Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Good morning to our witnesses. Thank you for joining us this morning.
My name is Eric Duncan. I serve as a Conservative member of Parliament from eastern Ontario, in the city of Cornwall and the significant rural area of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry and the community of Akwesasne.
Mr. Mayor, I'm going to start with some questions for you. I use to be a mayor in my previous life, so I think that we can relate on a few things and speak the language a little bit. I noted your comments in the introduction, and I would say a couple of things. I just want to get your feedback, perhaps, on a few parts.
We have a lot of gatekeepers at the municipal level. Having been there and done that, I would say that for rural municipalities, perhaps at different levels, getting infrastructure investment—water and sewer—ready to go and having investment for development would be a challenge. We have a lot of cities right now. When you look at transit projects, they aren't building density around there. Look at the city of Vancouver; to get a building permit, in government and permit fees, you're looking at $600,000. This is for a permit or a unit before a shovel goes into the ground for an individual.
I do think and have said, having been in municipal politics before, that there are three acronyms to remember in the line of work that we do when dealing with getting things done and making decisions on site plan control and then zoning. We have NIMBY, which everybody knows: “not in my backyard”. However, I introduced two others at the council table back in the day; I stole them from others. One is CAVE: “citizens against virtually everything”. Then sometimes you have BANANA: “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything”.
Being able to get development projects moving forward in site planning control is a major issue. I will note, in the plan that Mr. Poilievre has in his private member's bill for building more homes, not bureaucracy, that it's actually with rural communities across the country, including the ones I represent in eastern Ontario. There would be no penalties for not meeting targets but actually only bonusing for those that actually meet targets and exceed them by doing that, by removing processes that exist there.
My question is on the federal programs. You referenced the housing accelerator fund. That program was announced two years ago. Can you tell me if you've even had a successful application or shovels in the ground in your municipality pertaining to that program?