September 29, 2025 • 52 mins
Tonight on the Brian Crombie Radio Hour, Brian interviews Richard Lyall about his report from last week. This report is on the state of housing starts and sales across 34 municipalities in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, including the City of Toronto, is troubling and should set off the alarm bells for policymakers across all three levels of government.
“Housing projects have been shelved and the industry has hit a wall,” Lyall said. “The outlook is bleak, and we are trending in the wrong direction. We need governments to take concrete action to lower the #tax burden and modernize the process to kick-start the industry. Our economy will be in dire straits if we do not act quickly.”
Richard Lyall, President of RESCON, the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, is a prolific writer, speaker and commentator on what has and is going wrong with the housing sector in the GTA. Brian closes this episode with his ten point plan to address our housing crisis.
“Housing projects have been shelved and the industry has hit a wall,” Lyall said. “The outlook is bleak, and we are trending in the wrong direction. We need governments to take concrete action to lower the #tax burden and modernize the process to kick-start the industry. Our economy will be in dire straits if we do not act quickly.”
Richard Lyall, President of RESCON, the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, is a prolific writer, speaker and commentator on what has and is going wrong with the housing sector in the GTA. Brian closes this episode with his ten point plan to address our housing crisis.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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):
Beliasing everyone and Welcome to the Bran Crombie Radio War.
Got Richard Lyles back with us today. Richard is the
president of res CON, which is.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
The Residential Construction Council of Ontario, and.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Richard came out with a really shocking series of announcements
this week and some projections of what was going to
happen to the housing business, What has happened and what
will happen to the housing business in the Greater Toronto
area and in Ontario that I think needs to be
talked about. It needs to be talked about, you know,
(00:49):
at all levels, and I think governments have got to
take some action real quick.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Richard Lyle, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
Good to be here, Brian, thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
So what was this announcement that I'm thinking is so shocking.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
Well, we had a couple of things this week. But
the first thing was on Monday, we released a report
that we worked with the Missing Metal Initiative and the
University of Ottawa on which was ranking a scorecard for
municipalities in Ontario, and because people understand things like report
(01:22):
cards and letter grades and things like that, and of course,
you know, the housing issues very complicated. How we got
to where we are and how we're going to get
out of this, although getting out of it it's a little
more simple, but well simpler, but we'll come to that.
But the reason why we did this was that it
became clear to us that people just didn't really realize
(01:44):
what was happening and how severe the problem is with housing.
And that's because a lot of the data that was
being relied on was older data, like older starts data,
and so they weren't getting a clear picture of where
things are now and where they're going uh to put it,
(02:06):
you know, and we're talking about sales and starts data.
We can get into that a little bit if you like.
But the problem was is that there was a bit
of a you know, a little cognitive dissonance going on
here because on the street, you know, I'm talking to
contractors and builders and and you know, what's happening with
the workforce and laying people off big big numbers, and
(02:28):
not just skilled trades crews, but also project teams and
the back you know, back of house project teams, the
ones who put everything together and manage it. Meanwhile, we
still had people trying to interview me about, you know,
labor shortages, and you know, we had people bragging and
(02:50):
still bragging about how many tower cranes we have in
the sky and stuff like that, and I was saying, hey,
as they come down, they're not going back up again,
and so uh. And then you also have things like
the Housing Accelerator Fund and the provincial government, both federal
and provincial government, running around handing out checks to municipalities
(03:10):
based on their so called their supposed performance relative to
delivering the amount of housing relative to some of the
targets that have been set right, we know those targets
Ontario one point five million at the federal level, much
bigger than that. And we thought some of that was
(03:33):
really quite bizarre because you know, the performance really wasn't
there in our view. So we did this report and
of course it came out. We looked at thirty four municipalities.
There's a whole methodology for how they were graded. In
the back of the report that was University of Ottawa
again and the Missing Middle Initiative and out of the
(03:56):
thirty four twenty two failing grade and F two got a's,
two got b's, and three got c's and then that
was it. Right. So, but the f's, the twenty two
f's was really quite as you said, shocking, but really
(04:21):
not when you think about something like this, like if
compared to Alberta, we have we're building about a third
of the housing on a per capita basis that Alberta
is building right now. And that's why we had the
you know, later in the week we had our fifth
annual Housings of it that we set up to track
(04:43):
these things, and like that report, we're going to keep
that report coming every quarter because we're going to track
where we're at.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Right Jason, did you say that we are building one
third on a per capita basis of new starts versus
what Alberta is.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Doing one third?
Speaker 5 (05:02):
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, so the whole province is failing.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, no, in fact, but you know, if you
extrapolate this, you can say that the province is failing
in the federal government's failing because they all have their
fingers in the pie, you know.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
I mean, having said that all levels of government have
done certain things that are positive. They're sort of technology
and have been that. We have a serious crisis here.
The federal government have their Build Canada Homes Ontario Mortch
recently had Bill seventeen, which is for some very significant
(05:39):
changes to development charges and how they're managed. And then
at the municipal level, you've had various efforts by some
municipalities to really improve their systems. You had, you know,
Mayor Parish and Mississauga came up with a really nice
housing plan of kudos to her, and reduced their development charges.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
But is it having an impact.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
You know, the numbers that you talked about, and let
me just quote from your announcement if if I could,
the findings were troubling and should set off the alarm
ball along alarm bells for policymakers across all three levels
of government. Res CON president Richard Lyle said in a
news relief Overall housing starts were down forty percent in
(06:22):
the thirty four municipality study, with condo apartments leading the
decline down fifty four percent. Things were even more stark
in the city of Toronto, where housing starts were down
fifty eight percent. And then this is the most astounding
statistic condo apartment starts. We're down a staggering eighty percent
in Toronto, falling from an average of nearly eight thousand
(06:42):
during the first six months of the previous four years
to just one thousand, six hundred and six so far
in twenty twenty five. You're saying that we are sixty
seven percent behind the housing target set for the provincial government.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
That's right, that's what we meant. That's when we realized
that we needed this report to bring this to light
because people were believing their own I'll use the word
narratives too much, right, it's a serious problem. And then Brian,
just think about this number. Sales on high rise are
(07:17):
down ninety one percent and sales in low rise are
down seventy percent. This is for new housing. So you're
a businessman, you know where that's going. Eventually, that's going
to be a ninety percent drop and a seventy percent
drop respectively. And then if you connect that, think about
all the economic activity around that, in all the jobs
(07:42):
you know, we we were, you know, sitting back and saying, wow,
this announcement just came out on the steel plant that's
closing down. It's two hundred jobs and we're thinking that's
nothing compared to what's happening in our sector.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
You say that this announcement that RESCON says the slower
pace of construction like the event and nine fewer construction
jobs in the city part of a water loss of
an estimated twenty four and ninety five jobs across the
entire Greater Golden Horseshoe area. This is a This is
not a recession. This is a depression in the housing industry,
(08:15):
is it not.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
Yep? Yeah, Well, you know, words are important, right, Brent.
And we've called this crisis for some time, and a
crisis by definition is something that requires urgent action. But
we're going to a catastrophe now. It's beyond that. And
you know, the crazy thing is is a big chunk
(08:40):
of this is fixable. It's within our control. It's quite
different from the last big correction that we had in
the early nineties. And so that's where I'm feeling, you know,
somewhat positive about what we can do with this. That's
(09:00):
if on the proviso that the various levels governments them
get their act together. I'm writing something comparing for example,
Ontario and Alberta right now looking at you know, the
various data points from the two provinces, and it's you know,
you've got that housing comparison. I mentioned that they're building,
(09:23):
you know, three times more housing on a per capita
basis than we are. They're on fire, they can't build
fast enough. But it's a very interesting story. And you know,
they have average higher per capita incomes, they've got higher
per capita GDP, and Alberta they a lot of the
other economic data points sort of line up, and then
(09:46):
you get to housing. And then Alberta the average price
of a home is just over five hundred thousand, and
in Ontario it's over eight hundred thousand. And you ask yourself,
why does that exist in that totality because sets a
huge number. And of course the reason is is that
(10:07):
in Ontario, unlike any other jurisdiction in North America outside
of Vancouver, no one taxes housing new housing the way
it's tax in Ontario. And I can't think of a
jurisdiction outside of Vancouver again that has the amount of
red tape that we still have. Some efforts have been
(10:28):
made to change that, but we've got a long way
to go. But those are things that can be changed
and a down payment today for a young family and
so on. In Ontario is just the increase in two
taxes in the last ten years now the federal government
on taxes, there have been some changes on rental housing
(10:49):
and we saw a boost in rental housing there where
the sales taxes on rental housing and dcs were lowered.
The federal government in the spring went ahead with the
five percent reduction effective May twenty seventh on sales tax
for first time home bars. The province was supposed to
(11:11):
follow suit and then did not, and there was opposition
to that and some people were saying within the industry
that well, it's first time home bars. It's not enough.
It's got to go further because only five percent of
the market is first time home bars, which of course
is nonsense, and the first time home bar market's about
(11:34):
a third of the market. In fact, the last numbers
I saw were thirty nine percent. And so you know,
the province did not go ahead with that, but on
the other hand and said that you know, that would
be a bit of a hit to the provincial coffers
too as well. And then but then what happened was
the premier said, well, look if the federal government goes
(11:54):
further and cancels all sales taxes, then the province will
fall as on that, which is a bit odd. But
so anyways, we're in this sort of limbo on these
sales taxes. And again we still have other fees and
levees that have gone up dramatically, you know, like land
transfer taxes. So you know, when you know that report
(12:16):
that we did before, in the thirty six percent of
the cost of new housing, this taxes, fees and levies,
it's very real and we can and people can't afford it.
They don't have that in Alberta. And then on the
red tape Alberta the government, they're the minister when he
spoke at our housing summit, Uh, brilliant, brilliant guy. The
(12:39):
government of Alberta recognizes housing supply as the number one priority.
