Toronto: Too Big to Fine? The Housing Accelerator Integrity Crisis

Añadido: 2026-04-29

[00:00:00]It's back.

[00:00:13]>> And there's a new person.

[00:00:15]>> I'm Carara. I'm a much more agreeable person than Paige. Normally, I work on the Missing Middle podcast with uh Mike Moffett at the University of Ottawa.

[00:00:22]>> Absolutely. What fun is that, though? I think we need to have more uh beef on this podcast.

[00:00:27]>> I just [ __ ] sat down. We haven't even eaten yet. Okay, >> that's that's better engagement.

[00:00:31]>> I'm sorry for yelling, first of all. I need to work on that.

[00:00:34]>> Embrace our inner Paige. Try to tell Paige why he's just wrong about things, you know.

[00:00:38]>> I don't know, Paige. That seems dumb.

[00:00:40]You're always telling me what to do, and I don't think that that's correct.

[00:00:42]>> Only cuz you're so insistent that there's the right way to do things, and you've nailed it. Most of the time, he's he's right that it's the better way of doing things, but is it the way we all want to do things? I don't I don't think so. All of this uh is for foreshadowing uh for boating, forewarning, or for an excitement, >> forplay.

[00:01:01]>> This is all foreplaying things that we're hoping to do with the Canadian Civil Podcast. Now, wider reforms, things going on in Canada, lessons learned, but also um some of the stuff that we disagree on, a bit of a debate about things, you know, so you can see the behind the scenes on us not being totally in alignment. We aren't some sort of cult operation. This is more of a hurting cats sort of a situation. And if you haven't seen it already, we've got a snazzy new website.

[00:01:27]>> Brand new robot photo. Brand new one.

[00:01:29]>> It's totally different. I don't know if you appreciated this UT, but I finally dumped the color palette down just a little bit from like fire engine to like faded fire engine.

[00:01:38]>> It's sophisticated.

[00:01:39]>> The color code was exactly what the villor's red is.

[00:01:43]>> Kind of been a nightmare to work with a color that is that saturated for the last 5 years.

[00:01:48]>> Doesn't play well with others. I'm a bit of a pastels guy myself.

[00:01:51]>> I have a problem with lemon piping.

[00:01:53]>> We're maturing into a maroon.

[00:01:55]>> Adding nuance.

[00:01:56]>> The basic plan with with Canadian civil like we've been hanging out for years, gotten to know each other really well.

[00:02:02]We have these things which we do agree on. Kind of an optimism, a desire to see like sensible technocratic reforms.

[00:02:09]Nothing like insane.

[00:02:10]>> Not like fire truck red in our graphic design.

[00:02:13]>> These are maroon level changes.

[00:02:16]>> Sorry. Am I interrupting too much? P.

[00:02:17]>> No, it's great. Last time when we did a recording, car was like, >> "Do I just let a man talk at me for like 5 minutes?"

[00:02:23]>> Oh, dear. The lady has foolishly attempted to join the conversation with a wild and dangerous opinion of her own.

[00:02:29]>> Is that the thing I should do?

[00:02:30]>> I'd be triggered because I think you were saying something worthwhile and I think I did cut it.

[00:02:34]>> Really? I don't think I was saying anything too worthwhile. So, for now, what we've done, we've set up this website. We're looking to fund stuff. We want to do more stuff together. We're not very political. We're kind of just technocratic.

[00:02:44]>> I appreciate that. There's no like a party affiliation with any of us. It's just like wherever there's good ideas, we'll follow.

[00:02:49]>> What we're hoping to do with this stuff, learn something about a reform uh somewhere or in Canada and then make sure that everyone knows about disseminate that information.

[00:02:57]>> Uh while there are many municipalities across the country doing interesting urbanism, housing policy stuff like there's a lot of creators that are covering this content, too.

[00:03:07]>> Edmonton made their housing rules more flexible. A pretty bad law just passed in New Jersey.

[00:03:12]>> That's kind of how the street cars work in Toronto. It's been kind of just interesting and fun to, you know, connect with other people covering similar issues in their own backyard. I mean, if you have a backyard these days, >> this is a this is cheating.

[00:03:24]>> So, I kind of love the idea that we're we're going to get together and chat every now and then. Definitely a uh a bit of a movement of people making videos to explain where they live and filling this void left by local news having such a hard time in this day and age. It's nice to somewhat formalize it.

[00:03:41]And today's episode is a perfect example of exactly the sort of thing I was super excited to talk about when Cara mentioned it. Cara, what is the deal?

[00:03:50]>> The deal is the >> housing accelerator fund.

[00:03:53]>> Housing accelerator fund.

[00:03:54]>> Housing accelerator fund >> where the federal government was like we need to fix housing because they were like >> housing isn't a primary federal responsibility.

[00:04:03]>> And then the general population was like nah, it's kind of your fault. Make some changes, make it better. And so they were like, okay, what can we do to make it better? and they can't really affect the supply side of things. So, they decided, >> if you want the federal government to show up with financial investments that will directly support your ability to build more homes, we want you to legalize housing. It's not too much to ask. The $4.4 billion fund was launched in March 2023 and is supposed to run for 3 years to be doled out as cities meet construction targets. So basically make deals kind of to bribe municipalities to make changes to make it easier to build homes because they can't actually make those changes themselves. Right now it's like every municipality decides on their own what they're going to do. Sometimes like in BC you get a province where the provincial government decides to make a bunch of changes across the province.

[00:04:50]>> The province bringing in new housing legislation. It will see many restrictions stratas can impose gone, including how many units can be rented.

[00:04:59]>> But that hasn't happened to most of the country. The part of the story that got me all fired up and I was like, "Paige, I'm angry." The Toronto City Council was like, "We will commit to doing all these major changes." And it was like, "Oo, this is exciting." A lot of the changes they're making are things I could never have imagined when I started covering this like, I don't know, seven, eight years ago.

[00:05:16]>> Rowousing, duplexes, >> triplexes, forplexes, >> five plexes.

[00:05:22]>> My favorite number is sixlexes.

[00:05:24]>> But then they didn't they kind of pulled back a little bit.

[00:05:27]>> So hang on now. What does delivering on the initiative mean?

[00:05:32]>> Six.

[00:05:32]>> Sometimes I spend the whole afternoon.

[00:05:36]>> Six plexes.

[00:05:37]>> Six plexes.

[00:05:37]>> Six plexes.

[00:05:38]>> It's not quite as easy as we thought it would be.

[00:05:41]>> Have we not then met that requirement already because staff have reported back?

