Photo by Narciso Arellano on Unsplash

As the Ontario government begins to undertake the task of addressing housing affordability in the province, it is important to consider both long-term and short-term change. To relieve the current housing crisis, the government needs to take immediate action to curb real estate investment and limit the negative impacts of existing investors. However, to ensure that similar housing affordability crises do not reoccur in the long-term future, the Ontario government also needs to introduce new models of housing that decommodify affordable dwellings, rather than expecting for-profit actors to provide market-led solutions.

This paper will present a variety of solutions available to policymakers for combatting the financialization of housing. Rather than recommending one particular course of action, this paper will demonstrate how a suite of policies can be implemented jointly for the most effective results.

While this paper will focus on the provincial regulation of real estate investment and combating financialization, addressing the housing crisis and creating sustainable affordable housing in Ontario will require many considerations beyond increasing housing supply. The federal government and municipal governments are key partners in any housing initiatives. Further, zoning policies and the regulation of developers and construction practices all play a large role in the housing system.

Download and read the full report.

Watch the full presentation of the report by author Tsahai Carter at Progress Summit 2023.

Photo by Narciso Arellano on Unsplash

As the Ontario government begins to undertake the task of addressing housing affordability in the province, it is important to consider both long-term and short-term change. To relieve the current housing crisis, the government needs to take immediate action to curb real estate investment and limit the negative impacts of existing investors. However, to ensure that similar housing affordability crises do not reoccur in the long-term future, the Ontario government also needs to introduce new models of housing that decommodify affordable dwellings, rather than expecting for-profit actors to provide market-led solutions.

This paper will present a variety of solutions available to policymakers for combatting the financialization of housing. Rather than recommending one particular course of action, this paper will demonstrate how a suite of policies can be implemented jointly for the most effective results.

While this paper will focus on the provincial regulation of real estate investment and combating financialization, addressing the housing crisis and creating sustainable affordable housing in Ontario will require many considerations beyond increasing housing supply. The federal government and municipal governments are key partners in any housing initiatives. Further, zoning policies and the regulation of developers and construction practices all play a large role in the housing system.

Download and read the full report.

Watch the full presentation of the report by author Tsahai Carter at Progress Summit 2023.

People across Canada face significant threats and challenges. And yet, people are building social movements that offer compelling visions and spur collective action. From the Arab Spring to Black Lives Matter to Wetʼsuwetʼen, we have seen many movements spur to action in the past few years - and there is no shortage of reasons to keep the momentum going.

Nicholas Von Hoffman dubbed eruptions of demonstration from movements as “moments of the whirlwind.” But how were these whirlwinds built, and what makes these moments happen?

We wanted to identify the strategies and the practices that grow movements today and to understand how and why collective demands generated in movements surge at certain moments, creating tectonic shifts in society, particularly in a Canadian context.

The result of this work is the new report, Building the Whirlwind. 

It looks at the context and circumstances surrounding September 2019, when half a million people took to the streets of Montreal to call for climate action. Using first-person interviews and a multi-faceted look at different corners of the climate movement, we look at the complexity of one “moment” and identify how it came to be. We dive deeply to tell a rich, layered story. 

I hope you’ll take time to hear from people involved in this one moment, from this one whirlwind. It might be useful in creating your own. 

Explore Building the Whirlwind

Moments like this often don’t have one leader or spokesperson able to tell the story, but are the result efforts that are, by definition, collective and plural. They bring together disparate groups for one objective, and this is exactly how this moment came together. This principle guided our inquiry, from researching collaboratively to our approach to interviewing movement builders to writing this report.

As a result, this report features many voices who speak to the experience and insights of many sectors, coalitions, organizations and collectives. While recognizing that our interviews did not include everyone or every group involved, we offer these voices of individuals who operated and collaborated in an ecosystem which gave the historic Montreal climate protests of 2019.

Download the full Building the Whirlwind report or explore the digital version.

The Montreal climate protest movement moment