July 29, 2025 • 51 mins
Tonight on The Brian Crombie Hour, Brian interviews Eric Lombardi. Eric stands at the forefront of urban development and advocacy as the founder and president of More Neighbours Toronto, a volunteer organization committed to ending the housing crisis. Professionally, he specializes in strategy management consulting in the finance and technology sectors. Eric talks about our housing crisis and inter-generational inequity.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The views expressed in the following program are those of
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Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Brian Crombie Radio
and I've got Eric Lombardi back with us today. He
is a president of an organization that really is trying
to stand behind more housing in the Toronto Werry. He's
also a writer with the Hub. He's been quoted and
written in The Toronto Star and I've had the pleasure
of interviewing him before from a political standpoint, and he
(00:39):
really believes that housing is one of the major issues
facing particularly young people today, and he's just recently written
a couple of fasting articles about this topic. Eric, Welcome
to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Hey Brian, thank you for having me on my.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Pleasure So tell me you're saying in Toronto, the largest
and most talent rich city in the country, real media
and incomes for young people fell four point five percent.
Yes incomes fell, while real rents doubled and real home
prices tripled. The result is a stark generational divide, a
province that works far better for those who bought early
than for those trying to build something. Now, that's a
(01:13):
pretty stark picture that you're painting, sir, I.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Mean, and it is. The math itself is stark. Over
the last twenty five years, we've been seeing, especially in
regions like the GTA in Toronto, but also areas like
Vancouver where the high cost of housing has made it
a lot harder for young people to actually achieve the
milestones of adulthood that were more easily available to other generations.
(01:42):
And we have this way of acting like housing is
a mystery that we can't solve it. We don't understand
why the math of finding affordable places to live has changed.
But the reality is we're actually very much aware of
all the major challenges with our housing sector, and it's
(02:05):
largely our own choice to not have both better policy
that makes housing more affordable, but also to allow housing
to become more affordable. And I think with the number
of events that we've seen take place, particularly with Trump
and the American administration, the attention has fallen away from
(02:28):
how damaging the high cost of housing is to both
my generation but also I think to the future of
the country.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
If we don't fix it, well, we've got to try
to figure out what your solutions are. But some of
the statistics that you quoted are pretty stark as well.
You said in two thousand, Ontario's real gdpeper capital was
five percent higher than the rest of Canada. Today it's
three percent lower. From two thousand, Ontario's real gdpeper capital
grew just zero point five to five percent, forty percent
(02:56):
less than the rest of Canada. If Ontario to matched
it's pre two thousand growth director, the average on Terarin
would have an income twenty two three hundred dollars higher today.
Since two thousand, real incomes for Canadians it's twenty five
to thirty four rows by twenty percent nationally but only
six percent in Ontario. And in twenty twenty two youth
unemployment unemployment in Toronto was ten point nine percent. Today
(03:19):
it's sixteen point three percent. Canada needs a prosperous Toronto. Well,
what do you suggest? What are you going to do?
If you were in charge? How would you change things?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
So? I think when you look at productivity and economic
opportunity overall, what you want is a system that both
attracts talent in order to raise productivity, you want capital
investments to occur here and ultimately you want to move
people in goods as efficiently as possible. So when you
(03:50):
have housing markets like you do in Toronto, what you
end up doing is you raise the premium that talent
both a costs, but also you make harder for that
talent to locate near where the opportunity is, and so
people end up being mismatched with the types of jobs
and careers that they can have relative to where they
can afford to live. So to me, the fundamental issues
(04:13):
in our region are number one, the insufficient development of
our transportation network. I think your listeners and Miss Suggle
agree that traffic in this region has become a nightmare.
It's certainly worse than it was fifteen to twenty years ago.
I know I was as a kid then, but I
don't remember it being nearly as bad as it is today.
(04:36):
And so we really do need to invest far more
in our rapid regional metrorail. And this is something that
we're actually particularly bad at. So if you look at
the projects that are ongoing at the provincial level, they
cost multiples of what they do compared to other international jurisdictions,
and the result is actually we're building less than we
(04:58):
need to be on housing. If people can't imagine themselves
having a great quality of life and future here, and
people's self perception of their own quality of life is
almost directly tied to what they think they can afford
and the satisfaction that they have with where they live,
then they're going to make other choices. They're going to,
(05:19):
you know, if they don't have the opportunity in Ontario,
they're going to go move to Alberta, or they'll move
to BC or the Maritimes.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Going to What's happening already, isn't it. We've got out
migration from Ontario, from the GTA to Alberta, Mississauqia has
gone down in population, Toronto's gone down in population. We're
actually people are voting with their feet already, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
They already are. And I know from you know, I went,
I started engineering at the University of Waterloo, and you know,
even myself included over seventy percent of my class ended
up in the San Francisco Bay Area or the United
States in some way, shape or form, because even in
cities like San Francisco, with their high cost of living,
(06:01):
the higher salaries from a more competitive job market more
than makeup for it, and so Toronto as a region
has I think failed to realize the many opportunities that
it has. I think the enigma of this region is
(06:22):
not that it's not prosperous, and not that there aren't
opportunities here, but to the extent that we have all
the fundamentals for a very prosperous place going our way,
and we're not really achieving what we could with it.
And I think the drive down of our potential is
(06:46):
really sad, and in a lot of ways it is
self inflicted. And it's not just housing and transportation issues,
but housing in a way is an issue that makes
or breaks the success of everything else that you try
to accomplish. If people are not satisfied with both where
they live and the opportunities that they have to live
(07:08):
somewhere that they would like, a lot of other things
become a lot harder.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So, you know, the situation that you've described for young
people and the greater Trona is very stark. You've talked
about how unemployment has gone up, You've talked about how
incomes have gone down. You've talked about housing prices have
increased fairly dramatically, transit is one small but important change.
But what that's going to do is is only allow
(07:34):
people to live in Georgetown or Aliston to commute into Toronto.
What else? What else do you think needs to get done?
Your head of an organization called what More Neighbors Toronto?
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Yeah, so More Neighbors is housing focused. So I can
tell you some other things that I think candid needs
for competitiveness at large. And this isn't just about housing issues,
but in some ways the cultural attitude that has created
our housing situation has also created our lack of competitiveness.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Cultural attitude, Yes, so tell me about the cultural attitude.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yes, is big stuff. So I would say that, you know,
it's not just Canada. This sort of afflicts the entire anglosphere.
But we have this sort of not in my backyard
disease where whenever someone proposes doing anything at all, there
has to be multiple rands of consultations. Many stakeholders need
(08:28):
to be engaged, and the default of our regulatory systems
and processes is often to get to know. And if
you also look across many of our industries, we actually
do have many protected sectors protected not directly through subsidies
or or tariff barriers, but through regulatory barriers. So if
(08:52):
you look at like financial services, for instance, we have
six fairly dominant financial institutions in this country, and then
you know about four hundred other very small banking institutions
sort of littered across the provinces. Every province has its
own regulator, and the federal regulator certainly makes it hard
for smaller financial institutions to compete. So you end up
(09:16):
with a sector that ends up being less competitive than
it otherwise would be. And when you have less competitiveness
within a sector, you have a deterrent to investment. And
that's that because what you want is in business investment,
because it creates new opportunities for employees. Business investment also
(09:37):
results in what are called capital goods, so things that
exist and depreciate, and for a whole other variety of reasons,
this trickles down into the salaries that people have available
to them, et cetera. And so this culture where we've
allowed so much of our processes and regulatory systems to
(09:58):
be apture by incumbent winners or you know, this is
called regulatory capture, has become a major problem. And to
the extent that regulatory capture is the defining challenge in housing.
You know, plastating existing longtime homeowners over those who might
come after them is actually a challenge that afflicts basically
(10:21):
every other sector of Canada's economy in a similar way.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Wow, that's quite the thesis, you know. Doesn't a local
homeowner have a right to know that the community that
they moved into and invested their life savings in buying
a house in, isn't going to change too much, That
there's not going to be too much traffic, That there's
not going to be a big, forty story building right
(10:46):
next to them that casts a shadow over their backyard.
That there's going to be enough spaces in the local school,
that there's going to be enough space in the community center,
in the library, That there's not going to be too
much traffic, that that the that the building isn't going
to be built too close to their house. Like, don't
local owners have a right to say no to group
(11:11):
homes in their community, to h to hospitals in the community,
to to big apartment buildings in the community. Are you
saying that you don't think that local homeowners should have
the right to to object to things that are going
to change the flavor of their local community.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
I think the why how widespread the available vetos are
are the problem. Look, I'm not saying that people should
have no say in the future course of their city
or even their their neighborhoods at large, but we end
up in this situation, especially in the GTA, where we've
(11:46):
restricted so heavily what anyone can do within a neighborhood
that you end up having, Hey, you need to build
a fifty story building on your main arterial road, and
that's going to cause construction, and that's going to cause
traffic on the major three fair and that's going to
cause traffic fattle a whole bunch of other places as
well once you get into it. And so we've found
(12:08):
ourselves in an odd situation in which this idea that
we have say in our community has meant that we've
asked all of our politicians to take away our individual
property rights to build sensibly the next incremental amount of density.
