If Canada wants more houses built, policies must make it attractive to build more houses

Tax deductibility of mortgage interest would be a good start

Canada has more vacant land than the land area of most of the countries on Earth, a massive forest industry, and no shortage of gravel or concrete. It is hard to imagine a country with more of the resources needed to ensure an adequate supply of houses for a country Canada’s size with a tiny population of only a bit more than 40 million.

So we do we have a housing shortage? Look no further than the clowns we elect to municipal, provincial and our federal government.

When my ancestors came to Canada from Ireland long before Canada existed as a country, they build a log home in Moose Creek, Ontario as sound as inhabitable today as the day it was built. No regulations, no zoning restrictions, no building codes, no “gatekeepers” with their hands out for bribes or kickbacks from developers, no bureaucrats meddling in their desire to build a home that suited them, and no “do gooders” who pretend Canada is short of “green spaces” when our country has 3.5 million square kilometers of forested lands compared to 16.6 million square kilometers on the entire surface of the Earth.

Now try and get a building permit. There is a tract of land owned by a developer a couple of kilometers from my home in Collingwood, Ontario and in 2005 the developer submitted a plan of subdivision to build approximately 700 new homes in our fast growing community. That plan has yet to be approved. Instead, town council after town council has been “negotiating” with the developer to alter the size, nature and density of the home he wishes to develop. Give some retired popinjays a seat on town council and open the door to this nonsense. That is municipal politics in Ontario.

Instead of home builders, we have heritage committees (heaven forbid new homes should be better than old ones); “save our greenlands” activist groups; corrupt planning departments; and, a pile of “NIMBY” residents who don’t like development to spoil the tranquility of their private driveways with yellow equipment.

Prime Minister Trudeau published a recent plan to build 3.87 million new homes. Theatre. Trudeau was elected in 2015, has had nine years in office, and done nothing to advance residential construction. Now that it is an election issue, he publishes a plan that involves more regulations, not fewer. Hello? No crisis should go to waste and now the Liberal government that has done nothing but exacerbate the housing shortage since it came to power 9 years ago is going to be our “saviour”? LOL.

Free markets work. Get rid of the barriers to home construction (e.g. zone more land for residential construction including millions of acres of Crown land; abolish planning departments role beyond ensuring new home plans conform to building codes; and, permit anyone to build a home that conforms to building codes on land they own without intervention by town councils who can put their “official plans” where the sun doesn’t shine.

If it is profitable to build homes and markets are unrestricted, millions of homes will get built. Supply will bring down prices and people banking land to garner huge gains when it is “rezoned” after years of lobbying building departments or bribing officials to get agricultural land rezoned to residential will end when zoning restrictions are simply lifted and land owners can build what they want where they want.

Official Plans imply Town Councils know what people want. In reality, people know what they want and when they are free to act, they will build better communities than anything a Town Council of people who think they “know better” will come up with. Retail and commercial development naturally follows residential development and towns grew up without planning departments for the first hundred years of Canada’s existence without a bureaucracy’s involvment. Toronto, Montreal, Halifax and Vancouver became cities after they had been developed by individuals who decided they were nice places to live. It was only after they became cities that regulation made them less attractive by imposing the wishes of municipal policiticians on the citizens of those communities, justifying their involvement by claiming without it the cities would suffer “urban sprawl”, poor public transportation, inadequate utilities such as water supply and sewage treatment, not enough parks and recreational areas, and congested traffic.

Nonsense. People won’t build communities no one wants to live in. Developers will build parks, retail and utilities because the market demands them. Community planning by people with a profit motive will produce a better result than planning by an elected boffin wanting to stay in office long enough to get an indexed pension and hoping for some under the table payments to promote the interests of friends and family.

I think Pierre Poilievre will bring common sense back to Ottawa, dismantle the bureaucracies that strangle growth, cut taxes on corporations (which are really a tax on their customers since corporations collect taxes, not pay them, by passing them on in price), encourage oil & gas development and put an end to the pretense that CO2 causes climate change. Solving the housing crisis is as simple as reducing immigration levels to what our housing stock can accomodate, getting rid of the barriers to residential construction, and letting free markets work. Tax deductibility of mortgage interest will take the pressure off many households struggling to make ends meet, reduce the effective cost of new homes to new home buyers currently suffering from the unaffordable level of house prices.

Balancing the federal budget will do a lot to bring down interest rates as will higher taxes and royalties from oil & gas companies freed from the shackles Trudeau put on the industry without, and the higher revenue won’t require higher royalty or tax rates but will flow from higher levels of activity. A few new pipelines and expanded LNG export facilities will be a bonus.