Through you, Mr. Chair, that's the toughest question I've had so far: How are we going to do it?
Here's the problem: We don't have enough manpower in this country to double production of housing in the period that we're allotted. We need to tweak our immigration system to bring in a lot more skilled labour and not simply reward economic immigrants. We need to get into the high schools to tell our younger folks that a trade is a good career. Many more of them should be pursuing that career. So many in the labour pool right now are boomers like me, who will be retiring soon. That's another barrier.
Look, 2030 is seven years away. As I mentioned earlier, it takes five years to get approvals in a lot of cities in Canada. Even if we were to start right now with a rezoning application or a site plan approval application or whatever it is, it takes so long to get through some planning departments. We need to focus on speed.
We've always said in our industry that we need as-of-right zoning. When I started my career in the eighties, we had as-of-right zoning. You could put up an apartment building and just go in and apply for your building permit. As long as you were complying with the building code, you were building as of right. Maybe you'd look for a minor variance to close in the balconies. That was it in the eighties. Now everything is a “craft”. Everything has to go through series after series of meetings.
Those are two.