[00:05:45]>> No. This council submitted a plan to the federal government that said this is what we will do in order to be eligible for the housing accelerator funding. You were here when we voted on it. You've been aware of this for over two years.

[00:05:57]the city council. I heard the discussion then they were talking about well like are we going to lose a bunch of the money that we were promised >> because once we sign the agreement we need to build >> if Toronto does not fully implement the above initiatives and milestones by the newly extended timeline. Consequences for non-compliance include cutting uh funding equivalent to 25% of the annual payment >> $30 million.

[00:06:20]>> If we want to get that money, the only option we have now is essentially to go down this road. Councilors were warned what would happen if council said no to sixplexes.

[00:06:30]>> The risk isn't simply to the funds that are coming in future years. There is a potential that funds that have already been dispersed to the city of Toronto could be clawed back.

[00:06:41]>> I I think it's important that we don't lose that cuz they're promising us a lot of money almost like half a billion dollars over over four years. We could lose up to 25% of it by not fulfilling what we promised. And of course, >> and the federal government has told us what we have to do, then why are we debating this?

[00:06:56]>> They didn't fulfill what they promised.

[00:06:58]>> We voting against this.

[00:06:59]>> I won't be supporting the sixplex jump.

[00:07:02]I don't think it's uh going to gain us anything from federal funding. I don't think it's going to gain us anything as far as affordable.

[00:07:10]>> And I will invite members of council to imagine an image of a pig.

[00:07:16]>> But you're not helping me. You didn't even create this chart. But nobody's favorite number is six.

[00:07:22]>> And then the federal government was like, "Okay, we're going to punish you.

[00:07:25]>> Toronto will lose $10 million in federal funds."

[00:07:29]>> And I'm like, "Really? Really? It's so minor." I almost got the sense that they're like, "Well, we have to do something because it's not really fair if we do nothing.

[00:07:38]>> I'm only talking about forplexes now."

[00:07:41]>> But I look at other places like Vaughan, for example, which is just outside of Toronto. It's where I grew up. They decided to make a bunch of changes and they actually like did things that were beyond what was asked such as cutting development fees by I think they did something like 40%. And they lost almost as much money as Toronto lost even though they got such a smaller amount just because they like didn't hit the right deadlines of when the changes were going to be implemented. And the and the federal housing minister is like well a deadline's a deadline so of course you're going to get penalized for that.

[00:08:09]But I'd be pretty mad if I was watching it up there being like, "Well, why why are we getting punished almost as much as Toronto, which like promised so much more and then pulled back?"

[00:08:18]>> Federal Housing Minister Gregor Robertson today praised Toronto's efforts to build housing, saying it will receive 98% of the housing accelerator fund, a total of $461 million. And so the thing they pulled up back on is they said that they would allow sixlexes everywhere in the city >> in order to be eligible for the next tranches of the housing accelerator fund.

[00:08:40]>> That funding was approved by the federal government with the commitment of delivering on all of the initiatives.

[00:08:45]>> Six plexes were part of it >> and that like that's huge. I remember when they talked about adding forplexes and I was like I could not have imagined that at the beginning of these of the supply conversation in Toronto because it was yellow belt where you could only build single family homes in most of the city and then they're like you could build forplexes everywhere and there's a whole other episode we could do about like whether you can actually build forplexes in those neighborhoods because there's so many rules and regulations but putting in sixlexes was like that's huge.

[00:09:09]>> Sixlexes are going to fit within the existing built form of forplexes which are already allowed as a right. The only difference is is that you're going to have two more families potentially living in a neighborhood where they otherwise might not be able to.

[00:09:22]>> Councilors representing suburban areas in the city said it would change the nature of the neighborhoods they represent.

[00:09:28]>> And they ended up deciding to do it in only nine of the 25 wards. Basically, like we will put them in Old Toronto and East York. We will not allow them in the inner suburbs. And they're like, that's good enough, right? I can see why because a lot of the counselors downtown and in Old Toronto are much happier to see that. There's historically has been some multiplexes, but at the same time, I'm like, that's where it's most expensive to live. That's where the houses are the smallest in in the city.

[00:09:51]So then why not allow smaller units within houses in places where those units will be more affordable?

[00:09:56]>> I can devil's advocate this guy. So looking into it, like I noticed uh the program generally was giving money to cities who were making forplexes legal.

[00:10:08]I think Edmonton was the only other one that I came across where they had a higher number. They did eightplexes actually as part of the agreement. So there is this kind of argument maybe that's fair because like Vaughn wasn't aiming that high falling short of like this very high bar still did better than Vaughn so split the difference sort of thing or or the fact that it's like well they did do it for nine of awards like I I wonder if there actually is a formula behind the scenes which we didn't see which explains the amount. But if they decided that they're going to give this amount of money for this what they're going to deliver, it feels a little bit weird to be like, "Oh, okay. You know what? You guys got way more money than any other municipality because you're going so bold and then be like, "Okay, but you're better than the other ones anyway, so may as well pull back on it."

[00:10:50]And also, forplexes in Toronto seem less dramatic than forplexes in Vaughn where it's all, you know, big single family homes versus in Toronto, like in the biggest city in the country, it shouldn't really be that dramatic. Was there sort of a a vulnerability in this fund from the beginning? You know, a city could honestly just do a bunch of promises, announcements, you know, some marketing about how they're going to change. They're going to promise to change and get the money and then sort of reneg on a lot of those promises.

[00:11:21]Like I wonder if it would have been a better solution to attach that funding to to tangible targets rather than bylaw changes. The liberal plan was basically like make the changes, you'll get the money over I think it was four years. So that way they could watch it be implemented and if people change your mind, they could take some of the money back and say actually you're not getting it and give it to other people. The conservative suggestion at the time, >> go team >> was to actually look at the results.

[00:11:46]>> Something new and strange in Canada.

[00:11:50]>> That's not serious.

[00:11:51]>> They were only looking at highc cost cities. I will require big cities permit 15% more home building per year or lose their federal infrastructure grants.

[00:12:01]>> So they're looking at places that have over 200,000 people and they had to be defined as high cost based on their formula of like price to income of the average home. And >> they have vowed to cut the accelerator program.

[00:12:12]>> Their method was more like the stick.

[00:12:14]They were like we will take away money that we promised.

[00:12:16]>> My plan went perfectly >> versus the Liberals were like we will give you extra money if you do these things.

[00:12:20]>> Congrats Liberals. Canada loves us.

[00:12:23]Again, >> I can see the argument for making it based on the results. Although they're trying to basically standardize it, make it that everyone has the same rules.

