By Gazette Staff
March 2nd, 2026
BURLINGTON, ON
Eric Stern delegated before Council this morning, telling them what he felt was wrong with the approach they were taking to the creation of housing and the management of development charges.
He was before Council for more than20 minutes answering their questions.
Today’s reality is that property taxes are regressive.
Point 1 – Property taxes are a regressive tax. They impact low-income earners more than high-income earners. I know that FCM is trying to change this. Today’s reality is that property taxes are regressive.
Asking low-income households and struggling businesses to “save the development industry, save jobs, and create affordable housing” is simply unfair to them.
The Federal and Provincial governments have helped industries in the past, for example, the auto industry. Those levels of government have tax structures geared to incomes and profits.
Simply put, saving an industry, any industry, is not the responsibility of a lower-tier municipal government, especially one without an affordable housing mandate.
2 – Collins-Williams stated:
“The only way that we are going to be able to sell new units, get those units under construction and save jobs is to reduce pricing.”
There it is, direct from the lobbyist: prices need to come down!
At a very high level, there are two components to the price of a newly constructed home:
1 – Taxes
2 – Everything else, including capital gains on the land and developers’ profits.
For the sake of argument, let’s say the price of a newly constructed condo needs to come down by $100,000 to become competitive with an already built/resale condo.
If Burlington steps in with a $10,000 DC reduction, the developer must reduce the price on their side by $90,000. Without Burlington’s help, the developer must reduce the price by $100,000.
The big question is: If Burlington acts alone and the surrounding communities don’t (Oakville, Milton, Hamilton, Waterdown), do you think the developers will lower prices only in Burlington, or will newly constructed homes sell at market price in the area, as they do today?
It’s difficult for me to imagine that developers and commissioned real estate agents will lower housing prices below the market price. The market price is influenced by the resale homes, surrounding communities, interest rates, and immigration levels.
As Collins-William stated, the price needs to come down to be competitive with the resale market. Eliminating development charges reduces the amount the developer has to lower their price, not the price charged to the home buyer.
I believe it’s naïve to expect a Burlington-only action to lower the market price of a home in Burlington.
Simply put, it will be impossible to prove that the DC elimination will be passed on to the home buyer.
Federal immigration policies are a major factor in housing prices.
3 – Federal immigration policies are a major factor in housing prices.
The Federal government is prioritizing permanent resident spots for people already in Canada on temporary visas.
The target for international students and temporary workers has been reduced from 7.5% of the population to 5%, which maps to well over 1 million people.
Prices are determined by supply and demand. The Federal government is the elephant in the room, reducing demand and, in turn, lowering resale prices.
Simply put, actions by Burlington’s council will not significantly influence housing prices up or down.
In Summary
1 – Property taxes are regressive. Higher property taxes reduce housing affordability, add to homelessness, and put pressure on all businesses in Burlington.
2 – The province is expected to release a budget by the end of March. Step 1: wait and see what Ontario does.
3 – There is no guarantee that savings will be passed on to home buyers, muddying the affordability argument.
4 – Ask Burlington residents if they are interested in incentivizing developers to build in Burlington over neighbouring communities, or if they feel the community is crowded enough already.
5 – Speaking of asking residents, 2.6% of the people who responded to the Focus Burlington survey were in favour of eliminating development charges, 97.4% opposed. Where is the city’s survey data?
6 – Why did I have to read a summary of the mayor’s motion in the Burlington Gazette yesterday? The motion should be attached to the revised meeting agenda. From September to February, elimination was only an option with funding coming from another level of government; suddenly, things changed. Why wasn’t the mayor’s motion for today’s meeting shared with the public when it was announced on social media?
Saving industries is not a municipal responsibility
7 – Why wasn’t money allocated in the 2026 budget? 2% for infrastructure, or was it 2% for developers?
8 – Widening roads employs tradespeople.
9 – Saving industries is not a municipal responsibility; please stay in your lane and, while you’re in your lane, please fix some potholes. If you want to expand your personal mandate, run for higher office.
