Memo To Nate Erskine-Smith: 6 Ideas For The New Housing Minister

How To Solve Canada’s, And The LPC’s, Housing Crisis

Minister,

It has obviously been a rather chaotic week. In fact, despite it only being a week, enough time has passed that I can actually offer my congratulations on your appointment as Minister of Housing and even halfway mean it. Obviously the Christmas break and the continued leadership uncertainty are real structural impediments, but you do inherit a big job.

You have called housing one of the great crises we face, identifying housing as sufficiently important as to merit the decision to run again and to serve in Cabinet. It was your Ontario Leadership campaign that brought housing to the fore, leading with the issue and laying down a marker against which all other plans would follow. You inarguably moved the politics of housing to a more YIMBY place in that race, as subsequent developments show. And it’s in that spirit I want to make some suggestions.

There are any number of smarter people than me to advise on policy, and I make no claim to expertise in this area. But I do understand politics, and starting to solve the country’s housing crisis would also help solve the party’s polling crisis, and that I’m more of an expert in. So, here’s a few ideas on how you can help solve Canada’s and the Liberal Party’s duelling Housing crises.

Follow Bonnie’s Lead And Slash Development Charges

Let’s be completely real - do you think I want to be giving Bonnie this much credit, after the things I wrote in 2023? Of course not, but she’s got this one right. I have been banging the drum for a Housing Accelerator Fund-esque mechanism to pay for infrastructure costs for cities that cut or eliminate DCs for months now. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario party just laid out a pathway - no DCs on properties up to 3000/square feet per unit. If you want to build a McMansion, pay up. If you want to build apartments, let ‘em rip.

Obviously Crombie can do this by direct legislation if she wins the next election and you would need to work with and negotiate with cities, but as a policy initiative it would be a good one. We have a policy guide from the Crombie people, worked on with many smart housing experts including people who worked with you last year on your campaign, and it would put the onus onto Poilievre about whether he’s for Real Housing Action or just saying all the right buzzwords with no follow through. (It would also probably help your image and Bonnie’s party unity problems for you to give a speech that includes 3 paragraphs on how her leadership is a guide for how to make new housing more affordable. Not that that should guide your decisions, but let’s be real - it’s good policy and it helps you for the future, whatever that may be.)

Even if you don’t get many agreements in the limited time left, shifting the conversation to a federal fund to eliminate most DCs and showing that the government has ideas and has a purpose to be re-elected would be nice at a time most Canadians don’t know what purpose another term would do for them.

Rip Into Doug Ford And Other Blockers

November data showed that Ontario is a laggard in new housing starts, the Premier and Cabinet vetoed Paul Calandra’s original plan to legalize four units by right because of fear his suburban home owning voters would revolt, and he’s barely doing anything on the file. A Housing Minister who can fire back at Ford and remind people that Housing is a provincial issue would be nice. Hell, I’ve even got the quote:

“As much as Premier Ford may enjoy swanning around TV appearances in America, Ontarians are facing the consequences of his abysmal record on housing. His refusal to pass common sense reforms supported by everyone from Pierre Poilievre and myself to Marit Stiles and Bonnie Crombie shows just how out of touch he is. If the Ford Government won’t act in the best interests of Ontarians, then don’t come complaining to us when places actually taking their housing crisis seriously reap the benefits of your stupidity.”

You can mess with it however you want, but Ford is a huge blockage of housing success and if you want to claw back some Ontario seats you should probably not be squeamish about saying so.

It’s also time to take Olivia Chow to task. Toronto has made a lot of good noises, but Chow just demoted Brad Bradford from a crucial vice-chair role on the Council’s Housing committee, strengthening the left-NIMBY cause and costing the Committee a clear and prominent force for good. Bradford is often frustratingly inconsistent for people of our politics, and given that you are a constituent of his in Beaches I’m not even saying you need to vote for him. But he’s on our side here, and Gord Perks needs to be publicly shamed for his uselessness on the topic. There’s common ground here. Find it, use it, and don’t shy away from weird or uncomfortable alliances.