[00:12:30]>> The trade-off is sort of like, do you want to kind of get your fingers a little bit more into the kinds of housing and the types of changes we want to see rather than have a very broad brush of like here's just a number of housing. Meet it however you want. Is it high-rise? Is it middle missing middle?

[00:12:46]We don't care. Just hit the number. And I kind of like where they change the kinds of housing that should be built because you look in Toronto and like the number of units that have come on the market in the the last 5 10 years.

[00:12:56]Mostly small one or one plus onebedroom units that when they calculate it going like oh this many units have been built.

[00:13:02]That's great. But like a unit is not a unit is not a unit cuz it's like the family size homes that we we just don't have those. They don't make sense for builders to build them financially and so they just build whatever. And I know in Ontario we start accounting things like long-term care beds as housing. uh unit says which so that they can meet their goals. Like they've they just changed the definition.

[00:13:21]>> That tent over there.

[00:13:22]>> I have lived in this [ __ ] car for four years now and I wish I could say I'm going to miss it, but I'm not. Like living in a car kind of [ __ ] sucks.

[00:13:28]>> Yeah. And student residences which I'm like I can see the argument that someone's staying there, but I'm like that's not that's not what we're talking about. Like you just are trying to make it easier so you can check the box and go, "Yes, we did it."

[00:13:36]>> Yeah. Cook the books a bit.

[00:13:38]>> You have quite a number of municipalities where they signed the agreement and said like, "Yeah, we're going to pass a right to build forplexes. we're going to do this transit oriented development. I'm assume the feds modeled out what that would mean as far as like possible building permits that could be issued. Said, "Okay." And then the issue hit council.

[00:13:58]>> If you don't reszone your entire city to permit forplexes everywhere, you're not getting the money. I found that to be offensive, quite frankly.

[00:14:07]>> And council voted it down.

[00:14:08]>> I cannot support. and the feds had a much better time with the municipalities that had not received their first 25%.

[00:14:18]>> The vote was 8 to2 against allowing forplexes everywhere in the city of Windsor. At the end of the day, this application or this process will remain open until the funds are gone and so it may be funded at some point in the future.

[00:14:29]>> Windsor has missed out on tens of millions of dollars because its housing plan wasn't ambitious enough. The city believed that it would get $40 million if it hit the targets under the plan.

[00:14:40]Now that it's been rejected, the city will get nothing under the housing ACCELERATOR FUND.

[00:14:44]>> NOW YOU [ __ ] UP. YOU HAVE [ __ ] UP NOW.

[00:14:49]>> When no money had changed hands, it was like, okay, you're out. Great. We'll take that money and reallocate it elsewhere.

[00:14:55]>> With their choice not to move to more density in the manner that other cities have, the choice that I have to make is quite simple. Fund the more aggressive applications. Fraser adds Windsor is not alone. A few other cities will be denied for the same reasons, but most bought into the Liberals plan.

[00:15:10]>> The money that was reallocated did go towards bonuses. Like Calgary would be a good case of this.

[00:15:15]>> As of June 2025, I'm proud to announce that the city of Calgary has exceeded this target more than a year ahead of schedule.

[00:15:22]>> And so they're in store for more funding. That's a thing which comes in on the fourth year. It's a 4-year program. first year is money that goes towards like software theoretically and staffing involved. Then they start to measure permits. The thing that's interesting that's come in is because of things totally beyond the control of municipalities and developers, the increased cost of construction. The permits being issued are down at the moment and that's just bad luck. At present, we have 25,000 units of housing that we have already approved, but the permits are not being picked up by developers, and that's because of economic conditions.

[00:16:00]>> So, there's these cities that are not hitting those kind of final year performance metrics, but it's it's really >> kind of out of their hands.

[00:16:08]>> So, that might be a lesson for the program.

[00:16:10]>> There's no standard for counting like how do you count a unit? Some places count start, some places count like different points in the process. I've heard people make the argument in municipalities that it's unfair to go by completions. Even though like as someone watching this, I'm like, that's what I care about. How many homes are actually coming on the market, but if it's not a favorable environment for a builder to build, then like you can issue a permit, they're not going to build it. Some municipalities have been like, well, we'll limit how long that permit is good for. But really, like a lot of it's out of their control. And it's interesting how not standardized this is across the country, even across a province. So many municipalities do it differently, and it makes it really hard to compare. I mean it might be a matter of being transparent with the formula and being like here is the formula. It's a very big formula for how it works but you can see that we factor in here the overall national average of say permits being issued. If you're exceeding that even in a down period you're still going to get the money something that kind of recognizes the economic conditions.

[00:17:03]>> Well I mean the other thought I'm having is like isn't the ultimate goal here affordability rather than the the target? And I mean, you know that maybe this is my devil's point. Uh devil's what is it called? Maybe I'm the devil.

[00:17:14]>> The devil's advocate.

[00:17:16]>> Satan.

[00:17:17]>> If the market conditions have changed, if we're kind of entering a housing slump, and if prices are actually decreasing, uh arguably, have we not met the criteria of what all of these programs are about, just making homes affordable for people.

[00:17:29]>> Homes are not affordable, though. The way they measure affordability is if you go decades back, they used to count it saying, well, what percentage of someone's income is the cost of this home? And now they do it as how close is it to the average market price. It's not based on your income. So something being the average market price or you know 80% of the average market price like oh that's below market. That's how they they calculate it. But it's not actually affordable for so many people.

[00:17:52]>> It's interesting you bring that up.

[00:17:53]Sometimes we talk in housing supply economics about a kind of buyer of last resort of the government being able to come in a down period where there still is demand for housing and buying things.

[00:18:06]making sure that construction workers don't have three years out of work so that you don't have these oh and then in 10 years we're really screwed.

[00:18:13]Potentially it's a self-correcting mechanism. You throw money in to a municipality and they don't have many developers wanting to build anything.

[00:18:22]Well, they could reallocate it from building um pipes and sewers and streets and put it more into like oh well we'll build those co-ops we've been talking about for a decade. I've definitely noticed you're a public housing operator, non-market housing, I guess, entity. There may be some good deals coming your way.

[00:18:37]>> People see right now like that the there's a big slump in housing starts because people are just like, it doesn't make sense to build right now.

[00:18:43]>> The investors are gone from the market right now. These prices, it just it just doesn't make sense at 4% borrowing costs.

[00:18:50]>> That's essentially freezing the pre-construction market. Developers need to sell most of their units before they can put shovels in the ground. and you can watch how prices are falling. At the same time, it's like the situation's not fixed.

