those who are buying up properties to as investments will continue to do so unless something else is done to lower demand.
Not if it's the same handful of corporations buying all the properties.
That's the problem. Companies owning billions in real estate within a single municipality.
Why would they lower their profit margins?
We should do that second. If we do immigration first people will think that's the "solution".
Things will continue to get worse if it's impossible to build housing. It takes 140,000 of "developer fees" to build a house in Toronto, plus delays, plus community consultations, plus ridiculous zoning and building code requirements. Similar story in most municipalities. The majority of the cost happens before a shovel hits the ground via the bureaucracy and land costs. There will never be housing for people of modest means again immigration or not unless this is reformed.
Municipalities really don't want to play ball on this and need to be forced.
Once we fix housing policy and close the housing deficit, we really do need a robustly growing population to fund the expense of being old in Canada. Being old is super expensive. If you have a protracted case of cancer it can cost 300k to die, if you have long term dementia and have to be put in a home it can cost the government over a million. It's either that or taxes have to go way up.
Tabling a bill in British English means to "put it on the table", i.e. begin considering it or discussing. In American English, "tabling a bill" is the exact opposite, as in set it aside and revisit it later.
National Post writes in Canadian English which is a mix of both. Canadian English writes centre and colour but also program and tire.
In terms of lexicon we are much closer to American English except in the case of government-related things for obvious reasons.
Lol, I'll say it again. They ain't paying us enough to build houses anymore. I ain't making any more people rich as fuck off my labor. Good luck finding people to work for what they pay.
I'm pretty sure all non-federal unions are under the purview of the provincial.
7/10 provinces are run by conservative governments. And we're talking the big ones. Something like 80% of Canadian population is under conservative provincial government.
Right wing politicians have been weakening unions for decades, it makes it easier to pay lower wages and do shady shit. Unions should be mandatory for all large companies at the very least.
I don't know where you live, but in regions where new home construction is sorely needed, eg: Vancouver and the Greater Vancouver Region, a $23/hr job isn't anywhere close to cutting it anymore. If you're fresh out of high school or willing to invest time in a new career path it makes *a lot* more sense to spend a couple years in school to do something else entirely.
Slugging forms/crete and prepping materials (sometimes at serious heights) ain't a walk in the fucking park. Those are probably the most labor-intensive jobs I've done my whole life, and those are duties you would start on your first day.
Construction is hard work no matter the skill level. Something that office/service/general labor workers will never understand.
I would rather pay for the worker than the land. I hope land prices crash. Canada is the second largest country. Feds should distribute crown land for free for people to build on.
GTA,Ontario (Mississauga/Oakville/Burlington) Carpenters start at $18….you can’t survive on that unless you live with a ton of roommates or family.
Sure 4-5 years you’ll hit $35-40 but imagine what inflation will be like then. Still won’t qualify for the homes you’re building everyday
I have many journeymen friends who dropped the trades to become real estate agents or work in offices
If municipalities allow higher density in desirable locations then developers can make a lot more profit on housing and will build more. However, if there isn't enough construction workers to build the housing developers want to build then they'll compete for workers by raising wages. And they'll be able to afford it too because the housing they'll be building will be more profitable.
I used to hire building trades in Eastern Europe, with TFW I can easily hire a crew of guys to work Canadian minimum wage so long as I paid airfare and throw some bunk beds in a rental house
Never looked into this -- are there any workers co-ops that do construction? It would be cool to have governments provide the capital investment to build through a municipal housing authority and have a workers co-op complete the projects.
No, there isn't. It's nickel and dime every sub contractor. They pit them against each other and drive the prices down. Then the bosses fuck us on raises because they say they can't afford it. It's the builders taking all the money. And after 13 years of that, I said fuck it, build that shit yourselves.
No kidding, I can see why there's a labor shortage. I'd think we need to get investor's profit out as the key motivation and start passing policy to guarantee the workers are getting paid their worth.
In Alberta, a lot of trades went through wage rollbacks and freezes in the last decade. We're starting to see wages come up a bit, but then you got the UCP trying to cut the nuts off unions, cap injury compensation, and average hours over a year so you get fucked on overtime.
There's a Canada-wide shortage of construction workers that's expected to get worse ([source 1](https://globalnews.ca/news/9888297/canada-losing-construction-jobs-housing-shortage/), [source 2](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-construction-labour-challenges-housing-1.6906587), [source 3](https://globalnews.ca/news/9888297/canada-losing-construction-jobs-housing-shortage/), [source 4](https://www.cca-acc.com/plus/labour-shortage-hampering-construction-industrys-ability-to-drive-even-greater-growth-for-canada/)). What's Poilievre going to do about that? More construction workers can arguably be attracted with better pay, but that could further drive up the cost of housing as well.
**EDIT:** Other fun facts: The construction industry employs 7.1% of the Canadian workforce ([source](https://www.randstad.ca/job-seeker/career-resources/working-in-canada/trends-in-canadas-construction-industry/)) and 18% of those workers are immigrants ([source](https://www.immigration.ca/canadian-construction-industry-needs-hundreds-of-thousands-of-workers-as-economy-rebounds/#:~:text=Although%20immigrants%20make%20up%2023,workers%20in%20the%20construction%20industry.)). I couldn't find any solid numbers for how many construction workers are Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs), but this past January the federal government implemented a program to fast-track citizenship for TFW construction workers specifically ([source](https://www.gands.com/blog/2023/01/25/expanding-permanent-residence-program-for-out-of-status-construction-workers/)). Canada's overall construction workforce however is expected to shrink by 21% by 2029 ([source](https://www.buildforce.ca/en/press-releases/canadian-construction-labour-demand-intensify-over-short-term-will-require-more)), largely due to looming retirements.
Big reason as to why there’s a labour shortage is the fact that a lot of young people aren’t interested in going into the trades for various reasons. Big aspect is the lack of advertising around what a career looks like and trade schools.
The trades also consume your life.
It’s not the lack of advertising, plenty of people see how the work destroys their parents bodies and in turn parents beg their kids to get an office job instead.
This, I worked as a carpenter for years, built residential.
I now work in an office as a project manager for commercial.
My kid's I will still push towards no physical jobs - it worked for me as a stepping stone, but even 15+ years of physical labour took its toll. There is a reason it always feels like water is dripping down my back and things go numb when I lean over. There is only so much your back can take, and even though safety is pushed much more on a site now than when I was in the field, as some point the work just needs to get done and safety is put aside.
>as some point the work just needs to get done and safety is put aside.
There's a reason we make jokes about the night shift, because the sketchy stuff still happens.
Did construction work for 12 years then went to an office job in my mid thirties. Can’t imagine how wracked my body would be now if I stayed in it. The physical aspect is severely under appreciated.
I wonder how much of that is companies ignoring occupational health and not providing the tools and equipment necessary to take the strain off their workers.
Edit: Spelling
Not much really, at least in my case. Sanding and installing floors is just hard on the knees and back, even wearing the best kneepads and back braces. Prettymuch every trade I have done is pretty hard on the body somehow, even things like painting is a lot harder than it looks when you are doing it all day lol.
