Month: April 2024

Policy Born Out of Panic

April 26, 2024

It is astonishing how the federal and Ontario governments announced a fifteen billion dollar incentive to Honda to set up a car battery plant in Ontario yesterday while they encouraged the municipalities last week to eliminate the requirement for parking for multiple unit developments. So, the message is to make more cars but provide no parking! Let me describe what happened.

Camada’s three levels of government hastily introduced a cobbled together housing policy this month, a move that could have significant repercussions. Upon learning that our City Council, under pressure from senior government levels, is considering approving quadruplexes or four units on a residential lot and eliminating parking requirements for highrise or multiple-unit buildings, I couldn’t help but worry. These are just a couple of the many proposals aimed at addressing the severe housing shortage that has led to the emergence of tent cities in all metropolitan areas.

With all the recent announcements, the federal government promises to double housing starts for the next seven years from the current pace of 250,000 units per year, by pouring billions of dollars into municipal budgets, providing local city councils agree to change zoning codes, including the above two proposals.

While this could alleviate the housing shortage and provide more affordable housing options, it raises concerns about the quality of these new units and the impact on existing neighborhoods.

Yes, the recent surge in international migration created the housing shortage; statistics show that the Canadian fertility rate is way below the replacement rate, and the increase in population and the consequent surge in housing demand can be attributed directly and totally to immigration.

But wouldn’t it be more prudent for the federal government to address the demand for housing as well instead of focusing solely on the supply side? Would it not be faster and easier to restrict immigration in the short term than build housing that takes years to complete? A more balanced approach would be advisable in considering both supply and demand for housing.

A panic reaction is not a good incubator for developing thoughtful housing policy. For example, consider the proposal for building four housing units on a residential lot. A quarter-acre lot measures seventy by one hundred feet (excluding space for roads). Yes, one can build four units on such a lot; it could be two side by side units on the main level and the same upstairs, or one unit per floor in a four-storey building. It would be a dense development, especially considering the parking space for each unit.   But, oops! Are parking spots still required?

However, more recent developments have much smaller lot sizes; some are thirty-five by one hundred feet. To put four units in such a small lot would be a design challenge. And where would the parking be? On the neithborhood streets? As much as good public transit, which we do not have, may negate the need for cars, most individuals and families like to have a car to get around on weekends and at nights when public transit is sporadic at best.

In the suburbs, there are one-acre and larger lots where four units per residential lot are reasonably achievable, but would people desire it? They moved to the suburbs because they wanted bigger lots so why would they now build three additional units on their land? Not likely.

Although four units per residential lot is an attractive slogan, it behooves the government to specify what a “residential lot” means. For example, it would be helpful to identify a minimum lot size to utilize this concept fully.

While the first proposal for densification relates to the efficient use of an urban lot (four units on a lot), the second proposal to eliminate parking refers to cost; by not building garages, the government claims the cost savings would benefit renters/buyers. However, consider the potential impact of this idea on different demographic groups. For instance, families with children, the disabled or elderly individuals may still require parking spaces, and the lack of these amenities could disproportionately affect them.

Before believing government claims that eliminating parking spaces will reduce the cost to the buyer/renter, consider vacancy rates. With vacancy rates so low today that people immediately take up any vacant rental unit, why would developers not charge market rates even though their costs would be lower by not providing parking? And when people buy condominiums, they buy garage spaces in addition to the unit’s price. As a consequence, I do not see why multiple unit residential buildings with no parking would save money for renters/buyers.

To implement the no parking proposal, the City Council proposes to do away with the current policy of requiring parking as a ratio of the number of units in the building and let developers decide on the number of stalls provided based on market forces. While in some areas of the city, developers may choose to skimp on parking spaces, assuming that people could park on neighboring streets, it may not be the case downtown, where office towers dominate, and street parking is not available. I am concerned that not providing parking would exacerbate congestion on the streets and create a huge problem during the winter months when parking is prohibited on the streets for snow clearing.

What further concerns me and find astonishing is when I see that the two higher levels of government are actively pursuing car manufacturers to set up shop in Ontario.  They announced yesterday a multi-billion-dollar incentives package for Honda, after providing incentives for Volkswagen and Stellantis, last year. Is this not a huge contradiction: do not provide parking but encourage the manufacture of cars?

Quadruplexes on quarter-acre lots and highrise buildings without parking do not reflect what people want today; to me, it appears that governments are attempting to modify behavior to solve a housing shortage, without dealing with any of the basic issues that contributed to the problem – that is, an unprecedented increase in immigration levels, and the capacity of the country in both labor and supplies to accelerate any construction. Despite all good intentions and even beyond the questionable objectives of these ideas, the pace of housing construction cannot and will not double for the next few years due to the lack of skilled labor.

Awkward Facts

April 17, 2024

The Covid crisis brought to my attention the Canadian Government’s recent flood of announcements to address the ‘housing crisis.’ To contextualize this ”crisis,” I delved into statistics. I discovered that sixty-five percent of Canadians own their homes (and therefore experience no housing crisis), and the income-to-house price ratio has skyrocketed over the last decade. This has created significant hurdles for young people, making stepping onto the property ladder increasingly tricky.

