Finance committee  Honourable members, I'm thrilled to be here with you today. My presentation picks up on a series of themes that have been introduced by others in the context of their deputations. I would like to put on the table a tangible solution to address the housing supply issue, as well as the cost of housing that we see in the Canadian context, by looking specifically at how we address taxation.

Finance committee  It means that it will not kick off the $18 million of HST revenue modelled in the pro forma, and this in turn means that if the federal government were to forgive the HST or provide a grant in the amount of $8 million, it would actually be a revenue-positive scenario for the government in terms of tax revenue.

Finance committee  One of the biggest issues that we face today, of course, is that you can make a tremendous amount of money in the housing market. Anyone with eyes to see knows this. There was, in fact, a 60 Minutes piece on a Toronto-based company that is buying up single-family homes in America and now owns over 30,000 single-family homes, precisely because they are an asset class.

Finance committee  You did record that correctly. That's actually an estimate of the number across the country. It's estimated to be significantly higher in large cities like Vancouver and Toronto.

Finance committee  The intent of the policy recommendation is not to solve everything, but to solve this problem that has emerged, which is an investor class that is not currently disincentivized through taxation. I would recommend excluding principal residences for that reason, because they are our homes, as opposed to homes that have been acquired for the purposes of generating revenue.

Finance committee  I'll build on the comments that were made by Michael earlier. I think he hit on some critical and salient points around the role that the federal government can play in relation to municipalities, including when infrastructure funding comes forward and tying that infrastructure funding to density requirements, which does not happen today.

Finance committee  Government is absolutely required. The market has created this problem.

Finance committee  I don't actually know that off the top of my head, but I can speak to the development charges. Land transfer tax is similar. Because municipal governments have been reticent to raise property taxes, they've been increasing the development charges to create a user-pay model. That means the development charges on a unit can be upwards of $20,000 to $40,000, depending on the scale and size of the unit.

Finance committee  I'll confirm that I believe that's the case. I'll also clarify that I'm not a finance expert, although my partner at my development company, Jason Marks, is a finance expert. He has an M.B.A. from Harvard and was also a senior vice-president at TD Bank for many years. He does all of the pro forma and financial analysis on our projects and developments.

Finance committee  Good afternoon, honourable members. It's wonderful to be here today. You will hear some of the themes my colleague just outlined reiterated in my presentation. I'm trained as a professional planner, but I've now switched teams and I'm a developer, developing housing in the GTA.

Finance committee  I can't speak for other developers, but I know that there have been some significant announcements in the city of Toronto whereby developers are re-evaluating condo projects and now looking at the viability of building rental projects instead, as we have done as well. Probably the most significant impact has to do with financing and the allocation of capital.

Finance committee  That's absolutely correct.

Finance committee  Absolutely, yes.

Finance committee  That's correct. I think it's important to stress—and I think there were some other speakers who alluded to this—that we actually have a shortage of supply across the entire housing spectrum, and when you build affordable rentals, it means fewer people on social housing wait-lists, because they can now access affordable rentals.

Finance committee  Well, there are a couple of things.... One is that if the objective is to incentivize affordable rental housing specifically, there's a whole variety of measures that are required in order to make that achievable. For example, on our projects, not unlike what Maureen mentioned, there are incentives in the city of Toronto that make that viable.