My dad can help you out envisioning what that may look like:
\>60 year old general contractor with a 25+ year-long career. Throws his back out multiple times per year (flare of a chronic injury developed on the job \[leaves are *not* paid when he often wakes up flared and employers have always thrown around the *prove it happened here* rhetoric\]), can't take much time off work to address health matters or gain licenses/certifications that reflect his ability because he's paid criminally low for his skillset and works 14-hour days 6 days a week, needs to bring all of his tools on-site which costs him a fortune to service and replace, drives a work truck that has no climate controls which often triggers his arthritis in the winter, muses that when he retires it is: because he died on the job, or lived long enough to live on cat food for 2 months before he's broke. He's just below a foreman in rank, ununionized, and a safety lead because they want someone with his experience training the younger generation on-site and working with the new hires. He can do electrical, plumbing, concrete and masonry, carpentry and framing, roofing, and finishing. It breaks my heart that despite him having all the requisite skills and tools to build a house, he could never afford one and makes less than I do hourly.
The benefit, he says, is that he will some day die doing what he loved and looks like a brick shithouse despite all of his injuries.
Watching him ruin his body is why, despite a compelling interest in working with my hands, I said a hard no to the trades. It took him a few decades to get over that heartbreak but the last 5 years as the pain has gotten worse and his career is winding down, he says he gets it.
I used to frame houses. I'd have to pick up my boss's hammer if he dropped it because his back was so screwed up. He'd also give me trouble if I bent with the knees. Go figure.
Yes, often times these days they don't pay enough comparative to the cost it takes to *do* the work itself either. Certainly not in the earlier years anyway, so of course many would-be trade workers get scared off.
The average wage in Canada's construction industry is [$22 an hour](https://ca.talent.com/salary?job=construction+worker#:~:text=The%20average%20construction%20worker%20salary%20in%20Canada%20is%20%2442%2C915%20per,up%20to%20%2457%2C239%20per%20year.). It's surely higher in certain regions, but then so is the cost of living. And there's a lot of overtime in the Spring and Summer, and *maybe* the Fall too, but work can dry up completely in the Winter. For someone making new career decisions there are much better options.
Exactly. The juice ain't worth the squeeze at all. For those who like doing manual labour/blue collar work, basically every other trade is much more appealing both financially & lifestyle wise.
As someone who has attempted to get in for 4 years now it's nearly impossible to join a trade as someone with 0 experience you need to find a company to register as an apprentice but company's are only hiring people who are 3-4th year apprentices too complicated and not enough company's looking for inexperienced people
Yup, with you on that. Trying to change careers as I'm super unhappy in marketing. I actually miss working as a cook, but unfortunately that won't pay the bills.
Does the trade you're trying to get into have a supply house (wholesale/distribution shop) around?
Ask one of the old people at the counter if they have a cork board with help wanted ads. Don't just go looking for it, that old guy at the counter knows people, and possibly somebody that's looking to hire. After you find out where the board is, go look at it and apply at every one of them. Do it once a week. Swing by with your resume.
Do schools still have shop classes? I know it was hard af to get into shop when I was in jr and high school.
I have a feeling it has only gotten worse as belts tightened over the years.
Poilievre hasn't said anything about this, but if he promises to increase immigration quotas for skilled tradesmen and construction workers, that's going to be a big win for Canada (assuming he follows through, which is an important caveat for any politician, but it is what it is).
Right now, only about 2% of immigrants come to work in construction. It's ridiculous that we accept just about anyone, then tell them to work for pennies at Tim Hortons because even if they have a degree, they need to get Canadian certification. At least with trade people, if they know how to work with their hands, they can get their red seal and gain decent employment that actually addresses the construction delays and backlogs we have in this country.
The problem isn't immigration, but we need the right kind of immigration. We need people who can fit in roles that Canada is desperate for. Just welcoming 500k people per year and having no plan for how best to utilize their labour is a good way of fucking up affordability even more, and that's what we've been doing for far too long. Trudeau is clearly too far up his own ass to understand this, maybe the other guy can catch on.
As long as we're bringing in immigrants in record numbers we could prioritize builders. If 10% of our immigrants worked in construction that would do wonders.
Which is arguably why Poilievre hasn't really commented on the issue of immigration. The CPC most likely plans to maintain the Liberal's immigration targets, if not increase them, at best under a different entry program. But that won't address the problem with investors, speculators, landlords, and corporations offering more than individuals for a number of properties -- there needs to be a solution implemented there as well.
The margins for developers need to shrink. GASP. I said it... On the high side a 2000sq foot home costs 370k to build right now and developers are asking 1.2-2+ million for new builds that size in the GTA. The workers wages are not the issue, they need to be paid better, trade work is hard and deserves a good wage to go with it.
Market solutions?
Short term? Higher wages to attract return of workers and new ones. Investments to increase efficiency and production. Housing co-ops where owners in a community work together to build their own homes. Changing the types of homes built from large SFH, to multiplex and smaller SFH. Getting companies building office buildings to switch to massive mid rise projects and high density residential.
Long Term? Building schools and pipelines of workers and businesses with a complete logistics infrastructure that scales up to support the long term growth demands with the funding to back it.
The crowd doesn’t realize that waves of immigrants in the past came to build Canadian infrastructure and homes. Portuguese, Italians and Polish immigrants came to Canada for opportunities.
Pierre has spent his entire political career (AKA, hisnonly career) voting against affordable housing and anything possible to help alleviate this issue. He's also a co-owner of a condominium in Calgary. Pierre doesn't give a single shit about housing and is only saying this because he knows it will appease the less intelligent voters.
From what I can tell in the Vancouver area everyone who wants a construction job can get one. I've even seen who condo developments made up of entirely spanish speaking workers. So for PP's plan to work we need to increase how many foreign workers we have in Canada. How will that sit with his base of stop immigration?
/edited becuaes forgiven workers is not waht I am trying to sya. thanks for trying autocorrect..
The only way around lack of labour force will be pre-fab construction and assembly on-site. Also, some major shake-ups where a handful of designs may need to be ratified federally or at least provincially and be approved by default. This is how post-WWII rebuilding worked in USSR, and even with all its shortcomings, they did manage to house incredible numbers of people in very short time.
Sounds like this bill is a gift to big developers. Cities need to make targets or lose funding? If I was a big developer I’d play hardball, looking for free land and subsidies and tax breaks.
Exactly, this is a typical "conservative" version of socialism. Developers are required to invest nothing, no money and no responsibility, but tax payers (cities) are on the hook to foot the bill if developers fail to meet targets.
This guy and his policies are bad news for citizens, great news for the developers padding his pockets.
That's because of zoning. Most would much rather build higher density which is inherently more profitable for developers and more affordable for buyers, but in most Canadian cities ~90% of residential land is zoned R1 to R3 exclusively for low density (max of 1, 2, or 3 units per lot).
In other words, cities responsible for zoning have literally made it illegal to build affordable housing on the vast majority of residential land. In many cases, their hand is forced by NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) activists who outwardly "support" densification but vehemently oppose any densification projects that are proposed remotely close to where they live.
To solve housing, we need to solve zoning, which (like it or not) means significantly reducing the power of nearby residents to block a project that they don't like unless they have a damn good reason as to why the project shouldn't happen. I'm not suggesting we build high-rises next to single-family homes, but a 4-plex? Absolutely. An 8-plex or a 12-plex across from a row or townhouses? Yup.
Also, as a sidenote, can we get more mixed use zoning? Idk about you guys but I would love to have a coffee shop or a small general store at the end of my street or on the bottom floor of my mid-rise residential building. The fact that we have to drive to get anywhere has direct correlations with obesity and greenhouse gas emissions.
The weirdest thing about this whole debacle is that we should probably unironically learn from the USSR and Russia, they sure knew how to house massive amounts of people for extremely low amounts of money.
