Costly construction isn’t the culprit behind unaffordable housing

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Land restriction creates what amount to land cartels. A now smaller number of landowners gain windfall profits, which, of course, encourages speculation

The latest Demographia report on housing affordability in Canada, which I produce for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, reveals that over half of the 46 Canadian housing markets we assess are severely unaffordable. In fact, Vancouver and Toronto rank as third and 10th least affordable, respectively, among the 94 major global markets included in our latest international housing affordability study.

To evaluate housing costs, we utilize the “median multiple,” which divides the median house price within a given market (census metropolitan area) by its median household income. A multiple equal to or less than 3.0 is categorized as “affordable,” while anything exceeding 5.0 is labelled “severely unaffordable.”

Among the major Canadian housing markets, Vancouver (with a median multiple of 12), Toronto (9.5), Montreal (5.4), and Ottawa-Gatineau (5.2) fall into the severely unaffordable category. Vancouver has maintained a high median multiple for several decades, while Toronto has been in this range for approximately two decades. The increased prevalence of telecommuting has recently contributed to Montreal and Ottawa-Gatineau’s affordability challenges, leading to a surge in demand for larger homes and properties in more distant suburbs. In contrast, housing in Edmonton (4.0) and Calgary (4.3) remains comparatively affordable.

In Toronto and Vancouver, the implementation of international urban planning principles, particularly those promoting anti-sprawl measures like greenbelts and agricultural preserves, has led to unprecedented price hikes. This “urban containment” approach has consistently driven up land values where it has been adopted. And high land values rather than increased construction costs are what explain the substantial disparity between severely unaffordable and more budget-friendly markets.

Land restriction creates what amount to land cartels. A now smaller number of landowners gain windfall profits, which, of course, encourages speculation. Maintaining or restoring affordability requires eliminating windfall profits by ensuring a competitive market for land.

Another issue arises from urban planners’ preference for higher-density housing, such as high-rise condos. Some households may prefer high-rise living, but families with children typically seek housing with more land, whether detached or semi-detached. When they’re priced out of good housing markets, their quality of life suffers and they may even fall into poverty.

The troubling paradox is that unaffordable housing is far more common in markets like Vancouver and Toronto, which have embraced the planning orthodoxy — which is supposed to produce affordable housing. The same applies to international markets like Sydney, Auckland, London and San Francisco, where urban containment and unaffordable housing have gone hand in hand.

What’s the solution? Give up on urban containment and make more land available for housing. But wouldn’t that threaten the natural environment, as critics of Ontario’s recent attempt to allow development of a sliver of its greenbelt argued?

Not at all. It’s true that land under cultivation in Canada has been declining steadily over the years. But the culprit is improved agricultural productivity, not urban expansion. According to Statistics Canada, between 2001 and 2021, agricultural land shrank 53,000 square kilometres. That’s about equal to the land area of Nova Scotia. And it’s about triple all the area urbanized since European settlement began. Even in Ontario and B.C. where most of the severely unaffordable markets are concentrated, urban expansion from 2016 to 2021 took up less than one-quarter of the agricultural loss over that period. Urban expansion is not squeezing out agricultural land.

Given all this, what should we do about affordability? In my view, three things:

First, it’s essential to acknowledge that Canadians are already addressing the issue by relocating from pricier to more affordable regions. Housing is more affordable in the Atlantic and Prairie provinces and areas in Quebec east of Montreal. So it’s not surprising there is now a net influx of people to smaller, typically more affordable, locations. In the past five years, markets with populations exceeding 100,000 have collectively witnessed over 250,000 people moving to smaller markets.

Second, make more land available for development in increasingly unaffordable markets like B.C., southern Ontario, and the Montreal-Ottawa corridor. One way is with “housing opportunity enclaves” (HOEs), in which traditional, i.e., not high-density, housing regulations would apply, but essential environmental and safety regulations would. The aim would be to provide middle-income housing at the price-to-income ratios that were typical before urban containment came along and housing across the country was largely affordable.

Market-driven development would be ensured by relying on the private sector to provide housing, land, and infrastructure, a model that has been successful in Colorado and Texas. Current residents would maintain their property rights but could sell to private parties and First Nations for development.

HOEs would be situated far enough outside major centres to take advantage of low-priced land, prioritizing areas with the largest recent agricultural land reductions. Communities likely would resemble Waverly West in Winnipeg or The Woodlands in Houston, with ample housing space and yards for families with children.

These new communities would attract people working at least partly from home. Jobs would naturally follow, creating self-contained communities where most commutes occurred within the HOE. To ensure a competitive market and prevent land cost escalation, HOEs must have ample land available.

