By Ted McIntyre

Nine past presidents highlight OHBA challenges and achievements 

To provide a little historical perspective, John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson were squaring off in Parliament. The tallest two structures on the Toronto skyline were both more than 30 years old: the Canadian Bank of Commerce building at 184 metres (604 feet), and the Royal York Hotel standing 124 metres (407 feet) in height. The Government of Ontario Transit (later shortened to GO Transit) was still four years away from receiving its first passengers.

That was the scene in 1963 as a group representing 10 of Ontario’s local building associations met with representatives from the 20-year-old Canadian Home Builders’ Association at Evergreen’s Motel in Kitchener. The entity they formed, the Ontario Home Builders’ Association, would serve to provide residential builders with a voice in the provincial government, enable them to facilitate changes in the industry and provide networking opportunities for home building businesses, suppliers and services.

Among the primary challenges faced by OHBA’s first chairman, Eric Johnson, was the surging growth of the GTA. In Governing Metropolitan Toronto: A Social and Political Analysis, 1953 – 1971, author Albert Rose indicates that Metro Toronto housed 9% of the Canadian population within its 240 square miles in 1963, and that “developed urban land had more than doubled, from 45 to 92 square miles” over the previous decade. “The population has grown by 450,000—from 1,175,000 in 1953 to 1,625,000 in 1962—an increase of 40%,” 55% of which was accounted for by immigration, Rose indicated. “To accommodate growth on this scale, the stock of housing has increased by more than 50% since 1953, with the addition of 160,000 new dwellings to the 1953 housing stock of 265,000 dwellings.”

As OHBA celebrates 60 years of constructing high-quality, energy-efficient homes across the province, the challenge of meeting demand has remained a constant—but the association’s advocacy for its industry has also been unwavering. Its consultation with government officials has continued to be vital in protecting the interests of OHBA members as well as the needs of future homeowners by helping Queen’s Park make informed choices and to understand the long-term results of policy decisions.

Nine OHBA Past Presidents share memories from their terms, and the pivotal policy battles they experienced in ensuring a healthy, affordable Ontario housing market.

Get Them to the Table

Peter Saturno
2003–2004

It was a time of political upheaval as Peter Saturno seized OHBA’s presidential reins just as Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals were ousting Ernie Eves’ Conservative party in the October 2023 provincial election. “We went from the previous Ontario Minister of Housing asking, ‘Is there anything we can do for you?’ to a Premier who would not even meet with us,” Saturno remembers. “My first thought as president was, ‘It’s all gonna go down the drain and it’s gonna be on my shoulders!’ And then I thought, ‘If I’m going to go down, I’m gonna go down swinging.’”

Saturno and OHBA staff brought all guns to bear to get Liberal party ministers to the table.

“We weren’t the Premier’s favourite industry. At the time, he said the auto industry was the engine of Ontario’s economy, so I wrote him a letter, noting the home building industry was the true economic engine and, using a classic David Horton line, that the only thing different between us and the auto industry was that we didn’t want any subsidies—we just wanted them to get out of our way. ‘Tell us what the rules are, keep fees and taxes fair and let us do our job.’”

Painted in a negative light by a few vocal opponents, OHBA “embarked on a plan to put a fresh coat of paint on our tarnished image—we need to restore the respect that the residential construction industry merits in Ontario,” Saturno observed at the end of his term. 

The Association had certainly made inroads at Queen’s Park to that effect. “We are now again forging strong relationships and elected officials are starting to get the message and understand our contributions to the overall economy and quality of life we enjoy in Ontario,” Saturno wrote.

But it was far from the only raging torrent that needed to be crossed in 2003-04. “I have dedicated more time this year towards Tarion than I would like to admit,” Saturno noted at the time. “The Ministry was being told that Tarion could not control what was going on with bad actors in the building community because OHBA got to pick the board and would not allow Tarion to enforce rules and regulations. Those were complete inaccuracies and mistruths. We convinced the Ministry to look below the surface and find out what’s actually going on—that they’d find that the best consumer advocates in the home building industry are builders, because we actually have to sell homes to make a living. About six months later, Minister of Consumer and Business Services Jim Watson turned around and agreed, becoming an advocate and friend to the industry.”

