Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli doubts a 15 percent surtax the Wynne Liberals plan to apply to foreign investors buying property in Ontario will ease the housing crunch. On top of that, the Tory finance critic says the proposal leaves more questions than answers. Fedeli was reacting to the Liberals following the lead of the B.C. government and hitting foreign buyers with a surtax. However he says the housing issues both provinces face are not the same. Where housing has been scooped up by foreigners in the Vancouver area, he says the housing issue in Ontario is very different. “This is a made-in-Ontario problem,” he said. “You have high demand but low supply. And that’s because the Liberals imposed severe red tape restrictions on developers over the years.” Fedeli cites the Strong Communities Act the Liberals approved in 2011 as an example. He says the Act doubles the amount of time developers have to wait before their projects are approved. “In Toronto, the waiting time is now 17 months and in Ajax it’s 19 months,” he said. “Toronto developers will tell you they can drive by a field and say to themselves that would make a great subdivision. But from the time they say that to the time homes are actually on the site can be 16 years.”
Fedeli says the 15 percent surtax is a typical Liberal response, where they throw a new tax at something and hope that resolves the matter. “I call it ready, fire aim,” he said. “They throw out a napkin solution and work on the details later.” Fedeli says it’s clear that the Liberals don’t understand the problem because they caused it in the first place. He also says the 16-point proposal is ill-conceived in another area and that’s dealing with vacant property. Fedeli says the Liberals will allow municipalities the ability to add a new tax on vacant properties. “But what exactly is a vacant property,” the former Mayor of North Bay asks. “When snowbirds go to Florida for the winter and their home is empty for several months, is that a vacant property? What if you want to renovate your property so you move out for a while, is that consider a vacant home? Or if you rent your home out but one tenant leaves and it sits empty for several weeks, is that a vacant property?” Fedeli says the Liberal plan doesn’t address these questions and offers this as more proof that they don’t understand the housing issue. He says to resolve the housing problem, the issue will need science-based analysis. Fedeli says the people to help resolve it include developers, realtors, the business community and tenants and not the bureaucrats who created the problem in the first place.
