“The solutions are out there,” says Moffatt, an assistant professor of business, economics and public policy at the University of Western Ontario’s Ivey School of Business. “We don’t have to do anything novel — we just need to look at what the other provinces are doing better than us and adopt some of those reforms.”

Using data provided by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., he showed that, relative to its population, Ontario built fewer homes during the six-year period that ended on July 1, 2024 than any other province except New Brunswick and Saskatchewan.”That’s roughly the same time period as the Ford government,” Moffatt says. “That was intentional.”

To make matters worse, the province has slowed the pace of construction. During the period, about 13,000 fewer homes were built than in the previous year.

Asked about the findings, a representative of the provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing placed the blame squarely on the federal government’s shoulders. “Ontario has achieved the highest [number of] housing starts the province has seen in over three decades,” a ministry press officer wrote in a statement provided to Compass News. “However, as a result of high interest rates caused by the federal government’s runaway tax-and-spend policies — including the federal carbon tax — home builders across the province face a challenging economic environment that is impacting the pace of new home construction.”

While Moffatt agrees that some blame does fall at the feet of the Trudeau government, he says it has actually pursued several beneficial policies. “We need reforms at the federal level — and we’re starting to get some of those, [such as] the removal of the [government sales tax] on purpose-built rentals and some other tax reforms. . . . The federal side of this alone doesn’t explain why some provinces are doing better than others. Provincially, we haven’t had the seriousness of reforms that are needed to our land use rules.”

Moffatt notes that other provincial governments have already figured out ways to improve the speed of house and apartment construction. He says the province should be taking its lead from B.C. Alberta and Quebec — three large provinces that are successfully building more homes.

He’s particularly impressed by the B.C. government’s work streamlining its zoning process and removing restrictive regulations. “They’ve removed some height requirements and allowed for small, single-egress European-style apartments that are easier and cheaper to build. They’ve also allowed for more family-sized units [to be constructed].”

Moffatt adds that Alberta benefits from its liberal land-use regulations, which allow for more straightforward zoning applications. “Edmonton has even automated the development permit system so applications are assessed by computer so you can actually get same-day approvals. In Ontario, it takes months.”

He adds that Quebec has managed its own housing crisis by cutting the development charges placed on new homes. “When you look around the GTA, most communities are charging $100,000 or more just to get a shovel in the ground. That’s making building homes difficult and prohibitively expensive.”

Moffatt’s report, which was published by the Smart Prosperity Institute, also compared the rate at which homes and apartments are being built in Canada’s 100 largest cities. “There’s a very wide range of performance when it comes to approval processing times, land development reforms and regulatory reforms.”

A striking number of the most under-performing municipalities are found within Canada’s most populous province. Of the 30 Ontario municipalities included on the list, 13 are ranked among the bottom 20 performers — Aurora, Brampton, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Ajax, Windsor, Burlington, Halton Hills, Sarnia, Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury, Thunder Bay and, in dead last, North Bay.

“As for which level-of-government is to blame, though, I think it’s all of the above,” says Moffatt.

In the report, Barrie placed 37th in terms of the total number of homes and 48th for the total number of apartment units constructed in the last six years. It constructed about 45.3 houses and 22.3 new apartment units for per 1,000 residents.

“Barrie’s done relatively well for itself. There’s lot of demand out there thanks to all the families moving up from the GTA, as well as immigration.”

He is particularly impressed by its council’s decision to sit down with property developers to discuss ways to make Barrie a more appealing place for their investment dollars. This has been credited with helping to lead to a wave of development set to increase the city’s total stockpile of rental units by 25 per cent.

“Absolutely, cities should be sitting down with industry to figure out where the barriers are,” says Moffatt. “As long as everyone is welcome at the table, so cities aren’t giving special treatment to one developer or another, I’m in favour of that.”

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This year, Barrie residents were asked to complete the short survey online between October 7 and October 21. According to Mayor Alex Nuttall, it is a vital tool for gauging public opinion on the existing services provided by the city.

“[The annual budget survey] is really important because it lets us know where the people of Barrie are at in terms of the services available — whether it’s the police, library or other concerns they have about different things happening in the community,” says Mayor Alex Nuttall.

The large majority of Barrie’s $392 million budget is collected through property taxes, though it also maintains several other sources of revenue — including grants and subsidies from the federal and provincial government as well as development charges levied for particular projects.

