By Pepper Parr

May 27^th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

A picture is indeed worth more than 1000 words.

The seating plan for the House of Commons that met for the first time on Monday has former Cabinet Minister Karina Gould sitting about as far away from the Speaker as one could get.

Burlington North – Milton West MP and Secretary for Sport,  Adam Koeverden is a lot closer.

The seating plan was no accident – the Prime Minister has made it very clear – no room for Gould in his inner circle.

The question that begs to be asked is – What did Gould do that got under Carney’s skin?   Follow that up with the question: Is he that thin-skinned?

It is going to be interesting to see how well Koeverden grows as the politician people will go to with Burlington-related issues.

Gould brought a lot of federal funding into Burlington; she knew how Ottawa worked.  At the moment, it isn’t working all that well for her.

There is a lot of spunk and a lot of spine to Karina Gould – her plans to become the Prime Minister at some point are just on hold.

By Staff

May 26th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

The Ontario government is taking action to protect communities and build a stronger and more resilient province by reintroducing the Emergency Management Modernization Act, 2025. The proposed legislation will enhance public safety and disaster response measures, including making Ontario Corps a key function of emergency responses in the province.

Jill Dunlop, Minister of Emergency Preparedness and Response.

“Extreme weather events like the ice storm this spring are unfortunately becoming more frequent. Our legislation reflects the need to be more prepared in the event of an emergency,” said Jill Dunlop, Minister of Emergency Preparedness and Response. “That’s why our government is recognizing the critical need for Ontario Corps, so they can be deployed at a moment’s notice to help protect families and build a stronger, safer and more resilient Ontario.”

Ontario Corps brings together experienced non-governmental partners and skilled volunteers to enhance on-the-ground emergency response that can be deployed quickly to support communities across the province. During the spring ice storm, Ontario Corps partners volunteered over 6,000 hours, delivering generators, providing 3,725 meals and food hampers, conducting over 4,100 wellness checks, providing tree-clearing services and supporting evacuation reception centres.

Following the establishment of the Ministry of Emergency Preparedness and Response as a standalone ministry with a dedicated minister in March, this legislation, if passed, would enable a more effective, coordinated and comprehensive approach to provincial and community emergency management. The changes would prioritize community-led approaches that help municipalities design emergency management programs that reflect their unique needs and capacities.

Enhancing Ontario’s emergency management capacity is part of the government’s plan to build a stronger and more resilient province with the necessary tools in place to ensure the safety and wellbeing of people across the province.

Registration for Ontario Corps

Quick Facts

• The proposed Emergency Management Modernization Act, 2025 is the first comprehensive update to Ontario’s emergency management legislation in more than 15 years.
• The legislation is informed by valuable feedback from partners, best practices in emergency management and lessons learned from past emergencies. The province engaged with more than 550 partners, including municipalities, First Nations communities and emergency management organizations. The ministry also received 91 written submissions on a publicly posted discussion guide.
• The legislation builds on the government’s Provincial Emergency Management Strategy and Action Plan that outlines key actions the province is taking to ensure communities are safe, practiced and prepared before, during and after emergencies.
• Ontario is building a new Emergency Preparedness and Response Headquarters. The new state-of-the-art complex will be designed to support the province’s work to prepare for and respond to all types of disasters that will operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year. It will include dedicated training rooms and warehousing and aviation infrastructure and will be built to withstand all types of disasters including earthquakes, tornadoes and floods.

By Staff

May 26th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

Current OPP location in Burlington

There will eventually be a new Ontario Police detachment in Burlington.

Where it will be located, who will actually build it and when will building start – unanswered questions at this point.

In addition to building a new regional headquarters in Thunder Bay, the government is building 12 other new detachments one of which will be in  Burlington.

The provincial government explains that: “This project demonstrates a shared commitment with our government to ensure the OPP is as effective as possible at keeping communities safe,” said OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique. “Providing our officers, civilian and volunteer members with these modern new facilities will better position the OPP to evolve as we strive to be our very best at delivering on our public safety mandate.”

Burlington OPP location 24/7

In partnership with Infrastructure Ontario, the province is launching a competitive process to find qualified teams to help design, build, and finance the new detachments.

By Staff

May 25^th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

Housing experts are pushing back against a federal cabinet minister’s recent claim that home prices don’t need to go down in order to restore housing affordability.

