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But unless something extraordinary happens, there will be no more extensions. Among the conversations Siddall would be having with his lieutenants was how to “make sure the team is as tight together as it can be” heading into a leadership transition, “an environment where there are natural tensions that can emerge.”

The end of the public-serve phase of Siddall’s career is nigh.

“My term ends at the end of 2020,” he said. “The board and I haven’t decided on the exact timing of that. It depends on whether there’s a financial crisis and what’s going on … the choice for me is: do I step up and actually reapply for my job because that’s the process? Or use this opportunity to have a proper transition? The bias is the latter.”

A “proper transition” for Siddall means making sure the cultural change that he was asked to lead is permanent. CMHC was insular, cautious and at least somewhat captured by the housing industry when he took over five years ago. Today, the organization is the opposite of those things. The transformation is so impressive that it’s produced two separate casestudies in the Harvard Business Review.

Photo by Brent Lewin/Bloomberg files

“If this is all about me as a leader, the CEO, then I have failed,” Siddall said. “It’s the transformation of this entity that this is all about.”

Many in Ottawa will be sad to see him go. Real-estate lobbyists won’t be among them. Siddall has disrupted their easy relationship with the elected men and women who have an incentive to at least be seen to be doing something to help satisfy our most superficial desires, including owning a home.

It’s somewhat counterintuitive, but CMHC’s leader has made it his mission to dispel the notion that there is something special about homeownership. In particular, he is an aggressive champion of the stress test that the Justin Trudeau government imposed on borrowers in 2018 to deflate a household credit bubble that had ballooned to nearly 180 per cent of disposable income.

“Beware those who will stop at nothing, and expose young home buyers to financial ruin, by selling the myth of the ‘dream of home ownership.’ Renting works too,” he said on Twitter on Nov. 8.