So he said, for example, when it comes to green building,
you know, if we can afford it, we'll do some
of these things. But they're just going to stay at
tier one green building relative to the National Code and
not go beyond that because the priority is producing decent
(13:01):
housing for people. And you know, when it comes to
how green we are, we're I think the what was
our VP of Building Science and Innovation told me the
other day, we're nine percent ahead of the Paris Accord
on how green we build. You know, we're leaders in
that already. And this sort of MESSI at, this blind
(13:23):
pursuit of what people think is what they call net zero.
They don't even really understand it. It is crazy and
it's just driven up costs to the point where you know,
you could be talking about another fifty sixty seventy thousand
dollars per condominium with the next phase that they're looking at.
And thankfully Ontario didn't fallow suit on that. So you know,
(13:46):
at the edges we've got some positive things happening. Then
there's a stress test and the immigration debacle, now we
need you know, the stress test was designed that needs
to be fixed. It was designed to reduce consumption. We
don't have that problem now, you know. And then the
immigration what happened with immigration was crazy. And we do
(14:06):
need foreign investment. We need investment in housing in fact
generally bright as you know, we need investment period because
we've had a flight of capital from Ontario recently. So
these things can all be fixed. What we can't fix
is Donald Trump and terror fors right now. But you
know those are those are extenuating circumstances.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
And Richard, people are starting to vote with their feet.
I understand that Ontario last year and so far this
year has suffered out migration from Ontario, and Alberta is
growing its population, so people are moving from Ontario to Alberta.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
And absolutely, I mean, you know, yeah, oh look, there
are two elements to that. One is, we've had people
that have come here and guess what, this isn't a
better place to be. You know, it's been very difficult.
You've had immigrants coming here and because of the cost
of housing, principally you know, they're working three jobs and
(15:03):
whatever and they can't make it work. Then we've got
our young, best and brightest, a third of whom we're
talking serious talent here. You know, we are a talent factory.
This is not a problem of the people, right as
we know. But you know, like in STEM graduates, science, Technology, engineering, math,
we've got brilliant young people and they're leaving. And the
(15:25):
ones that are leaving are really the ones we can't
afford to lose because they're the risk takers. And but
they're the ones who are saying, look, I did everything right,
I did everything you asked me to do, and but
you know, I start working, I can't afford a decent
place on my own. And let's remember that only about
(15:45):
thirty percent of young people are getting help from their
parents on housing of one form or another, so that
leaves seventy percent that are and those seventy percent they're
hungry and they don't want to work hand to mouth
and downtown tron with the where housing costs were, and
so yeah, they're leading. And the people that are.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
The people that are staying are living in very small condominiums.
They're delaying family formation, or if they buy a house,
it's forty five minutes an hour or farther outside of
the city, and they're not spending any time with their family.
So we're harming our social fabric. In the future, we're
going to take a break for some messages and going
(16:30):
to come back in two minutes with Richard Lyle and
talk about how we got here. And before we go
back to talking about the solutions, I think it's going
to be really important to ask Richard what's going to
happen if we don't make changes, because I think that
this catastrophe could get a lot worse, and.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Then it could end up having.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
A bubble, and that boom bust bubble situation creates an
even worse kind of situation long term.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Say with us everyone back in two.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Minutes stream us live at SAGA nine am dot CA.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
A welcome back everyone to the Brian Crime Radio.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
I've got Richard Lile, the president of the Residential Construction
what's the organization called, sir.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
It's a Residential Construction Council of Ontario.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
And who do you represent.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Well, you know, we like to think of ourselves and
it's you know, consistent with our membership is builders. We
are a building community and so you know, they think
of some of the big name players in our world,
Madame each Freidel, tribute to you know, great Golf Green
Park and so on. They're members of our council and
(17:57):
we focus on really construction related ish shoes, anything to
do with building a building. We're not really kind of
on the land side of things or marketing of housing
or whatever. It's really construction related to activities. Although we
have kind of gotten more involved in other issues as
it's become apparent that there were significant problems that were
(18:19):
not being properly addressed, right, and.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
You represent some of the high rise as well as
low rise, is that correct?
Speaker 5 (18:27):
That's correct, And we build all the social housing too.
I mean it's you know, our industry is involved in
everything any any form of housing and some light commercial
with that. And of course we have an infrastructure group too,
because you need infrastructure to support new housing.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
You actually came up with another report on that this
week or a comment on that as well, which is
well worth talking about.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
But let's come back to this announcement.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
That you came up early in the week, and let
me quote from it again. If I could across our
thirty four municipalities, pre construction sales of condo apartments are
down eighteen nine percent eighty percent, and pre construction ground
oriented sales, which is I presume single family homestown homes things.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Are down seventy percent.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
So the people that have said that it's only the
condo market that's being impacted or not right, it's also
clearly all building down seventy This is a clear indication
that Ontario's housing situation will get worse before it gets better,
and that the market weakness is not isolated to the
condo market. The numbers come on the heels of another
CMAC report really started this month, which suggested Toronto was
(19:36):
the epicenter of weakness for residential construction.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
In the first half of the year.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
The report warrant that Toronto was on pace for the
lowest annual housing starts total in thirty years. In thirty years,
We've doubled our population in thirty years, and yet we're
going to have the lowest housing starts. Richard, how did
we get in this terrible situation?
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Nobody was paying attention at the thirty thousand foot level, Brian.
That was the problem, and accountability was divided between different
levels of government. So you had this sort of chicken
and egg game going on on various issues. You know,
I'll do this if those guys do that. It's like
what Premier fort is saying just this past week that
(20:21):
you know what, that tax break for the first time
home buyer isn't good enough, isn't doesn't go far enough.
We want more, but we'll do it if the federal
government does it right. Well, the federal government already acted
on the first time home buyer bit. They did what
they said they were going to do, so Why would
(20:42):
the federal government right now double down and go further,
especially when if you think about this, this is an
Ontario problem and Vancouver that's it. Outside of that, I mean,
you look at Alberta. They can't build fast enough. The
Prairie provinces are fine, Quebec has some records, starts happening
there in rental housing, and so on. Eastern Canada is
(21:04):
doing you know, they're doing fine. They get a healthy market.
I'm not saying that they don't have their respective challenges
and so on. Even the housing minister from Alberta will say,
you know, we have a housing crisis, but it's nothing
like Ontario, and so you know, here we are. And
then the word is out that there's going to be
a break on the sales taxes, but then it's not happening.
(21:27):
So guess what happens to the extent that you have
a market there like first time home bars or others, well,
some of them are going to wait and see, wait
for this thing to come. I mean, why would you
jump into a market if you're going to get a
big break on sales taxes on something of this scale. Right,
So it's just you know, at the thirty thousand foot level.
(21:48):
It just wasn't there. They weren't looking at the numbers properly.
They were doing crazy things like when you know, Minister
Miller at the federal level, remember when they doubled immigration
utterly without any regard to housing supply or healthcare services
for that matter. Right, crazy things like that that did
not make any sense because our immigration was already very high.
(22:10):
And then you look at you know, the college debacle
in Ontario where you know, we had this feeding frenzy
on foreign students and then that imploded. So right now, Yeah,
and one of the things we said, well over a
year ago is that the population numbers are dropping in
Toronto and Mississauga. At least mayor parish in Mississauga saw
(22:35):
this and acted. And she's she's doing real things and
real changes that are helpful. Isn't it enough? Well, you know,
sometimes it takes a while to turn a supertanker around.
It's not exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
It, but sir, I want to I want to challenge
you if I could in February of twenty twenty two.
February eighth of twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty two,
that's three half years ago, Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario,
released the Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force. He came out
with fifty five different recommendations on how to improve housing affordability,
(23:13):
and he was quoted as saying they're aimed at making
house prices more affordable by dramatically boosting the supply of housing.
Let me repeat that, by dramatically boosting the supply of housing.
February eight, twenty twenty two. You're quoted at this time
in responding to it, so to say that we haven't
been paying.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Attention, I think is wrong.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
We've been paying attention, we just haven't done anything.
Speaker 5 (23:39):
Well, okay, you were absolutely correct on that, and I
stand corrected. Sorry for the misunderstanding there. We are aware
of these things, and like good Canadians, you know, the
rhetoric is thick, right, but you know what, we're not
good at implementation. And so but my hat, my hat
(24:00):
softy on that one. That is a fine, very important
distinction there. So on that Housing Task Force report, you know,
two years later, only seventeen of the recommendations were implemented, right,
And so people were kind of saying, well, what was
the point of that, you know, and that's the problem
(24:20):
that we have. Canadians are you know, I think we
must I think we maybe invented the committee in Canada
or something like. We're just very good at Actually we're
just yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
How'd we get to.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
The situation like, you know during the twenty tens, how
did we get to the situation?
Speaker 5 (24:37):
Well, you know, again, it was kind of death by
a thousand cuts. It was insidious. It was kind of
a slow cancerous growth that it just got worse and
worse and worse. And then combining that with we had
high immigration, We had people that wanted to come here,
they were bringing money, they were prepared to pay those
(25:00):
higher prices, and so the prices went up. You know,
we had the economics of scarcity at place, so demand
was not being met with supply, and so that trajectory
just went up and up and up until you know,
we knew we're headed for a cleft, until we knew
(25:20):
it was going to end, and we were saying to people,
this is going to be over some day. But some
people thoughts, for example, that you know, condominium construction square
foot cost prices would go to or the price of
a condo we'd go to like two thousand dollars a
square foot. We had not long ago new projects being
(25:42):
priced out of fifteen sixteen, seventeen hundred dollars a square foot.
You look at what they're selling for now, selling for
it's half that, right.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
I met I met an expert in sales of pre
construction condos last week who said that during sort of
the twenty tens, at least that last half of the
twenty tens, so twenty fifteen to twenty twenty one or two,
he said, we were selling the math. We weren't selling
living spaces, we weren't selling homes. Now, the vast majority
(26:13):
of the buyers were investors that thought they were going
to be able to buy and flip it before they
even had to come in and close on the purchase
of the house.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
And so therefore it was.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
An investment vehicle that we were selling the math, he
called it, rather than actually a place to live. And
that's what caused the problem in his mind. And then
he said that, and then government saw this golden goose
and wanted to tax it out of existence, and they did,
what do you think about that?