And in cities like Toronto, where we just went through
this huge battle over legalizing six plexes and many of
(12:30):
its inner near downtown suburbs, where you know, we're really
talking about very modest scale buildings. But if for not
allowing those modest scale buildings that actually don't have major
traffic effects because they're off typically off street, they're close
to public transit, you end up creating this system that
(12:54):
no one ends up being very happy with. You know,
I don't look at like a story building going up
on a block of sort of historic retail and seeing
a whole street gets sanitized and saying ah, yes, like
people should be thrilled about that, But the outcomes are
happening in ways that upset people, and they don't realize
(13:16):
this because of how intensely restrictive we are about what
is allowed to be built within a neighborhood itself. And
so I do think that there is a level of
growing up that needs to happen for a lot of
homeowners to say, look, you should have some say in
the growth of your community, and things shouldn't change so
(13:38):
rapidly that you don't know what place you're in anymore.
But a society that's growing is a society that's changing,
and the idea that the places that we live shouldn't
change should actually be scary because that means that they're
losing opportunity, that there's no new people or new ideas
that we're not getting a recycle of cap role that's
(14:00):
getting invested in our infrastructure. So we've had this era
where a lot of people I think, got to have
their cake and eat it too. And I'm not saying
that like people shouldn't have their cake and eat too.
I guess what I'm saying is, you know, sometimes you've
got to let other people have a bit of your cake.
(14:20):
And I think it'll be every everywhere will be a
happier place.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
This is gonna be a fasting conversation tonight with Eric
Lombardi talking about you know, nimbiism versus yimbiism effectively and
housing regulations. But also he's suggesting that really is a
part of a cultural attitude that we have that pervades
our society. It's almost sounds like libertarianism lob, which I
(14:44):
don't think Eric's talking about, but certainly a far less
regulation in the ability to construct, whether it's housing or
pipelines or mines or or highways or whatever. Stay with everyone,
this is gonna be an interesting conversation tonight. Back into.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Stream US Live at SAGA nine six am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Wellcome back everyone to the Brian Crimby Radio ar I've
got Eric Lombardi with us tonight. He is the president
of an organization called More Housing Toronto, which really is
one of those organizations that's trying to say yes to
development and housing at times, not all the time, but
sometimes versus the typical attitude of nimbiism that he's described
a lot of residents have and an exert to stop
(15:40):
by developments taking place. But he's also raised this issue
of an attitude of regulation and of control, and he
called it within the anglosphere of our desire to stop
things or regulate things. Eric, there's a really interesting book
that's created a lot of attention to the United States
(16:02):
called Abundance, written by some some people think democrats so progressives.
Other people think that they're they're neoliberal people maybe sort
of centrists or or actually, in Canadian terms, progressive conservatives
that have talked about how many liberals and progressives in
(16:23):
the United States in the past have really got good
at stopping things through lots of regulation, but have got
really bad at actually building anything. And and and so
therefore what we've done is created a system where we
can stop really well, we can regulate really well, but
what that means is that we don't actually ever build anything.
And in the book they talk specifically about this issue
(16:44):
in regards to housing and talk about homelessness and say
that actually the progressive cities in the United States have
more homeless, which is sort of counterintuitive. One would think
that that that that in those more progressive cities, they'd
have better policy toward homeless and so therefore they have
less homeless, But in fact San Francisco and New York
(17:07):
have far more homeless. And and yet the cities that
are more conservative and open to development, and they use
Houston as an example, end up having a far greater
amount of housing supply and far less homeless. And it's
almost as if the best social program you can have
for people is building a home and building it cheaply
(17:30):
and making it available and so people can get off
the street. And it's sort of counterintuitive.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
It says that that.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Regulation and and and and you know, liberal attitudes actually
create more problems and and and just sort of allow
housing to be built solves problems. I don't know if
you've heard about that book or read.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
It, but I have read a big abundance, so, like
you know, I'd say I want to start off with
the two things. Just want to issue correction. My organization
is more Neighbors Toronto. There's always more homes Mississauga, which
would be like our sister organization in Mississauga. And you
should definitely check them out because they do great advocacy
work as well. And you know, abundance is sort of
(18:11):
funny because it gets accusations of libertarianism, which is sort
of what you mentioned earlier. I'm not necessarily against regulation,
but I'm against regulations that are made up without true
purpose or true evidence that there's a problem to begin
with in the first place. And in many ways we've
allowed sort of i'd say, like reactionary or pearl clutching
(18:35):
about fears of certain things to allow us to create
so many rules that when you add up all of
the rules, they don't actually end up producing the types
of results and outcomes we would otherwise agree on, even
as a democracy. And so then it goes to say, well,
are those regulations themselves working towards the outcomes that we
(18:57):
want as a bigger picture view, And this is sort
of the argument that abundance makes, which is to say
that actually, in many ways, you know, overregulation is conservative
the biggest you know, the institutions that inhibit themselves the
most as a result of their regulations are actually public
(19:20):
bureaucracies in a very big way. For example, if you
look at processes almost always to build public housing, whether
it's in the United States or it's in Canada, you
would almost always be better off just the government purchasing
privately built housing then the public itself building public housing
(19:44):
in terms of what the cost outcome is, which I
think would shock a lot of people. And you know,
abundance goes into many of the reasons why because they
wear on so many secondary and tertiary conditions as a
result of processes. You know, you have to use certain
vendors that meet certain criteria for you know, diversity inclusion,
(20:08):
et cetera. Not that all of these secondary goals are
bad per se, but once you wear on all of
the additional requirements, you get far from what you're actual And.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
They talk about not only the requirements, but the reporting
on the requirements and the evaluation of the requirements and
all the red tape that the requirements to rely on.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yes, and so you know my view, I don't consider
myself you know a libertarian, I consider myself a liberal
right markets should broadly be competitive, and consumer surplus should
really be the driving force of what happens within any
given sector, and the government should exist to be an
(20:46):
alternative service provider so that people ultimately have options. And
so governments in many ways have stopped seeing themselves as
agents of delivery and have instead become agents of control.
So instead of building lots of public housing themselves using
(21:06):
their own lands, et cetera, in many ways they've fallen
back and said, well, we're actually just going to regulate
what everyone else does. And I think that there is
a more positive sum approach that we can achieve as
a society in which government seeks to be excellent in
providing its own version of many public goods, and I'd
(21:27):
say housing is certainly one of those goods. And there
should also be a very private, competitive, private sector that
is I'm not going to say perfectly free, but freer
than today, and also trying to meet the demand of
its consumers. And then I think, ultimately, as you know
ordinary people, you know, you, myself, others, we will have
(21:50):
the benefit of having a plethora of different options when
it comes to the types of goods and services that
we need to consume both as our fundamentals, whether it's
housing or healthcare, as well as you know, non fundamentals.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
So you know, uh, Prime Minister Kearney are new prime
minister is running into this in regards to this new
uh you know, build stuff in Canada Bill five uh
C five and Bill five in Ontario, where you know,
some people would argue this is what we need to
have projects of national value actually constructed in Canada, and
(22:29):
other people would argue that it tramples over indigenous rights
and UH and environmental rights and and and and and
reports and regulations and studies that need and should be
done to ensure that we're not trampling on environmental issues
and UH and and indigenous rights. Where do you come
out on.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
That, sir? So you can put me into a new
third column on on this item. You know, we also
saw that we had Bill five and seventeen in Ontario
and in many ways they were similar to the federal
Bill five. And I think the crux of these bills
that we're seeing is that the government's in Ontario and
several other provinces as well as a federal government are
(23:06):
recognizing that their approval processes for major investments in energy,
mining and major national infrastructure are so arduous that it
basically makes all proposals non viable in its current form.
And so what our governments at both levels have said
(23:26):
is well, actually, for things that we see as in
the national or provincial interest, we will grant exemptions to
some parts of the process in order to expedite approval
on things that we're saying are strategic priority. I think
what is missing as a part of this conversation there's
really two things that makes me a little fearful. I
(23:49):
think Number one, our disposition towards investment, particularly if we
think our economy isn't going well, should be about getting
to yes and that most investment ultimately is in the
national interest. And this means that you can't just grant
yourself exemption processes. So you know, a bunch of senior
liberals can decide what the national interest is and prioritize projects.
(24:14):
You want a private sector able to see a system
that gives them certainty that if they make these investments
and follow certain steps, that their projects will be treated
fairly within a reasonablemount of time, such that the risk
graded return on their capital is lower and that helps
them make an investment, and so that work of actually
(24:38):
changing the underlying regulatory system has not been done. There
are signals that there is interest there, but my fear
is by granting themselves an easy ministerial exemption path, that
they're not going to do the hard work of actually
reforming regulatory systems that are so hostile to investment in
the first place. One other point I would add to
(25:00):
this is it is not a great system in which
any proponent of any project, particularly large ones, will get
benefit by forging a closer relationship with political leaders. And
I think you know, whether or not these things are
abused in this way now, it does open the potential
(25:23):
for forms of corruption that I think that we as
citizens should be aware of. I think, you know, the
conversations around environmental protection and indigenous rights and consultation are
important to have, but I think we also need to
have them in the sense of they're always trade offs,
and we might be trading off too much for these
(25:44):
stages of projects, and the outcome, which is the investment itself,
and you know, creating good jobs and economic opportunity kind
of takes a back seat. And I think there's a
way to get to yes for everyone involved, but it
means doing the systemic change and the legislative change and
(26:08):
actually changing the regulatory system. I think right now we're
really taking an easy way out with all of these.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
So bottom line, you say, we get to know reasonably easy,
but it's very difficult to ever get to a.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yes yes, and we're seeing that now. The way to
get to yes is for you know, the ministers and
government to think that your project is cute, and that
is also not a good outcome in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You know, it's interesting. I work for a very successful
billionaire Jim Patison at one point in time, and his
comment was, Brian, you got to stop negotiating. Sometimes you
should just take yes for an answer and get the
deal and move on.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Fascinating.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
We're going to take a break for some messages and
come back with Eric Lombardi and when we come back
to when and ask him about sort of his involvement
and people of his generation's involvement, because one of the
things that comes out in many of the articles that
Eric you've read written is I think part of the
problem is this sort of generational divide and maybe it's
and you don't say this exactly, though, I think you
(27:07):
effectively said that there's too many older people involved in
and controlling politics that are making decisions for society, and
not enough people like you that are involved. Stay with us, everyone,
We'll just be back in two minutes.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
No Radio, No Problem stream is live on SAGA ninety
sixty am dot cl.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Welcome back, everyone to the Brian Crombie Radio our. Eric
Lombardi from More Neighborus, Toronto. He's also an author in
the Hub. He's a financial consultant in the financial services industry.
