Ontario developers have launched a legal challenge against the City of Toronto, questioning its authority to impose construction “green standards”— rules to ensure new buildings are energy efficient, minimize emissions and accomodate pedestrians and bikes.

  • @[email protected]
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    12 days ago

    Jesus, this country fucking HATES progress. Apparently we have to be dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming.

    • masterofn001
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      2112 days ago

      Can’t build empty money laundromats, er, I mean, condos, with all those regulations.

  • @[email protected]
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    2512 days ago

    Fuck developers.

    If they don’t want to build housing, we should nationalize a few of them and build it ourselves.

    • @WhatAmLemmy
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      11 days ago

      But that would be communism, and we all know communism is the devil. Meanwhile, let’s all celebrate freedom and democracy with a toast to genocide in Gaza, and the increased profitability of the war machine in 2025.

  • @[email protected]
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    711 days ago

    They’d be right at home in Alberta, our government bends over backwards to stop going green and boost corporate dollars!

  • @Shane_McGoomy
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    411 days ago

    At the risk of looking like a corporate shill, I going to say the new green building standards are painfully strict. And while yes, that’s ultimately a good thing for the environment, it is a stick in the wheel to fixing the housing crisis.

    I don’t have the numbers for all of Canada, but in Quebec the private sector supposedly builds about 50 000 to 60 000 homes per year, and to “stabilize prices” - not sure what that means, but I know it doesn’t mean reducing prices - would involve building about 150 000 units per year, FOR TEN YEARS. The govt usually pats itself on the back for building a few thousand units in a year, so we’re still basically short a hundred thousand units. I get that the govt should just step in a build, but let’s be real, it’s not going to happen. Even if it wanted to, the workforce would have to be about 3 times the size it currently is, which is another nightmare to deal with.

    On a personal level, as a person who works in the industry, I’m not looking forward to the new standards. The new energy-saving stuff often require solutions that involve proprietary systems from large companies that are a pain to work with. Developers aren’t really going to be taking a cut anyway, they’ll just charge more, or starve the market until it’s profitable enough to build again. And then those propriety systems corpos are going to cash in, too.

    I wish the govt would just put its pants on and build tons of affordable housing.