Speaker 5 (26:40):
Yeap, one hundred percent correct. I mean, it got to
the point Brian where a condo would be sold, where
someone would buy a condo or five or ten with
no intention of ever taking possession and closing on it.
They were going to flip it, right, and it's called
the assignment. So you have this assignment. It was actually
(27:00):
got at the point where there was a company that
was created and you probably know some of these people too,
but you know, to trade assignments, so you could throw
it in an assignment market. It became it became like
you know that famous book mass Popular Delusions of the
Madness of Crowds, which was a famous book written in
(27:20):
eighteen forty six on market bubbles. This was a classic bubble.
And then the size of the units. I think a
lot of people they didn't care what the size was.
It was just an investment vehicle, you know when people
talk about the financialization of housing. We turned how to
my mind, we turned housing into an investment play on
(27:43):
a large scale, and that was the financialization of housing.
So people weren't really paying attention to you know, it's
four hundred square feet. In fact, some of them may
have been from other parts of the world where they
measure things in meters, probably thought it was a bigger unit.
But you know, and then why these boxes, Well, there
was a huge demand for housing, there was a market
(28:05):
for it, and there still is a market for small
little condos, little pieta tare or whatever that you want
to have in the city. But our technical standards, you know,
our restrictions in our codes and so on, actually encouraged
smaller units. So we have a restriction, for example, on
how big a floor plate on an apartment building or
econdominium building can be. There's no reason for it, there's
(28:28):
no research behind that, but it's there. And then when
you add in elevator shafts and stairwells and you're trying
to maximize the amount of units you have relative to
the size of that four floor plate, it's hard to
fit in two and three bedroom units. And of course,
the way costs we're going, the two and three bedroom
costs were getting prohibited, prohibitive, and it's a market. So
(28:50):
the market will go where markets going. And people forget
too that. Our industry, you know, we've got hundreds of
you know, significant home builders and thousands of contractors. It's
a fiercely competitive industry, one of the last truly competitive
industries out there. And then you had the land situation
which was choked by this growth plan that was ridiculous
(29:15):
introduced twenty years ago along with a green belt that
became this sort of sacrisanct never to be touched again land,
when in fact, there's a lot of land on the
green belt that is not farm land. It's not you know,
conservation land, and it could be built on it's had
things on it. And you know, the green belt land
(29:35):
only accounts for one percent of our agricultural produce that
we consume too as well. But yet we did that,
We took this huge piece of land and said thou
shalt never go there again. And by the way, we're
anti sprawl, but then they didn't do anything to allow
for higher densities and all that created was this ex
urban sprawl issue where people were still driving to qualify
(29:59):
and were they doing that? Well, it's it's behavioral psychology.
If you grew up in a house with the backyard
and you have a family, that's what you want and
that's what you're going to look for, and most people
will not. You know, herd As Simon had the word
satisfy singe. You know you're not gonna you know, you're
not going to compromise on that most people. And if
(30:21):
you can't get that and you really really want to
have a family, you're going to leave right or if
you want to have a you know, a future where
you're not being crushed by the cost of housing. So
it's it's a government. It's a government created problem.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Government created a problem.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
And so ye, Richard, if we don't make changes, if
the governments don't make changes, what's going to be the
situation in a yearor two, what like take take us out?
You've talked about significant out loss already is though? Are
those job losses going to continue?
Speaker 5 (30:53):
I ran some numbers on this on my own. I
used to be an analyst a long, long time ago,
and I came up with numbers that were well in
excess of one hundred thousand jobs. And depending how far
this goes, you know, we could be talking two hundred
thousand jobs in Ontario, right and we could be talking
one point five to two point five a hit of
(31:14):
one point five to two point five percent of GDP.
And these those are huge numbers. But if you look
at you know, seventy percent down on low rice, ninety
percent down on high rise that's eventually going to result
in a ninety percent drop in construction activity, a seventy
percent drop in construction construction activity all in all things considered.
(31:39):
That goes into that. And just think about how many
people work in the industry, and it's they're massive numbers.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
So it does it suggest that some of your your
members are going to go bankrupt? Is there going to
be financial distress within the building industry?
Speaker 5 (31:54):
Oh, one hundred percent. You know companies that there are
some groups that saw this coming and throttled back there.
But as you know, when you get into a bubble,
you get people that start really piling on at the end, right,
because of course it's just going to keep going up
and up and up. I mean, part of the problem
(32:16):
we had was a lot of people that are working
in the industry and buying into the market have only
known real estate values to climb except for remember two
thousand and eight nine we had a six month blip
there and then in twenty seventeen we had a six
month blip in the market where it dropped quite suddenly
with interest rate moves and stuff like that. So they've
(32:37):
only known the market to go up. But that was
the investment play that was created because wow, you can
make really good money here, and if it's your personal residence,
there's no capital gasee text, there's no you know, it's
just cash right, So off we went there and you
know that party's over.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yeah, these workers are they going to hang around waiting
until the market comes back? Are they going to move
to Calgary?
Speaker 5 (33:06):
So there are two things that happen there. We know
this from the last time. They'll find because people have
to put bread on the table. And it's heartbreaking what's
happening right now because we're laying off and firing really
good people and not through any fault of their own.
So you're going to do two things. So try to
get a job in another industry somewhere somehow, or they're
(33:29):
gonna leave. And in this case, manufacturing's down too. So
in the past we'd have sometimes people go into manufacturing
or whatever that happened in the early nineties, or you know,
they're gonna leave, and they will leave and Alberta and
you know other parts where you have much less expensive
housing and you have jobs, they're going to go. Why not.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
So if the people leave and housing starts for a
year or two or three are down dramatically. What happens
in like nine does it not lead to like another boom?
So we got this boom historically, this bus currently, and
we're going to have another boom in the future that
you know, we just on this this this rail roller
(34:13):
coaster ride.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
Yeah, so my theory. You know, that's a great question.
And you know, guess what I mean, this is still
one of the best pieces of real estate on the planet.
People want to be here. We have resources galore, we've
got fresh water, we've got relatively you know, we've got
stable government. All this stuff. This is a This is
a a So when that when we when the worm
(34:38):
turns in two or three years, demand is going to
shoot up. The cost of housing is going to go
through the roof again, right, and we're not going to
have the capacity. We're not going to be able to
supply housing on scale that will be required. And that's
where you know, for example, we're looking at off site
(34:58):
construction right now, factory to build housing because because we
can see this coming and we're not going to have
that workforce and if we you know, who knows what's
going to happen with immigration. You know, we've had that
decades long problem with you know, skilled trades, immigration and
(35:18):
challenges there and and I'm not sure. I just don't
really have a lot of confidence when it comes to
the government and immigration still. So yeah, twenty twenty eight
to twenty thirty is going to be really interesting. And
(35:38):
that's if we can get it right today. You know,
I've seen forecasts that put us getting back to the
average in twenty thirty five, they had thirty first amount
of production where we were.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
We're going to take a break for some messages and
come back in two minutes with Richard l'Ile, the president
of RESCON, the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, about what
we should do because we've talked about how bad it's got.
We've talked about that not a lot's been being done
even though we've been talking about it for five years,
or for certainly two and a half years since the
(36:12):
Housing Affordability Task Force. And we've talked about, you know,
how out migration is happening, how layoffs are happening, how
how construction is down in condos and in in singa
family homes and town homes, et cetera. What's going to
happen is that it's going to get far worse, and
so we've got to take some action. And so therefore
we've got to figure out exactly what Richard thinks we
(36:33):
should do.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
We're going to take a break. Be back in two
minutes with an action plan.
Speaker 5 (36:37):
Stay with us.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Everyone back into.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Stream us live at SAGA nine six am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
We'llcome back everyone to the Brian Cromey Radio chatting with Richard.
He's the president of RESCONS. He's been a strategist within
the construction business for quite a long period of time's
RESCON is the Residential Construction Council of Ontario. He's come
up with a major report this week that talked about
how I think you said it was twenty two of
thirty four or something like that, municipalities that had a
(37:19):
failing grade in the Greater Toronto area, in the southern
Ontario area. He talked about how residential construction is down dramatically,
particularly in condos, but also in surface built housing. We
talked about how pricing has come down. We've talked about
how layoffs are occurring. He's worried about bankruptcy within the
housing business. We've talked about how we've been talking about
(37:42):
this for a long time, and we haven't taken action.
And he's mentioned that taxes have increased dramatically and red
tape has increased dramatically. So I got to ask you, sir,
if you sat down with the premier or with the
federal Minister of Housing, what would you tell him they
got to do.
Speaker 5 (37:58):
Well, the first thing that they have to do is
really come up with an aligned plan between different levels
of garpment. There needs to be alignment here, and we
still don't have that yet. I mean, we've got some,
as I mentioned before, some positive things happening, but not
on the scale that's needed to turn this around. And
let's keep one thing in mind that the province has
(38:22):
the ultimate authority over this. The federal government certainly is
a huge role, but the federal government is federal and
that housing crisis is not the same across the country.
So to ask the federal government to do things just
for Ontario is difficult, right and so and then at
the provincial level, well, you know, there's no place in
(38:44):
the constitution for municipalities. In the Canadian constitution, municipalities are
creatures of the province. So if if these municipalities are
getting an F grade or a D. You know, we
get a bunch of d's in their three discs, you know,
and so on. Then the province has the power to
fix whatever the problem is, right And because you know, municipalities,
(39:08):
that's why they call them by laws, they they they
Missipalacey can pass laws by the by the leave of
the province, right, and so that needs to happen, and
we need to you know, it's one of the things
that you know, we've been fighting over these green building standards.