He's a really smart guy. But I got to ask you, Eric,
you know, a lot of the stuff that you've been writing,
the articles that you've been writing, the posts that you've
been making, have really talked about this sort of generational divide.
(28:00):
How you know people that have got homes, own homes,
have made this huge amount of appreciation on their homes
and have developed a substantial net worth, and unemployment is low,
and that young people are really challenged. Unemployment as you
described as high, real growth in wages is low, if
not negative, and they can't afford their homes. You know,
(28:23):
I had a fascinating interview with a chief economist from
a deputy chief economist from CMAC that said that when
I graduated, homes were three to four times medium household income.
Today they're fifteen times medium household income. So they've gone
up from three to four to fifteen five hundred percent
in a generation or maybe a generation and a half.
(28:45):
What's the problem? And you know, I think that one
of the things that I get from some of your
writing is that you think too many people of my
age and older are running the system and maybe we
need some young people like you involved. Is just the
fact that people like you aren't voting, aren't running, aren't
in politics, aren't in charge part of the problem.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
I mean, you know, there's always you know, there's always
a generational lens to politics at all times. Right if
you read a book like The Fourth Turning, you know,
there's actually a lot of predictions about how certain generations
come in they have inclinations because you know, generations have
common experiences that form common outlooks and perspectives. And I
(29:30):
don't necessarily think that there's like an inherent hostility from
you know, an older generation to give people. I do
think that you know, easy, it's easy oftentimes to vote
things that are in your own self interest and not
necessarily always see, well, what are the trade offs that
(29:50):
I'm making? And I think that what we've seen over
the last you know, thirty years of policy making in
Canada is that when trade offs are considered there consider
at all. The impacts that a certain decision will make
on young people at a systemic level are either an
afterthought or just not consider it at all. Right, So,
(30:11):
for example, like if we look at the housing system
that we have in the GTA, many of the problems
and challenges that we have trickled down from decision in
the two thousands I'm called the Growth Plan. And in
that growth Plan we created both growth centers. So we said, hey,
here are a couple of areas where we're going to
allow much more high density development and we created a
(30:33):
green belt. So we said, you know what, we're going
to put a limit onto suburban sprawl. We're going to
build the less single family homes. We determined that you know,
they're bad for meaningful finances, et cetera. Well, in many ways,
that was a very convenient decision for all the generation
that had bought especially in that decade where housing was
(30:56):
quite affordable and got to feel good about the environmental
choices that they were making for the region. But also,
you know, didn't have to have any trade offs like, well,
where we're going to build new housing, well, still not
in our neighborhood. We didn't you know, go sort of
end single family zoning when we did that, and so
you know, well, we've created a land monopoly now within
(31:17):
the GTA as a result of these choices. And even
though that was considered a little bit at the time,
it didn't really it wasn't really considered in a major way.
And so who sort of felt the consequences.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Of you're actually agreeing with Doug Ford that we.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Should all that we made. I'm not necessarily saying I'm
a greed like, you know, pay the green belt or anything,
but I'm saying that all choices have consequences. And if
we're going to say, hey, we want to preserve the
green belt because we value this agricultural and environmental land
around the GTA, then what you've got to say is, well,
maybe we need to be less restrictive about allowing different
(31:54):
types of housing to be built in our old suburban neighborhoods,
But that trade offs was barely acknowledged, and I think,
you know, even to some degree, a lot of people
benefited because all it meant is that their property values,
through their land value, are now in a constrained environment,
which means that they are going up. And even when
(32:16):
we talk about you know, things like hey, well, you know,
should the price of house income down, even the framing
that we hear from politicians as well, you know, so
many people are relying on their home equity for you know,
their retirement income, and we don't have the conversation of all,
you know, people prepared better for retirement, Like maybe it's
you know that their standards of living that we need
(32:38):
to question more than you know, the young person who's
expected to pay a premium their entire life afford to
pay out, you know that that equity. And even when
we talk about the potential for lower home values, the
people who are going to be most harmed by that
aren't people who've owned homes since you know, the nineteen nineties.
(32:59):
It's going to be people who in the last five years.
So either way, you know, the burden of change in
the system actually probably follows more hard on young people.
No matter what, then it does some older Canadians, but
you would never know from the framing that we have
in these dialogues. And so that just goes to show
you the strength of you know, your generation in just
(33:23):
in politics. And I'm not saying it's unexpected or that
it's malicious. It's just a fact that we ought to
recognize because if we do, it means that we might
force ourselves to grapple with the trade offs that we're making.
I mean, I think oas Is or old age security
(33:43):
is another great example of a system that's kind of
like this. Anyways, I can talk about that as well.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Eric, Eric Lombardi, thank you so much for joining us.
I really think this is an important conversation that we
need to have because I do think that there is
a generation inequity that has occurred in Canada today, and
I think it's wider than even what you've talked about.
I worry about the fact that we're leaving you with
deficits and debt and and underspending on military and an
(34:12):
underspending on infrastructure, housing affordability issue, lower incomes, lower productivity,
lower prosperity, climate change, potential risk of AI. I could
go on. So you know, I congratulate your involvement and
encourage you to stay involved. Sir, We're going to take
a break for some messages and I'm going to come
back with a couple conclusionary comments in just a minute.
(34:35):
Stay with us, everyone, Eric really appreciate you joining us.
Thank you of.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Course, stream us live at SAGA nine to six am,
dot c A.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Hi, everyone, welcome back to the Crimby Radio Art. You know,
I've got this show where I have an opportunity to
interview a lot of very interesting people on a range
of different issues, and then chat with you about those
interviews and about my conclusions of some of the concerns
that they've raised and some of the suggestions that they've
got for what we need to do. And I think
that Eric's conversation today about you know, the housing situation
(35:19):
in Toronto, in the Greater Toronto area, in the Lower Mainland, Vancouver, Montreal,
et cetera, it isn't fair to young people. It isn't
fair to people that are trying to start out. That
there is this intergenerational inequity that we've got going on.
And I don't know if people my age, the Baby
Boom generation, or the generation acts have really given thought
(35:42):
to the situation that we've created for our young people today.
And as I think about my kids and the potential
that maybe I'll have grandchildren at some point in time,
hopefully in the future, I think this is something that
we've really got to give a lot of thought too.
And so I wanted to go through ten issues that
I think that the generation of people that were born,
(36:02):
you know, prior to nineteen eighty, you've really got to
think about. In regards to the people that are born,
most been born more recently, and housing in affordability is
issue number one. I firmly believe. I think that we've
gone from a situation where housing prices relative to MEETI
and incomes have gone from like three times to twelve times.
(36:25):
You know, some people have mitigated that, or said we
should mitigate that by the fact that interest rates have
gone from double digits down to low single digits, and
I think that's true. But even if you think about
how long it takes to borrow, to save, to afford
a down payment, and or to pay off a mortgage
to afford what you're actually paying in regards to mortgage payments,
(36:50):
property taxes, and all the other fees housing is completely
unaffordable today for the young generation. I think that we've
talked about development fees being the most regressive tax that
our taxation system has, where we are making newcomers and
students and young people that are first time buyers of
homes pick up the vast majority of the cost of growth,
(37:11):
when all of society should be paying for some of
that growth. The fact that you know, we've got the
homes already and they need the homes, and we need
them to want those homes and have those homes because
we need them to be part of the employment sector.
We need them to be staffing our companies, to staffing
our restaurants, to employing our people, to creating the taxes
(37:32):
that are going to pay for our healthcare, et cetera.
Growth is something that all of us should be funding.
And it's not fair. You know, the fact that there's
a couple of billion dollars sitting in a reserve fund
in the City of Toronto because they've collected those development
fees and haven't been able to find justifiable ways to
spend it. It's wrong. The fact that film fees have
gone up by one thousand percent in less than ten years,
(37:54):
or something like ten years. It's wrong. So housing affordability
is issue number one where inter generational inequity exists. And
I've been told by numerous people that we are the
first generation in history that are leaving a worse future
to our children than was left to us. And every
other generation previously always gave a better future to the
(38:15):
next generation. And if we're not doing that, we've got
to give some real thought to the ethics of that,
to the financial sustainability of that, to the legality of that,
which really leads me to issue number two, which is debt.
You know, particularly in the United States with this beautiful bill,
but also in Canada, we are growing our deficits and
(38:36):
debts in an unsustainable manner. The debt to GDP in
Canada supposedly, you know, two and a half percent. It's
over five percent in the United States. But it's going
to be increasing in Canada with our commitments to defense
spending and all the other things that we're spending. And
you know what, the employment well, bad for youth, is
(38:57):
not bad everywhere else, not high. And our GDP well,
maybe in recession on a per capita basis, isn't in
recession overall now should be the time where we are
fiscally prudent and maybe going into surplus or at least
reducing our deficit. But we're not. And you know, I
worry about what if there is a recession, what if
(39:18):
there is another pandemic, what if there is a war
or a big crisis. Do we have the financial capacity,
the fiscal capacity to address that? And I worry we don't.