[00:19:04]>> Affordability has improved modestly, but it's still very unaffordable to the vast majority of people living here.

[00:19:11]>> And so, if we're not starting building now, we're going to see in a few years from now an even worse housing crisis.

[00:19:16]And I think people don't understand that because they go, "Well, it's dropping.

[00:19:19]Why are you still complaining about this?" I hear this all the time from a lot of people. I feel like there's sort of like yeah multi- facets to our housing goals here because part of it is affordability but part of it is also keeping this sort of production machine oiled and primed so that when demand does come up which you know likely will happen again uh knowing our country's demographics. Shout out to another great podcast out there that we're able to kickstart it up. I've certainly heard some people with theories about the current housing crisis who say like, well, there was a massive outflow of um workers and people leaving the sector following the financial crisis. I know for sure with modular housing. I've often heard the previous financial crisis blew the sector up.

[00:20:05]>> At one time, the future looked bright for the Pentictton Company, which specialized in modular buildings.

[00:20:10]>> So, we lost this factory built housing capacity.

[00:20:13]>> The plant closed its doors last week. A good government I think would have a policy of like we buy the dips there's always going to be needs for some sort of social housing right >> when we are in a housing lull ordering homes from these companies as social housing >> we we have this fund set aside and it's there to stabilize the economy as needed when those inevitable crashes happen.

[00:20:36]>> Yeah. The market is a bit depressed because of high interest builders, unless they get grants and a lot of support. A lot of builders that build rental housing, they're just not building.

[00:20:49]>> That was very and serious. Sorry.

[00:20:51]>> Yeah. Yeah. I had one kind of thought.

[00:20:54]It almost feels to me inherent to housing politics in general. Oftent times you'll see municipalities with or without the housing accelerator fund announce zoning bylaw changes and then once you know a handful of these new homes get built uh all hell breaks loose.

[00:21:10]>> Welcome back to the Vancouver Nimi Olympics.

[00:21:13]>> Let's go live now to day four of the public feedback on the transitoriented up zone. Go ahead up to 5 minutes.

[00:21:19]>> I'm guessing most of you don't associate yourselves with Trump, but the tactics are from the same playbook.

[00:21:23]>> The Trojan horse.

[00:21:25]>> Who builds a downtown next to a downtown? The tearing of the social fabric, drunk on highrises, >> vertical silos replacing neighborhoods, >> affecting people's mental and physical health.

[00:21:35]>> They live in Vancouver because they're here to connect with nature.

[00:21:39]>> What is the soul of Vancouver? Big question. Honestly, I don't know.

[00:21:43]>> Because obviously our net worth is tied up in our home.

[00:21:45]>> We're living in a permanent construction zone.

[00:21:47]>> Build, build, build. I disagree.

[00:21:49]>> If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world. Where's the character when everything is new and all more of the same? Unique character, >> heritage character, >> village character, >> great character neighborhood.

[00:22:02]>> Character character privatizing views impact.

[00:22:06]>> Not only will it destroy everything in our views and our neighbors views, but we'll live in perpetual shadows.

[00:22:12]>> Shadow shadowing that is a big problem in a city as stubbornly gray and dark as Vancouver. There will be no more view in Fair View and no more slope in Burard Granville slopes and I'm not that high.

[00:22:27]I'm in a mediumrise building.

[00:22:28]>> A couple dozen neighborhood residents complain and talk about it in the media and then uh the municipality pumps to break. I mean, I'll give one example here. I I think Burnaby is actually really quite notable and commendable for their ambition in their missing middle housing regulation. They were allowing up to fourtory tall multiplexes in what were traditionally single family neighborhoods. A few of them got built.

[00:22:51]People freaked out and they've completely scaled those back.

[00:22:53]>> At a recent Burnaby public hearing, it's clear these dwellings are drawing eye.

[00:22:58]>> Do not destroy any more neighborhoods.

[00:23:00]>> What we're seeing right now is just boxes.

[00:23:03]>> I can't use my deck.

[00:23:04]>> You know, it's a little embarrassing to talk about ED. So, I wonder if this is just a wall we'll run into constantly when it comes to housing changes is that especially when they go into established neighborhoods. You know, it's not even so much of a funding design thing, but it is sort of this neighborhood to neighborhood negotiation.

[00:23:21]>> That's why I think we really need to focus on the province, right? Like when you have a municipality, they're so responsive to the local residents association and because it's it's so hyper local. I think you're going to inevitably get that versus if you look at the provincial level, they're able to make changes across the board. That's something that I've been watching in BC, right? And then you take away that responsibility for like someone getting mad about this one building in their neighborhood that was traditionally something that the municipality would deal with. I think it makes a lot more sense. A big problem of housing in Canada is you have a lot of the three different levels of government all pointing fingers going, "It's your fault. It's your fault. It's your fault." And I'm like, "Can we like figure out whose fault it is for different aspects?" Cuz they're all responsible. But I do think when it comes to getting more homes on the market, a lot of this is a supply problem that is in the provincial jurisdiction. I would hope that the premier would see that and actually make some changes, but you need people to actually understand that that's where the responsibility is and hold them accountable and that's not happening in a lot of places. Definitely not in Ontario. Well, I think uh BC's case is interesting, and I didn't even realize I I just thought other provinces were doing this, but that the the province has come in a little bit more heavy-handed on top of the municipalities, strongly uh suggesting them to build more housing supply and in many cases actively going in and changing zoning bylaws. You know, of course, there was bill 47 around the uh transit oriented developments up zoning, the bill 44 around multiplexes. BC's new housing legislation means the affluent Shaughnessy neighborhood could have to densify.

[00:24:51]>> This as Bill 44 passed last fall and it enables denser housing options throughout the province with the hope of easing BC's housing crisis.

[00:25:01]>> But what I'm sort of seeing on the ground here is a real question around who has the I I guess the cultural jurisdiction over housing supply and policy. And I put cultural specifically because of course we all know municipalities are creatures of the province. Like the province technically has all of the right to come in and shake up the etch sketch of municipal zoning bylaws and redraw it as they want to. But of course over decades and decades of municipalities being delegated that responsibility of you know zoning bylaws there's become a real expectation that the cities know best. They're on the ground. They know what the residents want. I guess in their view they would argue that they would be the best suited and uh knowledgeable on how to grow their cities or not grow their cities in some cases and I think that's what this whole thing has triggered here in BC is like this standoff between province and municipalities around you know who's the best suited for that role.

[00:25:59]>> Are we going to have a tale of West Vancouver?

