Absolutely. That's a really important question. It highlights the need for collaboration.
Many municipalities want to build more housing, and they want to build it faster, but they are encountering obstacles. An example is land. Their fiscal capacity sometimes doesn't allow them to acquire that land and build affordable housing.
Other barriers to the faster building of housing include infrastructure upgrades. These are things like needing to expand the local water treatment plant so you can build another 2,000 units of housing for middle-class Canadians. These are real challenges being experienced by small, medium and large municipalities.
We're saying, as the federal government, that if we intend to see more supply in this country we have to do our part to incentivize them—especially municipalities—to bring in things like inclusionary zoning and transit-oriented development. We want to help in terms of their capacity to do more by enabling them to hire more zoning and permitting officials, as well as helping with the cost of land so that they can build more housing.
All those things are on the table. This housing accelerator fund will go a long way toward enabling municipalities to build more housing supply faster.