So I think that we've got to be thinking about
is it ethical for us to be leaving these deficits
that seem to you know, continue forever and grow forever.
And more importantly, the accumulated debt that when you add
(39:39):
federal and provincial debt together, supposedly we're one of the
most indebted entities in the world. Is that fair to
the next generation healthcare? You know, we make a big
brag that we've pre funded our pension funds, but we
have a pre funded healthcare And everyone tells me that
eighty percent of your healthcare dollars are spent in the
last couple of years, eighteen months or so of your life.
(40:01):
And we don't prefund healthcare. And we're going from a
situation where we've had you know, five employees for every
one senior to two employees for everyone senior. We're gonna
have a lot less people paying the taxes to fund
the health care needs in the future. And is that fair?
Long term care? We are getting a coming tsunami of
people that are going to be needing long term care,
(40:23):
and there's no way that institutionally we're going to be
able to afford that. And so therefore we're going to
have to be you know, funding people persuading people to
stay at home, and we're gonna have to be funding
health care, long term care that's going to be taking
care of them, and or we're going to be building
ten times as many seniors' homes as we currently have.
I don't think we funded long term care for the
(40:44):
baby boom that are going to be in that generation.
And people are living longer, and they are as they
live longer, they may not be they're healthier during their
sixties and seventies, but as they get into their eighties
and nineties, they may need more. They're living longer and
they may need more assistance in those later years, and
so have we taken that into account? So Number one,
(41:06):
housing in affordabilion. Number two debt and deficit. Number three
health care expenses that are going to look like they're
going to increase where we already got health care issues today.
Number four long term care that is a coming tsunami
that we're going to have to deal with. And yet
at the same time, we've got youth unemployment that's double
digit fifteen eighteen percent, I'm told. So we've got all
(41:28):
these problems that we're giving our young people, but yet
they're unemployed and they're finding challenges getting that experience. I've
got people coming to my office every day saying they
can't get a job even though they've got an MBA.
What do we do with this people? What do we
do with this situation? We've got to make sure that
we can employ these people so they can pay the taxes,
get the experience, develop the businesses, enjoy those careers so
(41:50):
that they can be happy themselves, but also pay the
taxes that are going to fund all these expenses. And
we've left this situation where climate change hasn't been addressed,
and we have got the biggest heat wave that I
can ever remember in my experience, fires that supposedly I've never,
(42:15):
you know, experienced before, and that supposedly are going to
continue on a regular basis going forward, wildfires, you know, tornadoes, hurricanes,
other events. Clearly there is an issue. And at the
same time, we get rid of carbon taxes that were
the one way that we thought was going to be
addressing climate change. So we're leaving our young people with
a climate change issue that needs to be addressed. We've
(42:39):
got wars in Eastern Europe, We've got wars in the
Middle East. We've got a potentiality of something happening in
Southeast Asia. We're ramping up our defense spending to one
point something percent of GDP to at least two percent,
if not two three and a half and five percent
if you include infrastructure spending. This is going to have
to be paid for by the current wag journers in
the future journers. And I don't see this increasing taxes,
(43:03):
even though I think we need to. With this dramatic
increase in defense venue. So it's going to increase our deficits,
increase our debt. It's going to compound the problem that
we're passing on to the next generation. Number eight. Everyone's
talked about how we're we've got an infrastructure deficit that
we're passing on to the next generation. And we can
see it with with airports, with rail, with lert's that
(43:24):
are late and over budget, that we're the most expensive
place in the world to build subways and lerts. We've
got an infrastructure issue that needs to be needs to
be addressed. Nine. AI could be a huge productivity increase,
it could be a huge job destroyer, and we don't
(43:44):
know which it is yet. I listened to a fascinating
podcast by Jeffrey Hinton to godfather of AI, who said that,
you know, his best advice to his kids was to
become a plumber because he thought all the white color jobs,
the entry level white color jobs would disappear, young lawyer's,
long accounts, long youngkins, sultans, etc. So what you needed
to do is to find a job that was a
manual job with a great deal of expertise that you
(44:06):
knew was never going to be able to be done
by AI or a robot. You know, this is a
risk that we're passing down to the next generation that
we don't know exactly where it's going to come out.
Bill Gates was interviewed and said, be curious, read a lot,
and get experience with AI, but be cognizant of the
(44:27):
risks and be concerned for what's going to happen to
jobs in the future. And number ten, I think that
at the same time as we got all these challenges
that we're passing on to the next generation, we've got
to ask ourselves have we armed them or harmed them
in regards to their ability to do with that because
I think the combination of the lockouts during the pandemic,
(44:49):
where people in high school went four years without clubs,
without sports teams, without interaction with their students. People went
four years in college or universities without the kind of
experiences that were the most important experiences of my high
school or my university careers that developed the social interactions,
that contacts, the connections, the social capital, the political capital
(45:11):
that one needed long term, the networks, the mentors, the
contacts that you needed. Because of the pandemic, because of
the law decks, have robbed them of that. And then
I worry that social social media Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, et
cetera continues to rob them where they are young people
are spending an ornimus of time building very loose connections
(45:35):
on social media without those close personal one on one
connections that I think are so vitally important to mentorship,
to learning, to getting the experience that they need in society.
And so I believe we have not armed them the
way they need to be armed, and I believe we
have potentially harmed them in their abilities to to make
(45:58):
their way in the world, to create the careers they need,
to make the income that they need to enjoy life,
and then also to pay taxes such that we can
enjoy the future that we need as we enter retirement.
So I think that there is this intergenerational inequity, and
as numerous people have pointed out in the past, when
intergenerational intergenerational inequity gets too big, when inequities in societies
(46:22):
get too big to be sustainable and to be things
that people support and can live with. You know, I
saw a podcast this weekend of a gentleman who said,
after one hundred thousand dollars more income doesn't actually add happiness,
and so therefore we're with tax cuts, you know, adding
(46:44):
nothing of value to people at the high end of
the system, when we could be doing something dramatically important
to people at the low end of the system. I
think that the marginal tax rates for people that are
on well for getting and trying to get off well
for are incredibly hugehu I think that, as I mentioned
the development fees GST on housing construction, on new housing,
(47:07):
I think land transfer taxes are incredibly regressive and they're
paid for by the people that are young, that are students,
that are newcomers to our society. I think that lots
of people have mentioned that when intergenerational inequities get too big,
and when inequities in society get too big, there's a
risk of civil civil strife and stress in our in
(47:31):
our societies. And whether it is.
Speaker 4 (47:33):
The UH the me too movement, or the movement you
know where we had about a decade ago, these encampments
across North America, or the Black Lives Matter movement, or the.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Civil rights movement, or the anti lockdown movements. When people
get too upset when they think that people aren't listening,
when people think that that society is not addressing their concerns.
You know, when we can see that young men have
voted for right wing populists in Canada and the United
(48:06):
States in such large measures, people are out there crying
for someone to listen and pay attention and to address
our concerns. And I don't think we're listening, and I
think we need to. And so housing in affordability maybe
the canary in the coal mine that we've got to address,
because I think, as I have said, I think there's
(48:26):
ten issues and we probably have more, but to remind
and repeat one, Housing in affordability, number two, alluming debt crisis.
Number three, huge increases in healthcare expenses as the baby
boom ages. This is a coming tsunami. Number four and
long term care expenses and the need for long term
(48:47):
care facilities and dealing with people that want to stay
at home and need to stay at home because there
isn't an institutional solution. Five Youth unemployment that's into the
double digits again for the first time and I think
ten years, well maybe other than the pandemic, but ten years.
So it's a great recession. Number nine. Climate change that
still hasn't been addressed and needs to be addressed that
(49:08):
we're seemingly to pass on to the next generation. Number
seven wars that we haven't had since World War Two,
and we're dealing with this threat of wars as if
you know, it's only going to be in the Ukraine,
in the Middle East, when lots of people are saying
it could easily expand beyond that, and that we're not
arming our system with the kinds of modern warfare that
(49:29):
we need to arm and we're not even arming our
selves with the armaments we needed for the historic Cold War,
let alone the drones and robots that we need today.
Number eight And infrastructure deficit and we see it all
around us. Number nine AI that is a huge opportunity
in a huge threat. We're not sure what it is,
but it could risk jobs for those young people that
(49:52):
need to get the experience, need to get the careers,
you need to get the employment, need to get the
income that they need, and we need them to earn
to pay the taxes. And Number ten these penda social
issues lockets that rob people, maybe justifiably to a certain
extent because of the risk, but I think way too
long and maybe not and shouldn't have been applied to
(50:13):
young people the way that we did apply them, such
that we robbed them of the social interaction, the connections,
the social capital, the political capital, the mentorship that they
so desperately needed to create the experience that they need
to be a successful life. So I am really worried
that we've got a generational inequity that we haven't addressed,
(50:34):
and then we need to and that my generation needs
to think very seriously about is this bear? Is this right? Frankly?
Is it legal to pass on all these risks to
our kids and to our grandchildren? And that you know
every other generation. I think we're proud to pass on
a better future to their kids. What happened to our generation?
