Alberta announces online portal to report red tape, home-building delays

Alberta has introduced a new online portal that will allow developers, municipalities and other housing partners to report red tape and unnecessary home-building delays.

The province says the Stop Housing Delays online portal will help identify areas that are preventing "fast and efficient residential construction."

"The Stop Housing Delays portal will allow Alberta's government to hear directly from developers, municipalities and other partners on where delays are happening in the construction process," said Jason Nixon, minister of community and social services.

"This will help identify and remove barriers, ultimately getting homes built faster and continuing Alberta's record home-building pace."

Nixon says the government will collaborate with a wide range of ministries to find solutions, ranging from minor policy changes to major reforms.

Nixon made the announcement from Calgary's MacDougall Centre on Wednesday morning.

As he spoke, protesters from renters' advocacy group Acorn gathered in front of Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver's southeast Calgary constituency office demanding the province institute a rent cap. 

"Rent control is the easiest thing that can be implemented, the quickest thing that can be implemented," said Acorn city centre chair Maggy Wlodarczyk.

"I hear a lot of politicians talking about building more, and that's great, but it takes time to build things, and rent control is something that can be put in place in the meantime while those places are being built."

McIver told the protesters that the province is working hard to keep up with growth, saying federal immigration policy is making the housing shortage worse.

"When the amount of immigration goes from a reasonable amount to two million people, that actually makes the issue that we're talking about here today worse instead of better," he said. 

"Our government will continue to work to make this situation better."

McIvor says the online portal will help speed up construction and the building of new homes.

Scott Fash, CEO of BILD Alberta Association, says the red tape and delays typically add around 10 per cent to the cost of building a home.

"Sometimes it might go higher than that depending on the scale of the project," he said.

Fash believes any costs saved will be passed on to consumers. 

"We have a hyper competitive Industry, our builders compete on a day-to-day basis with each other, and the way they do best from a business perspective is to be able to provide a product to the widest swath of the population possible."

On Wednesday, Nixon acknowledge the majority of building regulations slowing construction are under municipal control. 

He says if cities don't react to the province's call for red tape reduction, they risk losing provincial financing.