VAUGHAN, Ont. - Liberal Leader Mark Carney says his government would double Canada’s rate of residential housing construction over the next decade to nearly 500,000 new homes per year.
The Canada Housing Accelerator Credit is already the federal level incentive for density-favoured zoning. Zoning is handled by the provinces who can override municipalities, but the feds can’t override provinces re: housing. Poilievre’s platform is to revoke payments to provinces as punishment for not meeting housing quotas, but this is only going to get provinces more in debt and the budget crunch will only make building housing more difficult.
We need at least 1 million new homes a year
So a crown corporation building homes to get construction to half that level is good. And provinces can bolster that with appropriate zoning changes to spur provincial, municipal public and private development to get to that million target. Sitting back and complaining about the whole plan because it’s not the silver bullet isn’t helpful here.
I don’t really see how I can be helpful here since I’m not a municipal official or an elected representative, complaining is really all I am able to do as an average person.
I’m tired of being promised change only to be met with half-measures that get scrapped by the next party in power. Aren’t you sick of every policy being a version of “we’ll commit to making things slightly better over the next 10 years, when we’re no longer accountable for our failures”?
I’m tired of mediocrity being celebrated because the alternative is societal regression. So yes, I’m complaining. Oh no, how terrible.
Hold that thought in your heart, then organize after the election with other people that have that same thought. Go to your MP and have them introduce private member’s bills to get the change you want to see. Send petitions to the new government. Volunteer in your community or work in areas you want to see change.
If that doesn’t work, bring forward change in our political system ahead of the next election, not when we have to pull away from the brink of fascism.
Volunteering is great (done some non-political volunteer work in the past) but in the re-zoning space local efforts are often de-legitimized by municipal politicians, MPPs, and MPs themselves. They don’t want change; I’ve written to them and they’ve said as much, once they get through the obligatory “I understand your concerns” spiel. A lot of municipal council members are obsessed with single-family homes and are more than happy to give corporate builders exactly what they want.
Petitions are responded to all the time with empty platitudes, so I have no faith there; they’re seemingly only for press attention. They learned from the UK petitions that responding with a nice sentence or two about maybe doing something later on gets the media off their back.
Until we have proportional representation at every level of government and a majority of representatives that are not also landlords, this will probably never change in my lifetime. An actual solution here won’t be forthcoming, so all I have (other than complaining about how they always pull this do-nothing crap) is a tiny modicum of hope that the federal Liberals can commit to this small, incremental change and not fuck it up or water it down to the point where it doesn’t help anyone and the Conservatives cut it in 5 years.
The Canada Housing Accelerator Credit is already the federal level incentive for density-favoured zoning. Zoning is handled by the provinces who can override municipalities, but the feds can’t override provinces re: housing. Poilievre’s platform is to revoke payments to provinces as punishment for not meeting housing quotas, but this is only going to get provinces more in debt and the budget crunch will only make building housing more difficult.
So a crown corporation building homes to get construction to half that level is good. And provinces can bolster that with appropriate zoning changes to spur provincial, municipal public and private development to get to that million target. Sitting back and complaining about the whole plan because it’s not the silver bullet isn’t helpful here.
I don’t really see how I can be helpful here since I’m not a municipal official or an elected representative, complaining is really all I am able to do as an average person.
I’m tired of being promised change only to be met with half-measures that get scrapped by the next party in power. Aren’t you sick of every policy being a version of “we’ll commit to making things slightly better over the next 10 years, when we’re no longer accountable for our failures”?
I’m tired of mediocrity being celebrated because the alternative is societal regression. So yes, I’m complaining. Oh no, how terrible.
Hold that thought in your heart, then organize after the election with other people that have that same thought. Go to your MP and have them introduce private member’s bills to get the change you want to see. Send petitions to the new government. Volunteer in your community or work in areas you want to see change.
If that doesn’t work, bring forward change in our political system ahead of the next election, not when we have to pull away from the brink of fascism.
Volunteering is great (done some non-political volunteer work in the past) but in the re-zoning space local efforts are often de-legitimized by municipal politicians, MPPs, and MPs themselves. They don’t want change; I’ve written to them and they’ve said as much, once they get through the obligatory “I understand your concerns” spiel. A lot of municipal council members are obsessed with single-family homes and are more than happy to give corporate builders exactly what they want.
Petitions are responded to all the time with empty platitudes, so I have no faith there; they’re seemingly only for press attention. They learned from the UK petitions that responding with a nice sentence or two about maybe doing something later on gets the media off their back.
Until we have proportional representation at every level of government and a majority of representatives that are not also landlords, this will probably never change in my lifetime. An actual solution here won’t be forthcoming, so all I have (other than complaining about how they always pull this do-nothing crap) is a tiny modicum of hope that the federal Liberals can commit to this small, incremental change and not fuck it up or water it down to the point where it doesn’t help anyone and the Conservatives cut it in 5 years.