We're not again anti green building, but we've got all
these we had all these municipalities going off hither and
(39:30):
yon creating their own, you know, in response to their
own particular climate change crisis, their own green building standards,
and they didn't know what they were doing. I think
we finally got that fixed now with Bill seventeen. Uh,
but we still have litigation uh pending with the City
of Toronto over this. So just to segue there, so
(39:51):
we need to the levels of government need to get together,
and the targets have to be rooted in an actual plan.
If you're talking about one point five million holmes, that's great,
Now what's the plan to get there? You know, we
don't have that yet. And the federal government had their
own plans and we've got municipalities, you know, City of Toronto,
they're housing plans and whatever with targets that are never hit.
(40:16):
You know, they keep getting they keep kicking the can
down the road, repackaging things, for example, and then announcing
a new strategy, which is just a reworked old strategy.
So we have to get serious about this stuff. And
then you know, we have to a certain things that
must be implemented. We can't keep taxing housing like alcohol
and cigarettes. We tax housing like it's something that we
(40:40):
want to reduce public consumption because it's not good for you, right,
That makes no sense at all, And that's that's a
multi you know, the federal government, for example, and kudos
to the to UH Prime Minister Kearney and Minister Robertson
for the getting rid of the sales tax for first
(41:01):
time home bars. Now we'd like it to go further
than that, but they did that. They passed it and
they put in place and then it just sort of
nothing happened at the provincial level, as we've talked about before,
but at least they did that, and there was a
recognition for that. Now, we'd like it to be right
across the board, and certainly a new formula has to
(41:23):
be created to pay for infrastructure related to growth. We
can't keep putting that on the backs of first time
home bars and first time renters, which is what happened.
There was a perversion that happened here. You know, the
fact that young people, you know, the whole failure to
launch things and why they're leaving the province is because
(41:43):
the boomers and Gen X just dumped effectively, unwittingly dumped
the cost these huge costs on the first time home
bars and renters, and those costs went up one thousand
percent two thousand percent, depending on which time period you
know you looked at it. I mean, within a ten
year time period in the city of Toronto, for example,
(42:06):
a two veteran condo went from eight thousand dollars DC
cost per unit to eighty eight thousand dollars yeah, thousand
and so tell me and when you have you had
no real income growth during that same period of time,
brand real income growth just for inflation. I know you
(42:28):
know what that is, and I hope the listeners do too.
But on what planet does that make any sense at all,
and then turn around and blame them. You know, Oh,
they're lazy, they're not leaving home. You know, they got
to work as hard as we do. I heard a
radio show and I commented on it around the radio
show it said, you know, I think it was Jerry Agard.
(42:50):
I love Jerry Agard. Jerry Eerguard said, you know, they
got to work as hard as we did when I
was young and save up for a house. Well, Jerry,
the circumstances that game has changed. The rules have changed. Yeah,
we're still playing Monopoly, but the cost of those houses
has gone up ten times, you know, exponentially, So it's
(43:11):
not the same game. You're just going to jail.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Do you think that the people in charge are hearing you?
Speaker 5 (43:20):
I think so now. And one of the problems I think, yeah,
they're hearing us. We got we've got people, we've got
their attention. But now it's cutting through the Gordian knot
the morass of competing interests. It's the you know, not
wanting to jump in first. For example, the federal government
(43:42):
made a mistake on the development charges part of things
where they said they'll make municipalities hole if they you know,
cut their development charges. Well, the province isn't going to
jump in right after that and say oh no, no,
we got this. You know, I'll pick up the tab,
you know. So you get that stall there, and so
it's we're waiting for things like that to happen, and
(44:03):
then you get problems where the federal government did say, hey,
we're going to cut the sales tax for first time
home bars. That's great, but then the ball gets dropped
at the pervincial level and we've had people in the
industry saying, oh, don't do that, it's not enough. We
want the whole Enchilada. Well no, kiddie, ye know, we'd
love to get the whole Enchilada. But there's two things, Brian,
(44:24):
that you know that governments are not good at, and
a lot of people don't realize this. The governments are
not good at cutting taxes once they've once they've been created.
And they're not good at fixing their own failed organizations.
They're very good at creating new ones. Because when you
fix a failed organization, that usually means you got to
(44:45):
lose some people, you got to fire some people potentially,
and you've gotta make some serious changes. And it takes.
It takes a lot of work to get.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
In there, and they're going to vote against you.
Speaker 5 (44:56):
They're going to vote against you. You're gonna make people angry.
Speaker 6 (44:59):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (45:00):
Remember our buddy Tim houdakt there, you know, when he
announced that he was gonna cut the sill size. Yeah,
and guess what. One out of four Canadians gets a
paycheck directly or indirectly from the government. So that didn't
go over well.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Right, Richard Lyley, this has been a very hopeful conversation.
It was an excellent report you came up with this week.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
I think that this is a wake up call. Thank
you very much for your contribution to this issue.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (45:27):
Thank you, Brian, thanks for your interest, as always in
great questions.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
We're going to take a break and when we come back,
I'm going to give you my ten point plan on
how to solve this problem.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Stay with us, everyone back in two minutes. Thanks with
you doing.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Stream us live at SAGA nine six am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
A welcome back to the Brian Crumby Radio hour. I
wanted to give you my ten point plan on how
we solve this housing crisis problem because I think it
is a catastrophe, as Richard Lyles said, and I think
(46:06):
we need government to really pay attention to this, otherwise
it's going to get far worse. We're going to have
out migration, We're going to have layoffs, some bankruptcies within
the housing business that's not going to be able to
be fixed in the future, and or if it is,
it's going to end up having a massive dislocation. And
I think it's going to lead to another boom in
(46:27):
the future, which means that you go through this massive
dislocation in regards to boom bus boom bust, boom bust,
which just doesn't make any sense from an economic standpoint.
So number one, taxes, he said, I've heard statistics that
thirty one percent he was talking about, thirty four percent
of the cost of new housing is taxes. And importantly,
the taxes come out front, and that's wrong, and so
(46:47):
I think that we need to reduce it dramatically. Richard
used the example of retax housing like cigarettes and tax
cigarettes and alcohol. We're trying to discourage consumption. We should
be doing the opposite. We should be trying to encourage consumption.
And so therefore we need to dramatically reduce taxes. It
shouldn't just be for new home buyers. It should be
or of single family homes, of condos, it should be
(47:08):
for everything. I would reduce the taxes on every form
of housing immediately, right away completely. In the future, things
come back, you can change things. Development charges. Growth should
be paid for by society as a whole, not by
young people, not by immigrants that were welcoming into our country,
not by renters that want to become homeowners. Development taxes
(47:31):
have gone up by one thousand percent in Toronto. There's
a municipality north of Toronto that increased it by over
something forty percent just this year. When it's well known
how development taxes don't make sense. So development taxes development
charges have got to come down to zero for the
next couple of years and should never go up the
way they have in the past. Red tape it takes
(47:55):
longer to approve a development and a house than it
does to actually build it.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
That makes no sense.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
We push paper incredibly slowly. We've increased dramatically the number
of studies that have done. We have more red tape
and housing than in almost any other sector of society
other than maybe pharmaceuticals and even there, it's an on
off switch.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
You're approved or you're not approved.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Rather than this massive amount of influence over how many
amenity spaces, how many parking spaces, the building regulations, et cetera.
It makes no sense as of right should be what
governments are trying to do. We had this issue in
Toronto about six flexes, and we only passed it for
the old city of Toronto rather than the boroughs around
the balance of Toronto. It's a mistake. Six plexes should
(48:40):
be allowed as a right everywhere. We've got to get
back to making it easier for people to build same thing.
In regards to metro major transtation areos, we should make
it as a right to build greater density, greater height,
with more flexibility within four hundred eight hundred meters of
a major transistation area mbianism. No other sector of society.
(49:02):
We would allow the current soda manufacturers to decide whether
new soda manufacturers got to come in, or existing car
manufacturers to allow well, actually maybe we do have a
little bit of that in the car business, or existing
broadcasters to vote on whether new broadcasters should come into
the market. We have built up this nimbism that is
(49:22):
effectively an anti competitive establishment. That is wrong. We've got
to have people that have the entire society, the entire city,
the entire Greater Toronto area or Golden Horseshoe at mind
when they think about what should be done industrial land.
In Montreal, what they've done is old industrial land. They
increase from one times density to nine times density and
(49:43):
allowed people to take industrial land and repurpose it as
residential land.
Speaker 5 (49:48):
We don't in Toronto.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
Why not transit areas. I think that the major transit
station areas that have been talked about for two years
finally are getting thought about, but not nearly.
Speaker 3 (49:57):
To the extent that they should be.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Major transittitioneriy should be one hundred percent mixed juice, not
half mixed usee half neighborhood. And you should be allowed
as a right to build greater height, greater density. We
want to make building transit more efficient, more effective, and
the way to do that is to allow density around
transit stations. The green belt. We built a moat around Toronto.
We built a wall around Toronto. Some of it should
(50:22):
be protected, the conservation areas and some of the farmland,
but not all of it, and every place in the
world that has created such a green belt has lived
to regret it. We should be thinking about this. What
we're doing is we're creating this wall such that the
only way for our young people to afford a single
family home is to jump it and commute an hour
or what they're doing, which has moved to Calgary or Edmonton,
(50:45):
and that's not what we should be wanting for them. Infrastructure,
We've got to build more Ontario lines, more LRTs. We've
got to make it easier for people to get to
work or get around the city. We've got to create
the economic environment, the vibrancy, the entrepreneurialism, the social capital
that great cities.
Speaker 3 (51:05):
Grow on.
Speaker 2 (51:06):
And you go to Paris, you go to London, you
go to New York, you go to places that are great.
They've got far better transit infrastructure than we have, which
means that even in a dense city, even.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
In a large city, you can get around.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
You can get to that job, you can get to
that baseball game, you can get to that How many
people have said, I'm not going to go to a
baseball game. I'm not going to go from Mississauga to
Scarborough because it just takes too long. The stress test
was appropriate a couple of years ago, it's not appropriate anymore.