The Greenbelt, a Growth Plan and a Sprinkler System

Danny Gabriele
2004–2005

Ontario’s population is estimated at 14.5 million today, 2 million more than it was in 2005 when the Greenbelt Act came into law. But it wasn’t actually the protection of nearly 2 million acres that concerned Marz Homes President Danny Gabriele at the time—it was the red tape in which it was packaged. 

“We weren’t really focused on the Greenbelt as much as all these other policies that were coming into play and dragging out the planning approvals process—all these agencies were being created and all these timelines that were being added,” Gabriele remembers. “When people ask me how long it takes to build a home, I tell them, ‘A quarter century!’” 

Gabriele is only half-joking—Marz Homes has awaited the go-ahead for land it has held in Hamilton’s urban boundary for more than 20 years.

To be sure, there were victories for Gabriele during his tenure. “We had 84,000 housing starts during my year, so we were doing well, and we were able to hold off the idea of sprinklers in every house—that was a significant win for OHBA.”

But there was also a developing storm that OHBA forecasted from the outset. “‘A Place to Grow,’ the growth plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, came in during my term. While it had good intentions to align growth with infrastructure, it ultimately brought in unrealistic density targets that over the past decade have become the direct precursor to the shortage of many different forms of low-rise housing we have today,” Gabriele observes. “OHBA worked hard to make improvements from the original plan, and forewarned the government that there was no way they could achieve housing affordability without an adequate supply of land. A lot of the problems we have in the housing system today can be traced back to the policies put in place by the government at the time. But I also think the housing crisis would be 10 times worse than what it is now, had it not been for the OHBA over the years.” 

Code Changes and the Growth Plan

Bob Finnigan
2010–2011

As Bob Finnigan was preparing to exit his presidential post in the autumn of 2011, OHBA was working hard to ensure fair and balanced technical analyses as it approached the end of an exhaustive consultation for the upcoming edition of the Ontario Building Code. “OHBA has been there every step of the way, providing representation on various technical committees,” including its “high-profile Building Code Energy Advisory Committee,” Finnigan wrote at the time. “It is important for the government to consider both the cumulative impact of such changes on the cost of construction and potentially conflicting impacts on other public policy objectives.”

But it was the Growth Plan that would prove the greatest source of frustration during Finnigan’s term. “When it was launched in 2006, it was an excellent piece of work,” he says. “Where it fell apart—and continues to fall apart—was in its execution. There we were, five years later, still struggling to get the parameters of exactly how it was going to work. We spent a lot of time trying to get urban form into their heads.”

But Finnigan was ideally suited for the job. “I did my degree in geography, specializing in land and economics, so I could 100% relate to the Growth Plan and could try to help educate them,” he says. “Sometimes that falls on deaf ears—the Liberal government at the time was not builder-friendly and were more interested in implementing the Growth Plan than listening to the problems and concerns the industry had with it. But I think we worked the best we could on those issues. Every President will say the same thing at the end of their year: ‘Crap, we didn’t move the needle too far.’ But we were winning battles.

“The most unfortunate event during my term, though, was the passing of David Horton. He was very ill when I came in and by January he was staying home for the most part. I was meeting with him weekly or biweekly to get his input because he had such a vast knowledge of what was going on. And my last day was the day (Building Industry and Land Development President and CEO) Stephen Dupuis died suddenly. 

“During that period, past presidents and the folks at BILD all dug in and lent a big hand. We were all tied by the David bond, and it ended up being a really good team-building experience for the association.”

Six-Storey Wood and Other Wins

Vince Molinaro
2014–2015

“There was a lot of negative noise out there about our industry at the time, and the Condo Act provided a soapbox for some naysayers to preach about it,” reflects Molinaro Group President Vince Molinaro of his OHBA presidential term. “Bill Mauro, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, decided to do a town hall approach, putting all the stakeholders in a room for several meetings, so that everyone could have their say. There were a lot of people who relied on us as an industry who tried to throw us under the bus with fantastic stories about how we’re supposedly trying to do silly things like leasing back windows to the condo corporations. But I think the staff and ministry saw through that. OHBA did a lot of good on that front.”

Being a condo builder, Molinaro was well positioned to inform on the matter. “And with industry champions like Harry Herskowitz, a renowned condo lawyer, OHBA staff member Stephen Hamilton, some past presidents and builder members—we were really well represented.”

