I am a professional working…

I am a professional working in high density real estate development and construction and oversee real estate applied research in one of the top business schools in this country. I am actively involved in the community sitting on boards for affordable housing providers and on municipal advisory committees chatting our way toward net zero. I can unequivocally tell you that the balance of housing supply can be met:
1. Within existing municipal boundaries without needing to sprawl to encroach on farmland and environmentally protected lands. We cannot erode this natural infrastructure that provides us with a measure of resilience in the form of protection from catastrophic climatic events and food security. We can build on already developed but underutilized lands like surface parking lots, strip malls/ plazas and in other low density areas. Kudos to the Ford govt for already taking steps in the direction.

2. Without stripping away/ weakening the mandatory green building requirements such as TGS which create better higher quality buildings and generate resilient economic impact and make us world leaders in terms of expertise. We export this expertise around the globe and strengthen Canada’s leadership position globally. Besides, designing your these standards hasn’t come with a time or cost premium for the past 10 yrs. We know how to build these buildings cost neutrally for a while now.

If you want to speed up and lower the cost of housing one of the best investments is to increase clean carbon free capacity onto our electricity grids. More hydro, more nuclear, more DERs (distributed energy resources), more renewables.

Good job overall on the new housing legislation but we cannot sacrifice our progress on strategic natural assets and high performance building standards.