Long-term planning is in short supply at Queen’s Park. The premier routinely puts his short-term electoral interest ahead of the long-term public interest.
Imagine the good we could do with $1 billion per year to build affordable rental and workforce housing, instead of $1 billion per year to eliminate licence plate sticker fees?
Serious leadership means thinking about what it means to live and work in Ontario beyond the next election cycle. And it’s past time we had that kind of serious leadership on the housing challenge.
Politicians and housing experts across the board agree that we need to build more homes if we want to make housing affordable. Every political party has committed to a 1.5 million target over 10 years, with a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation analysis showing that this number should be even higher.
But we’re not on track to hit this target.
The Conservative government’s own 2023 budget predicts 79,300 homes built in 2024, down nine per cent from the previous year’s projection and less than half the pace we should be building at.
Fifty years ago, it took a young person five years to save up a 20 per cent down payment for an average home. When Premier Doug Ford was elected, it took 15 years. Now it takes 22 years across Ontario, and 27 years in the GTA. And it’s getting worse.
As more people move here, constrained supply will continue to result in higher prices for renters and aspiring homeowners alike. Young people will increasingly be forced to leave our province and housing will increasingly be unavailable for the workers that we count on for core services.
It’s an issue of generational fairness and it hamstrings our productivity. For all the talk about getting it done, Ford talks and little gets done. And like so many other provincial problems, it’s caused by short-term thinking.
The Conservative government is obsessed with splashy, controversial announcements: MZOs, strong mayoral powers, Greenbelt development, to name a few. But when it comes to implementing a serious plan that would address Ontario’s housing supply shortage, its attention has been fleeting.
In December 2021, Premier Ford appointed a housing affordability task force composed of experts in not-for-profit housing, Indigenous housing, real estate, home building, financial markets and economics to provide recommendations that would address this crisis. This group brought forward an expansive list of ideas touching on exclusionary zoning, red tape reduction, and incentives that would encourage municipalities to approve new builds.
Housing Minister Steve Clark embraced its ideas, at least rhetorically, saying that the report would bring the government, “practical, forward-thinking policies that unlock and fast-track all types of housing for all types of Ontarians.” But it was all talk, little follow-through.
The recommendations put forward would have fundamentally changed the way housing projects are approved, resulting in faster construction and increased density. Yet predictably, municipal leaders — including Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie — expressed “serious concerns” and called on the government to consult more before proceeding. On the eve of an election, the Conservative government took a step further and abandoned the report’s most valuable ideas.
We still have exclusionary and NIMBY zoning rules, lengthy reviews and bureaucratic red tape suffocating supply. Density targets for municipalities on undeveloped land have actually been reduced, with the government fully embracing sprawl.
Fixing these problems would have required principle, integrity and most importantly, a long-term outlook. It’s the type of outlook I’ve tried to bring to politics throughout my career. And with an absence of leadership in the premier’s office, we have an opportunity to lead.
That means removing all barriers to sustainable growth to build gentle density everywhere (e.g. fourplexes) and greater density near transit. It means using government as a vehicle to build and protect non-market housing, including affordable rental, workforce, and co-op housing. And it means treating housing as a home first rather than simply an investment, with phased-in rent controls, a beneficial ownership registry, and taxes for investors that don’t add new supply.
In all areas, the province should lead conversations with other levels of government, including by rewarding municipalities that hit their housing targets with top-up infrastructure dollars. Where municipalities fail to meet those same goals, provincial rules should apply instead so that homes get built.
As I travel across the province, the acute lack of housing affordability and availability is a top issue everywhere. Young people don’t see the same future here in Ontario that their parents did.
We can’t keep saying no to housing. And we can’t keep kicking the problem down the road.
It’s time for Liberals to be builders, not blockers — today, and into the future.
Nate Erskine-Smith is the MP for Beaches-East York and a candidate for leader of the Ontario Liberal Party. The Trillium has invited each of the candidates to submit an op-ed on a topic of their choosing.
