The Toronto Congress Centre in Etobicoke, Ont., after Doug Ford's re-election as Ontario's Premier was announced on June 2.CHRIS HELGREN/Reuters
One of the main narratives out of the Ontario election campaign is how Doug Ford came to win the support of private-sector unions, as well as working-class voters looking for a break on rising costs.
This feat has been trumpeted again and again by the Progressive Conservatives, but Mr. Ford now faces a much higher bar. He’s no longer the municipal politician who surpassed the low expectations many Ontarians had of him early in his tenure in provincial politics: He’s a second-term Premier.
And his government will be judged on issues such as combatting inflation and whether it actually increases the number of long-term care beds and rebuilds the health-care system. Mr. Ford will also continue to face questions about the wisdom of his promise to build Highway 413 through prime farmland and Greenbelt northwest of Toronto.
But the much more intractable issue is housing. And on that, Mr. Ford’s policies will face intense scrutiny from across the province, including the labour-heavy ridings that his party has now taken from the opposition parties – where jobs are now relatively plentiful but once-affordable housing is a thing of the past.
The day after the election, Mr. Ford boasted of Andrew Dowie’s Windsor-Tecumseh win, which brings a riding into the PC fold for the first time in nearly a century. Anthony Leardi won in Essex, where the provincial party similarly hasn’t won a seat in decades.
To get a sense of the challenge Mr. Ford and his government will face when it comes to workers not able to afford homes, there’s no better place to look than Windsor. The city’s unemployment rate dropped significantly in April, and it has been a key site in the Ford and Trudeau government announcements to bolster and transform the province’s auto industry.
But a combination of factors, including buying by those priced out of Toronto and other more-expensive centres, has led to Windsor home prices in all categories more than doubling in the past three years. The benchmark price for much-in-demand single-family homes was $753,200 in May, up 37 per cent on a year-over-year basis, according to the Windsor-Essex County Association of Realtors.
There’s no doubt that higher interest rates designed to counter “entrenched inflation” will take some of the edge off housing price increases in Windsor, but they will still go up, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
In Brampton, where the PCs took three key seats from the NDP, surprising many, prices are weakening but a semi-detached home still averages around $1.1-million. Even in Timmins, where the PCs punted long-time NDP MPP Gilles Bisson, year-over-year housing prices are up more than 20 per cent.
Days before the election, Mr. Ford was campaigning in an apartment building in Mississauga, where the main concern heard at people’s doors was a belief that they will never have the opportunity to own their own homes. It was something Mr. Ford heard constantly on the hustings. It’s something adviser Amin Massoudi says has doubled the Premier’s resolve on the issue, and “it’s one area where we do have some levers to pull.”
There is no province, save for British Columbia, that has as massive a housing problem as Ontario. And the spread is now far and wide beyond the GTA.
The PCs have promised to address the supply side by building 1.5 million homes in the next 10 years, and to crack down on “land and housing permit speculators who are artificially choking the supply of new homes and driving up costs.” There will be other plans brought forward, too, said Mr. Massoudi – without disclosing further details.
But conversely, if continued interest-rate hikes from the Bank of Canada weakens the sector too significantly, the Ontario government could have another problematic housing issue on its hands. Real estate, and renting and leasing, makes up more than 14 per cent of Ontario’s $851-billion GDP, a bigger slice of the pie than other major economic categories such as manufacturing, or health and education.
And if the PCs want to be able to continue to sell themselves as the best stewards of the economy and the province’s finances, they will have to make sure a key pillar of the province’s GDP doesn’t end up in too weakened a state.
The fine balance for this second-term Premier will be giving hope to those workers who some day want to own, who now feel it’s out of reach, while not rocking the boat too much for people already invested in the housing market.
Many other political leaders in Canada face the same quandary – the problem is just that much bigger in Mr. Ford’s Ontario.
Keep your Opinions sharp and informed. Get the Opinion newsletter. Sign up today.