First Time Homebuyers Don’t Need BILD’s Crocodile Tears

Crying Wolf on the Housing Crisis: When the Canada’s Biggest Developers Point Fingers

It takes a special kind of chutzpah for the representative of the Canada’s biggest developers to ask why no one is doing anything about the housing crisis. Yet, there was Dave Wilkes, the face of the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), using his regular, ample space in the Toronto Star to pose precisely this question.
The Boy Who Cried Crisis (Again)
Mr. Wilkes’ timing is peculiar. While the housing crisis is far from solved, the recent, albeit modest, decline in price appreciation has shifted the narrative. For the first time in years, the market feels less like a runaway train and, in some segments, is edging towards a buyer’s market.
But just as attention shifts, Wilkes appears, sounding like a bratty child who, after throwing a tantrum and getting everyone’s attention, now finds the grown-ups momentarily distracted by something else. “Why did you forget us poor multinational developers?” his column essentially whines. The issue isn’t the crisis itself, but the lack of sufficient public support for their preferred solutions.
Unrealized Profits and Misplaced Empathy
Wilkes, of course, can’t openly talk about the unrealized profits that have been scaled back now that the frenzy has cooled. Instead, he deftly changes the subject, focusing on construction workers and trades people losing their jobs. This is a legitimate concern, but it serves as a convenient shield. It allows him to demand policy changes that directly benefit developers’ bottom lines—namely, reducing the costs they incur—under the guise of protecting the little guy.
He goes on to attack the very fees collected by municipalities. These charges, known as development charges, are crucial for building and maintaining the essential infrastructure—roads, water, sewers, transit, parks, and fire stations—that make new developments habitable. Developers want to build their private profits on publicly subsidized infrastructure.
Even more egregious is the assault on sales taxes. Wilkes dislikes that his industry must pay the same levies that the rest of us pay for virtually everything else. He wants his industry, already enjoying decades of astronomical returns, to be exempt. Why? Because, as he argues, everything that adds to the cost of a new home is a barrier. But a lack of social services, roads, and parks is an even greater barrier to building a sustainable community.
A Better Path for Workers
The argument that we must cater to BILD to keep tradespeople employed is a false binary. In a better development pattern focused on incremental development—such as gentle density, mid-rise infill, and purpose-built rentals on smaller lots—we don’t need megaprojects controlled by big developers to employ construction workers. The vast majority of tradespeople can find stable, continuous, and locally-sourced work in retrofitting, adding laneway housing, and building smaller, human-scale projects across the existing urban fabric. This pattern is more resilient and less prone to the boom-and-bust cycle of major condo towers.
And let’s be clear about who doesn’t need BILD’s crocodile tears: first-time homebuyers. It was BILD and its members who benefited immensely from the skyrocketing house prices that have pushed an entire generation out of the market. Their lobbying efforts have consistently prioritized land banking and large-scale, often exclusionary, projects over diversified, affordable housing types.
Yes, Mr. Wilkes, the “stakes could not be higher.” The GTA desperately needs more houses, and construction workers absolutely need jobs and stability. But we are not going to achieve that by kissing BILD’s ring and acceding to demands that only serve to prop up the unsustainable, expensive, and exclusionary development model they have championed for too long. The solution lies in democratizing development, not further consolidating it.