This year’s survey solicited opinions on various areas of expenditure — including emergency services, public transit and waste management programs. For each area, the survey provided a rough calculation of what a typical household — one where the property has been assessed as worth $368,000 — currently pays through taxes. Respondents were asked to choose between keeping the budget flat, increasing it by five per cent or decreasing it by the same amount. The city also provided a brief outline of how services could be improved by increased spending or stripped down by a cut.

According to Nuttall, he has been consistently surprised by the outcome of the annual budget surveys. “Sometimes, you get feedback on the issues where you think you know what the community wants — but [what the community wants] is actually in a different direction,” he says.

“Getting this information is good because it feeds into the decision-making process and ensures we’re moving forward on behalf of the people of Barrie — walking with them and not leaving them behind.”

The Barrie Fire and Emergency Service cost the average Barrie home owner $424 in 2024. According to the survey, a five per cent budgetary increase would provide for 75 per cent of the construction and staffing costs of operating a sixth fire station in southeast Barrie. The survey noted a budget cut would lead to reduced response times and, potentially, higher home insurance premiums.

Public transit cost about $233 per head in 2024. According to the survey, by increasing expenditure, the system could halve the amount of time between trips on its bus routes, from every half-hour to every 15 minutes. Alternatively, a five per cent budget reduction would lead to the closure of existing routes in low demand.

In 2024, the average household paid about $160 for the city’s waste management services. An increase to the department’s budget would, among other things, allow it to extend the opening hours of its household waste and recycling depots. Alternatively, a cut would lead to increased disposal fees and decreased opening hours for the depots.

This year’s survey will be used in the development of Barrie’s budget for 2025. Its results, as well as those of a similar phone survey conducted during the same period, will be made available to the public next month, following a meeting of the finance and responsible governance committee on Nov. 20.

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Average house prices declined about 2.5 per cent, from $754,790 in Sept. 2023 to $737,810 in Sept. 2024. With year-over-year inflation reaching 1.6 per cent during the period, this is equivalent to a 3.93 per cent drop in real terms.

According to Lindsay Percy, chair of the BDAR, the fall should not be taken as a grim portent by Barrie’s homeowners. Rather, she says it is a return to normalcy after years of unusual market conditions.

This turbulent period began during the coronavirus pandemic. As companies introduced hybrid workplaces, people from outside the area began to consider moving to Barrie. “Now we’re seeing slightly less interest [from Torontonians] than we did when people began working remotely.”

“[Recently] the market has been in a state of flux because of higher-than-normal interest rates and people’s expectations for where they will land,” she says, adding that if Barrie’s property market was a game of tug-of-war played between buyers and sellers, “Right now, both teams are just sitting down, taking a breather.”

“Buyer demand is sitting on the sidelines as people anticipate falling rates. Sellers who don’t have to sell. . . are not going to sell for less [than they could have when prices peaked].

In practical terms this means the amount of time properties are listed without sold has increased from 3.98 months in Sept. 2023 to 4.78 months during the same period this year. At the same time, the total number of listings also grew from 657 to 827. “The time on the market has been extended at least partially because there’s a reduced number of buyers who can afford to buy at higher interest rates.”

Percy adds that attendance at house showings is up, especially among people who feel on-the-fence about buying property. She also says the city’s real estate agents expect the pent-up demand to ease as the Bank of Canada steadily lowers interest rates. “We’re expecting demand will remain steady through the fall and for the spring market decent if rates continue to come down.”

Despite the declines in Barrie, the value of home sales in the rest of Simcoe County actually grew. During the period, sales prices rose by 4.36 per cent, from $822,574 in Sept. 2023 to $858,442 in Sept. 2024. Accounting for inflation, this equates to an increase of about 2.7 per cent.

“As you get just out of the city of Barrie proper, there are a lot of higher-priced developments and expensive, waterfront properties,” Percy says.

The post Property market declines signal return to normalcy: Barrie realtor group chair appeared first on CompassNews.

Last month, Canadians picked up 47,000 new jobs, driving the unemployment rate down from 6.6 per cent to 6.5 per cent.

These gains were not evenly distributed from sea to sea. The largest increases were seen in Ontario, which had 43,000 new hires. The second-largest rise was seen in Quebec, which ended the month with 22,000 additional employees.

In some other regions, the number of employed people actually declined. The most significant losses were seen in B.C., where 18,000 people were taken out of work.

