Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that London, Ont., is the first city in Canada to reach a deal with his government under the Housing Accelerator Fund.
He says the deal will create 2,000 new homes in the city over three years.
“This landmark agreement with London will be the first of many, and we look forward to working with all orders of government to help everyone find a place to call their own,” Trudeau said in a statement.
London Mayor Josh Morgan said he wants the city’s agreement to set an example for the rest of the country when it comes to building housing units.
“This is the most significant housing and housing-related infrastructure investment in London’s history,” said Morgan, thanking his staff and council for their work on the deal.
Morgan added that on top of the 2,000 homes the fund will help build over the coming three years, it will also help facilitate the construction of thousands of additional housing units “in the years to come.”
The Housing Accelerator Fund, first announced during the 2021 election campaign, and introduced in the 2022 federal budget, allocates $4 billion in funding until 2026-27 to prompt more homebuilding in cities.
The agreement with London will see the city get $74 million in funding, allowing it to approve high-density developments without the need for rezoning, a statement from the prime minister’s office said.
The statement said the money will help the city:
Encourage home building by allowing four units to be built on a single property in low-density neighbourhoods.
More easily dispose of city-owned land for development.
Create partnerships with non-profits.
The Liberal government says the Housing Accelerator Fund’s objective is to build 100,000 more housing units across the country than what would have been built without the fund by streamlining land-use planning and development approvals.
Municipal governments with a population of more than 10,000 apply to take part by pitching initiatives that will increase the annual rate of home building in their cities by at least 10 per cent.
Sean Fraser, minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, told reporters at the opening of the Liberal caucus meeting in London, Ont., that Wednesday’s housing announcement is one of a series of measures his government will be rolling out this fall. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)
The PMO statement says the fund encourages cities to build high density apartments around public transit to help seniors, students and families.
After announcing the deal Trudeau issued a challenge “to mayors right across the country to step up with their proposals to so we can get building more homes, increasing supply and lowering the prices for families,” he said.
Pressure to tackling housing affordability
Trudeau and his government have faced increasing pressure in recent months to deliver a response to the ongoing shortage of housing across the country. That pressure increased late last month after the Liberal cabinet retreat in P.E.I. ended without the announcement of new measures to tackle the crisis.
Earlier Wednesday, Housing Minister Sean Fraser told reporters that when his government came to office in 2015, the housing shortage overwhelmingly impacted low-income families but the situation has now “fundamentally shifted.”
He said the crisis is now hitting Canadians with variable-rate mortgages, who have seen their payments dramatically increase with the rise in interest rates, prompting a need for a “renewed focus” to address the crisis.
“It’s looking to build homes, not just for low-income Canadians in affordable housing projects, but across the housing spectrum,” he said.
Conservatives were quick to take aim at the Liberals following Wednesday’s announcement. The party released a statement suggesting Liberal housing policies have “failed” thus far.
“It appears that members of the Liberal caucus are just now starting to notice what their constituents have been facing,” the statement said.
Restoring housing affordability: report
The Liberals’ announcement comes as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) released a new report estimating how many units are required to make housing affordable again.
The CMHC Supply Gaps Estimate report said another 3.5 million housing units are required by 2030, over and above the number of units expected to be built by that time, in order to restore affordability to 2004 levels.
The report updates the CMHC’s initial assessment from June 2022, when the housing agency said that gap was slightly higher, at 3.52 million housing units.
That report said that in 2003-2004, an average household in Ontario spent about 40 per cent of its disposable income to cover the annual costs of owning a house, while that figure was 45 per cent in B.C. By 2021, that had risen to 60 per cent.
The CMHC said while incremental progress has been made since last summer, housing in Ontario and B.C., where two-thirds of the 3.5 million extra homes need to be built, is not affordable.
Building the workforce
The renewed focus, Fraser said, would not contain a “silver bullet” but would require all levels of government, the private sector and the non-profit sector to work together.
It would also require measures that tackle some key problems, including:
Providing some kind of financial relief to builders who have projects approved, but have had to put them on pause because of the impact of rising interest rates.
Working with municipalities to speed up the issuing of building permits, and the time it takes to change “zoning practices,” to make it easier to build.
Fraser also said measures will have to be taken to “grow the productive capacity of the workforce” by training Canadians to work in construction, and by recruiting newcomers with much-needed skills.
“We’re going to be looking at everything we can do to build homes more quickly so we can make homes affordable for ordinary people,” he said.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