We've got to get rid of it. We should be
encouraging housing consumption, not discouraging it. And finally, we need
(51:37):
a solution to social housing. There are too many encampments
around the city and that's proof positive that we don't
have enough supply and we've got to solve it for
the people at the bottom of the income scale as
well as for people everywhere else on the income scale.
And that's something that can only be solved. I firmly
believe by increased supply and government involvement in private public
(51:59):
partnerships and or in in land that is given to
developers to provide social housing.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
That's my ten point Planet.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
Dext good Night, No Radio, No Problem. Stream is live
on SAGA nine sixty am dot c a
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):
Beliasing everyone and Welcome to the Bran Crombie Radio War.
Got Richard Lyles back with us today. Richard is the
president of res CON, which is.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
The Residential Construction Council of Ontario, and.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Richard came out with a really shocking series of announcements
this week and some projections of what was going to
happen to the housing business, What has happened and what
will happen to the housing business in the Greater Toronto
area and in Ontario that I think needs to be
talked about. It needs to be talked about, you know,
(00:49):
at all levels, and I think governments have got to
take some action real quick.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Richard Lyle, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
Good to be here, Brian, thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
So what was this announcement that I'm thinking is so shocking.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
Well, we had a couple of things this week. But
the first thing was on Monday, we released a report
that we worked with the Missing Metal Initiative and the
University of Ottawa on which was ranking a scorecard for
municipalities in Ontario, and because people understand things like report
(01:22):
cards and letter grades and things like that, and of course,
you know, the housing issues very complicated. How we got
to where we are and how we're going to get
out of this, although getting out of it it's a little
more simple, but well simpler, but we'll come to that.
But the reason why we did this was that it
became clear to us that people just didn't really realize
(01:44):
what was happening and how severe the problem is with housing.
And that's because a lot of the data that was
being relied on was older data, like older starts data,
and so they weren't getting a clear picture of where
things are now and where they're going uh to put it,
(02:06):
you know, and we're talking about sales and starts data.
We can get into that a little bit if you like.
But the problem was is that there was a bit
of a you know, a little cognitive dissonance going on
here because on the street, you know, I'm talking to
contractors and builders and and you know, what's happening with
the workforce and laying people off big big numbers, and
(02:28):
not just skilled trades crews, but also project teams and
the back you know, back of house project teams, the
ones who put everything together and manage it. Meanwhile, we
still had people trying to interview me about, you know,
labor shortages, and you know, we had people bragging and
(02:50):
still bragging about how many tower cranes we have in
the sky and stuff like that, and I was saying, hey,
as they come down, they're not going back up again,
and so uh. And then you also have things like
the Housing Accelerator Fund and the provincial government, both federal
and provincial government, running around handing out checks to municipalities
(03:10):
based on their so called their supposed performance relative to
delivering the amount of housing relative to some of the
targets that have been set right, we know those targets
Ontario one point five million at the federal level, much
bigger than that. And we thought some of that was
(03:33):
really quite bizarre because you know, the performance really wasn't
there in our view. So we did this report and
of course it came out. We looked at thirty four municipalities.
There's a whole methodology for how they were graded. In
the back of the report that was University of Ottawa
again and the Missing Middle Initiative and out of the
(03:56):
thirty four twenty two failing grade and F two got a's,
two got b's, and three got c's and then that
was it. Right. So, but the f's, the twenty two
f's was really quite as you said, shocking, but really
(04:21):
not when you think about something like this, like if
compared to Alberta, we have we're building about a third
of the housing on a per capita basis that Alberta
is building right now. And that's why we had the
you know, later in the week we had our fifth
annual Housings of it that we set up to track
(04:43):
these things, and like that report, we're going to keep
that report coming every quarter because we're going to track
where we're at.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Right Jason, did you say that we are building one
third on a per capita basis of new starts versus
what Alberta is.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Doing one third?
Speaker 5 (05:02):
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, so the whole province is failing.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, no, in fact, but you know, if you
extrapolate this, you can say that the province is failing
in the federal government's failing because they all have their
fingers in the pie, you know.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
I mean, having said that all levels of government have
done certain things that are positive. They're sort of technology
and have been that. We have a serious crisis here.
The federal government have their Build Canada Homes Ontario Mortch
recently had Bill seventeen, which is for some very significant
(05:39):
changes to development charges and how they're managed. And then
at the municipal level, you've had various efforts by some
municipalities to really improve their systems. You had, you know,
Mayor Parish and Mississauga came up with a really nice
housing plan of kudos to her, and reduced their development charges.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
But is it having an impact.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
You know, the numbers that you talked about, and let
me just quote from your announcement if if I could,
the findings were troubling and should set off the alarm
ball along alarm bells for policymakers across all three levels
of government. Res CON president Richard Lyle said in a
news relief Overall housing starts were down forty percent in
(06:22):
the thirty four municipality study, with condo apartments leading the
decline down fifty four percent. Things were even more stark
in the city of Toronto, where housing starts were down
fifty eight percent. And then this is the most astounding
statistic condo apartment starts. We're down a staggering eighty percent
in Toronto, falling from an average of nearly eight thousand
(06:42):
during the first six months of the previous four years
to just one thousand, six hundred and six so far
in twenty twenty five. You're saying that we are sixty
seven percent behind the housing target set for the provincial government.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
That's right, that's what we meant. That's when we realized
that we needed this report to bring this to light
because people were believing their own I'll use the word
narratives too much, right, it's a serious problem. And then Brian,
just think about this number. Sales on high rise are
(07:17):
down ninety one percent and sales in low rise are
down seventy percent. This is for new housing. So you're
a businessman, you know where that's going. Eventually, that's going
to be a ninety percent drop and a seventy percent
drop respectively. And then if you connect that, think about
all the economic activity around that, in all the jobs
(07:42):
you know, we we were, you know, sitting back and saying, wow,
this announcement just came out on the steel plant that's
closing down. It's two hundred jobs and we're thinking that's
nothing compared to what's happening in our sector.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
You say that this announcement that RESCON says the slower
pace of construction like the event and nine fewer construction
jobs in the city part of a water loss of
an estimated twenty four and ninety five jobs across the
entire Greater Golden Horseshoe area. This is a This is
not a recession. This is a depression in the housing industry,
(08:15):
is it not.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
Yep? Yeah, Well, you know, words are important, right, Brent.
And we've called this crisis for some time, and a
crisis by definition is something that requires urgent action. But
we're going to a catastrophe now. It's beyond that. And
you know, the crazy thing is is a big chunk
(08:40):
of this is fixable. It's within our control. It's quite
different from the last big correction that we had in
the early nineties. And so that's where I'm feeling, you know,
somewhat positive about what we can do with this. That's
(09:00):
if on the proviso that the various levels governments them
get their act together. I'm writing something comparing for example,
Ontario and Alberta right now looking at you know, the
various data points from the two provinces, and it's you know,
you've got that housing comparison. I mentioned that they're building,
(09:23):
you know, three times more housing on a per capita
basis than we are. They're on fire, they can't build
fast enough. But it's a very interesting story. And you know,
they have average higher per capita incomes, they've got higher
per capita GDP, and Alberta they a lot of the
other economic data points sort of line up, and then
(09:46):
you get to housing. And then Alberta the average price
of a home is just over five hundred thousand, and
in Ontario it's over eight hundred thousand. And you ask yourself,
why does that exist in that totality because sets a
huge number. And of course the reason is is that
(10:07):
in Ontario, unlike any other jurisdiction in North America outside
of Vancouver, no one taxes housing new housing the way
it's tax in Ontario. And I can't think of a
jurisdiction outside of Vancouver again that has the amount of
red tape that we still have. Some efforts have been
(10:28):
made to change that, but we've got a long way
to go. But those are things that can be changed
and a down payment today for a young family and
so on. In Ontario is just the increase in two
taxes in the last ten years now the federal government
on taxes, there have been some changes on rental housing
(10:49):
and we saw a boost in rental housing there where
the sales taxes on rental housing and dcs were lowered.
The federal government in the spring went ahead with the
five percent reduction effective May twenty seventh on sales tax
for first time home bars. The province was supposed to
(11:11):
follow suit and then did not, and there was opposition
to that and some people were saying within the industry
that well, it's first time home bars. It's not enough.
It's got to go further because only five percent of
the market is first time home bars, which of course
is nonsense, and the first time home bar market's about
(11:34):
a third of the market. In fact, the last numbers
I saw were thirty nine percent. And so you know,
the province did not go ahead with that, but on
the other hand and said that you know, that would
be a bit of a hit to the provincial coffers
too as well. And then but then what happened was
the premier said, well, look if the federal government goes
(11:54):
further and cancels all sales taxes, then the province will
fall as on that, which is a bit odd. But
so anyways, we're in this sort of limbo on these
sales taxes. And again we still have other fees and
levees that have gone up dramatically, you know, like land
transfer taxes. So you know, when you know that report
(12:16):
that we did before, in the thirty six percent of
the cost of new housing, this taxes, fees and levies,
it's very real and we can and people can't afford it.
They don't have that in Alberta. And then on the
red tape Alberta the government, they're the minister when he
spoke at our housing summit, Uh, brilliant, brilliant guy. The
(12:39):
government of Alberta recognizes housing supply as the number one priority.
So he said, for example, when it comes to green building,
you know, if we can afford it, we'll do some
of these things. But they're just going to stay at
tier one green building relative to the National Code and
not go beyond that because the priority is producing decent
(13:01):
housing for people. And you know, when it comes to
how green we are, we're I think the what was
our VP of Building Science and Innovation told me the
other day, we're nine percent ahead of the Paris Accord
on how green we build. You know, we're leaders in
that already. And this sort of MESSI at, this blind
(13:23):
pursuit of what people think is what they call net zero.
They don't even really understand it. It is crazy and
it's just driven up costs to the point where you know,
you could be talking about another fifty sixty seventy thousand
dollars per condominium with the next phase that they're looking at.
