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“We have to remove the barriers and the red tape that are getting ahead of housing being built at a more affordable cost,” Clark said in a telephone interview, describing the affordability issue as a “crisis.”

There is already growing concern that tighter mortgage regulations and other recent changes may have overshot, given last year’s plunge in transactions. Demand measures are blunt instruments that apply to all markets regardless of affordability, and disproportionately affect low-income households and youth. Supply measures, in comparison, allow markets to continue growing, albeit at a more sustainable pace.

We have to remove the barriers and the red tape that are getting ahead of housing being built at a more affordable cost Steve Clark, Ontario housing minister

Toronto, along with Vancouver on the Pacific coast, has the lowest price elasticity of any urban market in Canada, meaning supply is the most out of sync with demand, according to a report last year from the federal housing agency.

Developers agree. It takes about a decade and as many as 52 different reports, studies, checklists and plans to complete a development project in Toronto, according to the Building Industry and Land Development Association. The group estimates the GTA needs 50,000 new units a year to meet projected demand, but only about 40,000 are being built on average.

“The issue in our view for the sharp rise in prices and the affordability issue fundamentally is the supply side not being able to adjust quickly enough to demand,” Robert Hogue, senior economist at RBC Capital Markets, said by phone from Toronto. “So a big part of the solution is on the supply side. Except you have to be more patient, because it takes a while.” He said Clark’s proposals ” are the right types of measures” to ensure market imbalances get addressed more quickly.