Discussion · Government Orders
Scott Aitchison Conservative
“The current government plan to cut city building fees fails because cities can just choose not to join. The Conservative plan would push cities to lower these fees and help pay for infrastructure only when they actually build homes.”
“Mr. Speaker, my colleague always has incredibly insightful questions. That is a very good point. In fact, what has happened with respect to development charges is that the federal government and the provincial government, in Ontario only, have come up with a program to reduce development charges, but not to reduce them unless the local municipality applies to the program. A local municipality can say, “Yes, we are good; we like our development charges at $100,000 a lot”, and that means nothing happens. Those development charges stay high and no results happen. It is all based on whether the municipality agrees to reduce its development charges. Conversely, the Conservative plan would be to leverage municipalities to reduce their fees, and to assist them, absolutely, with the costs of housing-enabling infrastructure, but it would be based on results, not on hopes of things getting better.”
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague always has incredibly insightful questions. That is a very good point. In fact, what has happened with respect to development charges is that the federal government and the provincial government, in Ontario only, have come up with a program to reduce development charges, but not to reduce them unless the local municipality applies to the program. A local municipality can say, “Yes, we are good; we like our development charges at $100,000 a lot”, and that means nothing happens. Those development charges stay high and no results happen. It is all based on whether the municipality agrees to reduce its development charges. Conversely, the Conservative plan would be to leverage municipalities to reduce their fees, and to assist them, absolutely, with the costs of housing-enabling infrastructure, but it would be based on results, not on hopes of things getting better.