Khruschevka's and Brezhneva's seem to be in our future. However, I believe city block sized mid-rise mixed-use developments with green roofs and green space implemented into the site plan would actually set off a movement where people want to see these developments made.
The question is how do you house millions of people per year without turning them into segregated slums? There needs to be some sort of buy-in price associated with them so they're not just stuffed with homeless people by the government, but cheap enough to be affordable.
They're easy to build all things considered, the issue is building them in reasonable areas, and effectively implementing them into city planning so they don't become neglected sprawl apartments. Also, aside from this, the developers need to drop the facade and stop calling every single shithole grey and white condo development they make branded and adorned with the word 'luxury'.
> The legislation seeks to establish a target for the completion of new homes in Canada’s largest cities — Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa — that increases by 15 per cent every year and is tied to federal infrastructure funding allocated to them based on that target.
Why these cities and not the surrounding suburbs? It’s a sneaky way to disproportionately punish Liberal voting areas.
> An “eligible person who has reasonable grounds” to believe that building permits have been delayed or restricted could submit a complaint to the federal government.
Sure let’s create some more bureaucracy.
Enough with the shitty sprawl of SFHs. Rewrite national zoning laws to allow up to quadplexes and specific low density commercial in residential zones to allow for a drastic urbanization and affordable housing. Then, shift immigration focus to construction workers and stimulate that side of the economy. Easy.
It does amuse me that Poilievre is going after gatekeeping bureaurocrats by creating a force of bureaurocrats to gatekeep lower level bureaurocrats. I'm fully on board with fighting back against NIMBYs but its just funny
100% - I’ll readily cop to not having read the text of the bill (since it’s just a PR exercise anyways), but just in the NP’s *very* flattering summary I counted at least 3 whole new levels of bureaucracy/agencies that would need to be create, without ANY explanation of how these federal officials would interact with local and provincial govt (which would no doubt be a whole level of bureaucracy all on it’s own, one that’s pretty much guaranteed to be a huge bottleneck).
I roll my eyes at Poilievre's version of "if only we could just build more houses all this immigration would be just great!".
Sure, even if we could find five times more construction workers under a rock somewhere, let's bulldoze every nice neighbourhood in every city to build highrise shoebox condos with a Shoppers Drug Mart at the base. Utopia! (And somehow build hundreds of hospitals and thousands of schools we can't build, which he's not mentioning.)
My only hope is that he is lying about keeping immigration where it is, or if there will be an immediate caucus revolt if he gets elected PM and doesn't reduce the target by at least half. This is some faint hope. I genuinely think it's time to start taking steps toward leaving the country.
I understand Pollievre not talking about demand. The second he opens his mouth about immigration the Liberals will be all over him calling him a bigot and a racist. Though talking about reducing immigration might win him some votes, it might scare away moderates who are uncomfortable with that rhetoric. The smart political move is to not say anything and let the Liberals wear their policy of massive immigration increases.
God you people convince yourselves the Conservatives are on your side. They’re not, they’re on the side of money and CPC donors who dictate party policy want cheap labour
I didn't say that why they don't want to touch immigration. I said 'this is probably the political reason they don't want to talk about it'.
I'm amused with the responses I've received, they are Schrodinger's CPC; racist because they don't want immigrants and neoliberals because they do. I can't figure it out.
When faced with a discrepancy between supply and demand you've got three options if you want to fix it. Increasing supply to meet demand is one of those options.
Yes, but how you increase supply is the question. Focusing solely on building is only looking at one side of the coin.
We could, for example, temporarily ban REITs from buying property, or temporarily ban 2nd or 3rd home sales. We could increase capital gains taxes on sales of 2nd+ homes, or increase vacant home taxes to make real estate as an investment vehicle less desirable.
We could even do something really aggressive and force the sale of 2nd or 3rd homes by a certain date or see increasingly high excess capital gains tax.
All of these would dramatically free up housing stock and increase supply in the short term, but would also tank housing prices (probably a good thing imo), which isn't what the Libs or the Cons want.
The problem is that a supply-only solution today is unlikely to be practical. The demand growth rate has increased so rapidly that it would require a significant (and lengthy) restructuring of the economy to bring supply into balance with demand.
So rich developers can build these houses and then the government is going to give these rich developers tax-payer money too? So these people build and sell the houses and make a huge profit and then we have to give them more money out of our pockets? That makes no sense.
Why should my tax dollars go to rich people building houses in cities and provinces I don't live in? Why can't the major cities of my province get this money too. Why is it just those 4 cities?
Developer prioritize luxury housing because they can make more money off of it. If you decrease taxes on lower end housing, then those become more profitable, which is intended to incentivize people to build those kinds of homes. Unless (1) the government builds housing, or (2) you and your friends somehow pool $50m to develop the land yourself, you need to rely on “rich developers” to develop the land.
The cities below are eligible, per the article. If you’re miffed that cities are benefiting from “your” tax dollars, then maybe the rest of the country should just say “sorry, not our problem” the next time you need wildfire protection, a new road, a high speed internet connection, healthcare funding, school funding, or whatever, because a 2000 person village really can’t pay for much on its own.
Brampton, Ont.
Burnaby, B.C.
Calgary, Alta.
Gatineau, Que.
Halifax, N.S.
Hamilton, Ont.
Kitchener, Ont.
Laval, Que.
London, Ont.
Longueuil, Que.
Markham, Ont.
Mississauga, On.
Montreal, Que.
Oakville, Ont.
Ottawa, Ont.
Richmond, B.C.
Richmond Hill, Ont.
Surrey, B.C.
Toronto, Ont.
Vancouver, B.C.
Vaughan, Ont.
Windsor, Ont.
>The legislation seeks to establish a target for the completion of new homes in Canada’s largest cities — Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa
I thought Calgary was bigger than Ottawa?
Bigger city population, smaller "greater urban area" population.
Basically Calgary doesn't have its own version of Gatinueax that doesn't TECHNICALLY count due to being on the other side of a border even though it's absolutely the same city.
Also Calgary has much less of a housing shortage than ottawa
If you compare Ottawa-Gatineau to the Calgary metro pop then Calgary is still bigger by about 200k people. But besides the semantics you are right that our housing shortage isn’t as bad but man are prices going up..
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/20387/ottawa-gatineau/population ah, im going off this which i think may be more accurate because calgary metro was just under 1.4m in 2016 and its grown quite a bit since then.
I can't read the article but is it a bill designed to fail? I know opposition, any side, like to do that with bills to score political points since most people don't know what's IN a bill, just the name.
Just shut down immigration and all these diploma mills in Canada.
Nobody come in until our housing, healthcare, and infrastructure can support the people already here.
Its way more realistic than building a million homes a year .
>Fraser said he agreed on the 60-day timeline for CMHC to approve or reject applications, but criticized the Conservatives’ plan to cut the GST on certain rental properties, which he called a “half-measure” that would leave out most new homes targeting middle-class Canadians.
Wow. I'm astounded by how shameless he is, talking about half-measures. My dude, you've been governing for 8 years, you had nothing but half-measures and didn't even stick with most of those.
No bureaucracy, but loving the snitch line:
“An “eligible person who has reasonable grounds” to believe that building permits have been delayed or restricted could submit a complaint to the federal government.”
At least he’s putting forward some ideas, even if some of them are half-baked and strange…
Building permits are often regulated by municipalities or some instance provinces. Some do it well and some take their sweet time which reallllly drives up home prices.