(50:57):
We ever gone wrong? I think we need to think
seriously about these issues and listen to Eric and young
people that are saying it's wrong. Thanks for listening. That's
Brian Crombie for the Brian Cromby Radio Hour. I remind
you I'm on every Monday through Friday at six o'clock
on nine sixty am. You can streamail line of Trouble
Saga nine sixtym dot see all my podcast and videos
(51:18):
go up on my website Brian Cromby dot com. As
soon's my website as soon as my radio show goes
to Eric, Thanks, I really appreciate you. Have ton of
chat with you every night six o'clock. Good night, No.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
Radio, No Problem. Stream is live on Saga nine sixty
am dot CA
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
SAGA nine sixty am or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Brian Crombie Radio
and I've got Eric Lombardi back with us today. He
is a president of an organization that really is trying
to stand behind more housing in the Toronto Werry. He's
also a writer with the Hub. He's been quoted and
written in The Toronto Star and I've had the pleasure
of interviewing him before from a political standpoint, and he
(00:39):
really believes that housing is one of the major issues
facing particularly young people today, and he's just recently written
a couple of fasting articles about this topic. Eric, Welcome
to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Hey Brian, thank you for having me on my.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Pleasure So tell me you're saying in Toronto, the largest
and most talent rich city in the country, real media
and incomes for young people fell four point five percent.
Yes incomes fell, while real rents doubled and real home
prices tripled. The result is a stark generational divide, a
province that works far better for those who bought early
than for those trying to build something. Now, that's a
(01:13):
pretty stark picture that you're painting, sir, I.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Mean, and it is. The math itself is stark. Over
the last twenty five years, we've been seeing, especially in
regions like the GTA in Toronto, but also areas like
Vancouver where the high cost of housing has made it
a lot harder for young people to actually achieve the
milestones of adulthood that were more easily available to other generations.
(01:42):
And we have this way of acting like housing is
a mystery that we can't solve it. We don't understand
why the math of finding affordable places to live has changed.
But the reality is we're actually very much aware of
all the major challenges with our housing sector, and it's
(02:05):
largely our own choice to not have both better policy
that makes housing more affordable, but also to allow housing
to become more affordable. And I think with the number
of events that we've seen take place, particularly with Trump
and the American administration, the attention has fallen away from
(02:28):
how damaging the high cost of housing is to both
my generation but also I think to the future of
the country.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
If we don't fix it, well, we've got to try
to figure out what your solutions are. But some of
the statistics that you quoted are pretty stark as well.
You said in two thousand, Ontario's real gdpeper capital was
five percent higher than the rest of Canada. Today it's
three percent lower. From two thousand, Ontario's real gdpeper capital
grew just zero point five to five percent, forty percent
(02:56):
less than the rest of Canada. If Ontario to matched
it's pre two thousand growth director, the average on Terarin
would have an income twenty two three hundred dollars higher today.
Since two thousand, real incomes for Canadians it's twenty five
to thirty four rows by twenty percent nationally but only
six percent in Ontario. And in twenty twenty two youth
unemployment unemployment in Toronto was ten point nine percent. Today
(03:19):
it's sixteen point three percent. Canada needs a prosperous Toronto. Well,
what do you suggest? What are you going to do?
If you were in charge? How would you change things?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
So? I think when you look at productivity and economic
opportunity overall, what you want is a system that both
attracts talent in order to raise productivity, you want capital
investments to occur here and ultimately you want to move
people in goods as efficiently as possible. So when you
(03:50):
have housing markets like you do in Toronto, what you
end up doing is you raise the premium that talent
both a costs, but also you make harder for that
talent to locate near where the opportunity is, and so
people end up being mismatched with the types of jobs
and careers that they can have relative to where they
can afford to live. So to me, the fundamental issues
(04:13):
in our region are number one, the insufficient development of
our transportation network. I think your listeners and Miss Suggle
agree that traffic in this region has become a nightmare.
It's certainly worse than it was fifteen to twenty years ago.
I know I was as a kid then, but I
don't remember it being nearly as bad as it is today.
(04:36):
And so we really do need to invest far more
in our rapid regional metrorail. And this is something that
we're actually particularly bad at. So if you look at
the projects that are ongoing at the provincial level, they
cost multiples of what they do compared to other international jurisdictions,
and the result is actually we're building less than we
(04:58):
need to be on housing. If people can't imagine themselves
having a great quality of life and future here, and
people's self perception of their own quality of life is
almost directly tied to what they think they can afford
and the satisfaction that they have with where they live,
then they're going to make other choices. They're going to,
(05:19):
you know, if they don't have the opportunity in Ontario,
they're going to go move to Alberta, or they'll move
to BC or the Maritimes.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Going to What's happening already, isn't it. We've got out
migration from Ontario, from the GTA to Alberta, Mississauqia has
gone down in population, Toronto's gone down in population. We're
actually people are voting with their feet already, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
They already are. And I know from you know, I went,
I started engineering at the University of Waterloo, and you know,
even myself included over seventy percent of my class ended
up in the San Francisco Bay Area or the United
States in some way, shape or form, because even in
cities like San Francisco, with their high cost of living,
(06:01):
the higher salaries from a more competitive job market more
than makeup for it, and so Toronto as a region
has I think failed to realize the many opportunities that
it has. I think the enigma of this region is
(06:22):
not that it's not prosperous, and not that there aren't
opportunities here, but to the extent that we have all
the fundamentals for a very prosperous place going our way,
and we're not really achieving what we could with it.
And I think the drive down of our potential is
(06:46):
really sad, and in a lot of ways it is
self inflicted. And it's not just housing and transportation issues,
but housing in a way is an issue that makes
or breaks the success of everything else that you try
to accomplish. If people are not satisfied with both where
they live and the opportunities that they have to live
(07:08):
somewhere that they would like, a lot of other things
become a lot harder.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So, you know, the situation that you've described for young
people and the greater Trona is very stark. You've talked
about how unemployment has gone up, You've talked about how
incomes have gone down. You've talked about housing prices have
increased fairly dramatically, transit is one small but important change.
But what that's going to do is is only allow
(07:34):
people to live in Georgetown or Aliston to commute into Toronto.
What else? What else do you think needs to get done?
Your head of an organization called what More Neighbors Toronto?
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Yeah, so More Neighbors is housing focused. So I can
tell you some other things that I think candid needs
for competitiveness at large. And this isn't just about housing issues,
but in some ways the cultural attitude that has created
our housing situation has also created our lack of competitiveness.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Cultural attitude, Yes, so tell me about the cultural attitude.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yes, is big stuff. So I would say that, you know,
it's not just Canada. This sort of afflicts the entire anglosphere.
But we have this sort of not in my backyard
disease where whenever someone proposes doing anything at all, there
has to be multiple rands of consultations. Many stakeholders need
(08:28):
to be engaged, and the default of our regulatory systems
and processes is often to get to know. And if
you also look across many of our industries, we actually
do have many protected sectors protected not directly through subsidies
or or tariff barriers, but through regulatory barriers. So if
(08:52):
you look at like financial services, for instance, we have
six fairly dominant financial institutions in this country, and then
you know about four hundred other very small banking institutions
sort of littered across the provinces. Every province has its
own regulator, and the federal regulator certainly makes it hard
for smaller financial institutions to compete. So you end up
(09:16):
with a sector that ends up being less competitive than
it otherwise would be. And when you have less competitiveness
within a sector, you have a deterrent to investment. And
that's that because what you want is in business investment,
because it creates new opportunities for employees. Business investment also
(09:37):
results in what are called capital goods, so things that
exist and depreciate, and for a whole other variety of reasons,
this trickles down into the salaries that people have available
to them, et cetera. And so this culture where we've
allowed so much of our processes and regulatory systems to
(09:58):
be apture by incumbent winners or you know, this is
called regulatory capture, has become a major problem. And to
the extent that regulatory capture is the defining challenge in housing.
You know, plastating existing longtime homeowners over those who might
come after them is actually a challenge that afflicts basically
(10:21):
every other sector of Canada's economy in a similar way.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Wow, that's quite the thesis, you know. Doesn't a local
homeowner have a right to know that the community that
they moved into and invested their life savings in buying
a house in, isn't going to change too much, That
there's not going to be too much traffic, That there's
not going to be a big, forty story building right
(10:46):
next to them that casts a shadow over their backyard.
That there's going to be enough spaces in the local school,
that there's going to be enough space in the community center,
in the library, That there's not going to be too
much traffic, that that the that the building isn't going
to be built too close to their house. Like, don't
local owners have a right to say no to group
(11:11):
homes in their community, to h to hospitals in the community,
to to big apartment buildings in the community. Are you
saying that you don't think that local homeowners should have
the right to to object to things that are going
to change the flavor of their local community.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
I think the why how widespread the available vetos are
are the problem. Look, I'm not saying that people should
have no say in the future course of their city
or even their their neighborhoods at large, but we end
up in this situation, especially in the GTA, where we've
(11:46):
restricted so heavily what anyone can do within a neighborhood
that you end up having, Hey, you need to build
a fifty story building on your main arterial road, and
that's going to cause construction, and that's going to cause
traffic on the major three fair and that's going to
cause traffic fattle a whole bunch of other places as
well once you get into it. And so we've found
(12:08):
ourselves in an odd situation in which this idea that
we have say in our community has meant that we've
asked all of our politicians to take away our individual
property rights to build sensibly the next incremental amount of density.
And in cities like Toronto, where we just went through
this huge battle over legalizing six plexes and many of
(12:30):
its inner near downtown suburbs, where you know, we're really
talking about very modest scale buildings. But if for not
allowing those modest scale buildings that actually don't have major
traffic effects because they're off typically off street, they're close
to public transit, you end up creating this system that
(12:54):
no one ends up being very happy with. You know,
I don't look at like a story building going up
on a block of sort of historic retail and seeing
a whole street gets sanitized and saying ah, yes, like
people should be thrilled about that, But the outcomes are
happening in ways that upset people, and they don't realize
(13:16):
this because of how intensely restrictive we are about what
is allowed to be built within a neighborhood itself. And
so I do think that there is a level of
growing up that needs to happen for a lot of
homeowners to say, look, you should have some say in
the growth of your community, and things shouldn't change so
(13:38):
rapidly that you don't know what place you're in anymore.