Third, public authorities should allocate an ample amount of suburban land to safeguard reasonable land values in the Prairie and Atlantic provinces, as well as in Quebec east of Montreal. This would allow currently more affordable markets such as Quebec City, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Moncton and Halifax to accommodate interprovincial migrants without jeopardizing their affordability.

Provincial and local governments would need to monitor housing affordability multiples on at least a five-year cycle, and legislatures, land use authorities and city councils would have to allow enough low-cost land development to maintain price-to-income stability.

It’s not enough just to provide enough building lots to meet projected demand. The goal should be to enable builders to provide housing at prices middle-income households can afford. The key to that is affordable land.

Wendell Cox is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He is the author of 2023 Edition Of Demographia Housing Affordability In Canada and has been featured on Leaders on the Frontier – Cost of Living Under Crisis With Charles Blain.

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Carney government should retire misleading ‘G7’ talking point on economic growth

Published on November 3, 2025

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From the Fraser Institute

By Ben Eisen and Milagros Palacios

If you use the more appropriate measure for measuring economic wellbeing and living standards—growth in per-person GDP—the happy narrative about Canada’s performance simply falls apart.

Tuesday, Nov. 4, the Carney government will table its long-awaited first budget. Don’t be surprised if it mentions Canada’s economic performance relative to peer countries in the G7.

In the past, this talking point was frequently used by prime ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau and their senior cabinet officials. And it’s apparently survived the transition to the Carney government, as the finance minister earlier this year triumphantly tweeted that Canada’s economic growth was “among the strongest in the G7.”

But here’s the problem. Canada’s rate of economic growth relative to the rest of the G7 is almost completely irrelevant as an indicator of economic strength because it’s heavily influenced by Canada’s much faster rate of population growth. In other words, Canada’s faster pace of overall economic growth (measured by GDP) compared to most other developed countries has not been due to Canadians becoming more productive and generating more income for their families, but rather primarily because there are more people in Canada working and producing things.

In reality, if you use the more appropriate measure for measuring economic wellbeing and living standards—growth in per-person GDP—the happy narrative about Canada’s performance simply falls apart.

According to a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, if you simply look at total economic growth in the G7 in recent years (2020-24) without reference to population, Canada does indeed look good. Canada’s economy has had the second-most total economic growth in the G7 behind only the United States.

However, if you make a simple adjustment for differences in population change over this same time, a completely different picture emerges. Canada’s per-person GDP actually declined by 2 per cent from 2020 to 2024. This is the worst five-year decline since the Great Depression nearly a century ago. And on this much more important measure of wellbeing, Canada goes from second in the G7 to dead last.

Due to Canada’s rapid population growth in recent years, fuelled by record-high levels of immigration, aggregate GDP growth is quite simply a misleading economic indicator for comparing our performance to other countries that aren’t experiencing similar increases in the size of their labour markets. As such, it’s long past time for politicians to retire misleading talking points about Canada’s “strong” growth performance in the G7.

After making a simple adjustment to account for Canada’s rapidly growing population, it becomes clear that the government has nothing to brag about. In fact, Canada is a growth laggard and has been for a long time, with living standards that have actually declined appreciably over the last half-decade.

Ben Eisen

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Milagros Palacios

Director, Addington Centre for Measurement, Fraser Institute

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Mystery cloaks Doug Ford’s funding of media through Ontario advertising subsidy

Published on November 2, 2025

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The Rewrite

Plus! Some tough lessons learned by journalists at all levels – not everyone is telling the truth and there are many people with the same name. Verify.

By now it’s established that Ontario Premier Doug Ford is either an ever so dreamy “elbows up” super hero kinda guy who’s shown US President Donald Trump who his daddy is or …. a ham fisted, narcissistic blowhard with all the finesse of a drunken linebacker crashing through the Royal Doulton.

If you follow social media, those appear to be the options. You choose.

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His $75 million ad buy attempting to show Americans how Trump is offside on tariffs with the late Republican icon President Ronald Reagan (1981-89) was either, as Ford insists, a triumph, or a disaster of epic proportions. Either way, the result is the Americans broke off trade talks until, well, whenever a very aggrieved Trump next wakes up on the right side of the bed. And the progressive bromance between Ford and Prime Minister Mark Carney looks to be on the rocks, with the latter admitting he apologized to Trump and had advised against the ads. Me? I thought Matt Gurney summarized the situation very well in the Toronto Star.

