On the cost to build, we've talked about government fees and charges, which can be as much as 30% of the cost of an apartment. For context, the cost to build a single apartment unit in Toronto right now could be as much as $900,000. It could be $600,000 to do that in Ottawa. That's a significant amount. Of that, 30% on average would be government fees and charges.
There are all the inflationary pressures that we know. Obviously yesterday's announcement from the Bank of Canada is welcome. We'll need to see more than one reduction for it to have a meaningful difference in terms of reducing overall costs. Construction costs have skyrocketed. That certainly started happening through the pandemic. While there's been some relief there, we still experience that today.
Because of the cost of land, we talk a lot about ways we can utilize existing sites to build more towers on them if the land is already owned. That's a huge cost that can be taken away. That is still difficult to do when you have to wait four or five years to get approval.
There are a number of issues, but certainly there are a lot of cost pressures that make the environment very challenging.