But a society that's growing is a society that's changing,
and the idea that the places that we live shouldn't
change should actually be scary because that means that they're
losing opportunity, that there's no new people or new ideas
that we're not getting a recycle of cap role that's
(14:00):
getting invested in our infrastructure. So we've had this era
where a lot of people I think, got to have
their cake and eat it too. And I'm not saying
that like people shouldn't have their cake and eat too.
I guess what I'm saying is, you know, sometimes you've
got to let other people have a bit of your cake.
(14:20):
And I think it'll be every everywhere will be a
happier place.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
This is gonna be a fasting conversation tonight with Eric
Lombardi talking about you know, nimbiism versus yimbiism effectively and
housing regulations. But also he's suggesting that really is a
part of a cultural attitude that we have that pervades
our society. It's almost sounds like libertarianism lob, which I
(14:44):
don't think Eric's talking about, but certainly a far less
regulation in the ability to construct, whether it's housing or
pipelines or mines or or highways or whatever. Stay with everyone,
this is gonna be an interesting conversation tonight. Back into.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Stream US Live at SAGA nine six am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Wellcome back everyone to the Brian Crimby Radio ar I've
got Eric Lombardi with us tonight. He is the president
of an organization called More Housing Toronto, which really is
one of those organizations that's trying to say yes to
development and housing at times, not all the time, but
sometimes versus the typical attitude of nimbiism that he's described
a lot of residents have and an exert to stop
(15:40):
by developments taking place. But he's also raised this issue
of an attitude of regulation and of control, and he
called it within the anglosphere of our desire to stop
things or regulate things. Eric, there's a really interesting book
that's created a lot of attention to the United States
(16:02):
called Abundance, written by some some people think democrats so progressives.
Other people think that they're they're neoliberal people maybe sort
of centrists or or actually, in Canadian terms, progressive conservatives
that have talked about how many liberals and progressives in
(16:23):
the United States in the past have really got good
at stopping things through lots of regulation, but have got
really bad at actually building anything. And and and so
therefore what we've done is created a system where we
can stop really well, we can regulate really well, but
what that means is that we don't actually ever build anything.
And in the book they talk specifically about this issue
(16:44):
in regards to housing and talk about homelessness and say
that actually the progressive cities in the United States have
more homeless, which is sort of counterintuitive. One would think
that that that that in those more progressive cities, they'd
have better policy toward homeless and so therefore they have
less homeless, But in fact San Francisco and New York
(17:07):
have far more homeless. And and yet the cities that
are more conservative and open to development, and they use
Houston as an example, end up having a far greater
amount of housing supply and far less homeless. And it's
almost as if the best social program you can have
for people is building a home and building it cheaply
(17:30):
and making it available and so people can get off
the street. And it's sort of counterintuitive.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
It says that that.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Regulation and and and and you know, liberal attitudes actually
create more problems and and and just sort of allow
housing to be built solves problems. I don't know if
you've heard about that book or read.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
It, but I have read a big abundance, so, like
you know, I'd say I want to start off with
the two things. Just want to issue correction. My organization
is more Neighbors Toronto. There's always more homes Mississauga, which
would be like our sister organization in Mississauga. And you
should definitely check them out because they do great advocacy
work as well. And you know, abundance is sort of
(18:11):
funny because it gets accusations of libertarianism, which is sort
of what you mentioned earlier. I'm not necessarily against regulation,
but I'm against regulations that are made up without true
purpose or true evidence that there's a problem to begin
with in the first place. And in many ways we've
allowed sort of i'd say, like reactionary or pearl clutching
(18:35):
about fears of certain things to allow us to create
so many rules that when you add up all of
the rules, they don't actually end up producing the types
of results and outcomes we would otherwise agree on, even
as a democracy. And so then it goes to say, well,
are those regulations themselves working towards the outcomes that we
(18:57):
want as a bigger picture view, And this is sort
of the argument that abundance makes, which is to say
that actually, in many ways, you know, overregulation is conservative
the biggest you know, the institutions that inhibit themselves the
most as a result of their regulations are actually public
(19:20):
bureaucracies in a very big way. For example, if you
look at processes almost always to build public housing, whether
it's in the United States or it's in Canada, you
would almost always be better off just the government purchasing
privately built housing then the public itself building public housing
(19:44):
in terms of what the cost outcome is, which I
think would shock a lot of people. And you know,
abundance goes into many of the reasons why because they
wear on so many secondary and tertiary conditions as a
result of processes. You know, you have to use certain
vendors that meet certain criteria for you know, diversity inclusion,
(20:08):
et cetera. Not that all of these secondary goals are
bad per se, but once you wear on all of
the additional requirements, you get far from what you're actual And.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
They talk about not only the requirements, but the reporting
on the requirements and the evaluation of the requirements and
all the red tape that the requirements to rely on.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yes, and so you know my view, I don't consider
myself you know a libertarian, I consider myself a liberal
right markets should broadly be competitive, and consumer surplus should
really be the driving force of what happens within any
given sector, and the government should exist to be an
(20:46):
alternative service provider so that people ultimately have options. And
so governments in many ways have stopped seeing themselves as
agents of delivery and have instead become agents of control.
So instead of building lots of public housing themselves using
(21:06):
their own lands, et cetera, in many ways they've fallen
back and said, well, we're actually just going to regulate
what everyone else does. And I think that there is
a more positive sum approach that we can achieve as
a society in which government seeks to be excellent in
providing its own version of many public goods, and I'd
(21:27):
say housing is certainly one of those goods. And there
should also be a very private, competitive, private sector that
is I'm not going to say perfectly free, but freer
than today, and also trying to meet the demand of
its consumers. And then I think, ultimately, as you know
ordinary people, you know, you, myself, others, we will have
(21:50):
the benefit of having a plethora of different options when
it comes to the types of goods and services that
we need to consume both as our fundamentals, whether it's
housing or healthcare, as well as you know, non fundamentals.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
So you know, uh, Prime Minister Kearney are new prime
minister is running into this in regards to this new
uh you know, build stuff in Canada Bill five uh
C five and Bill five in Ontario, where you know,
some people would argue this is what we need to
have projects of national value actually constructed in Canada, and
(22:29):
other people would argue that it tramples over indigenous rights
and UH and environmental rights and and and and and
reports and regulations and studies that need and should be
done to ensure that we're not trampling on environmental issues
and UH and and indigenous rights. Where do you come
out on.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
That, sir? So you can put me into a new
third column on on this item. You know, we also
saw that we had Bill five and seventeen in Ontario
and in many ways they were similar to the federal
Bill five. And I think the crux of these bills
that we're seeing is that the government's in Ontario and
several other provinces as well as a federal government are
(23:06):
recognizing that their approval processes for major investments in energy,
mining and major national infrastructure are so arduous that it
basically makes all proposals non viable in its current form.
And so what our governments at both levels have said
(23:26):
is well, actually, for things that we see as in
the national or provincial interest, we will grant exemptions to
some parts of the process in order to expedite approval
on things that we're saying are strategic priority. I think
what is missing as a part of this conversation there's
really two things that makes me a little fearful. I
(23:49):
think Number one, our disposition towards investment, particularly if we
think our economy isn't going well, should be about getting
to yes and that most investment ultimately is in the
national interest. And this means that you can't just grant
yourself exemption processes. So you know, a bunch of senior
liberals can decide what the national interest is and prioritize projects.
(24:14):
You want a private sector able to see a system
that gives them certainty that if they make these investments
and follow certain steps, that their projects will be treated
fairly within a reasonablemount of time, such that the risk
graded return on their capital is lower and that helps
them make an investment, and so that work of actually
(24:38):
changing the underlying regulatory system has not been done. There
are signals that there is interest there, but my fear
is by granting themselves an easy ministerial exemption path, that
they're not going to do the hard work of actually
reforming regulatory systems that are so hostile to investment in
the first place. One other point I would add to
(25:00):
this is it is not a great system in which
any proponent of any project, particularly large ones, will get
benefit by forging a closer relationship with political leaders. And
I think you know, whether or not these things are
abused in this way now, it does open the potential
(25:23):
for forms of corruption that I think that we as
citizens should be aware of. I think, you know, the
conversations around environmental protection and indigenous rights and consultation are
important to have, but I think we also need to
have them in the sense of they're always trade offs,
and we might be trading off too much for these
(25:44):
stages of projects, and the outcome, which is the investment itself,
and you know, creating good jobs and economic opportunity kind
of takes a back seat. And I think there's a
way to get to yes for everyone involved, but it
means doing the systemic change and the legislative change and
(26:08):
actually changing the regulatory system. I think right now we're
really taking an easy way out with all of these.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
So bottom line, you say, we get to know reasonably easy,
but it's very difficult to ever get to a.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yes yes, and we're seeing that now. The way to
get to yes is for you know, the ministers and
government to think that your project is cute, and that
is also not a good outcome in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You know, it's interesting. I work for a very successful
billionaire Jim Patison at one point in time, and his
comment was, Brian, you got to stop negotiating. Sometimes you
should just take yes for an answer and get the
deal and move on.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Fascinating.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
We're going to take a break for some messages and
come back with Eric Lombardi and when we come back
to when and ask him about sort of his involvement
and people of his generation's involvement, because one of the
things that comes out in many of the articles that
Eric you've read written is I think part of the
problem is this sort of generational divide and maybe it's
and you don't say this exactly, though, I think you
(27:07):
effectively said that there's too many older people involved in
and controlling politics that are making decisions for society, and
not enough people like you that are involved. Stay with us, everyone,
We'll just be back in two minutes.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
No Radio, No Problem stream is live on SAGA ninety
sixty am dot cl.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Welcome back, everyone to the Brian Crombie Radio our. Eric
Lombardi from More Neighborus, Toronto. He's also an author in
the Hub. He's a financial consultant in the financial services industry.