“The Americans are more than savvy enough to have figured out what we’re up to. They’ve responded to our good cop/bad cop strategy by shooting both cops and then torching the police station.”

The Rewrite, though, is about media, not tugging forelocks and authoring political thumb suckers. So what really made me curious about Ford’s ad spend was whether the premier’s media friends in Ontario were going to get their – what’s that phrase again? – oh, right: fair share.

People may have forgotten but it was only last year when Ford, succumbing to News Media Canada’s lobbying, decided that too much government advertising money was going to American tech companies like Meta and Google and not enough to people who report about him and his opponents. Consistent with the progressive belief that government subsidies can cure any problem, Ford ordered that 25 per cent of the $100 million spent on advertising annually by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), the Ontario Cannabis Store, Metrolinx and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) be directed to Ontario newspapers. And he didn’t stop there. The directive news release made it clear that “the government is also making similar commitments with its own advertising spending, helping to provide even more support for Ontario jobs and promote Ontario culture.”

Word on the street is that this cashapalooza – announced mere months before an election- has been warmly received by Ontario media, so I was already trying to find out who was getting how much when the US ads launched.

Turns out what should have been a simple task is not so easy. The specifics are not to be found within Ontario’s public accounts. So I wrote to Grace Lee, the director of communications in the Premier’s office and then Hannah Jensen, who also works there. No response. Then I tried again. Still nothing. When I asked if the directive “also applies to the Government of Ontario’s recent advertising buy in the United States so that additional government advertising – as is indicated in the directive – worth 25 per cent of the US spend will benefit qualified Ontario media” I got the same cold shoulder.

So, while there was a bit of publicity regarding Ford’s initial decision to subsidize Ontario publishers to the tune of $25 million-plus, no one is providing the details. The publishers must know and the government must know, but they seem to be keeping it a secret. It doesn’t seem likely, but if Ford is faithful to the words and spirit of his 2024 directive, there should be some additional cash flowing to approved Ontario publishers as a result of his Trump tantrum-inducing investment.

Alas, it appears unlikely the public will ever know if that’s the case or which media outlets are benefiting from the premier’s benefaction. That makes these arrangements look all too grubby. Keeping them in the dark, where they’ll stay because that’s the way the politicians and the publishers like it, is only going to further diminish public trust in media. But it’s unclear most of them care anymore.

A phrase in a Juno News report caught my eye last week and it should serve as a cautionary tale. In its report on a large Alberta Independence rally in Edmonton, separatism-friendly lawyer Jeffrey Rath was, understandably, a key source. But he was loosely quoted when referring to a competing Pro-Canada petition on the question of separation. Juno reported that “Rath said Saturday that he heard (organizer Thomas) Lukaszuk was 50,000 signatures short, with a Tuesday deadline.”

The issue isn’t whether Rath said that or not – it’s whether what “he heard” was based on anything other than wishful thinking and rumour-planting. Reporters should not pass along that form of information without verifying because, as it turned out, Rath wasn’t even close. Needing 294,000 signatures, the Pro-Canada petition collected 456,000 or at least 200,000 more than what Juno’s source, Rath, “heard.”

Fine if Rath wants to make a fool of himself. Reporters should be careful not to share the distinction.

A more established title than Juno was in a shambles last week when the venerable Times of London had to quickly pull a story in which former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was quoted criticizing Democrat mayoralty candidate Zohran Mamdani.

What went wrong? The Times reporter believed he had reached out to de Blasio via email and got a response that questioned Mamdani’s economic plan. The New York Post, also owned by Rupert Murdoch, jumped all over it but when the real former mayor de Blasio responded on X that the report was bogus, The Times stepped back quickly, issuing a statement that it had “apologised to Bill de Blasio and removed the article immediately after discovering that our reporter had been misled by an individual falsely claiming to be the former New York mayor.”

In an interesting twist, the international publication Semafor reported that it had “reached out to a Gmail address our sources believed to be the one used by The Times.”

And:

“You are correct. It was me. The real Bill DeBlasio,” the person who controls the email address responded.

As it turns out, just as there’s more than one Peter Menzies in this world, there’s not just one Bill de Blasio and The Times’ assertion that someone was impersonating the former mayor quickly proved contentious.

The guy who responded to the email turned out to be a 59-year-old Long Island wine importer named Bill DeBlasio.

“I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio,” DeBlasio (not de Blasio) told Semafor after it knocked on his door. “I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor.

“So I just gave him my opinion.”

The moral of this story for journos? As the old Chicago City desk saying goes, always “check it out – if your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

In the meantime, we await The Times’ apology to DeBlasio – the one with the wine.

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(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)

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