Canada’s politicians are quietly relieved the headlines have moved on from housing. It was never an easy problem to solve—doing so would mean confronting municipal obstruction, reforming provincial systems, and holding governments, including their own, to account. Today, with public concerns shifting towards international trade wars and big-ticket national energy projects, housing—the issue that dominated the national conversation just months ago—is being carefully, silently deprioritized. Our leaders are thrilled.
We saw it in Toronto, where the city council recently failed to legalize sixplexes citywide. This wasn’t a major zoning tweak—it was a small test of whether our political leaders, at every level, are willing to lead the public toward necessary, but uncomfortable, change. City council gutted the proposal. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow didn’t even speak in support. Premier Doug Ford gave no comment. Some $30 million annually that the federal government tied to the reform through their Housing Accelerator Fund hangs in the balance. The new federal housing minister, former Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, has shown little sign that any accountability is coming.
This isn’t about sixplexes versus single-family homes. Toronto is not leaping from one to the other. It is simply failing to urbanize sensibly—refusing to let its expensive and depopulating postwar suburban cities evolve into the kinds of modest-density neighbourhoods that millions of Canadian families would live in if they could afford to.
The failure of the sixplex vote reveals something deeper than technical disagreement. It shows that, despite the rhetoric, our leaders still won’t spend political capital on the reforms that matter. Which makes one thing clear: they don’t understand the stakes—generationally, socially, culturally, or economically.
A milestone recession and erosion of cultural spirit
Canada’s housing crisis is not just locking people out of homeownership. It is delaying—and in many cases erasing—the milestones that define adult life for its next generation.
Our country is facing a milestone recession: a broad, intergenerational collapse in the ability to hit the benchmarks that once signalled independence and progress in adulthood.
Young people are staying in school longer, in part because entry-level wages are weak and job markets are uncertain. They’re staying at home longer because even with decent incomes, market rents are unaffordable. They’re delaying partnerships, marriage, and children—because a life of their own still feels out of reach. And when they finally do begin to start their adult lives, they often do it far from the cities they grew up in—because that’s where housing is available and affordable, if you don’t have an inheritance.
Many still go on to have children. But they do so later, and have fewer children than they had hoped for, and under greater stress. Housing is not the only reason for Canada’s record-low fertility rate, but it is a significant one, compounded by a deeper cultural sentiment: that the future feels less secure, less free, and less worth betting on.
A generation raised to believe they would do better than their parents is instead learning to shrink their expectations. That shrinkage—of time, of space, of possibility—is what makes this moment so corrosive. The promise of Canada was that each generation could build more than the one before. That promise is breaking. Not all at once—but in thousands of delayed decisions, deferred dreams, and invisible compromises that always put our youth last. It’s hollowing out our culture.
The inflated cost of Canadian housing is stripping away the time and energy young people once used to build meaningful lives. If you’re commuting hours each day, you can’t always watch your kid’s hockey game. If your rent keeps rising, you can’t afford to take an art class. If you’re juggling multiple jobs just to get by, you’re not learning a language, forming new relationships, or growing your family. People still want these things. They want joy, connection, and expression, but they’re exhausted.
A society that can’t house its people can’t expect them to participate in civil society. It can’t expect them to volunteer, to vote, to trust. It can’t expect them to be hopeful.
That erosion of trust—quiet, ambient, corrosive—is what happens when governments talk about opportunity, but make it impossible to grasp. When politicians say they care about affordability but then retreat the moment something controversial arrives on the council floor. When everyone says the right thing, but no one is willing to actually do the right thing.
The economic consequences of paralysis
The housing crisis is not just a moral failure, it’s our most significant long-term economic issue.
When people can’t afford to live near their jobs, productivity drops. Workers take on roles they’re overqualified for and are paid less. Commutes get longer. Labour mismatches grow. Regional economies underperform. When people are stretched thin just to keep a roof over their heads, they stop taking risks. They stay in jobs they hate. They delay starting businesses. They shelve creative projects. Entrepreneurship suffers.
We often talk about innovation and productivity as if they exist in a vacuum. But when young people are spending $3,000 a month on a one-bedroom apartment, trying to save $200,000 for a down payment, or spending half their after-tax income on a mortgage, risk becomes unaffordable. If business failure means delaying homeownership by years—or missing it altogether—most people won’t take the leap. They stay in jobs they don’t love, not because they lack ambition, but because the system punishes experimentation. We should not be surprised that entrepreneurship is falling under these conditions. This isn’t a creativity problem. It’s a housing problem. We’ve made risk too expensive to attempt, and the whole economy is worse for it.
This also shows up in capital markets. In Canada, the best way to build wealth has been to buy real estate instead of investing. The banking system is built around mortgages, not because it’s good for growth, but because it’s easy and profitable. If mortgages shrink and people deleverage—because homes get cheaper—banks looking to maintain loan volume will need to redirect attention toward lending to businesses. This is a good thing. Canada has long underperformed the U.S. on commercial and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) lending. Realigning incentives toward productive investment, not property speculation, would strengthen our economy.
However, instead of enabling that shift, governments are making things worse. Development charges, utility levies, and parkland fees continue to rise. While HST is not applied in full, the combined tax burden on a new two-bedroom home in Toronto can now exceed the total cost of a comparable unit—including land—just 25 years ago. That is not just inefficient. It is obscene.
Proposals to exempt HST on new homes under $1 million—and phase the exemption out to $1.5 million—are a positive step, and the federal pledge to halve development charges on new housing is welcome. But it isn’t enough. If we’re serious about supply, provinces—especially Ontario—must go further. They control many of the taxes, fees, and codes that make new housing so hard to deliver. These charges are politically easy but economically self-defeating. Eliminating them would not just improve affordability—it would protect jobs.
Because warning signs are flashing in construction, a sector that supports over 7 percent of Ontario’s workforce. Toronto’s housing starts have collapsed nearly 60 percent in the past year. As current projects wrap up and only a few new ones begin, unemployment will rise. Skilled workers will shift to more stable careers. When demand inevitably returns, driven by resumed population growth, we’ll find that the labour and capacity we once had will have vanished.
Build housing, save freedom
Canada still talks like a country that believes in growth. But we’re behaving like one that’s forgotten how to build. We say we welcome newcomers, but don’t build them homes. We say we want innovation, but we make risk unaffordable. We say we believe in fairness, but we punish anyone who tries to add something new to their city.
Housing isn’t just another issue—it’s the foundation beneath every other Canadian ambition. When it works, people move freely, start families, take risks, and dream bigger. When it fails, everything stalls.
We know what needs to change. We must re-empower people with the property rights to shape their communities—to build homes, add units, and grow. We must limit the power of the illiberal, neofeudal mob that has captured municipal processes across the country and made housing a gated club. We haven’t just seen bad policy. We’ve endured an attack on the functioning of markets, the distribution of opportunity, and the promise of liberal democracy itself.
The failure to legalize sixplexes in all of Toronto wasn’t just a local planning misstep. It was a test. If our leaders can’t find the will to defend even modest reforms, they will never confront the deeper challenges ahead.
Our politicians have turned to pipelines, ports, and national energy corridors—not out of vision, but because they’ve chased the only nation-building projects that don’t require them to talk about housing. But no terminal, corridor, or trade pact will fix what’s broken if people can’t afford to live, grow, and build lives here.
Eric Lombardi stands at the forefront of urban development and advocacy as the founder and president of More Neighbours Toronto, a volunteer…
