Jacob Loo Dawang 🔰

NEW BLOG POST While cities across North America struggle with housing shortages, Edmonton is proving that zoning reform works. In 2025, for the first time in history, the number of homes permitted in 5-8 unit rowhomes surpassed detached homes. 🧵 #yeg #yegcc #yimby

Doug Ford is a mattress salesman, waving accessories in front of your face, hoping that you won’t notice the box spring is being held together by thumbtacks. Doug Ford has utterly wasted an extraordinary mandate theglobeandmail.com/opinion/articl…

“With the three consecutive majority governments that his Progressive Conservatives have won, he’s had the ability to pursue radical policy changes and actually begin to see the fruits of those changes. He’s been able to conceive of, initiate and develop major infrastructure projects. And he can, if he wishes, fundamentally overhaul the way a province structures its basic funding operations, in service to greater efficiency and results. Mr. Ford has done none of those things.” Yup

@EricDLombardi I think you have to differentiate between algorithms made to match supply to demand and let markets clear vs price discrimination based on an individual's willingness to pay. The first just makes markets efficient. The second one is just capturing consumer surplus.

Algorithmic pricing almost certainly goes against the consumer interest and the perception of fairness among many Canadians. However, is banning it the right thing to do? I’m not certain. Regulating it may be harder than people think, too. Curious what my followers think?

Dan McLean wants to increase your property taxes because he can't fathom legalizing townhouses.

Landlord tears: the best evidence that housing is getting more affordable Edmonton's got Landlord Tears 💦 Three years after legalizing a wide variety of housing types city-wide, Edmonton landlords are nervous about having to compete with each other, and offer rental incentives

I didn’t go to the gym today because I was too busy monitoring the situation in Iran and that’s why I’m 30 pounds overweight

Turns out building more homes makes housing more affordable. Edmonton real estate investors are realizing that because so many options are on the market for tenants, they need to be sweetening the pot with incentives - and being "realistic" with rent. #yeg #yegcc

I often find it hard to balance the optimism I have for the future of Ontario, with the anger I have regarding how we’ve been governed. We really can, and should be doing, much better than we are. Everyone knows our potential is enormous, we should live up to it!

Ontario has been in managed decline for too long. I’m running for Ontario Liberal leader to change that — and I’ll be publishing weekly blogs that begin outlining a growth agenda. The first tackles the GDP per capita debate and what it reveals about our economic slowdown.

Let me say unequivocally that this attitude is my enemy #1. It’s thinking that has pulled the rug from under Ontario’s next generation. Fundamentally, you cannot have a high-opportunity and high-growth society when so many people are eager to pull up the ladder of opportunity after they got theirs. It’s also a classic Toronto perspective, as if the city has not exported its housing affordability challenges across the province. No matter where you go in Ontario, housing is nearly twice as expensive relative to people’s income compared to 2005. What the rest of Ontario needs is for Toronto to fix its housing problem, rather than this condescending attitude.

BREAKING: We're staying at 8 homes per lot! Edmonton City Council today voted against reducing the maximum number of homes per lot from 8 to 6 in the RS zone! #yeg #yegcc

You have governed for 8 years, froze tuition subsidies, blew up our higher education sector with an international student Ponzi scheme, pinned blame on the Feds for your failures, and eroded the confidence of an entire generation in the future of the province. Don’t throw stones

I believe that… - Productivity matters more than posturing. - Housing supply must meaningfully increase. - Infrastructure must be built faster and cheaper. - Institutions must become rules-based and transparent. - Competition must be strengthened, not feared. - Growth is not greed. It is how societies expand opportunity. If you agree, sign up at EricForOLP.ca

No it’s not. Even at its peak (~40K units) public housing has never been more than 20% of all housing built, and has rarely been more than 10%. The primary barriers and problems in housing are provincial (and via provinces, municipal). This is not an argument against public housing, but the reality is that governments broke housing economics in the private sector and there still isn’t accountability for it.

The OLP leadership rules are out for 2026. The contest officially starts July 3, and voting is online Nov 9 to 20. If you want a ballot, you’ll need an OLP membership. Deadline is Sept 7, with an extension to Sept 25 for post secondary students. On my end, I’m excited about the months ahead. We’ll keep this exploratory for now, keep listening, and keep building. I’ll make a clear go or no go decision in May, and if the support is there to run a truly competitive campaign, we’ll go for it. If you want to meet, help out, or volunteer, sign up at EricForOLP.ca.

If complaints around infill are sounding mighty familiar, that's because they are. We heard all the same talking points a decade ago, that splitting lots for skinny homes would be the end of our mature neighbourhoods. Thing is, it wasn't. It was fine. We grew, and changed.

Opponents of infill said the quiet part loud today. They don't believe renters should be allowed to live within their neighbourhoods, only on the fringes, by major roads. Their primary, unifying, rallying concern is "homeowner value" and getting what's their's.

@JoshMatlow Ok so raise property tax.

When you pay sales tax, your money goes up to Ottawa and Queen’s Park. I’m moving a motion for Toronto to finally receive a share of the HST, to invest in the services you rely on here in your city, every day. Please sign the petition: joshmatlow.ca/hst It’s budget season again in Toronto and the cracks are showing between the City’s revenue and the services that the City is expected to provide. For decades, provincial and federal governments have downloaded responsibilities to the City including roads, shelters, courts, daycare, public health and more. Today, approximately 27% of Toronto’s property tax revenue is spent funding extensions of federal and provincial responsibilities. But even as Toronto is told to take on more, the province prescribes what revenue tools are available to the City, and has restricted them almost exclusively to taxes on property. Toronto is one of Canada’s primary economic engines. The Toronto region generates 20% of the national GDP, 20% of Ontario’s jobs, and attracts more than 28 million annual visitors. This level of economic activity is enabled by the investments our city has made in social and civic infrastructure, including affordable housing, public health, roads and transit. We host people from across the country and around the world at events like Taylor Swift concerts, the World Series, and the FIFA games, which generates tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue for the provincial and federal governments. Meanwhile, the City shoulders the costs of additional policing, emergency services, transit, and crowd management that make these events possible. The math doesn’t work. Without any other source of revenue, municipalities have been forced to hike property taxes, cut vital services and delay critical infrastructure investments just to stay afloat.  If Toronto is expected to continue driving national prosperity, it must be granted access to revenue tools that are predictable, reflect our investments, and grow with the economy. No more “new deals”. No more begging for one-time ad hoc program funding. It’s time for Toronto to have a fair share of the HST.

#yeg now has $62M/yr of new revenue from mature neighbourhood infill compared to 2016 Over the same period, this redevelopment has added over $330M to the city coffers. All using the same roads, pipes, preserving farmland and enabling neighbourhood-level shops

The small local grocer would often be prohibited from existing by local zoning rules across Ontario, limiting competition and options. Many commercial plazas with a grocery store as an anchor tenant agree to prevent other tenants from selling similar products at lower prices. This kind of anticompetitive clause should be illegal in Ontario: Our supply management system for dairy, poultry and eggs raises costs by about 25-40%. These products represent ~15% of the average grocery cart, and even higher for those who are low income (~25%). There are a lot of ways to improve competition and reduce grocery prices in Ontario. But a consumer watchdog won’t legislate change politicians refuse to make.