And thankfully Ontario didn't fallow suit on that. So you know,
(13:46):
at the edges we've got some positive things happening. Then
there's a stress test and the immigration debacle, now we
need you know, the stress test was designed that needs
to be fixed. It was designed to reduce consumption. We
don't have that problem now, you know. And then the
immigration what happened with immigration was crazy. And we do
(14:06):
need foreign investment. We need investment in housing in fact
generally bright as you know, we need investment period because
we've had a flight of capital from Ontario recently. So
these things can all be fixed. What we can't fix
is Donald Trump and terror fors right now. But you
know those are those are extenuating circumstances.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
And Richard, people are starting to vote with their feet.
I understand that Ontario last year and so far this
year has suffered out migration from Ontario, and Alberta is
growing its population, so people are moving from Ontario to Alberta.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
And absolutely, I mean, you know, yeah, oh look, there
are two elements to that. One is, we've had people
that have come here and guess what, this isn't a
better place to be. You know, it's been very difficult.
You've had immigrants coming here and because of the cost
of housing, principally you know, they're working three jobs and
(15:03):
whatever and they can't make it work. Then we've got
our young, best and brightest, a third of whom we're
talking serious talent here. You know, we are a talent factory.
This is not a problem of the people, right as
we know. But you know, like in STEM graduates, science, Technology, engineering, math,
we've got brilliant young people and they're leaving. And the
(15:25):
ones that are leaving are really the ones we can't
afford to lose because they're the risk takers. And but
they're the ones who are saying, look, I did everything right,
I did everything you asked me to do, and but
you know, I start working, I can't afford a decent
place on my own. And let's remember that only about
(15:45):
thirty percent of young people are getting help from their
parents on housing of one form or another, so that
leaves seventy percent that are and those seventy percent they're
hungry and they don't want to work hand to mouth
and downtown tron with the where housing costs were, and
so yeah, they're leading. And the people that are.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
The people that are staying are living in very small condominiums.
They're delaying family formation, or if they buy a house,
it's forty five minutes an hour or farther outside of
the city, and they're not spending any time with their family.
So we're harming our social fabric. In the future, we're
going to take a break for some messages and going
(16:30):
to come back in two minutes with Richard Lyle and
talk about how we got here. And before we go
back to talking about the solutions, I think it's going
to be really important to ask Richard what's going to
happen if we don't make changes, because I think that
this catastrophe could get a lot worse, and.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Then it could end up having.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
A bubble, and that boom bust bubble situation creates an
even worse kind of situation long term.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Say with us everyone back in two.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Minutes stream us live at SAGA nine am dot CA.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
A welcome back everyone to the Brian Crime Radio.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
I've got Richard Lile, the president of the Residential Construction
what's the organization called, sir.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
It's a Residential Construction Council of Ontario.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
And who do you represent.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Well, you know, we like to think of ourselves and
it's you know, consistent with our membership is builders. We
are a building community and so you know, they think
of some of the big name players in our world,
Madame each Freidel, tribute to you know, great Golf Green
Park and so on. They're members of our council and
(17:57):
we focus on really construction related ish shoes, anything to
do with building a building. We're not really kind of
on the land side of things or marketing of housing
or whatever. It's really construction related to activities. Although we
have kind of gotten more involved in other issues as
it's become apparent that there were significant problems that were
(18:19):
not being properly addressed, right, and.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
You represent some of the high rise as well as
low rise, is that correct?
Speaker 5 (18:27):
That's correct, And we build all the social housing too.
I mean it's you know, our industry is involved in
everything any any form of housing and some light commercial
with that. And of course we have an infrastructure group too,
because you need infrastructure to support new housing.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
You actually came up with another report on that this
week or a comment on that as well, which is
well worth talking about.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
But let's come back to this announcement.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
That you came up early in the week, and let
me quote from it again. If I could across our
thirty four municipalities, pre construction sales of condo apartments are
down eighteen nine percent eighty percent, and pre construction ground
oriented sales, which is I presume single family homestown homes things.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Are down seventy percent.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
So the people that have said that it's only the
condo market that's being impacted or not right, it's also
clearly all building down seventy This is a clear indication
that Ontario's housing situation will get worse before it gets better,
and that the market weakness is not isolated to the
condo market. The numbers come on the heels of another
CMAC report really started this month, which suggested Toronto was
(19:36):
the epicenter of weakness for residential construction.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
In the first half of the year.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
The report warrant that Toronto was on pace for the
lowest annual housing starts total in thirty years. In thirty years,
We've doubled our population in thirty years, and yet we're
going to have the lowest housing starts. Richard, how did
we get in this terrible situation?
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Nobody was paying attention at the thirty thousand foot level, Brian.
That was the problem, and accountability was divided between different
levels of government. So you had this sort of chicken
and egg game going on on various issues. You know,
I'll do this if those guys do that. It's like
what Premier fort is saying just this past week that
(20:21):
you know what, that tax break for the first time
home buyer isn't good enough, isn't doesn't go far enough.
We want more, but we'll do it if the federal
government does it right. Well, the federal government already acted
on the first time home buyer bit. They did what
they said they were going to do, so Why would
(20:42):
the federal government right now double down and go further,
especially when if you think about this, this is an
Ontario problem and Vancouver that's it. Outside of that, I mean,
you look at Alberta. They can't build fast enough. The
Prairie provinces are fine, Quebec has some records, starts happening
there in rental housing, and so on. Eastern Canada is
(21:04):
doing you know, they're doing fine. They get a healthy market.
I'm not saying that they don't have their respective challenges
and so on. Even the housing minister from Alberta will say,
you know, we have a housing crisis, but it's nothing
like Ontario, and so you know, here we are. And
then the word is out that there's going to be
a break on the sales taxes, but then it's not happening.
(21:27):
So guess what happens to the extent that you have
a market there like first time home bars or others, well,
some of them are going to wait and see, wait
for this thing to come. I mean, why would you
jump into a market if you're going to get a
big break on sales taxes on something of this scale. Right,
So it's just you know, at the thirty thousand foot level.
(21:48):
It just wasn't there. They weren't looking at the numbers properly.
They were doing crazy things like when you know, Minister
Miller at the federal level, remember when they doubled immigration
utterly without any regard to housing supply or healthcare services
for that matter. Right, crazy things like that that did
not make any sense because our immigration was already very high.
(22:10):
And then you look at you know, the college debacle
in Ontario where you know, we had this feeding frenzy
on foreign students and then that imploded. So right now, Yeah,
and one of the things we said, well over a
year ago is that the population numbers are dropping in
Toronto and Mississauga. At least mayor parish in Mississauga saw
(22:35):
this and acted. And she's she's doing real things and
real changes that are helpful. Isn't it enough? Well, you know,
sometimes it takes a while to turn a supertanker around.
It's not exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
It, but sir, I want to I want to challenge
you if I could in February of twenty twenty two.
February eighth of twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty two,
that's three half years ago, Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario,
released the Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force. He came out
with fifty five different recommendations on how to improve housing affordability,
(23:13):
and he was quoted as saying they're aimed at making
house prices more affordable by dramatically boosting the supply of housing.
Let me repeat that, by dramatically boosting the supply of housing.
February eight, twenty twenty two. You're quoted at this time
in responding to it, so to say that we haven't
been paying.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Attention, I think is wrong.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
We've been paying attention, we just haven't done anything.
Speaker 5 (23:39):
Well, okay, you were absolutely correct on that, and I
stand corrected. Sorry for the misunderstanding there. We are aware
of these things, and like good Canadians, you know, the
rhetoric is thick, right, but you know what, we're not
good at implementation. And so but my hat, my hat
(24:00):
softy on that one. That is a fine, very important
distinction there. So on that Housing Task Force report, you know,
two years later, only seventeen of the recommendations were implemented, right,
And so people were kind of saying, well, what was
the point of that, you know, and that's the problem
(24:20):
that we have. Canadians are you know, I think we
must I think we maybe invented the committee in Canada
or something like. We're just very good at Actually we're
just yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
How'd we get to.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
The situation like, you know during the twenty tens, how
did we get to the situation?
Speaker 5 (24:37):
Well, you know, again, it was kind of death by
a thousand cuts. It was insidious. It was kind of
a slow cancerous growth that it just got worse and
worse and worse. And then combining that with we had
high immigration, We had people that wanted to come here,
they were bringing money, they were prepared to pay those
(25:00):
higher prices, and so the prices went up. You know,
we had the economics of scarcity at place, so demand
was not being met with supply, and so that trajectory
just went up and up and up until you know,
we knew we're headed for a cleft, until we knew
(25:20):
it was going to end, and we were saying to people,
this is going to be over some day. But some
people thoughts, for example, that you know, condominium construction square
foot cost prices would go to or the price of
a condo we'd go to like two thousand dollars a
square foot. We had not long ago new projects being
(25:42):
priced out of fifteen sixteen, seventeen hundred dollars a square foot.
You look at what they're selling for now, selling for
it's half that, right.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
I met I met an expert in sales of pre
construction condos last week who said that during sort of
the twenty tens, at least that last half of the
twenty tens, so twenty fifteen to twenty twenty one or two,
he said, we were selling the math. We weren't selling
living spaces, we weren't selling homes. Now, the vast majority
(26:13):
of the buyers were investors that thought they were going
to be able to buy and flip it before they
even had to come in and close on the purchase
of the house.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
And so therefore it was.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
An investment vehicle that we were selling the math, he
called it, rather than actually a place to live. And
that's what caused the problem in his mind. And then
he said that, and then government saw this golden goose
and wanted to tax it out of existence, and they did,
what do you think about that?
Speaker 5 (26:40):
Yeap, one hundred percent correct. I mean, it got to
the point Brian where a condo would be sold, where
someone would buy a condo or five or ten with
no intention of ever taking possession and closing on it.