[00:26:02]>> Oh my goodness. Yes. In 2023 the the province started identifying well we all sort of joked that it was like the naughty list. Oh, >> I wanted to spend a little time and talk to you about >> the municipalities that were not building as much housing as they really ought to be like you know what municipality has a lot of demand but isn't you know keeping up with the supply anyway so so they identified 10 of them and you know two years later we have some really strong results of uh who's met those targets and who's woefully behind for example Victoria Port Moody they were identified and they've sort of well exceeded their targets like you know 150 50 plus% of what the province told them they'd like to see. Good for you, Victoria. Good for you, Port Moody.

[00:26:44]>> That makes me happy. And I write your name right back on the nice list.

[00:26:50]>> But then at the bottom of this list, West Vancouver and Oak Bay, >> Sleepy Oak Bay needs to build more than 600 new units. They're currently sitting at 37% and 26% respectively of uh the housing targets that the province I guess strongly suggested for them to meet.

[00:27:08]>> These housing targets put forward by the province mark a 30% increase in overall housing to be built in these communities.

[00:27:16]>> And at this point uh those municipalities are straight up just throwing in the towel it seems.

[00:27:21]>> A plan to increase density in the Ampleside neighborhood has been stuck in a three-3 tie on council for months. So the mayor of West Vancouver, Mark Seager, he said, >> "Picking arbitrary dates, arbitrary numbers, and trying to force their vision on local communities is fundamentally wrong.

[00:27:38]>> I'm afraid I have to write your name in the naughty list."

[00:27:41]>> And so you see these some of these municipalities like just taking like a fundamental opposition against these policies and really just telling the province to to bring it on. You know what I mean? Like just like let's play it out in the court of public opinion.

[00:27:54]The province recommends a lot coverage of 60% while Burnaby has scaled it down to 40 to 50%. The province recommends three-story buildings of at least 11 m tall. Burnaby reduce the maximum to 10 m.

[00:28:10]>> To start on day one to say that we're not able to hit those targets because X uh is not going to be an answer.

[00:28:17]>> So frustrating though because they like they're hearing from people who are living there and saying I don't like this. I don't want to see change.

[00:28:23]They're not hearing from people who want to live there. If you if you just let municipalities decide for themselves, who's speaking for the people who can't afford to live there anymore? If Toronto decides not to build enough homes, well, people are going to move to other places. People moved to Hamilton for a long time. Then they started moving further. Sudbury had a huge increase in housing cost. No one's holding Toronto responsible because not everyone wants to live in Toronto, of course, but there are a lot of people who do who want to live somewhere within reasonable commuting distance and there's no accountability for the lack of homes.

[00:28:50]the municipalities, they are very much influenced and mired in hyper local politics and often times city boundaries are a lot more arbitrary than the economic built reality of what a metro area really is. And Metro Vancouver is certainly a strong example of this. Like city of Vancouver, 600,000 people, but like the metro area is 2.5 million. by having these individual municipalities, 21 of them, make their own decisions about housing policy and how much supply they're going to introduce, uh, really does create some weird incentives. Like, if I have to be honest, building new supply can be painful, can be a lot of change. It means building out new infrastructure, putting a lot of debt on the books for a municipality.

[00:29:31]>> It's hard to change. Like, people don't like change.

[00:29:34]>> And it's really lucrative to just sort of sit back and say, "Hey, Bernaby can build the housing or Siri can build the housing. We'll just be the destination."

[00:29:41]But is that really fair? At some point does the province does a sort of a overarching body have to come in and take a more regional approach to this?

[00:29:49]And by the way, for context, West Vancouver is like the highest income/wealth bracket neighborhood in Metro Vancouver.

[00:29:58]>> Who would want to buy a property with a bus stop immediately in front of it with all that spewing of uh that which comes out of a bus, exhaust, etc. It is just entirely predictable that they would take this sort of stance. The the municipalities that really push back on these housing targets are the ones that really didn't want to build supply in the first place.

[00:30:20]>> Mary, I am out of control. Yeah.

[00:30:23]>> Walk to the Glenn Eagles golf course.

[00:30:25]>> I can do what I want, [ __ ] That said, I do have a little bit of a take on this because what's kind of baffled me about the province's approach to these housing targets is that they just continually expand the list to more and more municipalities in the province. And I thought this was really effective personally when it was like treated as the naughty list. Like if you get get on this list, we are scrutinizing you.

[00:30:47]We're focusing our efforts and picking our battles politically as a province with select municipalities. But now the list I think it's 40 municipalities long and >> the province has announced its fourth round of municipalities >> you know and it includes Vancouver it includes sur >> while Vancouver tops the list there are significant new builds required in other communities >> like the biggest municipalities in the province are now on this list of housing targets >> this time around the city of Burnaby is on the list and their target more than 10,000 new homes >> and from my observations like even the ones that are meeting the targets they don't like this provincial scrutiny. I question how sustainable it is for the province.

[00:31:26]>> I've always opposed uh the changes that the province has made to housing and the massive overreach they've made. In my opinion, we were getting the job done and we never had any issues. I'm really baffled about why the province has stepped in here.

[00:31:39]>> New multi-unit homes are being built all over Burnaby. This longtime resident says she wants to see more homes, just not this way.

[00:31:48]>> I definitely don't want it in my backyard, four stories high. No, I don't want it in my neighborhood.

[00:31:54]>> And the city is listening, reducing the size allowed for new multi-unit housing projects on previously single and two family lots.

[00:32:02]>> And we never had any issues had any issues any issues.

[00:32:07]>> They saw you doing something naughty.

[00:32:08]>> I mean, it's hard enough to pick a fight with 10, but like to fight like a 40front political battle against these municipality. I I just don't know how long that's going to work for. I wonder with the um housing accelerator program if maybe that's what's missing in the BC equation. I believe that Port Moody missed out on getting housing accelerator funding and if you had the system set up so the money goes to the province then you go like look we are coming down on you and telling what you need to do but we're flowing through this cash >> and that together creates a strong alliance. One example would be Edmonton when they were doing their 8plex um up zone when opposition started to hit from astute nimbies who realized what this would mean.

[00:32:51]>> When did eightplexes become the common >> with one neighbor saying she's ready to chain herself to a tree to stop development on this house behind me.

[00:32:59]>> I grew up in the 60s and and you know people when they got upset enough that's what they did. This new 8plex in the middle of a residential block may be one of the last in Edmonton if city council agrees to amend its controversial zoning bylaw.

[00:33:14]>> The people who are pro housing were able to say, "Hey, like we're just being fiscally responsible here. You're telling us we're not going to take money?"