It was a productive give-and-take process, Molinaro says. “Every few years you live and learn, so it can be healthy to take a fresh look at legislation. There were some things they did fix—things being leased back to the condo corporation that maybe shouldn’t have been. And they added items like the condo office for dispute resolution and put mandatory training in place for the board of directors, which made a lot of sense.” 

Molinaro’s term also saw an OHBA-backed push of the Home Energy Ratings and Disclosure (HER&D), which would have helped inform consumers of the energy performance of a home they were planning to sell, buy or upgrade—expanding the energy-improvement focus beyond merely newly built homes to the more problematic existing home stock, but the proposed program was cancelled. 

Clearing the path for six-storey wood construction, though, would prove to be the biggest feather in Molinaro’s cap. “Drawing evidence and experience from Europe and an association tour of B.C., OHBA was armed with the material it needed to push through legislation for six-storey wood buildings. “In a country like Canada, with wood being an extremely renewable resource, why not us?” Molinaro asked. “It was a missing-middle piece that was really needed, one that we co-championed with Ted McMeekin, Minister of Housing. It took a little while to catch on, but now we’re seeing projects being built. We have a lot of low-rise stick-frame constructors. For them to build a mid- or high-rise might be a bit of a leap, but to jump to six-storey wood is not. It gave them a way to progress as a company—to build a different product.

“It required an extensive education process to show how all the safety protocols were in place so that it could be done safely,” Molinaro says. “It was a legacy piece for which I credit a much bigger group and the staff at OHBA.”

But some of that foundation was poured in the years leading up to Molinaro’s term. “We were building relationships with everyone, even when the PCs were third behind the NDP. And now we’re seeing all the good relationships and the positive legislation toward building more affordable housing and getting through the process quicker.”

Fighting the Good Fight

Neil Rodgers
2016–2017

You can’t win every battle, but there’s always honour and purpose in fighting for those you represent. 

“My presidency was dominated with Kathleen Wynne and the Liberal government, and they never took their foot off the gas with respect to planning and OMB reform,” recalls Neil Rodgers. “Whether it was motivated by the municipal sector arguing, ‘The pace of development is too fast and we need more time to review applications,’ or ‘The OMB is out of check with local ratepayer interests,’ it was very much an agenda of putting additional timelines into the process. There are greater economic forces related to affordability and interest rates that are outside of the provincial government’s realm, but certainly the additional processes and time imposed on residential construction during my term made things categorically worse.

“I vividly remember face-to-face meetings with Premier Wynne and some senior ministers in the cabinet room,” shares Rodgers, now president of Dumara Projects Ltd. “We as an association argued about serviced land supply and an inefficient approvals process. Sadly, they just didn’t care how it would become the most pressing problem of a generation.

“Politics is the art of compromise, and everyone has to give something up to get forward progress,” Rodgers continues. “But I felt the government had made its mind up before going into certain consultations and just gave us time because we were a stakeholder.”

But even amid the most frustrating times, Rodgers and company were laying bricks. “You don’t lie down as an industry or association. You must demonstrate value to the membership. The effort put into policy submissions to help the Opposition party hold a ruling government to account is equally as important as the determination it takes to advocate with the current regime. We’ve always curated relationships with opposition MPPs. And there were many times when they were hungry for information and solutions that we were able to supply. And next thing you know, Steve Clark becomes the Minister of Municipal Affairs in a Doug Ford government.  I know he and his colleagues valued all of that effort and trust we built.”

Rodgers’ term also saw a victory on the WSIB front, with the groundwork having been paved by some of his predecessors. “The increase in WSIB premiums was getting out of hand, particularly for small to medium-sized builders and renovators,” Rodgers says. “The government heard us, and the data was there to demonstrate that employers were being vigilant in terms of on-the-job safety and that the number of incidents were down dramatically. Government began a number of rate reductions and it was a welcome relief. That no doubt showed to a large cross-section of our membership that there was value in belonging to the OHBA.”

The Right Man for the Job

Pierre Dufresne
2017–2018

OHBA Past Presidents have all taken advantage of their respective fields of expertise during their traditionally annual assignments, but few have been more perfect fits than Pierre Dufresne.

“I’d already been involved in dealing with Liberal government policy for a few years with all the legislation being passed to me as an OHBA board member,” says Dufresne, currently Senior V.P. at Cavanagh Communities. “And responsible for development approvals, I was able to get myself to the table with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing—both at the bureaucratic level with staff who were writing policy as well as Queen’s Park. The policy being written was very prejudicial to our industry and to new homebuyers. I think Mike Collins-Williams (OHBA Policy Director at the time; now CEO of West End HBA) noted there were something like 23 open files or pieces of legislative changes—everything from inclusionary zoning and development charges to changes with conservation authorities and species at risk. 

