What I'm hearing from people who have a housing shortage is that they want the freedom to live where there are opportunities for jobs and good schools. It seems that in many cases, those are the very places that governments prevent them from living.
In Toronto, for example, it takes $185,000 of government cost to build a single unit of housing. Now $186,000 isn't a lot of money if you're a millionaire, but it's a lot of money if you're living close to the poverty line. That could be what prevents you from living near arguably the biggest economic hub in Canada.
It seems to me that if we're going to address the right to housing, we don't need more international bodies with high-priced consultants and lawyers who travel around the world giving lectures like we've seen today. What we need is to get municipal red tape out of the way so that we can allow builders to build and provide the housing that is affordable to the people who want to live in it. Right now, the main obstacles for that construction are the zoning restrictions that drive up the price of housing and prevent supply from coming onto the marketplace.
It is predictable that we would hear from someone like the witness here that all we need are more government programs, grand declarations, offices, speeches and other such bureaucracy—