Connecting with Greater Ottawa Home Builders' Association

Thursday January 16 2025
Greater Ottawa Home Builders Association – 2025 Breakfast

Good morning,
Bonjour. C’est formidable d’être de nouveau réunis ce matin. 

It’s great to be with you once again this morning. 

I think this is becoming a bit of an annual tradition, isn’t it?
I’m happy to come back, every year, as long as you’ll have me. 

Even if next year I’m no longer the mayor of the nation’s capital, and I’m just the mayor of the capital of the 51st state, I’ll still be here.

Happy New Year to all of you. Bonne et heureuse année à tout le monde. Il s’agit d’une année importante pour notre ville. This is an important year for our city. 
And it’s also a year during which we’ll be facing a lot of risks and obstacles. 
But I want to tell you this morning that one of our absolute highest priorities this year will be to do our part to support the construction of more homes in our city.
 

I know how important that is to you, not just as builders but as residents of Ottawa.
Look, we all want the same thing. 
Nous voulons construire plus de logements et le faire plus vite. Nous voulons bâtir une ville meilleure et plus abordable pour nos enfants et nos petits-enfants.

We want to build more homes and we want to build them faster. 
We want to build a better, more affordable city for our children and grandchildren.
But I think we can all agree that the issue is very complex and the solutions aren’t easy. 
If it was easy, it would have happened already. 
There are so many factors that affect the housing market. 
And there are so many players, including three levels of government. 
But just because it’s challenging doesn’t mean we should stop trying. 
And my goal this year is to be as innovative as possible on housing approvals.

Mon objectif cette année consiste à innover le plus possible en ce qui concerne les approbations de logements.
 

I’ve spoken with many members of the development community and I hear what you’re saying. 
I understand the challenges and the frustrations. 
And we want to do everything we can to fix that.

We’ve done a lot already. The team at city hall has been working to streamline the process. We’ve added more than 30 positions in the planning department.

 We’ve introduced a team approach so that applications are less likely to be slowed down when someone is away or unavailable. We’ve revamped our pre-consultation process. And that’s already reduced application timelines by more than two months.

But we can always do more. And we want to do more. 

I want you to look back on 2025 as a year when we made a lot of progress. 
We want to take bold steps, innovative steps, to shorten and improve the approval process. 
And we want to work as closely as possible with you. Et nous voulons collaborer très étroitement avec vous.
I want to start by providing some important context.

First of all, let’s talk about the world in 2025.

We live in some pretty interesting times. 
I joked about Canada becoming the 51st state, but we are about to see a new administration in Washington that is threatening tariffs and other measures that could have a huge impact on the Canadian economy. 
Closer to home, we are very likely to have a federal election in the next four months, and perhaps even a provincial election as well. 
And there are decisions that are being made by both those levels of government that have a huge impact on Ottawa.

So, for example, if Donald Trump introduces tariffs, how will that impact interest rates in Canada?
Will the next prime minister of Canada make changes to the federal public service?

Le prochain premier ministre du Canada apportera-t-il des changements à la fonction publique fédérale?

 

Will the prospect of a federal election cause the largest group of employees in Ottawa to have uncertainty about the future, meaning they won’t make big purchasing decisions?
Let’s face it, people buy homes when they’re excited, optimistic, and confident about the future. 
Uncertainty is bad for business. 
And there’s a lot of uncertainty in the political climate right now.

There are also many other market conditions like supply chain issues, challenges in hiring skilled labour, and the rising costs of construction materials.

The reason I mention all of this is to point out that none of that is within your control. 
Nor is it within my control, or within the control of your municipal government. 
We’re going to have to watch carefully and see what happens with all of those challenges and pressures.

I hope the market conditions improve and that leads to more homes being built. But I have no control over that and neither do you.

There are a lot of things we can’t control. 
But we’re going to work very hard on the things we can control. 
That’s our job at the City of Ottawa.

La seule chose que nous puissions faire c’est de travailler sur ce que nous contrôlons. 
At the City of Ottawa, we need to be laser focused on improving and shortening the approval process. 