However, the billions of dollars announced to encourage home construction seem overkill. The demand for housing, which many studies concluded resulted from the recent surge in international migration, may be reduced by government policy, limiting future immigration flows. Mortgage rates may also come down soon, alleviating the need to solve a “crisis.” However, throwing vast amounts of money at a sudden “crisis,” which has evolved recently, reminded me of the pandemic’s beginning. Let me describe.

The Canadian Minister of Procurement ordered 419 million Covid vaccines at the pandemic’s onset, costing nine billion dollars. The experience of Italy and New York State with Covid was a stark reminder of the potential devastation without vaccines. However, with a population of 38 million people in 2020, Canadians would receive ten vaccines each. The Public Health Agency of Canada recommended two doses for vaccination and boosters every six months. So, the vaccines purchased would suffice for five years for all Canadians.

As a result of publicizing the dangers of Covid, over 80 percent of the population raced to get the first two shots. Although the vaccines kept coming, and booster shots were widely available, people decided that two vaccines were sufficient, and fewer and fewer people took a third or fourth dose. By the time the sixth shot, the XBB.1.5 Omicron subvariant designed to shore up protection against the SARS-COV-2 descendants came about in late 2023, only fifteen percent of the population decided to receive the dose.

By late 2023, people considered Covid more of a nuisance than a dangerous sickness, similar to having a cold. With all the vaccines ordered but not used, the British Medical Journal called Canada one of the most vaccine-hoarding countries in the world. The Director General of the World Health Organization, in 2022, remarked that Canada was hoarding vaccines at the expense of poorer nations. Of the over 400 million vaccines contracted, only 105 million were used by December 2023 in Canada.

It’s disheartening to note that policymakers seemed to overlook the fact that vaccines have expiration dates. They also seemed to disregard the reality that the virus mutates, necessitating the development of updated vaccines to maintain effectiveness. As a result, millions of doses expired and were unusable   However, the contracts for the original orders still have to be honored. For instance, Canada still owes C$350 million to Novavax, one of the vaccine manufacturers, for vaccines ordered. 

So, was Canada successful in avoiding Covid? Can we put some metrics to success? The Canadian experience with Covid indicates that Canada fared well among the G7 countries in handling the pandemic, with less than a thousand deaths per million people, second best after Japan. However, we did spend a significant amount of money, and much of it was wasted. It is astounding that Canada used only 25 percent of the vaccines purchased. I wonder if we could have been more agile and intelligent in our decision-making, considering people’s willingness to receive periodic shots over the years and the expiry dates of the millions of vaccines ordered.

I also wonder if the Government has learned anything from throwing so much money at the Covid issue that could be applied to their new “housing crisis ” so that Canada can avoid throwing good money away with minimal results.

The Eclipse, April 8, 2:12 pm

April 12, 2024

Kathy said we should see the eclipse. She said:  It happens once in a lifetime; the next one will come in forty years. And it is fantastic! The news media estimated a million people would visit Niagara Falls to watch the eclipse; hotels tripled their room rates there. After reading about how to watch the eclipse, Kathy ordered appropriate sunglasses from Amazon, and the package also came with a cover for the camera lens.

Kathy also said that her friend invited us to view the eclipse from the deck of a cottage facing the St. Lawrence River in Brockville, Ontario, where it was supposed to be 100% covered. That sounded too good to pass up until Kathy received a phone call from her friend disinviting us; apparently, not all the details of our visit met the cottage owner’s approval. Kathy was a little annoyed that her friend did not discuss alternative locations where we could meet.

So now, I wondered, why should we leave Ottawa and go elsewhere to view the eclipse since we would see 98.8 percent of the sun covered by the moon in Ottawa? In Brockville, I read that the coverage will be one hundred percent. OK. Does that make a huge difference? I doubt it, but I said let’s go and drive south towards Brockville, searching for an attractive venue for viewing. 

 The news media projected massive traffic for April 8, with people trying to drive to be under the eclipse’s pathalong the St. Lawrence River. To avoid traffic, we chose to go south on a secondary road, Highway 15, towards Brockville. We decided to make an outing to get there early “to avoid” the traffic.  So, we brought along a picnic.For the picnic, I bought some black forest ham, Swiss cheese, sourdough bread, and a bottle of wine (Ventoux, a French rose from 2022). 

On our drive south, we first checked out the parking lot at the Crosby fleamarket. It is a gravelly lot with no attractive landscaping surrounding it, so we drove further south and stopped at the parking lot at the entrance to the Cataraqui Trail, a rail-to-trail path where there was lots of open space to see the sun. There were already two other cars on this sunny and balmy day; the temperature was 15 degrees Centigrade (60 degrees Fahrenheit).

Mothers with children disgorged from one of the cars and started walking along the Trail. They were from Ottawa and told us that the Ottawa school board had let the children off on April 8 to view the eclipse. The people from the other car had just returned from walking the Trail and reminded us to wear our eclipse-viewingsunglasses.