He's a really smart guy. But I got to ask you, Eric,
you know, a lot of the stuff that you've been writing,
the articles that you've been writing, the posts that you've
been making, have really talked about this sort of generational divide.
(28:00):
How you know people that have got homes, own homes,
have made this huge amount of appreciation on their homes
and have developed a substantial net worth, and unemployment is low,
and that young people are really challenged. Unemployment as you
described as high, real growth in wages is low, if
not negative, and they can't afford their homes. You know,
(28:23):
I had a fascinating interview with a chief economist from
a deputy chief economist from CMAC that said that when
I graduated, homes were three to four times medium household income.
Today they're fifteen times medium household income. So they've gone
up from three to four to fifteen five hundred percent
in a generation or maybe a generation and a half.
(28:45):
What's the problem? And you know, I think that one
of the things that I get from some of your
writing is that you think too many people of my
age and older are running the system and maybe we
need some young people like you involved. Is just the
fact that people like you aren't voting, aren't running, aren't
in politics, aren't in charge part of the problem.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
I mean, you know, there's always you know, there's always
a generational lens to politics at all times. Right if
you read a book like The Fourth Turning, you know,
there's actually a lot of predictions about how certain generations
come in they have inclinations because you know, generations have
common experiences that form common outlooks and perspectives. And I
(29:30):
don't necessarily think that there's like an inherent hostility from
you know, an older generation to give people. I do
think that you know, easy, it's easy oftentimes to vote
things that are in your own self interest and not
necessarily always see, well, what are the trade offs that
(29:50):
I'm making? And I think that what we've seen over
the last you know, thirty years of policy making in
Canada is that when trade offs are considered there consider
at all. The impacts that a certain decision will make
on young people at a systemic level are either an
afterthought or just not consider it at all. Right, So,
(30:11):
for example, like if we look at the housing system
that we have in the GTA, many of the problems
and challenges that we have trickled down from decision in
the two thousands I'm called the Growth Plan. And in
that growth Plan we created both growth centers. So we said, hey,
here are a couple of areas where we're going to
allow much more high density development and we created a
(30:33):
green belt. So we said, you know what, we're going
to put a limit onto suburban sprawl. We're going to
build the less single family homes. We determined that you know,
they're bad for meaningful finances, et cetera. Well, in many ways,
that was a very convenient decision for all the generation
that had bought especially in that decade where housing was
(30:56):
quite affordable and got to feel good about the environmental
choices that they were making for the region. But also,
you know, didn't have to have any trade offs like, well,
where we're going to build new housing, well, still not
in our neighborhood. We didn't you know, go sort of
end single family zoning when we did that, and so
you know, well, we've created a land monopoly now within
(31:17):
the GTA as a result of these choices. And even
though that was considered a little bit at the time,
it didn't really it wasn't really considered in a major way.
And so who sort of felt the consequences.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Of you're actually agreeing with Doug Ford that we.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Should all that we made. I'm not necessarily saying I'm
a greed like, you know, pay the green belt or anything,
but I'm saying that all choices have consequences. And if
we're going to say, hey, we want to preserve the
green belt because we value this agricultural and environmental land
around the GTA, then what you've got to say is, well,
maybe we need to be less restrictive about allowing different
(31:54):
types of housing to be built in our old suburban neighborhoods,
But that trade offs was barely acknowledged, and I think,
you know, even to some degree, a lot of people
benefited because all it meant is that their property values,
through their land value, are now in a constrained environment,
which means that they are going up. And even when
(32:16):
we talk about you know, things like hey, well, you know,
should the price of house income down, even the framing
that we hear from politicians as well, you know, so
many people are relying on their home equity for you know,
their retirement income, and we don't have the conversation of all,
you know, people prepared better for retirement, Like maybe it's
you know that their standards of living that we need
(32:38):
to question more than you know, the young person who's
expected to pay a premium their entire life afford to
pay out, you know that that equity. And even when
we talk about the potential for lower home values, the
people who are going to be most harmed by that
aren't people who've owned homes since you know, the nineteen nineties.
(32:59):
It's going to be people who in the last five years.
So either way, you know, the burden of change in
the system actually probably follows more hard on young people.
No matter what, then it does some older Canadians, but
you would never know from the framing that we have
in these dialogues. And so that just goes to show
you the strength of you know, your generation in just
(33:23):
in politics. And I'm not saying it's unexpected or that
it's malicious. It's just a fact that we ought to
recognize because if we do, it means that we might
force ourselves to grapple with the trade offs that we're making.
I mean, I think oas Is or old age security
(33:43):
is another great example of a system that's kind of
like this. Anyways, I can talk about that as well.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Eric, Eric Lombardi, thank you so much for joining us.
I really think this is an important conversation that we
need to have because I do think that there is
a generation inequity that has occurred in Canada today, and
I think it's wider than even what you've talked about.
I worry about the fact that we're leaving you with
deficits and debt and and underspending on military and an
(34:12):
underspending on infrastructure, housing affordability issue, lower incomes, lower productivity,
lower prosperity, climate change, potential risk of AI. I could
go on. So you know, I congratulate your involvement and
encourage you to stay involved. Sir, We're going to take
a break for some messages and I'm going to come
back with a couple conclusionary comments in just a minute.
(34:35):
Stay with us, everyone, Eric really appreciate you joining us.
Thank you of.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Course, stream us live at SAGA nine to six am,
dot c A.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Hi, everyone, welcome back to the Crimby Radio Art. You know,
I've got this show where I have an opportunity to
interview a lot of very interesting people on a range
of different issues, and then chat with you about those
interviews and about my conclusions of some of the concerns
that they've raised and some of the suggestions that they've
got for what we need to do. And I think
that Eric's conversation today about you know, the housing situation
(35:19):
in Toronto, in the Greater Toronto area, in the Lower Mainland, Vancouver, Montreal,
et cetera, it isn't fair to young people. It isn't
fair to people that are trying to start out. That
there is this intergenerational inequity that we've got going on.
And I don't know if people my age, the Baby
Boom generation, or the generation acts have really given thought
(35:42):
to the situation that we've created for our young people today.
And as I think about my kids and the potential
that maybe I'll have grandchildren at some point in time,
hopefully in the future, I think this is something that
we've really got to give a lot of thought too.
And so I wanted to go through ten issues that
I think that the generation of people that were born,
(36:02):
you know, prior to nineteen eighty, you've really got to
think about. In regards to the people that are born,
most been born more recently, and housing in affordability is
issue number one. I firmly believe. I think that we've
gone from a situation where housing prices relative to MEETI
and incomes have gone from like three times to twelve times.
(36:25):
You know, some people have mitigated that, or said we
should mitigate that by the fact that interest rates have
gone from double digits down to low single digits, and
I think that's true. But even if you think about
how long it takes to borrow, to save, to afford
a down payment, and or to pay off a mortgage
to afford what you're actually paying in regards to mortgage payments,
(36:50):
property taxes, and all the other fees housing is completely
unaffordable today for the young generation. I think that we've
talked about development fees being the most regressive tax that
our taxation system has, where we are making newcomers and
students and young people that are first time buyers of
homes pick up the vast majority of the cost of growth,
(37:11):
when all of society should be paying for some of
that growth. The fact that you know, we've got the
homes already and they need the homes, and we need
them to want those homes and have those homes because
we need them to be part of the employment sector.
We need them to be staffing our companies, to staffing
our restaurants, to employing our people, to creating the taxes
(37:32):
that are going to pay for our healthcare, et cetera.
Growth is something that all of us should be funding.
And it's not fair. You know, the fact that there's
a couple of billion dollars sitting in a reserve fund
in the City of Toronto because they've collected those development
fees and haven't been able to find justifiable ways to
spend it. It's wrong. The fact that film fees have
gone up by one thousand percent in less than ten years,
(37:54):
or something like ten years. It's wrong. So housing affordability
is issue number one where inter generational inequity exists. And
I've been told by numerous people that we are the
first generation in history that are leaving a worse future
to our children than was left to us. And every
other generation previously always gave a better future to the
(38:15):
next generation. And if we're not doing that, we've got
to give some real thought to the ethics of that,
to the financial sustainability of that, to the legality of that,
which really leads me to issue number two, which is debt.
You know, particularly in the United States with this beautiful bill,
but also in Canada, we are growing our deficits and
(38:36):
debts in an unsustainable manner. The debt to GDP in
Canada supposedly, you know, two and a half percent. It's
over five percent in the United States. But it's going
to be increasing in Canada with our commitments to defense
spending and all the other things that we're spending. And
you know what, the employment well, bad for youth, is
(38:57):
not bad everywhere else, not high. And our GDP well,
maybe in recession on a per capita basis, isn't in
recession overall now should be the time where we are
fiscally prudent and maybe going into surplus or at least
reducing our deficit. But we're not. And you know, I
worry about what if there is a recession, what if
(39:18):
there is another pandemic, what if there is a war
or a big crisis. Do we have the financial capacity,
the fiscal capacity to address that? And I worry we don't.
So I think that we've got to be thinking about
is it ethical for us to be leaving these deficits
that seem to you know, continue forever and grow forever.