Make A Proper Case For Deregulation

I’m not going to claim to be an expert on specifics here, but it does seem like one of the arguments that is both true and politically believed is that bureaucratic choices are delaying building and increasing costs. Take the issue of the National Fire Code. From a May Globe editorial: “Single-stair buildings – also known as point access blocks – are common around the world, and in accordance with modern fire-safety standards. In countries such as Germany, single-stair buildings of up to seven storeys are permitted.” Why single stair buildings are good enough for Munich but not Montreal is beyond me. This singular reform could make it cheaper to build that “missing middle” housing we desperately need (for many reasons the op-ed explains better than I ever could).

Deregulation has become a dirty word amongst Liberals and progressives, but plenty of ideas used to be sensible in a world that no longer exists. Look at any department in the country and you’ll see weird inconsistencies or outdated relics that are the proper of piecemeal changes that never accounted for the rules in totality. When it’s the fact that the age of consent varies from 16 to 18 depending on the orifice in use, a never enforced relic of the gay panic culture of our past, it’s a fun party trivia answer. When it’s obscure rules pushing up the cost or increasing the lag from proposal to approval, it’s less fun.

Show The Success Stories

We don’t yet have many tangible proofs of concept for the successes of the Housing Accelerator Fund in Canada, but we do have proofs of concept in North America. Progressive politicians in Austin and in Minneapolis successfully bent the curve on housing costs and even saw rent decreases after success implementation of YIMBY policies. Get on a plane, grab the press, do a joint press conference with the Mayors there and have them wax lyrical about what reforms helped achieve these outcomes and then come back home and sell that we are on the road. Put the idea of tangible results in the window for Canadians, and make clear that there is more to do but that there is progress coming.

Go to some of the building sites of former single family homes being converted into missing middle, or of the higher density housing by a GO Station or SkyTrain line legalized in the last two years. Show that all those announcements and all the pomp of the last two years is being made real for Canadians, soon.

Do Every Interview

Sean Fraser was one of the more visible cabinet ministers, but even then he wasn’t nearly as omnipresent as he could be. There’s no reason not to offer any and everybody who might want you, from AM Radio in Toronto to Power Play and Power And Politics essentially standing invitations. Talk walking out of every Cabinet Meeting and out of the House every day. There is nothing (within reason) you should say no to.

You’re a charismatic speaker and you generally make news when you speak, which is two things that lead to coverage. And if your latest quote about housing policy or Doug Ford’s failures or whatever else you say is the A Block on The National and the clip that goes viral, then Pierre’s whinges about taxation and the axing of them won’t be the A Block. You can start to take back control of the media narrative for the party.

Listen To Smart People (And Show Your Work)

When you ran for leader of the Ontario Liberals, you routinely assembled experts in key areas to drive your innovative ideas. Be it climate or health or education or housing, you called on experts and frankly geniuses to help you. Do that again, and show us. Disclose those meetings, show us when you have Mike Moffatt or whoever swing us, take those meetings but also narrativize them. Show that you are not yet another arrogant and out of touch politician who doesn’t listen, and make clear that you’re willing to work with anybody who can help.

Even if the only meeting who care that you invite Eric Lombardi or whoever else in for a chat are nerds and wonks, one of this government’s huge failures is that it is lacking people outside of hardcore partisans making the case for them. Getting people like me and my readers excited isn’t going to flip the polls, but getting people who regularly lambast the government’s ineptitude to start singing this government’s praises a bit. A few columns and op-eds about a new style and tone from this government, a “recommitment to serious governing”, and a couple of Poilievre brain farts and maybe suddenly the pendulum has swung a bit.

None of this is going to win you a fourth term. You know my view on the leadership, which is the most important thing. But you took this job to serve, and I think these ideas can help.

All the best and Merry Christmas, friend.