In the year that ended on Sept. 30, about 321,000 jobs were created. Statistics Canada found 193,000 of these positions were in the private sector and 128,000 were in the public sector.

According to Cynthia Gordon, an employment services consultant at with Georgian’s Career and Employment Community Services in Barrie, Statistics Canada’s figures don’t paint a clear picture of the situation facing job seekers in Ontario. She says that, while the number of openings may be rising, her clients are spending more time out-of-work.

“These days, it is taking people a little bit longer to secure employment. But people are certainly getting jobs, and local ones, which is good.”

The report found the number of young people hired in September was far higher than the national average. Among Canadians aged between 15 and 24, the unemployment rate fell from 14.5 per cent in August to 13.5 per cent the next month.

According to Gordon, who works with Georgian students as well as with other members of the public, many young people in Barrie are still struggling to find work. “Anecdotally, it seems like people are employing fewer young people because the cost-of-living is going up. The sectors that drive youth employment, like retail, need the rest of us to have disposable incomes to spend.”

There is reason to believe disposable incomes are starting to grow. According to the report, nominal hourly wages grew from $34.01 to $35.59 on a year-over-year basis — a 4.6 per cent rise. Factoring in inflation, which dipped to 1.6 per cent last month, this equates to a 2.9 per cent increase real terms.

“My sense is that high-earners are skewing those results,” says Gordon, who estimates single adults need to earn about $25-per-hour in order to live comfortably in Barrie. “Most of the people I’ve successfully helped find jobs are getting about $20- to $22-per-hour.”

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“We’re leaning against it through very specific policies designed to support middle class Canadians — and people working hard to join the middle class,” Freeland said during a press event in Scarborough on Thursday.

The comments came in response to a report from Statistics Canada that revealed income inequality reached the highest level ever recorded since records began in 1999. As of the middle of 2024, the richest 20 per cent of Canadians owned 67 per cent of the nation’s total wealth while the poorest 40 per cent owned just 2.7 per cent of it.

The issue is something of a pet subject for the journalist-turned-cabinet minister. In 2012, while working as the editor of Thomson Reuters Digital, she wrote Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. In it, she argued new technology and increased economic globalization were driving people out of the middle class and into poverty. “My view then, and my view now, is that this is a real problem,” Freeland said. “It is an economic problem, but it is also a social and political problem.”

She added that she felt Canadians want to live in a “middle class country” — one in which any hard-working person is able to join the middle classes. “For me, that is how we create a healthy economy and how we create the healthy society we all want to live in.”

Freeland went on to highlight three of her government’s policies she believed are working to reduce the divide between the richest and poorest Canadians. “[Our early learning and childcare program] has cut costs down [by] 50 per cent here in Ontario — that is a saving of about $8,000 per-child per-family,” she said. “We are working hard to drive those costs down to $10-per-day. . . . It makes it easier for women to have a child and to have a job.”

Freeland, who became Canada’s first female Minister of Finance in 2020, also noted that more than two million people had taken advantage of the Canadian Dental Care Plan since its launch in 2022. The CDHC provides dental coverage to otherwise uninsured Canadians with household incomes below $90,000 per annum. “We are seeing a real enthusiasm among Canadians to get their teeth [and] their dental care taken care of. . . . It’s making people healthier and helping pay cheques go farther.”

She also mentioned the Clean Technology Investment Tax Credit. First introduced in the 2022 Fall Economic Statement, the program provides tax credits for capital invested in adopting and operating new clean technologies on properties.

“[This] is really ensuring that we have the kind of economic growth that creates good paying middle-class jobs,” said Freeland. “For the first time in Canadian history [the tax credits] have a labour requirement. To take advantage of the full value of [the CT ITC], you have to be paying the prevailing union wage.”

Freeland also discussed several recent housing policies. One allows for first-time home owners to receive special insured mortgages with 30-year amortization periods and lower minimum down payment requirements. In December, the cap on these mortgages will be raised from $1 million to $1.5 million.

Another is meant to encourage Canadians to build more apartments on their properties. When it comes into effect in January, homeowners will be able to access 90 per cent of their homes value through in order to construct secondary suites in basements, attics or lane ways.

“Really, what we’re saying is that we want to encourage supply, supply, supply in the housing sector. . . . This is what I would describe as a middle class, supply-side measure.”

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