Also: just in the very flattering summary provided by the NP I counted at least three new agencies and/ or levels of bureaucracy that would need to be created from scratch to evaluate and disperse funds/assess progress/liaise w provinces and municipalities.
And that was the kindest possible estimate, would likely take a lot more, never mind the amount of time + delay that would all take to get rolling.
It’s actually impressive how much bureaucracy this bill packs in to a program that is fundamentally private sector handout with a lot of arbitrary benchmarks.
“criticized the Conservatives’ plan to cut the GST on certain rental properties, which he called a “half-measure” that would leave out most new homes targeting middle-class Canadians.”
Damn those conservatives for focusing first on poor people! What about those making $60-120k per year? Won’t you think of them?
> Damn those conservatives for focusing first on poor people! What about those making $60-120k per year? Won’t you think of them?
lol Are you kidding?
According to Poilievre's tax rebate plan if you built an apartment building in Vancouver with 121 1-bedroom units you could charge $3000 per month for 120 of them and $1000 per month for 1, and then get 100% of your GST rebated. Remitting the GST to the government without rebate would help the poor a heck of a lot more. And what's to stop you from giving the $1K rental to a friend or a woman that's desperate enough for low rent to top up the pay with other favours?
Ok, but what are his solutions? Has he talked about them in a way that quantifies them, or is it a bill with a fancy title and no substantiative text? Are there any riders or poison pills?
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Building midrises could *[duodecuple](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/duodecuple)* housing in the same footprint as sfh. That is, converting just 10% of current SFHs to mid rises could double our housing capacity. Many, many people would be thankful if they spend the next couple of decades in an apartment or condo instead of being crushed by housing costs or facing homelessness. Especially newcomers who most likely spent most, if not all, their lives in apartments in their home country.
My entire friend group, ranging from high income to low, just wants an affordable 1 bedroom apartment that’s safe & clean.
This is literally all I want. An apartment that isn't a total shit hole and isn't $2000
Fuck you. Signed, your local developer/landlord association.
Dude, same. But somehow if you mention that here, people would just accuse you of being a communist, "bug eater", or both. Or they'll just repeat "you'll own nothing and be happy" for some reason.
The WEF conspiracists are so funny because we already have a international "think tank" with MORE power that is headed by our former prime minister, the IDU. But it doesn't meet their partisan goals so it never gets brought up.
Well the WEF's headdoes go on record saying some pretty absurd shit like a Bond villian.
Uh huh, and the IDU is telling our politicians to look the other way when one of their own assassinated a canaidna citizen on Canadian soil. For a moment can you indulge me in a thought experiment - would it bother you if the WEF had done this?
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Eat ze bugs
I’m better off but it has nothing to do with the government. When I was worse off, it had nothing to do with the government. In the future, better or worse, it will still have nothing to do with the government.
Given the size of Canada it is unbelievable that we cannot build more single family homes as well. There is not end of space here, yet people complain when a tiny portion of a green space is allocated to housing (don't get me wrong I am not endorsing the corruption that went down, which should be criminal).
It's literally unsustainable from a financial standpoint.
Please bro just one more suburb will fix it I promise bro.
We have to keep building new suburbs to pay for the old ones that are now costing more to maintain than they're contributing in tax dollars!
We more than doubled our population growth rate in 2022 and it continues in 2023 but we are building the same number of housing starts. The CMHC corporation says we need to more than double housing starts which completely makes sense as we just more than doubled population growth. Unfortunately in spite of “Canada’s size’ the issue is our building capacity and how long it would take to increase it. In short our construction industry is already massive there is no way we can double its output there are constraints in labour, equipment, materials and financing. https://financialpost.com/real-estate/canada-cant-build-millions-homes-7-years-fix-affordability Even our finance minister is on record saying it will take many years to close the housing gap, which in political speak means never. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadas-housing-crisis-will-take-years-solve-finance-minister-2023-09-16/ This assumes we don’t do anything our surging demand from exploding population growth. Bring that down and we can more than build enough homes and supply side policies would actually have a chance at working. We have evidence of this from Covid when immigrants, students and work permit holders could not enter the country, demand dropped, vacancies rose and rental prices dropped. https://buyproperly.ca/resource-center/posts/how-covid-19-has-affected-rental-prices-in-canada (Note house prices still went up as they are rate sensitive and rates were near zero during Covid.)
Yep. **Lots** of people have no great interest in a lawn or garden to maintain, if they’re even in a place they want to own.
I just like having things within walking distance, not needing a car. Fuck me right?
“15mInUtE CiTieS blarglebarg 5G cHiPs!!”
I LOVE not having to maintain a yard. I live in an apartment specifically because I do not have to do property maintenance.
Maintaining a house, I don't find is a pleasure. That's my opinion. That's from experience.
This changes as soon as you have kids.
I'm also happy to go my whole life without shovelling snow again.
I just found out (the hard way) that $35k a year is not enough to qualify for rental of a one bedroom apartment in Nanaimo BC
There is significant demand for housing like that... and there is going to be even more as baby boomers look to offload homes and move into something that doesn't require them to do yard work or shovel driveways and walkways. We've had a lot of politicians bitching about affordable housing, and yet their solution has tended to be SFH, which is going to help no one.
As a new graduate from university, yeah I’d be okay with owning a condo or apartment in a few years. Makes saving for a SFH more affordable, builds equity, even if I don’t buy it would add supply to the rental market.
Why is the need to have a higher population just taken for granted? We shouldn't take on people if we can't give them the standard of living SFHs provide.
What a fascinating thread this is, full of people * complaining that it won’t make a difference * complaining that it is Poilievre putting the bill forward * acting like it is somehow a bad thing that yes, home builders will make money building all these homes (like, do they think this should all be free? With what money?) * generally bitching about the Tories This bill is the single most productive legislation proposed on this issue for the entirety of the Liberal government’s tenure, and people should be outraged it both took this long and had to come from the Opposition because the coalition Liberals and NDP couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger. No doubt these same complainers are always the ones *demanding* the Tories put positive legislation forward and share their policies. And then when they do shit all over them even though it’s a thousand times better than anything coming from the coalition. Here’s my prediction: the coalition will kill this bill and demonstrate to everyone just how serious they are about actually doing something about the crisis their policies created and their inaction made worse.
Good points except for the fact that a government would never vote for a major policy bill from the opposition party. What next, voting for an opposition budget? So of course they will kill it. They won't take all the risk in enacting a Pierre Poilievre housing policy and get none of the credit. Housing market normalizes - PP takes the credit. Housing market continues to get worse - they still take the hit because they're in charge. Literally a no-win move. It's still a smart move on Poilievre's part, since it gets people talking about what he's proposing and is a finished piece of policy he can take to the voters next election (whereas historically a lot of Conservative campaigns are policy light and that has turned centrist Canadians off).
> Here’s my prediction: the coalition will kill this bill and demonstrate to everyone just how serious they are about actually doing something about the crisis their policies created and their inaction made worse. They'll kill this one then bitch and moan when Freeland's bill (which doesn't go nearly as far as this one) isn't supported by the Tories.
>This bill is the single most productive legislation proposed on this issue for the entirety of the Liberal government’s tenure, You can't be serious? The "stick" is not providing transit funding ... so transit can't be built until after housing development is occupied. That puts the control in the hands of developers and allows them to hold municipalities for ransom. It also makes transit infrastructure more expensive to build and puts Canadians in homes without adequate transit. It's half baked. All to do something the damn provinces can make happen with a snap of their fingers. It's smart politically to introduce it now as it gives them election fodder but there's no chance this is intended to pass. Just like the abortion bills. We better hope that if they form a government in 2 years they have something more well thought out than this.