 

Notre travail consiste non pas à construire des maisons, mais à les approuver.

We’re not in the business of building homes. We’re in the business of approving homes. 
We’ve done a lot to improve in that area already. And I am determined to do more.

I can’t commit to you that the economy will be strong in 2025. 
I can’t commit that interest rates will come down. 
I can’t commit that the next federal election will bring stability to Ottawa. 

But what I can say is that I will do everything in my power that if you sell a new home, we’ll get you the building permit as quickly as possible. 

Before going any further, I want to address another issue honestly and candidly. 
I know everyone would love to see development charges frozen or even lowered. 
It would be great if that were easy to do. 
But let’s be honest about that. 
It’s very challenging. 

You know, at the time when my parents were buying their first home, there weren’t development charges. 
The federal and provincial governments provided municipalities with the money they needed to build infrastructure and there wasn’t a development charge attached to every new home. 
But somewhere along the way, the other levels of government stopped providing the same level of resources. 
They no longer give us enough money for water, for sewers, for roads, for transit. 

Effectively, they shifted the burden for paying for that infrastructure to municipalities, and so we had to introduce development charges. 
It’s a bit unfortunate, from my perspective, that the same governments who got out of providing funding for infrastructure are now criticizing municipalities for raising the money to pay for that infrastructure.

That’s the situation we’re now in. But I think there’s a way forward. 

 

I think we can work with other levels of government to get more investment in infrastructure, so we don’t have to rely as much on development charges. 
But we can’t do it alone. 
If you have a chance to talk to your MPs and MPPs, especially during what is very likely to be an election year, please ask them to help us with infrastructure funding. 
We’d be prepared to work with them on development charges if we had more money coming in for infrastructure.

==Let me tell you why that’s so important. 


 

It’s not easy running a municipal government these days. 

 

Ce n’est pas facile de faire fonctionner un gouvernement municipal par les temps qui courent. 

Nous sommes confrontés à bien des défis, un des plus gros étant notre situation financière.

 

We face a lot of challenges. 

And one of the biggest is our financial situation. 

I wish we had the resources and the legislative authorities that the other levels of government have. 

That would make things a lot easier.

Here’s a bit of math for you. 

In 2024, a typical household in Ottawa paid about $4,300 in property taxes. 

But a typical family with two income earners paid about $22,000 in income taxes and another $11,000 in sales taxes. 

So that’s more than $33,000 for the other two levels of government and less than $45-hundred for the municipal government.

Now, income taxes and sales taxes go up every year as the economy grows. 

But our property taxes don’t go up unless we raise them manually. 

So there’s a lot of attention on our annual tax increases but not on the annual revenue increases for other levels of government.

And by the way, the federal and provincial governments get to run deficits and we don’t.

The other levels of government can make moves like cutting the HST temporarily or sending every resident a $200 cheque because they have much higher revenues and the ability to run deficits. 

We don’t have that flexibility. 

 

So here’s the unfortunate reality: If we were to cut development charges, we would just have to increase property taxes.

And I don’t want to have big property tax increases at a time when residents and business owners like you are already facing significant inflationary pressures. 
I’m proud of the fact that we’ve had the lowest tax increases of any major city in Canada over the past three years. 

Je suis fier que nous ayons été, de toutes les grandes villes du Canada, celle qui a eu les plus faibles augmentations d’impôts au cours des trois dernières années.

We’ve worked hard on our budget, we’ve found more than $200 million in savings and efficiencies, and we’re making sure we don’t add to the financial burden our residents are already facing. While other cities have had tax increases of 9 or 10 per cent, or even higher in recent years, we’ve kept our average to below 3% for the past three years.              You may have heard this week that Toronto has a 6.9% tax increase planned for 2025. That brings their total for the past three years to almost 22%. Here in Ottawa, our three-year tax increase is 8.9%.

We will continue to do everything we can to keep tax increases as low as possible so we’re not adding to inflation, so we’re not adding to the burden our residents and small business owners are facing.

 

Now, let’s talk about what we CAN do on streamling approvals.