And more importantly, the accumulated debt that when you add
(39:39):
federal and provincial debt together, supposedly we're one of the
most indebted entities in the world. Is that fair to
the next generation healthcare? You know, we make a big
brag that we've pre funded our pension funds, but we
have a pre funded healthcare And everyone tells me that
eighty percent of your healthcare dollars are spent in the
last couple of years, eighteen months or so of your life.
(40:01):
And we don't prefund healthcare. And we're going from a
situation where we've had you know, five employees for every
one senior to two employees for everyone senior. We're gonna
have a lot less people paying the taxes to fund
the health care needs in the future. And is that fair?
Long term care? We are getting a coming tsunami of
people that are going to be needing long term care,
(40:23):
and there's no way that institutionally we're going to be
able to afford that. And so therefore we're going to
have to be you know, funding people persuading people to
stay at home, and we're gonna have to be funding
health care, long term care that's going to be taking
care of them, and or we're going to be building
ten times as many seniors' homes as we currently have.
I don't think we funded long term care for the
(40:44):
baby boom that are going to be in that generation.
And people are living longer, and they are as they
live longer, they may not be they're healthier during their
sixties and seventies, but as they get into their eighties
and nineties, they may need more. They're living longer and
they may need more assistance in those later years, and
so have we taken that into account? So Number one,
(41:06):
housing in affordabilion. Number two debt and deficit. Number three
health care expenses that are going to look like they're
going to increase where we already got health care issues today.
Number four long term care that is a coming tsunami
that we're going to have to deal with. And yet
at the same time, we've got youth unemployment that's double
digit fifteen eighteen percent, I'm told. So we've got all
(41:28):
these problems that we're giving our young people, but yet
they're unemployed and they're finding challenges getting that experience. I've
got people coming to my office every day saying they
can't get a job even though they've got an MBA.
What do we do with this people? What do we
do with this situation? We've got to make sure that
we can employ these people so they can pay the taxes,
get the experience, develop the businesses, enjoy those careers so
(41:50):
that they can be happy themselves, but also pay the
taxes that are going to fund all these expenses. And
we've left this situation where climate change hasn't been addressed,
and we have got the biggest heat wave that I
can ever remember in my experience, fires that supposedly I've never,
(42:15):
you know, experienced before, and that supposedly are going to
continue on a regular basis going forward, wildfires, you know, tornadoes, hurricanes,
other events. Clearly there is an issue. And at the
same time, we get rid of carbon taxes that were
the one way that we thought was going to be
addressing climate change. So we're leaving our young people with
a climate change issue that needs to be addressed. We've
(42:39):
got wars in Eastern Europe, We've got wars in the
Middle East. We've got a potentiality of something happening in
Southeast Asia. We're ramping up our defense spending to one
point something percent of GDP to at least two percent,
if not two three and a half and five percent
if you include infrastructure spending. This is going to have
to be paid for by the current wag journers in
the future journers. And I don't see this increasing taxes,
(43:03):
even though I think we need to. With this dramatic
increase in defense venue. So it's going to increase our deficits,
increase our debt. It's going to compound the problem that
we're passing on to the next generation. Number eight. Everyone's
talked about how we're we've got an infrastructure deficit that
we're passing on to the next generation. And we can
see it with with airports, with rail, with lert's that
(43:24):
are late and over budget, that we're the most expensive
place in the world to build subways and lerts. We've
got an infrastructure issue that needs to be needs to
be addressed. Nine. AI could be a huge productivity increase,
it could be a huge job destroyer, and we don't
(43:44):
know which it is yet. I listened to a fascinating
podcast by Jeffrey Hinton to godfather of AI, who said that,
you know, his best advice to his kids was to
become a plumber because he thought all the white color jobs,
the entry level white color jobs would disappear, young lawyer's,
long accounts, long youngkins, sultans, etc. So what you needed
to do is to find a job that was a
manual job with a great deal of expertise that you
(44:06):
knew was never going to be able to be done
by AI or a robot. You know, this is a
risk that we're passing down to the next generation that
we don't know exactly where it's going to come out.
Bill Gates was interviewed and said, be curious, read a lot,
and get experience with AI, but be cognizant of the
(44:27):
risks and be concerned for what's going to happen to
jobs in the future. And number ten, I think that
at the same time as we got all these challenges
that we're passing on to the next generation, we've got
to ask ourselves have we armed them or harmed them
in regards to their ability to do with that because
I think the combination of the lockouts during the pandemic,
(44:49):
where people in high school went four years without clubs,
without sports teams, without interaction with their students. People went
four years in college or universities without the kind of
experiences that were the most important experiences of my high
school or my university careers that developed the social interactions,
that contacts, the connections, the social capital, the political capital
(45:11):
that one needed long term, the networks, the mentors, the
contacts that you needed. Because of the pandemic, because of
the law decks, have robbed them of that. And then
I worry that social social media Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, et
cetera continues to rob them where they are young people
are spending an ornimus of time building very loose connections
(45:35):
on social media without those close personal one on one
connections that I think are so vitally important to mentorship,
to learning, to getting the experience that they need in society.
And so I believe we have not armed them the
way they need to be armed, and I believe we
have potentially harmed them in their abilities to to make
(45:58):
their way in the world, to create the careers they need,
to make the income that they need to enjoy life,
and then also to pay taxes such that we can
enjoy the future that we need as we enter retirement.
So I think that there is this intergenerational inequity, and
as numerous people have pointed out in the past, when
intergenerational intergenerational inequity gets too big, when inequities in societies
(46:22):
get too big to be sustainable and to be things
that people support and can live with. You know, I
saw a podcast this weekend of a gentleman who said,
after one hundred thousand dollars more income doesn't actually add happiness,
and so therefore we're with tax cuts, you know, adding
(46:44):
nothing of value to people at the high end of
the system, when we could be doing something dramatically important
to people at the low end of the system. I
think that the marginal tax rates for people that are
on well for getting and trying to get off well
for are incredibly hugehu I think that, as I mentioned
the development fees GST on housing construction, on new housing,
(47:07):
I think land transfer taxes are incredibly regressive and they're
paid for by the people that are young, that are students,
that are newcomers to our society. I think that lots
of people have mentioned that when intergenerational inequities get too big,
and when inequities in society get too big, there's a
risk of civil civil strife and stress in our in
(47:31):
our societies. And whether it is.
Speaker 4 (47:33):
The UH the me too movement, or the movement you
know where we had about a decade ago, these encampments
across North America, or the Black Lives Matter movement, or the.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Civil rights movement, or the anti lockdown movements. When people
get too upset when they think that people aren't listening,
when people think that that society is not addressing their concerns.
You know, when we can see that young men have
voted for right wing populists in Canada and the United
(48:06):
States in such large measures, people are out there crying
for someone to listen and pay attention and to address
our concerns. And I don't think we're listening, and I
think we need to. And so housing in affordability maybe
the canary in the coal mine that we've got to address,
because I think, as I have said, I think there's
(48:26):
ten issues and we probably have more, but to remind
and repeat one, Housing in affordability, number two, alluming debt crisis.
Number three, huge increases in healthcare expenses as the baby
boom ages. This is a coming tsunami. Number four and
long term care expenses and the need for long term
(48:47):
care facilities and dealing with people that want to stay
at home and need to stay at home because there
isn't an institutional solution. Five Youth unemployment that's into the
double digits again for the first time and I think
ten years, well maybe other than the pandemic, but ten years.
So it's a great recession. Number nine. Climate change that
still hasn't been addressed and needs to be addressed that
(49:08):
we're seemingly to pass on to the next generation. Number
seven wars that we haven't had since World War Two,
and we're dealing with this threat of wars as if
you know, it's only going to be in the Ukraine,
in the Middle East, when lots of people are saying
it could easily expand beyond that, and that we're not
arming our system with the kinds of modern warfare that
(49:29):
we need to arm and we're not even arming our
selves with the armaments we needed for the historic Cold War,
let alone the drones and robots that we need today.
Number eight And infrastructure deficit and we see it all
around us. Number nine AI that is a huge opportunity
in a huge threat. We're not sure what it is,
but it could risk jobs for those young people that
(49:52):
need to get the experience, need to get the careers,
you need to get the employment, need to get the
income that they need, and we need them to earn
to pay the taxes. And Number ten these penda social
issues lockets that rob people, maybe justifiably to a certain
extent because of the risk, but I think way too
long and maybe not and shouldn't have been applied to
(50:13):
young people the way that we did apply them, such
that we robbed them of the social interaction, the connections,
the social capital, the political capital, the mentorship that they
so desperately needed to create the experience that they need
to be a successful life. So I am really worried
that we've got a generational inequity that we haven't addressed,
(50:34):
and then we need to and that my generation needs
to think very seriously about is this bear? Is this right? Frankly?
Is it legal to pass on all these risks to
our kids and to our grandchildren? And that you know
every other generation. I think we're proud to pass on
a better future to their kids. What happened to our generation?
(50:57):
We ever gone wrong? I think we need to think
seriously about these issues and listen to Eric and young
people that are saying it's wrong. Thanks for listening. That's
Brian Crombie for the Brian Cromby Radio Hour. I remind
you I'm on every Monday through Friday at six o'clock
on nine sixty am. You can streamail line of Trouble
Saga nine sixtym dot see all my podcast and videos
(51:18):
go up on my website Brian Cromby dot com. As
soon's my website as soon as my radio show goes
to Eric, Thanks, I really appreciate you. Have ton of
chat with you every night six o'clock. Good night, No.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
Radio, No Problem. Stream is live on Saga nine sixty
am dot CA
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