Prime Minister François Legault often likes to compare Quebec to Ontario. He reiterates in every tone his desire to reduce the wealth gap with the neighboring province.
A suggestion in this vein: his government should take inspiration from what is happening in the West in terms of housing.
Not all the way, of course. Doug Ford’s government made serious mistakes by wanting to rezone the “greenbelt” around Toronto, to the point that two of its ministers had to resign. Embarrassing about-faces accumulate in this file.
But beyond the blunders, Ontario has adopted a strong strategy and has set clear targets to boost residential construction.
A real game plan.
Precisely what Quebec should put in place, as the housing crisis reaches historic proportions. However, we seem to be swimming in an interstellar blur, with measures sprinkled here and there, without any real overview.
Let me dissect for you some of Ontario’s recovery measures, which deserve to be studied by Quebec.
First of all, the Ford government has set a numerical objective: to build 1.5 million new housing units by 2031. We are talking here about affordable apartments, condos, single-family homes, in short, the whole range of housing that the market needs.
The target is ambitious, perhaps too ambitious, but Queen’s Park has given cities a series of concrete tools to at least try to achieve it.
Among these: Ontario will offer bonuses to cities that set – and achieve – targets for residential construction. An envelope of 1.2 billion has been provided for this purpose over three years.
This is a real incentive to speed up the issuance of building permits and simplify bureaucracy, which will translate into tens of millions more each year for the best-performing cities.
Another interesting, although controversial, measure: the Ford government granted “superpowers” to the mayors of around twenty municipalities, including Toronto and Ottawa. The leaders of these cities can, among other things, use them to force densification on their territory, even if citizens or elected officials oppose it.
The mayor of Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, has just invoked this new latitude to allow the construction of fourplexes in neighborhoods of single-family homes.1.
Ontario also announced that it will follow in the footsteps of the federal government by exempting the construction of new rental properties from its provincial tax. Quebec is closed to this measure, despite loud cries from the real estate industry.
This list is far from exhaustive.
I am not proposing to make a crude copy and paste of Ontario’s ways of doing things in Quebec, of course.
But it is clear that the trend in construction starts is pointing in the right direction among our neighbors, while it is on a dangerously slippery slope here.
The contrast is striking between the two Canadian metropolises.
Toronto posted a 32% increase in new construction during the first six months of the year, a record, while Montreal saw a 60% decline.2.
The picture is almost as bleak throughout Quebec. And nothing suggests an improvement in the coming year.
Construction is in a state of crisis in Quebec, it is now clear and clear. More and more voices are beginning to be raised to demand a real war effort from the Legault government, rather than modest programs adopted piecemeal.
I discussed it Thursday with Guy Caron, the mayor of Rimouski, a city with one of the worst housing shortages in the province. Without demanding “superpowers” like those granted by Ontario, he judges that Quebec should give more autonomy to municipal leaders.
He gave me a very evocative example.
Rimouski recently decided to offer property tax holidays for several years to real estate developers, to encourage them to build on its territory. The City, which will absorb this expense, had to request authorization from the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs… which took months to give the green light. “It should be automatic,” believes Guy Caron.
Agree with him.
The Quebec Construction Association (ACQ) for its part presented a brief which contains several ideas for relaunching construction. His main suggestion: that Quebec adopt a special law, inspired by the Act to accelerate certain infrastructure projectsin order to make it easier for promoters during this period of crisis.
The idea is certainly worth investigating closely.
The Minister of Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau, is expected to present amendments to her Bill 31 on housing in the coming days. Certain articles could, perhaps, facilitate construction starts. We’ll have to see.
Quebec’s budget update on November 7 will also contain new sums, probably hundreds of millions more, to finance affordable housing. It’s good news.
But I fear – and I am not alone – that these measures are like bandages on a gaping wound. At the moment, Quebec needs an ambitious and concerted game plan to emerge from the crisis.