Gregor Robertson – Minister of Housing – Asked if “home prices need to fall” Answered “No, I think that we need to deliver more supply”.

Gregor Robertson, the former mayor of Vancouver who was elected to the House of Commons in April, sparked the debate after he was sworn in as housing minister earlier this, when a reporter asked him whether he thinks home prices need to fall.

“No, I think that we need to deliver more supply, make sure the market is stable. It’s a huge part of our economy,” he said.

Robertson added that Canada lacks affordable housing and championed Ottawa’s efforts to build out the supply of homes priced below market rates.

Mike Moffatt, founding director of the Missing Middle Institute, had a different answer when asked whether housing can be made more affordable for the average Canadian without a drop in market values.

Mike Moffatt: “…it would take 18 years to return to more affordable home price-to-income ratios…”

“The short answer is no. It’s simply not possible to restore broad-based affordability to the middle class without prices going down,” he said.

Moffatt crunched the numbers last month on how long it would take for housing to return to 2005 levels of affordability if the average home price holds steady while wages grow at a nominal pace of three per cent annually.

Across Canada, he said, it would take 18 years to return to more affordable home price-to-income ratios — while in Ontario and British Columbia it would take roughly 25 years.

In B.C. and Ontario, Moffatt said, wages and home prices have become so detached from one another that it’s not “realistic” to rely on wage growth to catch up to housing costs.

While Moffatt said he welcomes policies that encourage more housing for vulnerable Canadians and those experiencing homelessness, efforts to build more below-market housing units won’t address the “middle-class housing crisis.”

Days after Robertson weighed in, Prime Minister Mark Carney was asked the same question. Rather than offering a yes-or-no answer, he asserted instead that he wants “home prices to be more affordable for Canadians.”

There is a lot of personal equity in these homes: should the prices fall – there will be a lot of unhappy property owners. If the prices do not fall there will be millions of young people who will never be able to afford a home – which is the challenge Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberal government face.

He cited Liberal election campaign pledges to drop the GST on new homes and offer incentives to municipalities to cut development charges in half.

The Liberals are looking to lower the cost of homebuilding with the aim of doubling the pace of housing starts in Canada. The government wants to scale up the use of prefabricated parts and other technological advances to streamline housing development.

Carney said that this boost in supply would “make home prices much lower than they otherwise would be.”

Moffatt said he agrees that lowering the cost of homebuilding would help to make homes more affordable.

In fact, he said, if the cost of building doesn’t go down and if home prices stagnate or decline, development will immediately cease to be profitable for builders, causing housing starts to dry up.

“I think that should be the primary focus of all three orders of government … figuring out how we can reduce the cost of home construction in order to create affordability and to lower prices,” he said.

Moshe Lander agrees: “…home prices must come down if the government hopes to see broad affordability restored to the market over the next generation.”

Concordia University economist Moshe Lander agrees with Moffatt that home prices must come down if the government hopes to see broad affordability restored to the market over the next generation.

But he also questions whether the federal government should be the arbiter of housing affordability in the first place, given that so many of the political decisions are out of its control.

Lifting regulatory barriers to boosting supply is largely a matter for provincial and municipal governments, as are efforts to encourage more students to develop skills in the trades.

“And so for the federal government to say, ‘We’re going to try and incentivize this,’ I think they’re going miss the mark in whatever they’re trying to do because really, at the end of the day, it’s not their issue,” Lander said.

Lander said he also understands why politicians of all stripes are reluctant to come out in favour of lowering home prices.

Any explicit government effort to bring down housing prices down would be seen as an attack on homeowners’ equity — an asset many use to fund retirements or other long-term savings as they pay off their mortgages.

“Homeowners will not accept it,” Lander said. “And you risk alienating a very sizable and influential voting bloc.”

At the local level, he said, politicians tend to seek the support of homeowners because — unlike renters — they tend to stay put in a riding or district.

Lander said that most efforts to win renters’ votes tend to be “tepid” at best and “counterproductive” at worst. Policies that target the demand-side of the equation — helping Canadians become homeowners — tend to put upward pressure on home prices at the same time, he said.

Lander said part of the path to affordable housing has to be a shift away from the narrative that Canadians have been fed for generations — that home ownership is a lofty goal to aspire to and renters are “second-class citizens.”

“I don’t think that we’re being clear with society that this is what that might look like,” he said.