I’d like to see the city go further to streamline processes, leverage technology and embrace bold ideas to improve and shorten the approval process.
We will launch a specialized task force that will explore as many solutions as possible. 
We need to innovate and test new ideas. 
They may not all work, but some of them could make a big difference. 
Here are a few that have been suggested that I think are worth looking at.

First, we can look at ways to defer development charges to ease the financial burden and improve cash flow at the beginning of a project.

We can explore whether we can introduce incentives for transit-oriented development. 

Let’s take for example, the new Riverside South transit station. 
It was built not to serve existing demand, but future demand. 
There isn’t a lot of residential around it right now, but there will be down the road. 
 

So if we incentivize development in that area, residents will have a reliable transit system at their doorstep from the day they move in.
We can consider issuing long-term leases for land that’s owned by the City of Ottawa. We’ll work with the federal government and not-for-profit housing providers on speeding up approvals for their surplus land that could be developed quickly. 
We’ll look at more opportunities for conversions of office buildings into residential. 
We can look at new models such as lease-to-own, vendor-take-back mortgages, issuing bonds, and any other financial tools that would expedite development on city land. We’ll also look at pre-zoning city land so it can be developed faster.

Regarding the approval process, we can explore streamlining the urban design review. 
I know how frustrating it is to be bounced from department to department when you’re advancing an approval. 
So we’ll explore ways to improve collaboration between departments at the city. 
We’ll take a look at technology like AI to see if that can help speed up the process. And there is no point making any important effort if you are not measuring your progress. 

So we will introduce a new dashboard that will track the number of permits we’ve approved and the time to approval.

That dashboard will be available for the entire community to see, to ensure we are making progress on approving more homes, and approving them faster.
Those are just some of the ideas that we’re considering. And if you have others, send them our way. 
We want to work with you on this. Nous voulons travailler sur cela avec vous.

I intend to bring a motion to city council later this month to launch the task force and the dashboard and start considering as many ideas as possible.

Now, there’s another important role for the city to play. 
We must lead the way to building more affordable housing. 

That’s critical for families in our city, but it’s also very important for your industry.

We’ve managed to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from the federal and provincial governments through the Housing Accelerator Fund and the Building Faster Fund. 
As a result,  more than 1227 new affordable units will be ready for occupancy later this year and through 2027 in Ottawa. 
I’ve been fortunate to tour a number of those projects in the past few months. 

For example, Gladstone Village is a great Ottawa Community Housing development in centretown where 336 units are being built. 

There is also the redevelopment of Rochester Heights by Ottawa Community Housing—273 units of affordable housing that will provide families with safe and modern homes. Or the modular homes from Habitat for Humanity, offering ownership opportunities that change lives.

So my message to you today is this:
We’re facing a lot of volatility and uncertainty right now. 
 

And a lot of that is completely outside our control. 
Mais en 2025, nous allons redoubler d’efforts sur les choses que nous pouvons contrôler. But in 2025, we’re going to work hard on the things we can control. 
And that includes:

• Improving and accelerating the approval process.
  
   

• Using city land to build more homes.
  
   

• And leading the way on building more affordable housing.

   

We’re also going to continue to campaign for more funding and support from the other levels of government. 
We simply can’t do it without them.

Most of all, I want you to remember this: we’re going to work with you. Let’s not underestimate the value of collaboration. 

I know that you want to work together and I want to emphasize today that we want to work together as well. If we align our interests, if we stay focused on the same goal of building more homes, and building them faster, we can make progress together.
I want to say thank you to all of you for what you do. 

 

Thank you for building the places that our residents will call home for generations to come. 
I’d especially like to thank:

• Jason Burggraaf, Executive Director of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association;
  
   

• Representatives of the Board of Directors, staff, and GOHBA members; and
  
   

• Today’s sponsors, the team at Regional

Ensemble, tout est possible. There’s nothing we can’t do if we are working together. 
So I’m excited to partner with you and the other levels of government to build more homes in Ottawa. 
We all share that goal. 
At the city, we can’t do everything. 
But we can do our part. 
And that’s our commitment to you this year.

Thank you / Merci.