Why are residential permits in Canada down?

If people aren't willing to buy homes, builders aren't ready to stop building them. Canada saw fewer new building permits issued this past March, with Stats Canada reporting an 8.3% drop in the value of residential permits from February to March, and a 5.8% drop from March 2023 to this March. Ontario alone saw the value of residential permits drop 23% from 2023. Ontario Home Builders Association CEO Scott Anderson credits the province for trying to speed the approvals process, but says. Any time changes happen, there's bumps in the road. You undertake change of this magnitude, there's gonna be some blips along the way in terms of slowdowns and quick pace startups. Again, this is to be on for our industry. This is not something that was really unexpected. We did have, you know, peak levels of housing starts. So you know, a 2 or 3% reduction from a peak year is not really a drastic reduction. In fact it's not, you know, great, you know, it's we're still significantly higher than we were pre 2021. And Steve Pomeroy from the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative points out 2023 was a record year for new starts, so a decline for this year. Isn't necessarily a problem. He also says high construction costs means some builders may already have permits but are delaying builds or not applying for new ones. Fair enough. I mean their costs are high. There are some serious constraints in terms of labour supply as well that they just can't find the trees to get stock built. I live in Ottawa, we have a huge number of infrastructure projects between an LRT line, the rebuilding of the Parliament buildings, a whole bunch of Hwy. stuff and there's only so much construction able to go around. Says he is in favor of anything that gets homes built faster, suggesting pre approved designs as well as cutting out the need for municipalities to recheck design work by professional engineers and architects. There's more that can be done. We're ready and and and willing to to work with all levels of government to do that because more is needed in Ottawa. Shaoli Lee, City News.