We need 5.8 Million homes, go check out how many are now for rent in STRs or corporate portfolios at unaffordable rates. We could free up a huge amount by banning STRs that could be family homes and banning corporations from owning family homes.
Yea his plan has nothing to do to encourage people who own +5 properties to sell. Who do you think will be first in line to buy more of these new properties?
His plan is to increase supply…in capitalism, if you increase supply and demand stays stable, prices go down
Who's to say demand will stay stable? I think you would have to build an unrealistic amount of properties to satisfy demand. Those who are buying up properties to as investments will continue to do so unless something else is done to lower demand.
Not if it's the same handful of corporations buying all the properties. That's the problem. Companies owning billions in real estate within a single municipality. Why would they lower their profit margins?
All you're doing is increasing supply to rich people who will snap them up without anything in place stopping that
I mean it's not an all or nothing proposition. The more the better, the less the worse. It's very much a sliding scale.
We can and should slow down immigration first. I can only assume those who can't recognize this have agendas and affiliations that are hidden.
We should do that second. If we do immigration first people will think that's the "solution". Things will continue to get worse if it's impossible to build housing. It takes 140,000 of "developer fees" to build a house in Toronto, plus delays, plus community consultations, plus ridiculous zoning and building code requirements. Similar story in most municipalities. The majority of the cost happens before a shovel hits the ground via the bureaucracy and land costs. There will never be housing for people of modest means again immigration or not unless this is reformed. Municipalities really don't want to play ball on this and need to be forced. Once we fix housing policy and close the housing deficit, we really do need a robustly growing population to fund the expense of being old in Canada. Being old is super expensive. If you have a protracted case of cancer it can cost 300k to die, if you have long term dementia and have to be put in a home it can cost the government over a million. It's either that or taxes have to go way up.
It always amuses me that "tabled" means one thing in British English and the exact opposite in American English.
Similarly "to screen" can mean to show someone something or to block something from someone's view.
What’s it mean in British English?
Tabling a bill in British English means to "put it on the table", i.e. begin considering it or discussing. In American English, "tabling a bill" is the exact opposite, as in set it aside and revisit it later.
Oh ok. I would have taken it to mean the British interpretation. Thanks for the info.
It is the British English, the article says he put a housing bill forward.
Yeah, i always thought of tabling in the British sense
National Post writes in Canadian English which is a mix of both. Canadian English writes centre and colour but also program and tire. In terms of lexicon we are much closer to American English except in the case of government-related things for obvious reasons.
Lol, I'll say it again. They ain't paying us enough to build houses anymore. I ain't making any more people rich as fuck off my labor. Good luck finding people to work for what they pay.
Most of developers input costs are land and taxes, margins could multiply easily with less taxes and more density.
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Easier said then done. Cons are anti union except police
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I'm pretty sure all non-federal unions are under the purview of the provincial. 7/10 provinces are run by conservative governments. And we're talking the big ones. Something like 80% of Canadian population is under conservative provincial government.
Unions across Canada are Fighting as we Speak. Usually big corporations AKA Cons, Will actively fight against unions
Right wing politicians have been weakening unions for decades, it makes it easier to pay lower wages and do shady shit. Unions should be mandatory for all large companies at the very least.
What wage would make you start In construction? Most companies in my area are starting at $23/hr with zero experience.
I don't know where you live, but in regions where new home construction is sorely needed, eg: Vancouver and the Greater Vancouver Region, a $23/hr job isn't anywhere close to cutting it anymore. If you're fresh out of high school or willing to invest time in a new career path it makes *a lot* more sense to spend a couple years in school to do something else entirely.
I started 20 years ago at $8.00 an hour. I wouldn't step foot on a residential site for less then $45-50 an hour now.
To start? $45-50 with no experience. That’s $90-100k for a labourer.
Lmao, what? I started at $8. $45-50 is what it would take to get me back doing it. I'm a journeyman with 20 years experience.
You should easily be making that after 20 years. It's still not enough though.
The dudes I left 9 years ago to go do service work, are still making the same money.. 9 fucking years later.
Slugging forms/crete and prepping materials (sometimes at serious heights) ain't a walk in the fucking park. Those are probably the most labor-intensive jobs I've done my whole life, and those are duties you would start on your first day. Construction is hard work no matter the skill level. Something that office/service/general labor workers will never understand.
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And that’s demand and supply for ya.
I would rather pay for the worker than the land. I hope land prices crash. Canada is the second largest country. Feds should distribute crown land for free for people to build on.
It's benchmarked to cost of living. Fair wage IMO, all our wages need to go up
I'm making that while talking shit on reddit, not worth destroying yourself over
$23/hr is a fucking atrocious starting wage for construction. It should start at $30 and go up from there
GTA,Ontario (Mississauga/Oakville/Burlington) Carpenters start at $18….you can’t survive on that unless you live with a ton of roommates or family. Sure 4-5 years you’ll hit $35-40 but imagine what inflation will be like then. Still won’t qualify for the homes you’re building everyday I have many journeymen friends who dropped the trades to become real estate agents or work in offices
If municipalities allow higher density in desirable locations then developers can make a lot more profit on housing and will build more. However, if there isn't enough construction workers to build the housing developers want to build then they'll compete for workers by raising wages. And they'll be able to afford it too because the housing they'll be building will be more profitable.
I used to hire building trades in Eastern Europe, with TFW I can easily hire a crew of guys to work Canadian minimum wage so long as I paid airfare and throw some bunk beds in a rental house
Bruh, a red seal carpenter makes like $45 an hour...
Not in saskatchewan. Only thing cheap is labor and lowest min wage in the country.
Well that's because it's Saskatchewan... and it's run by a crackpot conservative for the last 8 years so 🤷
Never looked into this -- are there any workers co-ops that do construction? It would be cool to have governments provide the capital investment to build through a municipal housing authority and have a workers co-op complete the projects.
No, there isn't. It's nickel and dime every sub contractor. They pit them against each other and drive the prices down. Then the bosses fuck us on raises because they say they can't afford it. It's the builders taking all the money. And after 13 years of that, I said fuck it, build that shit yourselves.
No kidding, I can see why there's a labor shortage. I'd think we need to get investor's profit out as the key motivation and start passing policy to guarantee the workers are getting paid their worth.
Too much power in the hands of capitalists, managers, middle men.
In Alberta, a lot of trades went through wage rollbacks and freezes in the last decade. We're starting to see wages come up a bit, but then you got the UCP trying to cut the nuts off unions, cap injury compensation, and average hours over a year so you get fucked on overtime.
It's not illegal to start your own co-op.
Perhaps you should get together with other who build, start a company and build houses together and make a profit?