[00:33:20]>> Council voted down the unit reduction, instead focusing on a proposal to cut the height of exterior walls by one meter, encouraging peaked roofs over flat ones. you know, all these things when you're debating them in public, you're adding forces and and backups and reasons to things. So, I think like BC's little stick heavy.

[00:33:40]>> You're so right.

[00:33:41]>> If there was a bit more carrot in there, it might have longevity.

[00:33:44]>> Yeah. Whereas the feds were a lot more carrot and perhaps not as much stick.

[00:33:48]>> Little symbolic $10 million stick, but that's about it. That's a twig.

[00:33:52]>> They did see a lot of changes. Like roughly half of municipalities in Canada got money from this. And some of the ones that didn't get it, it wasn't because they didn't want to change. They just were like too late applying and they're like, "The fund's empty." Quite a lot of places actually did see changes because of this. Whether or not it's going to actually lead to enough housing is like a whole other question.

[00:34:10]>> For sure. Looking into this at first when you hear the headline story about Toronto, you're like, "Ah, this is terrible."

[00:34:15]>> The council rejected a policy that would allow six plexes.

[00:34:19]>> Then you go like, honestly, that forplex up zone, this played a role. The policy prescriptions that the feds had, some were just like um what's it called? town homes, >> dental density, >> yeah, accessory dwellings in in other small towns and stuff. So, broadly, it it did cause this kind of upzone to Canada. I like the mechanism. I like having this kind of tool in the kit. So, I hope that with this they just kind of learn from a program and apply those lessons and just make it like 30% more effective next time.

[00:34:50]>> We will reinforce the housing accelerator fund. If there is sort of a big strokes hopeful change from this I is kind of this expectation that we now have that senior levels of government can and likely will get involved in local housing policy in the future. Up until the the 2020s, it was just much more unheard of for provinces and the federal government to actually be kind of getting into the details of zoning bylaws. And I kind of welcome that change. I mean, as we talked about before, it's great to have a broader perspective about our cities to counteract at least some of that hyper local politics that municipalities often have.

[00:35:29]>> It was a very frustrating period of time where the feds were saying, "Hous's got nothing to do with us while like cranking immigration and not really being involved in finding the solution to it." Right? It was nice when the program got announced. I remember reading through it and actually taking the time and being like, "Here are the formulas, here's the process and stuff and being like, "This is pretty good.

[00:35:47]This is about as good as you can try to design for the first time ever.

[00:35:51]>> It's not a bad first draft.

[00:35:52]>> Yeah, we've had the first draft through and we can see some of the issues. Now, there is I don't think it would come to any anyone's surprise a province in Canada that did sign an agreement with the feds because they don't let the feds uh negotiate directly with municipalities.

[00:36:07]>> They got to be different.

[00:36:08]>> Which weird province in Canada wouldn't be doing what everyone else did?

[00:36:12]>> It's not Manitoba. It's not Alberta.

[00:36:14]>> On my bingo card. Actually, Alberta would be a good guess.

[00:36:16]>> Quebec, obviously. It's kind of funny.

[00:36:18]There was this um one particular kind of federal funding for a non-market housing project in Montreal. And I was like, how did the VA morale get the money from the feds? And lo and behold, the housing minister like literally shows up just to sign the agreement. Quebec is, I think, a example of probably what we don't want to do. We muddled in Quebec housing supply with deeply affordable housing.

[00:36:45]So, the money, $900 million from the feds, combined with $900 million from the province, and it's literally all going to build non-market housing.

[00:36:54]>> The activists marched to the former horse racing track to make their demands for the future project known.

[00:36:59]>> It'll build about 8,000 units. That's what's estimated, which is fine. You know, it's like 200 something a door.

[00:37:06]>> Is that what the housing accelerator fund money went to?

[00:37:09]>> Yes. You know, generally the what I've read on it, the projects are moving ahead. It is being spent, but it's not what this was supposed to do.

[00:37:18]>> No, >> the housing accelerator fund everywhere else in Canada removes regulatory barriers and allows increased supply. So looking at Toronto for example, where you have a quarter of the amount that was spent in Quebec, the changes are modeled to add tens of thousands of new units, like 50, 60,000, something like that, far in excess of the 8,000 literal units that were built in Quebec. I think it's really bad for public discourse when we mix these two things. As you guys both know, you end up with certain people in the public only seeing a non-market unit as being affordable.

[00:37:53]These six buses will be will not be affordable units.

[00:37:56]>> But people desperate for affordable housing are being hoodwinkedked into thinking all these towers will provide what they need. But tower clusters do just the opposite. They raise rents all around.

[00:38:09]>> Really, like what we're trying to do on the supply side is is make it so you don't need to get a nonmarket unit.

[00:38:15]>> People mostly want to live in homes that they own or can rent but not have to go through the city to be to get a below market home.

[00:38:21]>> Both of these things are great. I mean, there are there are people who have permanent physical disabilities. There are people who are in really tough situations and they need a kind society to provide them with housing to help them out. It's just a little unfortunate when you throw money into an ecosystem that's really expensive to build housing in. We just get less non-market housing, right? It would be good to have both these programs happening at the same time. And I'm hoping that when we move into the next iteration of this, there isn't the kind of confusing of what the money's supposed to be for.

[00:38:55]>> There's a lot of people who the market is never going to work for them. Like it just it's never going to. And so we need to have social housing. When people are advocating for that being the only thing we should focus on, I'm like, well, what percentage of the population do you think should be living in those? And like I think most people would not think the majority should be. I I've never really come across people who think it should be the majority. So then it's like, well, that's not going to solve the problem for everyone.

[00:39:16]>> I have um spent a long time working on trying to set up um a housing co-op. We all have to follow the rules that the municipality has. Just because you're a non-market housing developer, it doesn't mean that you get to have, oh yeah, non-market, let it rip. Here's a skyscraper. And you don't need to put in smoke alarms.

[00:39:34]>> When the cities are building, when it's their land and their and their projects, they still have to follow the rules, and they still run into the same problems.

[00:39:40]The 40-unit complex is set to be built on city-owned land on Elmbridge Way. The project to house Richmond's homeless hasn't yet been approved by city council, but neighbors are already distributing flyers sharing their fears.

[00:39:54]>> This kind of person homeless, maybe they have the drug problem.

[00:39:57]>> What do you think that the kids will think >> doing both programs? Weirdly enough, they do feed into each other. So like the situation uh in New Zealand when New Zealand passed its broad nationwide upzone, there was a state housing developer building housing. They were tasked kind of old school, you know how politicians do like, >> we will put 100,000 Kiwi families into their first home.