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Eric, great delegation, as you illustrated the housing issue is not systemic only to Burlington, it’s across the country.
The root cause is therefore a national one, high immigration, money printing and weak Canadian dollar both of which makes construction costs near or more expensive than the price of existing homes – hence development stalls.
You covered immigration, but federal monetary and fiscal policy was not covered as far as I can tell. I’ve been beating this drum for a while and will continue.
The delegation by Mike Collins Williams hinted at the root cause – new building costs are too expensive. Why? Building materials are priced in USD for the most part. Expansion of our money supply (M2) weakens the buying power of the Canadian dollar. Investment flowing out of Canada weakens our dollar. Our labour rates are high, they are because of inflation. We have lots of regulations, more costs, simple things like our non-sense tree policy all add to the price of housing.
We have an industrial carbon tax, steel, aluminum, lumber, cement, shingles, transportation, most things that go into building are more expensive because of this tax, then at every point in the supply chain this added tax gets margined up over and over.
We have a clean fuel standard tax (carbon tax in disguise), which adds cost to every delivery and the operation of every piece of heavy machinery necessary to build homes.
I’ve worked on development charges for the Region of Halton back in the 90’s, and as a consulting engineer for other municipalities, I know what goes into the calculations and am extremely knowledgeable in estimating construction costs for municipal infrastructure. These same factors will also cause development charges to increase year over year as they impact the cost of those projects!
This problem took five to 10 years to manifest itself through bad policy decisions, so unless our Mayor and Council want to understand the root cause, what was proposed will not solve the root problem – the high price of housing.
Its not only the initial building costs that are impacted, its ongoing maintenance and taxes. New condo fees are $500 to over $1000 per month, these don’t get paid off, they are forever and increase every year! This gets factored into a mortgage calculation. City taxes have gone up as we well know, as insurance for similar reasons.
Clearly the Liberal housing accelerator plan is failing, as many critiqued back when it was introduced, as it did not address these fundamental structural problems in our economy, fundamental issues with fiscal and monetary policy.
Can our council and Mayor do something about an issue that was created “out of their lane”, at the federal level? Most certainly, every time I turn around I see a photo op with our Mayor and our federal MP. I would hazard to guess that none of these structural issues are discussed as I believe our Mayor and MP are willfully blind to such issues.
I am very grateful for Eric for explaining so called experienced Councillors why this idea of subsidizing Developers is ridiculous.
I don’t know the no of Burlington residents that responded to the survey regarding eliminating development charges ..however
most residents that I talk to are opposed to it
I was in the council chambers when the delegates spoke. Eric Stern’s delegation was excellent. All the delegations were very good. No one was in favour of a 2 year freeze on development Fees.
The Mayor and some members of council are now pivoting to use funds from the Community Improvement Plan (CIP) to provide “affordable” housing. No one asked the question – How much money is in this fund presently? The answer is $4,000,000.00 ( this information came from the information session held on Saturday at City Hall.
What can one accomplish with $4,000,000.00 today? The City offered $15,000,000.00 to the developer Argo to purchase part of the golf course in Milllcroft and they were turned down.
Also in order for the city to qualify for more government funding we have to be developing more affordable rentals and homes. The only area where the city has presently reached its target is with the expensive multi-housing (condos).
Doubt the developers are going to want to build mid priced housing options. Not enough profit in that. I can’t imagine that Burlington will be able to deliver on this requirement to get additional government funding.
Timely engagement with the public was also an issue brought forward through the delegations.
I found it interesting when members of council and the mayor asked the delegates how they could accomplish providing proper engagement with the residents. Really!!!!
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Well said Eric! Thank you for advocating for us.
Excellent delegation! hopefully our mayor and council will listen and “Heed your advice”.
If Burlington residents have time, I urge you all to listen to all of the Delegations from today’s meeting online, “Special Meeting, March 2, 2026”. The link to this video should be posted sometime this evening and can be found on the City of Burlington website under Council Meetings – March 2, 2026.
Eric Stern gave an amazing delegation and my family
Are in agreement.