VAUGHAN, ONT. — Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON) president Richard Lyall, staff and board members met with Ontario Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra Sept. 25 to discuss challenges facing the homebuilding sector, including exorbitant taxes and extremely slow approval times.
The goal was to encourage all levels of government to push for immediate actions.
During the meeting, RESCON officials noted new home sales are lack-lustre and the homebuilding industry is facing serious financial challenges, states a release, adding new development application submissions have slumped and starts for 2025 are sparse.
The financial realities of the new housing market are not workable and regulations and policies are only adding to the inability to build.
While RESCON appreciates the actions Calandra and the provincial government have taken to date to encourage more homebuilding such as eliminating the HST on new purpose-built rentals, homebuilders continue to face a perfect storm of high taxes, endless bureaucracy and an approvals system that is slow and dysfunctional is killing the housing market, especially for first-time buyers, Lyall pointed out.
“We have a devastating housing affordability and supply crisis yet are still in the dark ages across many municipalities when it comes to residential development approvals,” he said. “We can and must do better.
“We are urging the minister to drive changes at the federal level to lower taxes on new housing and encourage municipalities to lower development charges as they have jacked up the fees that are impacting our ability to build new homes,” he said. “Federal taxes are too high and municipal development charges are like a runaway train. Costs to consumers for new housing are too high and most first-time buyers and renters can’t afford the cost. Why is it that development charges on a new home in Vaughan are $192,000 while they are $22,000 in Calgary?”
According to Lyall, development charges have become a cash cow that municipal governments now rely on to fund infrastructure and other amenities.
“While municipalities rely on the levies, a big chunk is not being spent,” he explained. “Instead, it is going into reserve funds. The levies must be reduced to a more manageable level so the savings can be passed on to homebuyers.”
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