A box from Costco was our table, and a beach chair and a folding bridge chair provided seating forour picnic lunch. Sitting on the beach chair, as I was opening the wine and getting ready to enjoy my lunch, Kathy motioned to me with bad news. She pointed to two nails in the back tire next to where she sat. I looked over and thought, what a downer on a marvelous sunny day, looking for the eclipse. I said we’d be lucky to drive back to Ottawa without the tire deflating, to which Kathy replied: do not take the nails out, orthe tire will deflate!

While enjoying my lunch, I thought about changing the tire with the spare in the car. So, after finishing lunch and worrying about what to do with the tire, I looked at changing the tire.  I lay down on my back, looking for the spot under the car where the jack would go. As I slithered towards the back of the car on my back, where the tire with the nail was, I noticed that the head did not look like a standard nail-head, and as I touched it, it just fell off the tire! It was some dried-out grass clump wedged between the grooves of the tire!  With the problem resolved, it was time for another glass of wine.  

Relieved by not having to change tires, fortified by a glass of wine, an hour to go before the eclipse,we decided to walk on the Cataraqui Trail. It is flat and straight, with swamps on both sides. The birds and frogs made a racket that was pleasant to the ears. A half-hour later, and with gathering clouds, we thought the better part of prudence was to turn around and return to the car, especially with the darkening clouds.

Suddenly, it became dark, and I told Kathy we had better rush back to the car; it looked like it was going to storm. In our rush back on the trail, we noticed the sun becoming dark and realized that this was the eclipse coming on! We grabbed our sunglasses, and I put the screen on the camera lens to take some pictures. At the same time, the frogs and birds became quiet, and an eerie silence descended on us. I kept shooting. I did not get a classic image of the eclipse with the moon fully covering the sun; taking photos through the unique lens was a challenge, but I got some decent shots.

As the eclipse passed over us, the sky lightened up again. We walked back to pack our picnic gear, listening to the birds and frogs, who seemed to come back to life as soon as the sky lit up. The sun was shining brightly when we got back to the car. A phone message awaited us from Kathy’s friend about the excellent view she had of the eclipse from the cemetery in Brockville. Our location was probably better because we shared our experience with birds and frogs rather than the souls of dead people.

Zooming with Cottage Neighbors

April 2, 2024

I push the join button on Zoom and face 18 somber people on the screen, members of our cottagers’ association. Nobody speaks. With a look of expectation on their faces, they appear serious. I ask: can you hear me? Some say yes. I grab my glass of wine while Kathy brings our dinner at 7 pm. We decided to eat our dinner during the Zoom call.

Looking at the Zoom participants, I ask who is from Ottawa. A woman says she is 100 km from Ottawa in Madoc. Then I recognize Kit joining us from Florida, Ry, who lives in New Hampshire, and a few from Toronto. The association’s President lives in Toronto and called the Zoom meeting to discuss issues concerning the group.

A revised constitution and the transfer of land used as pathways from the island’s original owners to our cottagers’ association are on the agenda. These topics leave me cold; I have never been interested in constitutions, and the land transfer has no impact on our enjoyment of the island. We already have legal access to walk on the pathways with all other cottagers, so who owns it is irrelevant.

I would have been more interested in the Zoom call if the agenda had proposed some new activities and developments for the upcoming summer. Bureaucratic matters, especially constitutions, leave me cold, but I looked forward to seeing some cottage neighbors.

After tent camping and trailering, we bought the cottage a few decades ago, envisioning a permanent summer venue we could visit every weekend. It never involved Robert’s Rules and land transfers. It was “getting away” from urbanization and work. It had to do with living on a lakefront with all the lake’s benefits, like swimming, canoeing, kayaking, sailboarding, and even walking on the pathways in the back.

But here we are, having dinner with a glass of wine when the President puts the revised constitution on the screen and explains proposed changes. What a bore, except for a few quirky items. He says we could have more than the current membership class, consisting of property owners on the island.

Less than half of the current cottage owners belong to the association, and the President suggests we could have the non-paying cottagers become another class of members. Huh? What does that mean? Why should you be a member if you do not pay the membership fee and cannot vote? Some people on the island may not even be aware of the association, but we make them members?

But wait. The President also suggests another member class: people who do not even live on the island. Who could these people be? Relatives, potential cottage property buyers? I think we do not need these artificial membership classes.

Another peculiar suggestion the President makes to include in the constitution is that only people with no history of bankruptcy can serve on the association’s executive. Someone asks how we can filter these individuals out of consideration. How can we ascertain that the individual volunteering to serve on the Executive Committee has no bankruptcy history?

Concerning the pathways, I ask: Why transfer the land to the association when we have the legal right to walk on them? What are the benefits? I do not get a response to my question or to the other question, whether owning the land would require liability insurance, which would cost dearly and increase the membership fee.  

However, there seems to be momentum to proceed with the land transfer, mainly from the executive members. There appears to be wind in their sails; I am unsure what drives their motivation. They promise to follow up on suggestions from the 19 members of the association logging in.

I leave the Zoom meeting with mixed feelings. When we bought a cottage on an island, we thought we had left bureaucracy behind in the city. But bureaucracy follows us today and is burgeoning, with big-city people coming to our island and developing big-city organizations with rules and regulations. I may have to reconsider joining the association for next year.