‘Calm ... not kill’ is the aim behind changing the rules in Toronto’s housing market rules, Premier Kathleen Wynne says

Government will continue monitoring impact of changes as real estate industry urges Ontario to wait before intervening further.

Thestar.com
July 13, 2017
By Kristen Rushowy and Tess Kalinowski

Changes to Toronto-area real estate rules were meant to “calm ... not kill” the market, says Premier Kathleen Wynne, adding the province will continue to keep an eye on their impact.

“We’re monitoring it closely,” said Wynne, speaking to reporters at Queen’s Park. “It was a sophisticated response to an overheating of the market and we’ll see, over the coming months, what the impact has been.

“I’m pretty confident that the range of things that we put in place is having the desired effect, and will continue to.”

While housing sales in Toronto area remain up year-over year, they have nevertheless declined month-to-month since Wynne introduced new housing policies April 20, including a 15 per cent tax on foreign buyers and an expansion of rent controls.

The real estate industry has urged the province and other levels of government to wait for an extensive period before intervening any further.

“Let’s hit the brakes here,” said Tim Hudak, CEO of the Ontario Real Estate Association and former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. “Let’s take a wait-and-see approach before any more demand interventions.”

Toronto realtor David Fleming believes the housing market was already correcting itself before the government changes.

“This is a market that likely would have cooled itself,” said Fleming of Bosley Real Estate. “What they've done effectively is just fast-tracked what would have been a natural cooling.”

Wynne spoke to reporters at Queen’s Park on Thursday morning before heading to Rhode Island to meet with U.S. governors to talk trade and promote cross-border economic ties at a national conference.

She called the meeting “a really important moment for Ontario, in the context of Canadian-American relations.

“The trade relationships between Canada and the United States, and Ontario and the United States, is critical to the well-being of both jurisdictions,” said Wynne, who will be joined by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “That’s really the underpinning of the conversations that I’ll be having with the governors and have been having with governors for the last number of months.”

While the pressure of protectionism is a concern - “we don’t know exactly where that protectionist sentiment is going to lead to” - Wynne said there is “some urgency, (as) we know that sometime in the next week or so there will be more clarity in what the mandate for the renegotiation of NAFTA will look like.”

About 28 states in the U.S. list Ontario as their first- or second-place export market.

Meanwhile, just-released results from the first quarter of this year showed Ontario’s economic growth bested the rest of the country, the United States and G7 countries.

“Ontario is doing very well in that national and international context,” Wynne also said. “That only for me reinforces why we continue to find ways to strengthen and grow the economy.”