By Jeff Liu

Edited by Claire Posno and Andre Fajardo

Are the governments of Canada doing enough to make housing affordable? In 2019, the Canadian Government passed the National Housing Strategy Act, which recognizes adequate housing as a fundamental human right and aims to improve housing outcomes for Canadians. Despite the Canadian government recognizing housing as a human right, housing remains highly unaffordable across much of Canada. According to Statistics Canada, the annual inflation rate for housing has been consistently higher than the general rate of inflation for years. In Ontario, the average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment was $2,281 in October 2023, up by 8% since last year. This is particularly concerning considering that Ontario is already one of the most expensive provinces to rent in Canada, second only to British Columbia.

In response to this crisis, the Ontario Government announced in November 2022 their plan to remove 7,400 acres of land from the Greenbelt to build 50,000 new homes, with the intention of adding 9,400 acres of land from the Paris Galt Moraine and urban river lands from the Greater Golden Horseshoe to the Greenbelt. The Greenbelt is provincially protected land that is currently 2 million acres in size and spans across Southern Ontario, containing farmlands, wetlands, and forests. The land was established in 2005 by the Greenbelt Act to prevent environmentally sensitive lands from being destroyed for urban development. However, the Ontario Government decided in October of this year to return the land taken for housing development back to the Greenbelt. This reversal comes after an investigation into the former Ontario minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Steve Clark, who resigned after it was discovered that the redesignation of those areas was unfairly influenced by certain land developers for their financial benefit.

Putting the corruption scandal aside, the government made the right call to reverse its decision. Although more homes need to be built, taking land away from the Greenbelt for housing development was never the correct solution as the Greenbelt is incredibly important for protecting the environment. Housing policy should be sustainable as environmental issues such as climate change become more of a threat to the people of Ontario.  The Greenbelt is vital to mitigating climate change since it offsets 71 million metric tonnes of carbon annually, equivalent to the amount of carbon produced by 56.5 million cars in a year. Additionally, the trees and flora within the Greenbelt provide $224 million worth of flood protection every year by absorbing excess moisture from the ground.

What Ontario should have done instead is focus on intensification rather than urban sprawl. Instead of destroying parts of the environment to build more homes, Ontario should increase the density of its cities by developing more high-rise apartments in urban areas. According to James McKellar, professor of real estate and infrastructure at York University, “Toronto’s density is 4,350 people per square kilometre. That’s 64 per cent as dense as Copenhagen, which is a pleasant city to walk around in. There’s room to intensify here.�?. Additionally, Ontario should place an emphasis on building more low-cost apartments rather than luxury apartments to better ensure affordable and adequate housing for everyone.

However, building more housing is not enough to make housing more affordable. Property investors can artificially drive up the demand for housing by buying residential properties for speculative investment purposes instead of using them to house people. Ontario would benefit from implementing a tax on vacant residential properties, similar to what other provinces like British Columbia have done. British Columbia currently has what they call a Speculation and Vacancy Tax, which helps pressure owners of residential buildings to use their buildings for housing instead of leaving them vacant. Similar vacancy taxes exist across different levels of government, such as Canada’s Underused Housing Tax on the federal level and Toronto’s Vacant Home Tax on the municipal level. These kinds of taxes not only curb excessive demand for housing but will also increase the supply of rental units by pressuring real estate owners to rent out their residential properties instead of keeping them vacant.

Altogether, Ontario needs to do more to ensure adequate housing remains affordable for all Ontarians. Taking land away from the Greenbelt should never have been an option. Intensification and taxing vacant residential properties are more effective alternatives that will make rent more affordable in Ontario. There is no single solution that can solve the housing crisis. Thus, the Ontario Government will need to use a variety of policy tools if they wish to ensure adequate housing for everyone.

Jeff Liu is a Master of Public Policy candidate at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto Scarborough in 2021 with a double major in International Development Studies and Physics. His research interests include international security, economics, the environment, and public health policy.