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My children would love to have a home in Toronto, but that dream is most likely unattainable now and forever to come. Why?
Most migrants from both domestic and international points come to Toronto and other major urban centres in Canada. Small-town Canadians, many young people, must go to these large urban centres for their education and employment, and most international migrants move towards Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal, all cities with little housing to offer.
The situation will not get better, really. If you think the limited new homes being built in these urban centres will be less costly than now, you’re dreaming. Developers will charge what the market can bear, and seemingly, even with high interest rates, the cost of housing is going upward.
Children of ‘boomers’ are either demanding their inheritance or crying the blues in front of their parents, people who saved and managed their money. The now generation wants what their parents have, and this is forcing many citizens ready to retire to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars to their children. A generation of financially depleted seniors will be upon us soon.
A developing trend of bankruptcy and home abandonment is upon us, also. Interest rates will continue to rise whether the economy slows or not. The Liberal administration has its eyes upon the massive private debt we all have accumulated these past decades because of the low interest rates, which are a thing of the past. Furthermore, banking and financial sectors will increase their interest rates upon private debt, fearing a growing wall of insolvency within the public’s domain.
The Greenbelt is being raided by the provincial government, releasing many acres to be built upon, some commercial, some residential. Housing starts outside of the urban centres mentioned above show us that our provincial governments have finally realized that there is a need to move excess populations from the urban centres to new communities out there.
The economy, with its offerings of homes, new schools, new communities with new business opportunities, will not grow if it is stuck within the urban city monoliths of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. The great cities will continue to grow, but rightfully so, upward, not outward. Skyscraper apartments will be the rule for a new future in the big city. Single homes, detached or otherwise, will continue to be built in the new Ontario away from southern Ontario, in areas where rural will meet suburban.
Our large cities can grow only so much, expanding outward, when they should be going upward. Land within these urban centres is precious and so very expensive. Land use within these cities needs to become an art form, deciding what to build and how to build it. The only place average citizens can grow with the province is outside of these constrictive cities.
Dreaming bigger should be the provinces’ new mantra. I suggested this sort of growth northward long ago, but the Liberal administration’s love for the large cities, and its control of them, silenced my call. Conservatives finally realized that Ontario’s future is not in Toronto, but in the province’s rural landscape, where land and opportunities welcome us.
The premier of Ontario and his administration have finally taken the public’s head out of a stagnant box that limited its way of seeing the province, to see that the rest of the province needs to be developed, offering to our citizens as virginal opportunities to a future economic boom. Develop the smaller communities, grow their ambition along with yours to build something better, more livable, more affordable.
Young people, seniors and all you entrepreneurs out there, get out of the big city and find yourself in a new beginning within a new Ontario, an Ontario with breathing room, open space and opportunities galore.
Steven Kaszab
Bradford