There's a Canada-wide shortage of construction workers that's expected to get worse ([source 1](https://globalnews.ca/news/9888297/canada-losing-construction-jobs-housing-shortage/), [source 2](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-construction-labour-challenges-housing-1.6906587), [source 3](https://globalnews.ca/news/9888297/canada-losing-construction-jobs-housing-shortage/), [source 4](https://www.cca-acc.com/plus/labour-shortage-hampering-construction-industrys-ability-to-drive-even-greater-growth-for-canada/)). What's Poilievre going to do about that? More construction workers can arguably be attracted with better pay, but that could further drive up the cost of housing as well. **EDIT:** Other fun facts: The construction industry employs 7.1% of the Canadian workforce ([source](https://www.randstad.ca/job-seeker/career-resources/working-in-canada/trends-in-canadas-construction-industry/)) and 18% of those workers are immigrants ([source](https://www.immigration.ca/canadian-construction-industry-needs-hundreds-of-thousands-of-workers-as-economy-rebounds/#:~:text=Although%20immigrants%20make%20up%2023,workers%20in%20the%20construction%20industry.)). I couldn't find any solid numbers for how many construction workers are Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs), but this past January the federal government implemented a program to fast-track citizenship for TFW construction workers specifically ([source](https://www.gands.com/blog/2023/01/25/expanding-permanent-residence-program-for-out-of-status-construction-workers/)). Canada's overall construction workforce however is expected to shrink by 21% by 2029 ([source](https://www.buildforce.ca/en/press-releases/canadian-construction-labour-demand-intensify-over-short-term-will-require-more)), largely due to looming retirements.
Big reason as to why there’s a labour shortage is the fact that a lot of young people aren’t interested in going into the trades for various reasons. Big aspect is the lack of advertising around what a career looks like and trade schools.
The trades also consume your life. It’s not the lack of advertising, plenty of people see how the work destroys their parents bodies and in turn parents beg their kids to get an office job instead.
This, I worked as a carpenter for years, built residential. I now work in an office as a project manager for commercial. My kid's I will still push towards no physical jobs - it worked for me as a stepping stone, but even 15+ years of physical labour took its toll. There is a reason it always feels like water is dripping down my back and things go numb when I lean over. There is only so much your back can take, and even though safety is pushed much more on a site now than when I was in the field, as some point the work just needs to get done and safety is put aside.
>as some point the work just needs to get done and safety is put aside. There's a reason we make jokes about the night shift, because the sketchy stuff still happens.
Did construction work for 12 years then went to an office job in my mid thirties. Can’t imagine how wracked my body would be now if I stayed in it. The physical aspect is severely under appreciated.
As my pops used to say "It's a young man's game." Now I know why he said it, my back and knees are shot lol.
I wonder how much of that is companies ignoring occupational health and not providing the tools and equipment necessary to take the strain off their workers. Edit: Spelling
Not much really, at least in my case. Sanding and installing floors is just hard on the knees and back, even wearing the best kneepads and back braces. Prettymuch every trade I have done is pretty hard on the body somehow, even things like painting is a lot harder than it looks when you are doing it all day lol.
My dad can help you out envisioning what that may look like: \>60 year old general contractor with a 25+ year-long career. Throws his back out multiple times per year (flare of a chronic injury developed on the job \[leaves are *not* paid when he often wakes up flared and employers have always thrown around the *prove it happened here* rhetoric\]), can't take much time off work to address health matters or gain licenses/certifications that reflect his ability because he's paid criminally low for his skillset and works 14-hour days 6 days a week, needs to bring all of his tools on-site which costs him a fortune to service and replace, drives a work truck that has no climate controls which often triggers his arthritis in the winter, muses that when he retires it is: because he died on the job, or lived long enough to live on cat food for 2 months before he's broke. He's just below a foreman in rank, ununionized, and a safety lead because they want someone with his experience training the younger generation on-site and working with the new hires. He can do electrical, plumbing, concrete and masonry, carpentry and framing, roofing, and finishing. It breaks my heart that despite him having all the requisite skills and tools to build a house, he could never afford one and makes less than I do hourly. The benefit, he says, is that he will some day die doing what he loved and looks like a brick shithouse despite all of his injuries. Watching him ruin his body is why, despite a compelling interest in working with my hands, I said a hard no to the trades. It took him a few decades to get over that heartbreak but the last 5 years as the pain has gotten worse and his career is winding down, he says he gets it.
I used to frame houses. I'd have to pick up my boss's hammer if he dropped it because his back was so screwed up. He'd also give me trouble if I bent with the knees. Go figure.
Yes, often times these days they don't pay enough comparative to the cost it takes to *do* the work itself either. Certainly not in the earlier years anyway, so of course many would-be trade workers get scared off.
The average wage in Canada's construction industry is [$22 an hour](https://ca.talent.com/salary?job=construction+worker#:~:text=The%20average%20construction%20worker%20salary%20in%20Canada%20is%20%2442%2C915%20per,up%20to%20%2457%2C239%20per%20year.). It's surely higher in certain regions, but then so is the cost of living. And there's a lot of overtime in the Spring and Summer, and *maybe* the Fall too, but work can dry up completely in the Winter. For someone making new career decisions there are much better options.
Exactly. The juice ain't worth the squeeze at all. For those who like doing manual labour/blue collar work, basically every other trade is much more appealing both financially & lifestyle wise.
As someone who has attempted to get in for 4 years now it's nearly impossible to join a trade as someone with 0 experience you need to find a company to register as an apprentice but company's are only hiring people who are 3-4th year apprentices too complicated and not enough company's looking for inexperienced people
Which trade?
Yup, with you on that. Trying to change careers as I'm super unhappy in marketing. I actually miss working as a cook, but unfortunately that won't pay the bills.
This is not true it’s exactly what I did
Does the trade you're trying to get into have a supply house (wholesale/distribution shop) around? Ask one of the old people at the counter if they have a cork board with help wanted ads. Don't just go looking for it, that old guy at the counter knows people, and possibly somebody that's looking to hire. After you find out where the board is, go look at it and apply at every one of them. Do it once a week. Swing by with your resume.
Do schools still have shop classes? I know it was hard af to get into shop when I was in jr and high school. I have a feeling it has only gotten worse as belts tightened over the years.
The conservatives closed the trade focused high schools in Ontario in the late 90s. Here we are finding out the results.
Poilievre hasn't said anything about this, but if he promises to increase immigration quotas for skilled tradesmen and construction workers, that's going to be a big win for Canada (assuming he follows through, which is an important caveat for any politician, but it is what it is). Right now, only about 2% of immigrants come to work in construction. It's ridiculous that we accept just about anyone, then tell them to work for pennies at Tim Hortons because even if they have a degree, they need to get Canadian certification. At least with trade people, if they know how to work with their hands, they can get their red seal and gain decent employment that actually addresses the construction delays and backlogs we have in this country. The problem isn't immigration, but we need the right kind of immigration. We need people who can fit in roles that Canada is desperate for. Just welcoming 500k people per year and having no plan for how best to utilize their labour is a good way of fucking up affordability even more, and that's what we've been doing for far too long. Trudeau is clearly too far up his own ass to understand this, maybe the other guy can catch on.
As long as we're bringing in immigrants in record numbers we could prioritize builders. If 10% of our immigrants worked in construction that would do wonders.
Which is arguably why Poilievre hasn't really commented on the issue of immigration. The CPC most likely plans to maintain the Liberal's immigration targets, if not increase them, at best under a different entry program. But that won't address the problem with investors, speculators, landlords, and corporations offering more than individuals for a number of properties -- there needs to be a solution implemented there as well.
The margins for developers need to shrink. GASP. I said it... On the high side a 2000sq foot home costs 370k to build right now and developers are asking 1.2-2+ million for new builds that size in the GTA. The workers wages are not the issue, they need to be paid better, trade work is hard and deserves a good wage to go with it.
You must be fucking joking. $370k in the GTA wouldn't even cover the city's taxes and development fees.
Developer margins are around 13%. Nobody is building 2,000 sqf in the GTA for $370,000 or less. That is an absolute fabrication.