“We created a line of dialogue with ministry staff in a professional manner that enabled us to stay at the table, have our feedback continue to be heard and considered, and to improve the situation,” Dufresne says. “So although the policies might have been prejudicial toward our industry and to new-home buyers and affordability, we were always able to, in a reasonable fashion, temper the severity of those proposals as they were going through legislation.”

As a planner, Dufresne was also able to educate and forewarn policymakers of the potential ramifications of their decisions. “There were things like inclusionary zoning that were promoted to be able to create more affordable housing stock. They were actually creating subsidies for a portion of housing stock, but then adding those costs to other types of affordable housing typologies, and therefore acting counter to the intent,” Dufresne explains.  

But even when the Conservatives were victorious in the 2018 provincial election and endeavoured “to reverse what the Liberal government had done in terms policy framework, dialogue still has to continue,” Dufresne notes. “OHBA members are on the ground. We negotiate development charges, background studies and subdivision approvals, get plans registered, manage projects and sell units. The legislation government creates has to be implemented. Sometimes it can handicap municipalities’ ability to meet the intent, or it can run contrary and municipalities can find ways around it or to challenge it. That’s why it’s so important for people in the industry to actually be at the table and say, ‘This is how things work.’ So you can go from the higher-level policy approaches of the Province, to the implementation or translation of that policy and the regulatory authority, through the municipalities, to us as implementers. So it’s important to be able to scope it or frame it in a way that enables it to meet its intent.”

Home Believers and Trades

Rick Martins
2018–2019

 

Maybe it’s his Portuguese blood, but on the eve of his presidency, the typically soft-spoken Rick Martins was anything but timid when discussions turned to the College of Trades at the 2018 OHBA Annual General Meeting in Ottawa. “Everyone was talking about how we should petition whatever government comes in to amend the College of Trades, and I said, ‘We’ve just gotta *&@#ing can it! It has done nothing to bring in trades or to apprentice people,’ and they had $52 million that they’d collected but done absolutely nothing with. I said, ‘If I’m coming in, I’m asking for it to be tossed.’ They were afraid of me being that young bull and wanted me to be a little more sly, but I was like, ‘No man! You’ve gotta throw a grenade!’ And that was exactly what (Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development) Monte McNaughton did when he came in. He blew the College of Trades out of the water.”

The move was complemented by the Ontario government’s move to set journeyperson-to-apprentice ratios at 1:1 for all trades where ratios applied—something that reaped rapid rewards, particularly for small- to mid-sized builders and renovators who, after years of delay, were finally able to hire apprentices.

“The biggest thing during my term, though, was the Home Believer campaign that we ran before the election,” says Martins, V.P. at Huron Creek Developments. “That came from the mind of Joe Vaccaro, which was always going 1,000 miles a minute. I think that campaign really set the tone—not just for the provincial election, but the next federal election too. It’s something I still hashtag out every once in a while, because at the heart of our industry, if we’re not Home Believers, then what are we? It’s a roof over someone’s head. It’s safety!”

Martins is all too familiar with the spiralling costs of building new homes in his own stomping grounds. “We were buying lots at $1,500 a front foot in Kitchener about 20 years ago. They’re now $15,000 a front foot!” he says. “When I came in, Joe wanted us to be screaming from the highest mountaintop that the system had gone awry and that we needed to get back to what true homeownership is all about.  Fortunately, we had a government whose ear was open to listen. But those were easy conversations to have because we had all factual numbers that I could bring to the ministers and say, ‘You need to invest in these roads and make sure that there’s more money going into municipalities, because if they don’t have staff, they can’t approve things. 

“And we were able to arm our HBAs with those statistics so that they could make their voices heard with their MPs and MPPs. That all rolled into President Bob Schickedanz’s campaign of the elephant in the room, where now we all know about the problem, but what are we doing about it?”

Martins is eminently modest about OHBA’s accomplishments during his term. The stars were aligned for me,” he says. “The political climate was there, and I had a lot of puppetmasters behind me making me look really good.”

