‘We are ready to build:' Toronto mayor to meet with PM Mark Carney and request money for housing, public transit
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow is in Ottawa today where she will meet with Prime Minister Mark Carney and make the case for federal investments in building housing and public transit in the city.
The meeting is set to take place at 1 p.m. and marks the first time that Chow will sit down with Carney since he became Prime Minister in March.
During the recent election campaign. Carney proposed a series of initiatives that he said would double the rate of housing construction to 500,000 units a year.
But in an interview with CP24 on Thursday, Chow pointed out that much of that work will take time, especially with the federal government not expected to present a budget until the fall.
She said that her pitch to Carney will be simple: why not fund help Toronto fund some existing programs designed to increase the pace of housing starts right now?
'He (Carney) has said that the federal government is back in the housing business which is great. we have been waiting for that for three decades and he is finally doing it but it will take a while to ramp up so what I am trying to say is in the meantime there is a whole lot of things we (the City of Toronto) can do to partner with you so that we can do the building of housing and giving rent supplements right now,' she said. 'We can help people right now. So I am presenting him with a plan on how to start now and not wait until the budget comes in the fall.'
In March, the federal government announced that it would provide Toronto with $2.55 billion in low-cost financing to help deliver nearly 5,000 new rental homes, including a minimum of 1,075 affordable units.
But Chow suggested that the city could incentivize the construction of even more units if the federal government were to provide additional funding to a pre-existing program, where development charges and other fees are waived so long as a developer commits to building a certain number of affordable units.
'He (Carney) also wants to build right? Remember he said 'build, build, build.' So we are ready to build,' Chow told CP24.
Chow said that she will also press Carney for funding for a number of priority transit projects, including the Waterfront LRT.
'I just can't go and build housing if people are stuck in traffic. The waterfront is bad enough already. We are putting in 100,000 (more) people there. How are they going to move in and out of that area?' she said.
Chow first travelled to Ottawa on Wednesday and has already participated in a number of meetings with federal government officials, including Minister of Housing Gregor Robertson.
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