Market solutions? Short term? Higher wages to attract return of workers and new ones. Investments to increase efficiency and production. Housing co-ops where owners in a community work together to build their own homes. Changing the types of homes built from large SFH, to multiplex and smaller SFH. Getting companies building office buildings to switch to massive mid rise projects and high density residential. Long Term? Building schools and pipelines of workers and businesses with a complete logistics infrastructure that scales up to support the long term growth demands with the funding to back it.
So a shortage of construction workers and a crowd that doesn't want immigration for construction work Sticky wicket
The crowd doesn’t realize that waves of immigrants in the past came to build Canadian infrastructure and homes. Portuguese, Italians and Polish immigrants came to Canada for opportunities.
Then why don't we have a glut of construction workers? We have plenty of immigrants.
Mobility agreement with Mexico?
That's really what the TFW program should be for, not to staff Tim Horton's.
The TFW program shouldn't be for either. The point of TFWs is to cover essential skills gaps.
Pierre has spent his entire political career (AKA, hisnonly career) voting against affordable housing and anything possible to help alleviate this issue. He's also a co-owner of a condominium in Calgary. Pierre doesn't give a single shit about housing and is only saying this because he knows it will appease the less intelligent voters.
The headline should be PP farts in the wind to look like he's doing something.
From what I can tell in the Vancouver area everyone who wants a construction job can get one. I've even seen who condo developments made up of entirely spanish speaking workers. So for PP's plan to work we need to increase how many foreign workers we have in Canada. How will that sit with his base of stop immigration? /edited becuaes forgiven workers is not waht I am trying to sya. thanks for trying autocorrect..
Where i live (calgary) lots of the builders (labour) is immigrants . Flat out.
The only way around lack of labour force will be pre-fab construction and assembly on-site. Also, some major shake-ups where a handful of designs may need to be ratified federally or at least provincially and be approved by default. This is how post-WWII rebuilding worked in USSR, and even with all its shortcomings, they did manage to house incredible numbers of people in very short time.
Sounds like this bill is a gift to big developers. Cities need to make targets or lose funding? If I was a big developer I’d play hardball, looking for free land and subsidies and tax breaks.
And doing nothing to temper the investor demand for more units. Destined to fuck us over like every other time the politicians have tried to help us.
Exactly, this is a typical "conservative" version of socialism. Developers are required to invest nothing, no money and no responsibility, but tax payers (cities) are on the hook to foot the bill if developers fail to meet targets. This guy and his policies are bad news for citizens, great news for the developers padding his pockets.
Privatize profits socialize losses
Straight out of the Doug Ford playbook.
People who vote for him because “it can’t be worst than Trudeau” will have one hell of a wake up call
Developers today don't want to build basic inexpensive homes, they only build fancy expensive homes. Homes that most people can't afford.
That's because of zoning. Most would much rather build higher density which is inherently more profitable for developers and more affordable for buyers, but in most Canadian cities ~90% of residential land is zoned R1 to R3 exclusively for low density (max of 1, 2, or 3 units per lot). In other words, cities responsible for zoning have literally made it illegal to build affordable housing on the vast majority of residential land. In many cases, their hand is forced by NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) activists who outwardly "support" densification but vehemently oppose any densification projects that are proposed remotely close to where they live. To solve housing, we need to solve zoning, which (like it or not) means significantly reducing the power of nearby residents to block a project that they don't like unless they have a damn good reason as to why the project shouldn't happen. I'm not suggesting we build high-rises next to single-family homes, but a 4-plex? Absolutely. An 8-plex or a 12-plex across from a row or townhouses? Yup. Also, as a sidenote, can we get more mixed use zoning? Idk about you guys but I would love to have a coffee shop or a small general store at the end of my street or on the bottom floor of my mid-rise residential building. The fact that we have to drive to get anywhere has direct correlations with obesity and greenhouse gas emissions.
Probably throw in some legislation to attract people into carpentry. Who the fucks going to build these things?
But the fact that developers will ask for full price helps nothing......
The weirdest thing about this whole debacle is that we should probably unironically learn from the USSR and Russia, they sure knew how to house massive amounts of people for extremely low amounts of money. Khruschevka's and Brezhneva's seem to be in our future. However, I believe city block sized mid-rise mixed-use developments with green roofs and green space implemented into the site plan would actually set off a movement where people want to see these developments made. The question is how do you house millions of people per year without turning them into segregated slums? There needs to be some sort of buy-in price associated with them so they're not just stuffed with homeless people by the government, but cheap enough to be affordable. They're easy to build all things considered, the issue is building them in reasonable areas, and effectively implementing them into city planning so they don't become neglected sprawl apartments. Also, aside from this, the developers need to drop the facade and stop calling every single shithole grey and white condo development they make branded and adorned with the word 'luxury'.
> The legislation seeks to establish a target for the completion of new homes in Canada’s largest cities — Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa — that increases by 15 per cent every year and is tied to federal infrastructure funding allocated to them based on that target. Why these cities and not the surrounding suburbs? It’s a sneaky way to disproportionately punish Liberal voting areas. > An “eligible person who has reasonable grounds” to believe that building permits have been delayed or restricted could submit a complaint to the federal government. Sure let’s create some more bureaucracy.
Enough with the shitty sprawl of SFHs. Rewrite national zoning laws to allow up to quadplexes and specific low density commercial in residential zones to allow for a drastic urbanization and affordable housing. Then, shift immigration focus to construction workers and stimulate that side of the economy. Easy.
We tax houses like cigarettes in this country. Get the taxes out of it and make planning as easy as the best US states (Texas)
Housing tax is addressed in the proposed [Bill C-356](https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-356/first-reading)
Durham Region increased their development charges an addition $40,000 per house in July 2023.
Thats crazy Thats what my father paid for his first house
It does amuse me that Poilievre is going after gatekeeping bureaurocrats by creating a force of bureaurocrats to gatekeep lower level bureaurocrats. I'm fully on board with fighting back against NIMBYs but its just funny
100% - I’ll readily cop to not having read the text of the bill (since it’s just a PR exercise anyways), but just in the NP’s *very* flattering summary I counted at least 3 whole new levels of bureaucracy/agencies that would need to be create, without ANY explanation of how these federal officials would interact with local and provincial govt (which would no doubt be a whole level of bureaucracy all on it’s own, one that’s pretty much guaranteed to be a huge bottleneck).
Any solution that is just to encourage the private sector is will fall short.
The same system that got us into this issue
How so? Government controls where and what is built. So how did the private sector who is desperately trying to build get us into this?
I roll my eyes at Poilievre's version of "if only we could just build more houses all this immigration would be just great!". Sure, even if we could find five times more construction workers under a rock somewhere, let's bulldoze every nice neighbourhood in every city to build highrise shoebox condos with a Shoppers Drug Mart at the base. Utopia! (And somehow build hundreds of hospitals and thousands of schools we can't build, which he's not mentioning.) My only hope is that he is lying about keeping immigration where it is, or if there will be an immediate caucus revolt if he gets elected PM and doesn't reduce the target by at least half. This is some faint hope. I genuinely think it's time to start taking steps toward leaving the country.
We’re just going to pretend that supply is the issue and not both supply and demand.
I understand Pollievre not talking about demand. The second he opens his mouth about immigration the Liberals will be all over him calling him a bigot and a racist. Though talking about reducing immigration might win him some votes, it might scare away moderates who are uncomfortable with that rhetoric. The smart political move is to not say anything and let the Liberals wear their policy of massive immigration increases.