They were going to flip it, right, and it's called
the assignment. So you have this assignment. It was actually
(27:00):
got at the point where there was a company that
was created and you probably know some of these people too,
but you know, to trade assignments, so you could throw
it in an assignment market. It became it became like
you know that famous book mass Popular Delusions of the
Madness of Crowds, which was a famous book written in
(27:20):
eighteen forty six on market bubbles. This was a classic bubble.
And then the size of the units. I think a
lot of people they didn't care what the size was.
It was just an investment vehicle, you know when people
talk about the financialization of housing. We turned how to
my mind, we turned housing into an investment play on
(27:43):
a large scale, and that was the financialization of housing.
So people weren't really paying attention to you know, it's
four hundred square feet. In fact, some of them may
have been from other parts of the world where they
measure things in meters, probably thought it was a bigger unit.
But you know, and then why these boxes, Well, there
was a huge demand for housing, there was a market
(28:05):
for it, and there still is a market for small
little condos, little pieta tare or whatever that you want
to have in the city. But our technical standards, you know,
our restrictions in our codes and so on, actually encouraged
smaller units. So we have a restriction, for example, on
how big a floor plate on an apartment building or
econdominium building can be. There's no reason for it, there's
(28:28):
no research behind that, but it's there. And then when
you add in elevator shafts and stairwells and you're trying
to maximize the amount of units you have relative to
the size of that four floor plate, it's hard to
fit in two and three bedroom units. And of course,
the way costs we're going, the two and three bedroom
costs were getting prohibited, prohibitive, and it's a market. So
(28:50):
the market will go where markets going. And people forget
too that. Our industry, you know, we've got hundreds of
you know, significant home builders and thousands of contractors. It's
a fiercely competitive industry, one of the last truly competitive
industries out there. And then you had the land situation
which was choked by this growth plan that was ridiculous
(29:15):
introduced twenty years ago along with a green belt that
became this sort of sacrisanct never to be touched again land,
when in fact, there's a lot of land on the
green belt that is not farm land. It's not you know,
conservation land, and it could be built on it's had
things on it. And you know, the green belt land
(29:35):
only accounts for one percent of our agricultural produce that
we consume too as well. But yet we did that,
We took this huge piece of land and said thou
shalt never go there again. And by the way, we're
anti sprawl, but then they didn't do anything to allow
for higher densities and all that created was this ex
urban sprawl issue where people were still driving to qualify
(29:59):
and were they doing that? Well, it's it's behavioral psychology.
If you grew up in a house with the backyard
and you have a family, that's what you want and
that's what you're going to look for, and most people
will not. You know, herd As Simon had the word
satisfy singe. You know you're not gonna you know, you're
not going to compromise on that most people. And if
(30:21):
you can't get that and you really really want to
have a family, you're going to leave right or if
you want to have a you know, a future where
you're not being crushed by the cost of housing. So
it's it's a government. It's a government created problem.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Government created a problem.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
And so ye, Richard, if we don't make changes, if
the governments don't make changes, what's going to be the
situation in a yearor two, what like take take us out?
You've talked about significant out loss already is though? Are
those job losses going to continue?
Speaker 5 (30:53):
I ran some numbers on this on my own. I
used to be an analyst a long, long time ago,
and I came up with numbers that were well in
excess of one hundred thousand jobs. And depending how far
this goes, you know, we could be talking two hundred
thousand jobs in Ontario, right and we could be talking
one point five to two point five a hit of
(31:14):
one point five to two point five percent of GDP.
And these those are huge numbers. But if you look
at you know, seventy percent down on low rice, ninety
percent down on high rise that's eventually going to result
in a ninety percent drop in construction activity, a seventy
percent drop in construction construction activity all in all things considered.
(31:39):
That goes into that. And just think about how many
people work in the industry, and it's they're massive numbers.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
So it does it suggest that some of your your
members are going to go bankrupt? Is there going to
be financial distress within the building industry?
Speaker 5 (31:54):
Oh, one hundred percent. You know companies that there are
some groups that saw this coming and throttled back there.
But as you know, when you get into a bubble,
you get people that start really piling on at the end, right,
because of course it's just going to keep going up
and up and up. I mean, part of the problem
(32:16):
we had was a lot of people that are working
in the industry and buying into the market have only
known real estate values to climb except for remember two
thousand and eight nine we had a six month blip
there and then in twenty seventeen we had a six
month blip in the market where it dropped quite suddenly
with interest rate moves and stuff like that. So they've
(32:37):
only known the market to go up. But that was
the investment play that was created because wow, you can
make really good money here, and if it's your personal residence,
there's no capital gasee text, there's no you know, it's
just cash right, So off we went there and you
know that party's over.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yeah, these workers are they going to hang around waiting
until the market comes back? Are they going to move
to Calgary?
Speaker 5 (33:06):
So there are two things that happen there. We know
this from the last time. They'll find because people have
to put bread on the table. And it's heartbreaking what's
happening right now because we're laying off and firing really
good people and not through any fault of their own.
So you're going to do two things. So try to
get a job in another industry somewhere somehow, or they're
(33:29):
gonna leave. And in this case, manufacturing's down too. So
in the past we'd have sometimes people go into manufacturing
or whatever that happened in the early nineties, or you know,
they're gonna leave, and they will leave and Alberta and
you know other parts where you have much less expensive
housing and you have jobs, they're going to go. Why not.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
So if the people leave and housing starts for a
year or two or three are down dramatically. What happens
in like nine does it not lead to like another boom?
So we got this boom historically, this bus currently, and
we're going to have another boom in the future that
you know, we just on this this this rail roller
(34:13):
coaster ride.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
Yeah, so my theory. You know, that's a great question.
And you know, guess what I mean, this is still
one of the best pieces of real estate on the planet.
People want to be here. We have resources galore, we've
got fresh water, we've got relatively you know, we've got
stable government. All this stuff. This is a This is
a a So when that when we when the worm
(34:38):
turns in two or three years, demand is going to
shoot up. The cost of housing is going to go
through the roof again, right, and we're not going to
have the capacity. We're not going to be able to
supply housing on scale that will be required. And that's
where you know, for example, we're looking at off site
(34:58):
construction right now, factory to build housing because because we
can see this coming and we're not going to have
that workforce and if we you know, who knows what's
going to happen with immigration. You know, we've had that
decades long problem with you know, skilled trades, immigration and
(35:18):
challenges there and and I'm not sure. I just don't
really have a lot of confidence when it comes to
the government and immigration still. So yeah, twenty twenty eight
to twenty thirty is going to be really interesting. And
(35:38):
that's if we can get it right today. You know,
I've seen forecasts that put us getting back to the
average in twenty thirty five, they had thirty first amount
of production where we were.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
We're going to take a break for some messages and
come back in two minutes with Richard l'Ile, the president
of RESCON, the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, about what
we should do because we've talked about how bad it's got.
We've talked about that not a lot's been being done
even though we've been talking about it for five years,
or for certainly two and a half years since the
(36:12):
Housing Affordability Task Force. And we've talked about, you know,
how out migration is happening, how layoffs are happening, how
how construction is down in condos and in in singa
family homes and town homes, et cetera. What's going to
happen is that it's going to get far worse, and
so we've got to take some action. And so therefore
we've got to figure out exactly what Richard thinks we
(36:33):
should do.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
We're going to take a break. Be back in two
minutes with an action plan.
Speaker 5 (36:37):
Stay with us.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Everyone back into.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Stream us live at SAGA nine six am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
We'llcome back everyone to the Brian Cromey Radio chatting with Richard.
He's the president of RESCONS. He's been a strategist within
the construction business for quite a long period of time's
RESCON is the Residential Construction Council of Ontario. He's come
up with a major report this week that talked about
how I think you said it was twenty two of
thirty four or something like that, municipalities that had a
(37:19):
failing grade in the Greater Toronto area, in the southern
Ontario area. He talked about how residential construction is down dramatically,
particularly in condos, but also in surface built housing. We
talked about how pricing has come down. We've talked about
how layoffs are occurring. He's worried about bankruptcy within the
housing business. We've talked about how we've been talking about
(37:42):
this for a long time, and we haven't taken action.
And he's mentioned that taxes have increased dramatically and red
tape has increased dramatically. So I got to ask you, sir,
if you sat down with the premier or with the
federal Minister of Housing, what would you tell him they
got to do.
Speaker 5 (37:58):
Well, the first thing that they have to do is
really come up with an aligned plan between different levels
of garpment. There needs to be alignment here, and we
still don't have that yet. I mean, we've got some,
as I mentioned before, some positive things happening, but not
on the scale that's needed to turn this around. And
let's keep one thing in mind that the province has
(38:22):
the ultimate authority over this. The federal government certainly is
a huge role, but the federal government is federal and
that housing crisis is not the same across the country.
So to ask the federal government to do things just
for Ontario is difficult, right and so and then at
the provincial level, well, you know, there's no place in
(38:44):
the constitution for municipalities. In the Canadian constitution, municipalities are
creatures of the province. So if if these municipalities are
getting an F grade or a D. You know, we
get a bunch of d's in their three discs, you know,
and so on. Then the province has the power to
fix whatever the problem is, right And because you know, municipalities,
(39:08):
that's why they call them by laws, they they they
Missipalacey can pass laws by the by the leave of
the province, right, and so that needs to happen, and
we need to you know, it's one of the things
that you know, we've been fighting over these green building standards.
We're not again anti green building, but we've got all
these we had all these municipalities going off hither and
(39:30):
yon creating their own, you know, in response to their
own particular climate change crisis, their own green building standards,
and they didn't know what they were doing. I think
we finally got that fixed now with Bill seventeen. Uh,
but we still have litigation uh pending with the City
of Toronto over this. So just to segue there, so
(39:51):
we need to the levels of government need to get together,
and the targets have to be rooted in an actual plan.
If you're talking about one point five million holmes, that's great,
Now what's the plan to get there? You know, we
don't have that yet. And the federal government had their
own plans and we've got municipalities, you know, City of Toronto,
they're housing plans and whatever with targets that are never hit.