[00:40:20]>> You know, oh well, I'll build two two two bazillion homes for our party. Oh, well, three bazillion homes for our >> It's time to build 1 and a.5 million new homes.

[00:40:28]>> 1.2 million homes.

[00:40:29]>> Half a million new homes. 1.5 million >> 300,000 a million >> 3.9 million by the end of the decade >> over the next 10 years >> by the end of 2030 >> in the next 3 years >> by 2031 >> you know how I did that thing right the state housing developer in New Zealand set about that task of like just literally we the state will build the homes and they ran into tons of barriers at the municipal level and they went back to the national government and said the task you've given us is almost impossible because it's so hard to get building permits for our housing. And then the national government passed regulations that have made like housing in New Zealand, look at the charts.

[00:41:08]>> What we've seen in Oakland, this widespread zoning reform that successfully enabled more supply has also had price effects flow through at least into into rental prices. Having an entity like Build Canada Homes, you know, this new government initiative, >> Build Canada Homes, a lean, missiondriven organization that will accelerate the development of deeply affordable housing projects.

[00:41:32]>> They will hit those things and I think it's good if that kind of culture gets back into the government. the institution has knowledge of what needs to be fixed. And if they go to the province to sign an agreement for funding, they can go like, well, we know because we literally were trying to build homes that this province has an issue with, you know, I should say blank. I'm doing these like facial expressions which do not work well for an audio format.

[00:41:54]>> Is this not also going to be a video format?

[00:41:56]>> Hey everyone, don't do your video if you want to see Paige like do a face. We're in the section basically where we're talking Canadawide reform and policy takeaways. So it's like what do we do next time? Sign agreements with the province. There is an issue if the feds come in and they say something like we want missing middle that's going to be our priority. The truth is that if you throw that at Saskatchewan, you are doing that like >> big city Ottawa coming in a thing, right? If you do a flow through to the province and you say like here's the provincial money, what other policies you're going to pass? And it's like, oh, we're removing parking minimums, secondary suites, da da da da, they can be like, okay, >> well, I think that there's value to saying that we should be allowing this to be built. Like they're not saying Saskatchewan, you have to be building these. Like that's not happening.

[00:42:42]They're saying you have to make it legal to build. And that's a very big distinction, right?

[00:42:47]>> Yeah. And I mean, it's funny when you think about a place like West Vancouver.

[00:42:51]Sometimes, I don't know about you guys, but still to this day, I'll be like picturing kind of wrecking balls coming in demolishing the neighborhood.

[00:42:58]>> And that building that the kids are in, well, that has got to go.

[00:43:01]>> But it is like, no, no, your neighbor has to literally sell the home to a developer. It's not like it's being bought out from under them. There is a kind of secondary mechanism that is on there as well. It's very uh disappointing seeing some of a lot of the scaremongering and commentary about sixplexes about how it's this, you know, monster thing that's coming for your house.

[00:43:22]>> Yeah. It has to be that people want to change and this is why like I get frustrated sometimes when I hear well people just want to live in the suburbs.

[00:43:28]You look at where people have been raising their families and traditionally they've gone to the suburbs. So that's where people want to live. But I'm like do we know that? Are they doing that because that's the best option available to them given their circumstances, given like what they can't afford. There are a lot of people who do want to give their families that opportunity to like grow in a suburban neighborhood and that's totally fine. But I just I reject this idea that that's what people want. It's just not legal to have these other options and it hasn't been until quite recently. So, we need to see those come on the market to see if people will make changes, especially if the cost is right.

[00:43:58]>> Well, and especially cuz like it's not urban renewal. Your house isn't going to be turned into an apartment building.

[00:44:04]>> No. Like you can still live on your suburban lot, have a backyard pool, all this other stuff. You know, your neighborhood will change, but it's not going to be like demolished overnight.

[00:44:13]You're not being forced out of your home. You know, you can still have like that lifestyle and you might find it's kind of nice. There's a there's a shop on the corner now cuz there's some mixed use.

[00:44:24]>> I mean, not in Toronto because they followed that precedent that was set with the housing accelerator fund with sixlexes and said, well, we're going to introduce some neighborhood retail.

[00:44:33]Well, where are we going to allow it?

[00:44:33]How about the same nine wards that we said you could build successes and also have neighborhood retail >> to run.

[00:44:39]>> I always say I I don't hate bike lanes.

[00:44:41]>> No, my brother Rob actually put more bike lanes in than David Miller.

[00:44:45]>> What I compare bike lanes to is swimming with the sharks.

[00:44:48]>> We're not going to take away parking for bike lanes. My heart bleeds for him when I hear someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day.

[00:44:56]>> So frustrating. Like you're just going to be the same thing over and over. And I have said before that I am willing to exclude Atobbico from any of the uh good reforms that like urbanist reforms that we're seeing in city council because it seems like if it personally affects Doug Ford, it will get overridden.

[00:45:11]>> In a few weeks, our government will introduce legislation to ban speed cameras in Ontario. To protect taxpayers and drivers, >> it turns out several vehicles assigned to Ontario cabinet ministers have racked up more than $3,000 in charges. The Ontario uh chiefs of police put out a statement. Uh they say that speed cameras help.

[00:45:31]>> He's doing his job. If I go to my doctors and I'm eating this ice cream, he'd say, "Doug, stop eating ice cream."

[00:45:37]All I'm saying, you want to slow down traffic? Stay tuned. Next week, I'm going to show you.

[00:45:42]>> The same driver was also charged in a collision on the 401 that sideswiped Premier Doug Ford's vehicle.

[00:45:48]>> He hit me right on my door going over 200 km an hour. They're racing from point A to point B. You know, it's just terrible. They they need to have their license taken away.

[00:45:59]>> Hi, by the way, how you going to catch him?

[00:46:01]>> Like, you just look at what he's doing with bike lanes.

[00:46:03]>> People do not want the bike lanes, >> the ones between his home and his office, >> especially Blue or West.

[00:46:09]>> He wants to be those the ones he's fighting to get rid of. If we could just exclude that, fine. But like, can we let the rest of the city as into this whole thing and to be able to legalize things?

[00:46:18]I hear a lot of counselors talking about like property rights, but when it comes to like I want to have the right to do what I want to do with my property, which might include putting another unit on it, all of a sudden they're not into rights of the property owner at all.

[00:46:29]>> It's a forplex, a multi-unit dwelling that Premier Doug Ford has staunchly opposed.

[00:46:35]>> There's going to be a lot of shouting and screaming. That's a massive mistake.

