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The Canadian government is currently facing this problem. Provinces have constitutional authority over building and zoning. One way they're trying to get around

The Canadian government is currently facing this problem. Provinces have constitutional authority over building and zoning. One way they're trying to get around it (though in my opinion, no party is taking this seriously and all efforts thus far have fallen laughably short of where they need to), is by incentivizing the adoption of federal policy by conditioning federal housing grants on the adoption of new federally guided policy. This is the way for the west, if we're being serious. Once we've taken a few breaths and accepted that we don't want to be authoritative, we can see that incentivizing provinces is the right move. In my opinion, the federal government should be designing simplified building and zoning guidelines and offering unprecedented grants (on the order of tens of billions) to provinces in a first come first serve manner. Have provinces compete on urgency to receive the most funds, tapering off the offer the longer provinces hold out.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
The BC government has been relatively successful at this. Housing prices in Vancouver used to be ~2X those of Toronto; now Toronto is more expensive than Vancouver. The Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force released a list of 55 things to do to reduce housing prices. BC has implemented a far larger share of that 55 than Ontario has. > In my opinion, the federal government should be designing simplified building and zoning guidelines and offering unprecedented grants (on the order of tens of billions) to provinces in a first come first serve manner. Have provinces compete on urgency to receive the most funds, tapering off the offer the longer provinces hold out. That's basically what they're doing. They can't change zoning without changing the constitution, but they are giving out tens of billions of dollars conditional on appropriate zoning changes. BC has received lots of money that way, Toronto has bypassed the province to get theirs and Alberta has made it illegal for Calgary & Edmonton to access theirs.

bryanlarsen 2y ago

The BC government has been relatively successful at this. Housing prices in Vancouver used to be ~2X those of Toronto; now Toronto is more expensive than Vancouver. The Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force released a list of 55 things to do to reduce housing prices. BC has implemented a far larger share of that 55 than Ontario has. > In my opinion, the federal government should be designing simplified building and zoning guidelines and offering unprecedented grants (on the order of tens of billions) to provinces in a first come first serve manner. Have provinces compete on urgency to receive the most funds, tapering off the offer the longer provinces hold out. That's basically what they're doing. They can't change zoning without changing the constitution, but they are giving out tens of billions of dollars conditional on appropriate zoning changes. BC has received lots of money that way, Toronto has bypassed the province to get theirs and Alberta has made it illegal for Calgary & Edmonton to access theirs.