(40:16):
You know, they keep getting they keep kicking the can
down the road, repackaging things, for example, and then announcing
a new strategy, which is just a reworked old strategy.
So we have to get serious about this stuff. And
then you know, we have to a certain things that
must be implemented. We can't keep taxing housing like alcohol
and cigarettes. We tax housing like it's something that we
(40:40):
want to reduce public consumption because it's not good for you, right,
That makes no sense at all, And that's that's a
multi you know, the federal government, for example, and kudos
to the to UH Prime Minister Kearney and Minister Robertson
for the getting rid of the sales tax for first
(41:01):
time home bars. Now we'd like it to go further
than that, but they did that. They passed it and
they put in place and then it just sort of
nothing happened at the provincial level, as we've talked about before,
but at least they did that, and there was a
recognition for that. Now, we'd like it to be right
across the board, and certainly a new formula has to
(41:23):
be created to pay for infrastructure related to growth. We
can't keep putting that on the backs of first time
home bars and first time renters, which is what happened.
There was a perversion that happened here. You know, the
fact that young people, you know, the whole failure to
launch things and why they're leaving the province is because
(41:43):
the boomers and Gen X just dumped effectively, unwittingly dumped
the cost these huge costs on the first time home
bars and renters, and those costs went up one thousand
percent two thousand percent, depending on which time period you
know you looked at it. I mean, within a ten
year time period in the city of Toronto, for example,
(42:06):
a two veteran condo went from eight thousand dollars DC
cost per unit to eighty eight thousand dollars yeah, thousand
and so tell me and when you have you had
no real income growth during that same period of time,
brand real income growth just for inflation. I know you
(42:28):
know what that is, and I hope the listeners do too.
But on what planet does that make any sense at all,
and then turn around and blame them. You know, Oh,
they're lazy, they're not leaving home. You know, they got
to work as hard as we do. I heard a
radio show and I commented on it around the radio
show it said, you know, I think it was Jerry Agard.
(42:50):
I love Jerry Agard. Jerry Eerguard said, you know, they
got to work as hard as we did when I
was young and save up for a house. Well, Jerry,
the circumstances that game has changed. The rules have changed. Yeah,
we're still playing Monopoly, but the cost of those houses
has gone up ten times, you know, exponentially, So it's
(43:11):
not the same game. You're just going to jail.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Do you think that the people in charge are hearing you?
Speaker 5 (43:20):
I think so now. And one of the problems I think, yeah,
they're hearing us. We got we've got people, we've got
their attention. But now it's cutting through the Gordian knot
the morass of competing interests. It's the you know, not
wanting to jump in first. For example, the federal government
(43:42):
made a mistake on the development charges part of things
where they said they'll make municipalities hole if they you know,
cut their development charges. Well, the province isn't going to
jump in right after that and say oh no, no,
we got this. You know, I'll pick up the tab,
you know. So you get that stall there, and so
it's we're waiting for things like that to happen, and
(44:03):
then you get problems where the federal government did say, hey,
we're going to cut the sales tax for first time
home bars. That's great, but then the ball gets dropped
at the pervincial level and we've had people in the
industry saying, oh, don't do that, it's not enough. We
want the whole Enchilada. Well no, kiddie, ye know, we'd
love to get the whole Enchilada. But there's two things, Brian,
(44:24):
that you know that governments are not good at, and
a lot of people don't realize this. The governments are
not good at cutting taxes once they've once they've been created.
And they're not good at fixing their own failed organizations.
They're very good at creating new ones. Because when you
fix a failed organization, that usually means you got to
(44:45):
lose some people, you got to fire some people potentially,
and you've gotta make some serious changes. And it takes.
It takes a lot of work to get.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
In there, and they're going to vote against you.
Speaker 5 (44:56):
They're going to vote against you. You're gonna make people angry.
Speaker 6 (44:59):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (45:00):
Remember our buddy Tim houdakt there, you know, when he
announced that he was gonna cut the sill size. Yeah,
and guess what. One out of four Canadians gets a
paycheck directly or indirectly from the government. So that didn't
go over well.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Right, Richard Lyley, this has been a very hopeful conversation.
It was an excellent report you came up with this week.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
I think that this is a wake up call. Thank
you very much for your contribution to this issue.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (45:27):
Thank you, Brian, thanks for your interest, as always in
great questions.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
We're going to take a break and when we come back,
I'm going to give you my ten point plan on
how to solve this problem.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Stay with us, everyone back in two minutes. Thanks with
you doing.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Stream us live at SAGA nine six am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
A welcome back to the Brian Crumby Radio hour. I
wanted to give you my ten point plan on how
we solve this housing crisis problem because I think it
is a catastrophe, as Richard Lyles said, and I think
(46:06):
we need government to really pay attention to this, otherwise
it's going to get far worse. We're going to have
out migration, We're going to have layoffs, some bankruptcies within
the housing business that's not going to be able to
be fixed in the future, and or if it is,
it's going to end up having a massive dislocation. And
I think it's going to lead to another boom in
(46:27):
the future, which means that you go through this massive
dislocation in regards to boom bus boom bust, boom bust,
which just doesn't make any sense from an economic standpoint.
So number one, taxes, he said, I've heard statistics that
thirty one percent he was talking about, thirty four percent
of the cost of new housing is taxes. And importantly,
the taxes come out front, and that's wrong, and so
(46:47):
I think that we need to reduce it dramatically. Richard
used the example of retax housing like cigarettes and tax
cigarettes and alcohol. We're trying to discourage consumption. We should
be doing the opposite. We should be trying to encourage consumption.
And so therefore we need to dramatically reduce taxes. It
shouldn't just be for new home buyers. It should be
or of single family homes, of condos, it should be
(47:08):
for everything. I would reduce the taxes on every form
of housing immediately, right away completely. In the future, things
come back, you can change things. Development charges. Growth should
be paid for by society as a whole, not by
young people, not by immigrants that were welcoming into our country,
not by renters that want to become homeowners. Development taxes
(47:31):
have gone up by one thousand percent in Toronto. There's
a municipality north of Toronto that increased it by over
something forty percent just this year. When it's well known
how development taxes don't make sense. So development taxes development
charges have got to come down to zero for the
next couple of years and should never go up the
way they have in the past. Red tape it takes
(47:55):
longer to approve a development and a house than it
does to actually build it.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
That makes no sense.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
We push paper incredibly slowly. We've increased dramatically the number
of studies that have done. We have more red tape
and housing than in almost any other sector of society
other than maybe pharmaceuticals and even there, it's an on
off switch.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
You're approved or you're not approved.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Rather than this massive amount of influence over how many
amenity spaces, how many parking spaces, the building regulations, et cetera.
It makes no sense as of right should be what
governments are trying to do. We had this issue in
Toronto about six flexes, and we only passed it for
the old city of Toronto rather than the boroughs around
the balance of Toronto. It's a mistake. Six plexes should
(48:40):
be allowed as a right everywhere. We've got to get
back to making it easier for people to build same thing.
In regards to metro major transtation areos, we should make
it as a right to build greater density, greater height,
with more flexibility within four hundred eight hundred meters of
a major transistation area mbianism. No other sector of society.
(49:02):
We would allow the current soda manufacturers to decide whether
new soda manufacturers got to come in, or existing car
manufacturers to allow well, actually maybe we do have a
little bit of that in the car business, or existing
broadcasters to vote on whether new broadcasters should come into
the market. We have built up this nimbism that is
(49:22):
effectively an anti competitive establishment. That is wrong. We've got
to have people that have the entire society, the entire city,
the entire Greater Toronto area or Golden Horseshoe at mind
when they think about what should be done industrial land.
In Montreal, what they've done is old industrial land. They
increase from one times density to nine times density and
(49:43):
allowed people to take industrial land and repurpose it as
residential land.
Speaker 5 (49:48):
We don't in Toronto.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
Why not transit areas. I think that the major transit
station areas that have been talked about for two years
finally are getting thought about, but not nearly.
Speaker 3 (49:57):
To the extent that they should be.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Major transittitioneriy should be one hundred percent mixed juice, not
half mixed usee half neighborhood. And you should be allowed
as a right to build greater height, greater density. We
want to make building transit more efficient, more effective, and
the way to do that is to allow density around
transit stations. The green belt. We built a moat around Toronto.
We built a wall around Toronto. Some of it should
(50:22):
be protected, the conservation areas and some of the farmland,
but not all of it, and every place in the
world that has created such a green belt has lived
to regret it. We should be thinking about this. What
we're doing is we're creating this wall such that the
only way for our young people to afford a single
family home is to jump it and commute an hour
or what they're doing, which has moved to Calgary or Edmonton,
(50:45):
and that's not what we should be wanting for them. Infrastructure,
We've got to build more Ontario lines, more LRTs. We've
got to make it easier for people to get to
work or get around the city. We've got to create
the economic environment, the vibrancy, the entrepreneurialism, the social capital
that great cities.
Speaker 3 (51:05):
Grow on.
Speaker 2 (51:06):
And you go to Paris, you go to London, you
go to New York, you go to places that are great.
They've got far better transit infrastructure than we have, which
means that even in a dense city, even.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
In a large city, you can get around.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
You can get to that job, you can get to
that baseball game, you can get to that How many
people have said, I'm not going to go to a
baseball game. I'm not going to go from Mississauga to
Scarborough because it just takes too long. The stress test
was appropriate a couple of years ago, it's not appropriate anymore.
We've got to get rid of it. We should be
encouraging housing consumption, not discouraging it. And finally, we need
(51:37):
a solution to social housing. There are too many encampments
around the city and that's proof positive that we don't
have enough supply and we've got to solve it for
the people at the bottom of the income scale as
well as for people everywhere else on the income scale.
And that's something that can only be solved. I firmly
believe by increased supply and government involvement in private public
(51:59):
partnerships and or in in land that is given to
developers to provide social housing.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
That's my ten point Planet.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
Dext good Night, No Radio, No Problem. Stream is live
on SAGA nine sixty am dot c a
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