[00:46:38]It's off the table for us.

[00:46:39]>> Another lesson would be hard ass being very hardline about it. being like, "We'll sign you a contract saying we're going to give you the money, but we're not giving you the money until you pass the laws." Don't create a situation where you're going to court, which like a few places nearly have with the feds.

[00:46:55]The feds can easily um get money back that they've put into cities uh as well because uh cities buy a lot of stuff and don't charge a lot of GST, so they get pretty big tax refunds. So there's really no excuse for the feds being like, well, you know, it's not worth it.

[00:47:12]You know, it's very easy for them to just be like, don't refund $20 million of tax >> to recuperate the cost if they don't follow through. You're saying >> the feds can get back in like one tax bill the amount that they gave Toronto.

[00:47:24]So it's quite easy for them to do the clawback. I think they want to operate in a more like a you can't negotiate with terrorists way. be like, "Look, if you signed up for six plexes and you backslide on this, have the consequence be really painful." Be like, "Oh, we're going to lose everything. We'll lose all the transit oriented stuff. We'll lose all the everything else that they'd signed up for." I think by being like, "Oh, you can kind of opt out a little bit." You're just leaving this kind of crack open that understandably because of the force of nimism, which is just like one of the most powerful forces in Canada. uh that is a escape hatch that the cities and provinces will fly through at a regular basis if you don't make it really painful.

[00:48:06]>> And the federal government can kind of like focus on what they can actually directly affect with housing because one thing they're trying to do here is try to tackle a part of the problem that they don't really actually have jurisdiction over. So if they could focus on the parts where they do have jurisdiction. So it could be like looking at the taxes and charges that they charge when it comes to building new homes. They can look at population growth, which is something they have been doing. You know, clamp down on how using diploma mills as a way to get immigration. That's something that was under their nose the whole time and they didn't do anything about it until the outcry became too big. There's another idea that like my colleague Mike Moffet just pitched which was a the idea of a national housing secretariat. So, it's someone who's watching all the different levels and trying to standardize things across jurisdiction trying to align some of that the building codes.

[00:48:49]>> I really like that idea. Like sometimes it's just, you know, just the phenomenon of appointing a SAR, you know, like a >> we love SARS these days.

[00:48:56]>> Here in BC, the province appointed like the downtown east side SAR or like it's like they just appoint one person to study this really complex problem. It's not a department. It's not multiple.

[00:49:07]It's like just one person. And I was like, so uh like is this the right way to do it? But the the more I learn about government and how how all of these different departments don't really talk to each other, often have very dysfunctional relationships, like it kind of makes sense that it would just be like one human being might actually have the most objective sort of evaluation of a situation and might have some of the best advice for how to resolve it. But uh before I get too far down that tangent, I'm sort of reflecting a little bit right now just on this question of what can senior levels of governments do about housing policies that you know up until very recently were really within the purview of municipal governments. And I think kind of in our conversation I feel like I've sort of learned of a number of different approaches with the federal government. Yeah, you can offer a carrot. you can, you know, offer money, cut a check to municipalities who are willing to change up their zoning bylaws and maybe in some cases achieve a certain target or whatnot. But I think in BC's case, it was here's a command like build this much housing and change these specific bylaws. In my sort of observations, I think BC has in some ways bitten off a little bit more than it can chew. I think they've created a very multiffront battle with the municipalities. I mean, first by picking 40 municipalities for their naughty list instead of like 10 and also introducing a ton of new housing legislation that has run into barriers on the ground that their one housing ministry can't individually sort of litigate and you know resolve. I I was just having this thought of like yeah like if if if this is something that culturally we've come to expect that you know is a local government problem I think we do have to be especially tactful when governments higher levels of government do interfere or intervene on these sorts of things and and to me it all kind of boils down to narrative like who's got public favor in this and I think from the provinces side of things uh they have to really carefully make sure that everyone knows this is about unlocking housing supply because the municipalities have had a long time to you know build housing and due to some sort of distortions on the ground because of hyper local politics uh they haven't but I think on the municipality side what they're really trying to push is like this is arbitrary targets and law changes made by a senior level of government that doesn't actually know what's going on on the ground. doesn't understand what we have to deal with as coun as a council when it comes to zoning and reszoning applications.

[00:51:42]>> Whichever narrative wins out is going to really kind of form how housing policy looks like moving forward.

[00:51:50]>> It's kind of weird to say, but this benefits from diffusion of responsibility.

[00:51:57]You know that when an angry citizen comes in and shakes their fist at the counselor, >> I moved to this area to get away from this density and now you're proposing to bring the density closer to me.

[00:52:07]>> It's kind of nice for them to be able to say the feds and there's a contract signed and my hands are tied and then also the provincial government and this law and being able to kind of kind of help shoulder the burden. You kind of need all three levels of government stepping up and being prepared to take the blowback cuz they can't vote you all out of office. It is very hard for one level of government to win this alone.

[00:52:28]The feds can provide the money. The province can provide the standardization and you know municipalities can give feedback. You might decide like yeah we do have some historic municipalities where you have exceptions and carve outs and we also might need to accept that.

[00:52:42]You know it's always frustrating watching the rich people get away with it but like h you know >> if it means the rest of us could have nice things. Yeah, they kind of always do. And in the end, if we can get something signed that will like mean housing prices drop over the next 10 years.

[00:52:56]>> There's a pragmatism versus the idealistic changes obviously, right?

[00:52:59]Like you have to go with what will actually work. Our job partly is to educate people to help people understand that cuz there is a lot of like politicians will use this to try to score political points sometimes to be like it's this person's fault.

[00:53:10]>> Who's got ideas?

[00:53:11]>> Oh, I've got an idea. Less houses liberaling is so easy. If you want to see more homes in your neighborhood, if you want to be able to live in in your neighborhood and you hear about a building going up, like go to the public consultation and and advocate for it so it's not just people who live there being like, I don't like it. It could be calling your MPs or MPPPS or MLAs to be telling them you want to see these changes. Like I think that people have to understand that if they put pressure on politicians, politicians will act.

[00:53:37]>> Talking to your MPs and MLAs and and that sort of thing. If the federal government for its purse strings ability can give you this motivation of like hey there's money available so you can go meet with your city council and be there's money available you know like it's just it's one more tool to uh to kind of get the uh engine of housing uh as as UT has described it uh lubricated and functioning a lubed up engine of housings. Yeah, we did say there would be foreplay.

[00:54:32]Well, that's how it works. So, that's all for today. Thank you for joining me.

[00:54:38]And in the meantime, until next time, you be