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42 www.canadianlawyermag.com LEGAL REPORT REAL ESTATE In practice, the combined impact on his buyers is limited. In his markets, fewer than 10 percent of purchasers qualify as first-time buyers, so "90 percent or more of the home buyers are seeing no benefit at all to the government incentives right now," he says, while every buyer still shoulders significant embedded HST. His prescription is blunt: expand the full HST holiday to all buyers, with a cap at $1 million to keep the focus on attainable homes rather than luxury products. He argues that expansion would address only part of the legal and financial fric - tion in the system. For example, develop- ment charges have climbed to more than $100,000 per unit in Hamilton, before parkland and other fees, and those costs sit on top of the risks associated with hostile municipal approvals. "Eighty-three per cent of our approvals are from the [Ontario Land Tribunal] now," he says. "We can't build, we can't expand, and we can't contract either," when councils elected on anti-development platforms block both greenfield expansion and infill intensification. Liske's solution is radical by Canadian municipal standards: pull some housing approvals away from local councillors entirely. "There has to be a way of putting decision-making for land use, planning, and home building in the hands of inde - pendent, neutral, and trained adjudi- cators," he says, rather than politicians whose voter base "is diametrically opposed to facilitating housing." Where Liske points to structural resis - tance inside the system, Ottawa real estate lawyer Mitchell Leitman focuses on afford- ability measures that have backfired. In his practice at Rasmussen Starr Ruddy LLP, THE 'CARROT' INCENTIVES Federal government: Build Canada Homes, and the $6 billion Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund provide a new federal builder and long-term infrastructure money to support affordable housing enabling projects nationwide. Ontario: The March 30, 2026, Canada Ontario Partnership to Build puts $8.8 billion into housing-related infrastructure, pairs it with an HST rebate on new homes, and ties other provincial funds to municipalities that hit housing targets. British Columbia: Under its "Homes for People" plan, BC couples mandatory small-scale multi-unit and transit-oriented zoning with provincial funding and new development-finance tools so municipalities can update bylaws, improve approvals, and build the infrastructure needed for more homes. he sees the fallout from vacant-unit taxes, underused-housing le vies, and non- resident speculation taxes that were pitched as affordability tools but often become administrative headaches. Vacant-unit taxes in cities like Ottawa were meant to force owners to put homes back into circulation, yet Leitman says the policy logic does not align with how most landlords behave. "It's rare that people sit on homes and don't make them avail - able," he says, pointing to situations like land assemblies, where owners expect