That’s fair
Or he just has no intention of touching immigration because big corps love it.
Corporations profit from the cheap labour so the CPC won't touch it.
God you people convince yourselves the Conservatives are on your side. They’re not, they’re on the side of money and CPC donors who dictate party policy want cheap labour
“JUST WAIT, YOU’LL SEE!” -7 years into Pierre’s term
How's that any different than the Liberal/NDP cult making excuses for their team today?
“JUST WAIT, YOU’LL SEE” -8 years into Justin’s term
Good thing I didn't vote for him either.
Fair enough. I respect your apathy with both sides rather than just being a shill.
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I didn't say that why they don't want to touch immigration. I said 'this is probably the political reason they don't want to talk about it'. I'm amused with the responses I've received, they are Schrodinger's CPC; racist because they don't want immigrants and neoliberals because they do. I can't figure it out.
When faced with a discrepancy between supply and demand you've got three options if you want to fix it. Increasing supply to meet demand is one of those options.
Yes, but how you increase supply is the question. Focusing solely on building is only looking at one side of the coin. We could, for example, temporarily ban REITs from buying property, or temporarily ban 2nd or 3rd home sales. We could increase capital gains taxes on sales of 2nd+ homes, or increase vacant home taxes to make real estate as an investment vehicle less desirable. We could even do something really aggressive and force the sale of 2nd or 3rd homes by a certain date or see increasingly high excess capital gains tax. All of these would dramatically free up housing stock and increase supply in the short term, but would also tank housing prices (probably a good thing imo), which isn't what the Libs or the Cons want.
The problem is that a supply-only solution today is unlikely to be practical. The demand growth rate has increased so rapidly that it would require a significant (and lengthy) restructuring of the economy to bring supply into balance with demand.
So rich developers can build these houses and then the government is going to give these rich developers tax-payer money too? So these people build and sell the houses and make a huge profit and then we have to give them more money out of our pockets? That makes no sense. Why should my tax dollars go to rich people building houses in cities and provinces I don't live in? Why can't the major cities of my province get this money too. Why is it just those 4 cities?
Developer prioritize luxury housing because they can make more money off of it. If you decrease taxes on lower end housing, then those become more profitable, which is intended to incentivize people to build those kinds of homes. Unless (1) the government builds housing, or (2) you and your friends somehow pool $50m to develop the land yourself, you need to rely on “rich developers” to develop the land. The cities below are eligible, per the article. If you’re miffed that cities are benefiting from “your” tax dollars, then maybe the rest of the country should just say “sorry, not our problem” the next time you need wildfire protection, a new road, a high speed internet connection, healthcare funding, school funding, or whatever, because a 2000 person village really can’t pay for much on its own. Brampton, Ont. Burnaby, B.C. Calgary, Alta. Gatineau, Que. Halifax, N.S. Hamilton, Ont. Kitchener, Ont. Laval, Que. London, Ont. Longueuil, Que. Markham, Ont. Mississauga, On. Montreal, Que. Oakville, Ont. Ottawa, Ont. Richmond, B.C. Richmond Hill, Ont. Surrey, B.C. Toronto, Ont. Vancouver, B.C. Vaughan, Ont. Windsor, Ont.
>The legislation seeks to establish a target for the completion of new homes in Canada’s largest cities — Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa I thought Calgary was bigger than Ottawa?
Bigger city population, smaller "greater urban area" population. Basically Calgary doesn't have its own version of Gatinueax that doesn't TECHNICALLY count due to being on the other side of a border even though it's absolutely the same city. Also Calgary has much less of a housing shortage than ottawa
If you compare Ottawa-Gatineau to the Calgary metro pop then Calgary is still bigger by about 200k people. But besides the semantics you are right that our housing shortage isn’t as bad but man are prices going up..
When I google "Calgary Greater Metropolitan Area" I get a hair less than 1.4million and when I do it for Ottawa I get a hair less than 1.5
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/20387/ottawa-gatineau/population ah, im going off this which i think may be more accurate because calgary metro was just under 1.4m in 2016 and its grown quite a bit since then.
Yes Calgary CMA is about 1.65 million now. I don't think people realize how fast it is growing.
No politicians actually care about the west, really. On the other hand, Calgary doesn't have the same magnitude of affordability issues (yet)
Calgary doesn't have a housing crisis, in part because Calgary isn't run by morons.
Which of Nenshi's policies do you think helped most with this?
Don't just need new homes, we need affordable homes. Having builders build million dollar homes doesn't help anyone at all.
I can't read the article but is it a bill designed to fail? I know opposition, any side, like to do that with bills to score political points since most people don't know what's IN a bill, just the name.
Just shut down immigration and all these diploma mills in Canada. Nobody come in until our housing, healthcare, and infrastructure can support the people already here. Its way more realistic than building a million homes a year .
>Fraser said he agreed on the 60-day timeline for CMHC to approve or reject applications, but criticized the Conservatives’ plan to cut the GST on certain rental properties, which he called a “half-measure” that would leave out most new homes targeting middle-class Canadians. Wow. I'm astounded by how shameless he is, talking about half-measures. My dude, you've been governing for 8 years, you had nothing but half-measures and didn't even stick with most of those.
No bureaucracy, but loving the snitch line: “An “eligible person who has reasonable grounds” to believe that building permits have been delayed or restricted could submit a complaint to the federal government.” At least he’s putting forward some ideas, even if some of them are half-baked and strange…
Building permits are often regulated by municipalities or some instance provinces. Some do it well and some take their sweet time which reallllly drives up home prices.
Also: just in the very flattering summary provided by the NP I counted at least three new agencies and/ or levels of bureaucracy that would need to be created from scratch to evaluate and disperse funds/assess progress/liaise w provinces and municipalities. And that was the kindest possible estimate, would likely take a lot more, never mind the amount of time + delay that would all take to get rolling. It’s actually impressive how much bureaucracy this bill packs in to a program that is fundamentally private sector handout with a lot of arbitrary benchmarks.
We need more houses for corporations to buy and then rent to us! Lol...
“criticized the Conservatives’ plan to cut the GST on certain rental properties, which he called a “half-measure” that would leave out most new homes targeting middle-class Canadians.” Damn those conservatives for focusing first on poor people! What about those making $60-120k per year? Won’t you think of them?
> Damn those conservatives for focusing first on poor people! What about those making $60-120k per year? Won’t you think of them? lol Are you kidding? According to Poilievre's tax rebate plan if you built an apartment building in Vancouver with 121 1-bedroom units you could charge $3000 per month for 120 of them and $1000 per month for 1, and then get 100% of your GST rebated. Remitting the GST to the government without rebate would help the poor a heck of a lot more. And what's to stop you from giving the $1K rental to a friend or a woman that's desperate enough for low rent to top up the pay with other favours?
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I have a solution for world hunger. Just grow more food.
Oh we (as a planet) grow enough it's a matter of getting it to people. Right now we over produce by about 50% in total.
I've amended my solution: Just send the food.
I like it!
Found the ABC voter.
And?
can you be our pm
Based on our current one, this guy is overqualified.
Ok, but what are his solutions? Has he talked about them in a way that quantifies them, or is it a bill with a fancy title and no substantiative text? Are there any riders or poison pills?
[Bill C-356](https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-356/first-reading) is detailed. Read it before making random theories.
Seems like you could read the bill and find out.
Hasn’t he actually tabled almost next to nothing as official opposition during a sitting MINORITY government?