Keeping the Doors Open During Covid

Bob Schickedanz
2019–2022

It wasn’t long after the tremor was first felt and the waters rippled that the tidal wave consumed Ontario, remembers Bob Schickedanz. “I was about five months into my term when the Covid pandemic hit Ontario. The lockdown came in early March 2020, and not unlike individuals or businesses, there was the initial shock and so many unknowns—from personal lives to our business lives—and our industry was not immune. We really hunkered down and started looking at the impacts for our industry and how we could navigate through it.”

Schickedanz, OHBA staff and representatives from local chapters across the province worked diligently with government officials and the Ministry of Labour to have residential construction declared as an essential service, and then to establish the conditions under which it could continue its work. “On the building side, we had to ensure that permits would be issued and that inspections would take place, meaning making sure that municipal business continued,” Schickedanz says. “Planning and public meetings, in many cases for the first time, were done virtually! We managed to work with our friends at Tarion to make sure inspections would move forward and claims would be addressed—all while having a record number of units to build, compounded by the lack of supplies and labour shortages and increased volatility and pricing. 

“It was needed for our industry but, more important, it was needed for our customers. There were thousands of homes across Ontario in various stages of construction, and those people had already committed to selling and moving out. Had building ground to a complete halt, what would they have done?”

“There were so many detailed pieces that had to come together to make this puzzle work. I’m tremendously proud of the effort of so many who have their fingerprints on it. It wasn’t long afterward that we implemented measures that were acceptable to allow renovators to go into people’s existing homes and continue their work. 

“These accomplishments were like minor miracles,” Schickedanz observes. “Sometimes people question the value of the membership fees they pay to the association, but the work that was achieved through these short couple of years and the benefit to our members and our industry was worth many lifetimes of those annual fees. What if we were like the retail or the hospitality sector, where we just had to shut down our business and carry our inventory of land and projects and high debt? It would have been ruinous for so many.”

The passing of Bills 108 (the More Homes, More Choice Act 2019) and 109 (More Homes for Everyone Act 2022) fuelled the momentum, as did the passionate ‘Cut the ****’ advocacy campaign, with Schickedanz and OHBA staff criss-crossing the province to hear face-to-face stories about the issues of housing affordability and supply. Candidates running for election were asked for their plans to address the housing crisis and to sign a pledge to do so. While the estimated need of a million new homes within 10 years rose to 1.5 million, local chapters joined OHBA staff in ensuring that the housing crisis was prominently on the election radar screen. 

But it wasn’t just about pointing out the problem but identifying solutions, Schickedanz notes. “We’ve come from making the broader community aware of the challenges and the need for more housing, to helping craft out policies and provide advice, to now helping implement them—and that’s where the rubber hits the road.”

On a Roll

Louie Zagordo
2022–202

It has been a momentum-building term for OHBA and President Louie Zagordo, whose continuing cross-province tour has been nurturing bonds with the association’s Chapter HBAs and members. Emerging from the pandemic with a full head of steam, OHBA has helped spur a string of productive legislation and policies for the industry, beginning with Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act in October 2022.

“I think it’s the most impactful housing legislation in the past 15 years, setting municipalities on the right path for growth and streamlining new-home construction,” says Zagordo, SLV Homes’ founder and president, “and it’s a big win for new-home builders and buyers who will benefit from more predictability and certainty.

Spring forward to March, with the Ford government’s renewal of the Skills Development Fund grant for OHBA, enabling the association to continue to deliver its highly successful Job Ready program, which introduces young people, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds, to rewarding careers in residential construction. Just two days later, the 2023 Ontario Budget signalled that the Province was prepared to work with the federal government to begin discussion on the HST on new homes. “Either through prorating, deferrals or exemptions, particularly for first-time homebuyers, this would have an immediate positive impact, and is a measure that OHBA has been pushing for years,” notes Zagordo.  

April witnessed Bill 97—Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act and the Provincial Policy Statement. Part of the provincial government’s latest Housing Supply Action Plan, these combined measures will help encourage more rental construction and improve housing supply and choice across our province, all while laying out a bold planning framework to help Ontario meet future housing demand. 

The spring was capped by OHBA Leadership Day on April 24—an event Zagordo considers “a significant demonstration of political strength that our association has with all levels of government. 

“It marks a turning point,” he says, “where the narrative has shifted from the scope of housing supply challenges to how we are going to meaningfully add more housing of all shapes and sizes.” 

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