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Say hello to the man who deserves credit for all the condominiums that have sprung up all across the city over the last decade. He’s well known to you, missed by some, still hated by others. He’s Mike Harris, the former Premier of Ontario — and the leader who removed many of the shackles from the province’s once-tightly-controlled rental apartment market.

Look around Toronto — and Ontario’s other urban centres, for that matter — and you see cranes everywhere, building condominiums. There are still plenty of investors lined up to buy those units and rent them out, creating a new, de facto apartment market.

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The sizzle may have lately cooled from the condo sales scene: research firm Urbanation Inc. reported that sales numbers in Toronto were off 30% in the third quarter of this year, compared to the previous three months, with prices remaining flat.

But still, by the time the year’s over, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. forecasts that Ontario will have 37,500 multi-family units it didn’t have before.