Matt Pelletier 🇨🇦

The Land Lord’s Prayer Lessons from a chaotic consultation on tenants’ rights

PEI’s pathway to restored housing affordability requires more homes for families, not fewer rights for tenants.

After attending last week's consultation on the Residential Tenancy Act, I think there are some lessons for MLAs wanting to make changes✍️

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The Kettle Black Summit, c. 2025

The scenic route from PEI to Ottawa:

🚌 Maritime Bus from Charlottetown to Halifax
🚆 The Ocean from Halifax to Montreal
🚆 Corridor VIA Rail service from Montreal to Ottawa

And thanks to advocacy from groups like Fusion Charlottetown, the province looks poised to walk back a proposal that would have undercut its own progress on housing supply.

Hopefully, the government can use today's CMHC numbers to come up with a new approach.

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This is a success story for all orders of government - feds on HAF and GST rebates, the province on its Building Together incentives and matching PST rebates, and the munis on their land use reform like Charlottetown's ambitious draft new official plan. This is worth celebrating.

New CMHC data show that the Charlottetown region saw an impressive 441 housing starts so far in 2025 - including over 160 starts in April alone.

We don't have local data for anything before 1990, but I bet that this will be one of the best housing years for the capital region.

Two-thirds of PEI's investment properties are situated in unincorporated and rural communities that lack official planning.

A cabinet veto on property sales in cities and towns risks increasing this trend by pushing more investment out to areas that can't really sustain growth.

This land is your land (pending cabinet approval) A proposed change to the Lands Protection Act will be bad news for affordability, newcomers, and the environment.

At a time when PEI is taking down interprovincial barriers to trade and investment, the housing department is trying to put new ones up.

The changes to the Lands Protection Act would be bad news for affordability, newcomers, and the environment. ✍️

matthewjamespelletier.medium.com/this-land-is...

This land is your land (pending cabinet approval) A proposed change to the Lands Protection Act will be bad news for affordability, newcomers, and the environment.

At a time when PEI is taking down interprovincial barriers to trade and investment, the housing department is trying to put new ones up.

The changes to the Lands Protection Act would be bad news for affordability, newcomers, and the environment. ✍️

matthewjamespelletier.medium.com/this-land-is...

It's frustrating to see a department explore adding more barriers to interprovincial trade and investment at a time when province as a whole is trying to lead a broader campaign to eliminate them.

If PEI is serious about ending the housing crisis, we need to get the focus back on building housing.

If you’re trying to return/plant roots on PEI, this Cabinet veto would make you explore alternative housing plans like:

-buying a home in a non-planning area (reinforcing sprawl)
-competing with incumbent tenants for a rental unit
-just taking your investment to another province

And because of how “non-resident” is defined in the Act, all property sales in larger urban centres could end up getting vetoed by Cabinet if the purchaser is a born-and-raised Islander who wants to return to PEI after living away. How would this make Islanders want to move back?

Ostensibly, the change is being made to address housing speculation and investment.

But when looking at resident occupancy and investor ownership of PEI’s housing stock, it's more of an issue in rural and non-planning communities – where the Cabinet veto wouldn’t even apply.

It’s currently illegal for non-residents to hold 5+ acres of land in any type of community. This change would Cabinet allow cabinet to veto non-resident purchases of any property of an acre or less munis with official planning (in green), but not for the rest of PEI.

This consultation flew under the radar for a lot of people, but the idea being proposed is concerning.

Basically, the government is proposing to give Cabinet the power to veto non-resident property purchases for smaller lots in municipalities with planning areas. 🧵

It's actually so fascinating to see the drop in Canadians travelling to the US in 2025 compared to the same time in 2024.

20% fewer Canadians have taken road trips to the US this year - and things started diverging after the first round of tariff threats in early February.

There are some risks: Permits don't necessarily lead to a housing start, and a housing start might not translate to a housing completion. PEI construction is also somewhat exposed to the current trade war over steel-related products.

But overall there is room for optimism.

I could be wrong about this, but I think next week's housing start numbers will show very strong momentum for PEI in the first quarter of 2025.

Looking at StatCan permit totals, PEI approved over 1,800 units in the past twelve months - something that hasn't been seen since 2021!

April 9, 1917 - The Battle for Vimy Ridge begins. By nightfall on April 12, the Canadian Corps was in firm control of the ridge, having suffered 10,602 casualties; 3,598 men had been killed and 7,004 wounded.
#lestweforget #wewillremember 🇨🇦 🍁 🇨🇦

With the launch of the federal election, this snapshot should give a good idea to candidates in PEI's four ridings of how residents are voting with their feet. The campaigns have the opportunity to meet voters where they are - especially if they want them to stay on the Island.

The West and the rest of Atlantic Canada appear to be the prime destinations for interprovincial outmigration - particularly to communities where homebuilding has been strong like Calgary, Edmonton, Moncton, and Halifax.

PEI’s non-permanent resident population fell by over 500 people in 2024 mainly due to cuts in international student and temporary worker numbers. Although the non-permanent resident share of PEI’s population is falling, interprovincial outmigration will make that target harder to reach.

In 2024, PEI’s population grew by half the amount it did in 2023. Permanent immigration was PEI’s only positive growth component, with the Island seeing more deaths than births, interprovincial out-migration, and significant reductions in non-permanent numbers.

This is a good moment for PEI construction with interest rates low and momentum up. But tariffs on materials could contribute to inflation and make construction harder in the months ahead.

That's why we can't delay bringing in important policy tools like new official plans and updated zoning rules.

And if you look at the year-to-date progress for purpose built rental construction, the 2025 Jan-Feb number of rental starts in the region is more than that of the nine previous years combined.

If this momentum continues, it will be a record year for housing in Charlottetown.

The Charlottetown area is seeing the best year-to-date progress on housing starts since at least 1990.

The region's year-to-date progress for 2025 (259 starts in January and February) is more than that of the four previous years combined (233).

CBC Compass - February 27, 2025 PEI News at 6 with regional, national and international stories.

You can learn more about Fusion Charlottetown and the upcoming Fusion Flavours event from our recent appearance on CBC Compass (around the 36-minute mark).

I'll also post the Eventbrite link for the tickets when they're available!

www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

Excited to share that I'll be serving as the Vice President of
Fusion Charlottetown for the coming year! Fusion is an advocacy group for young adults in PEI's capital region. We have some great events coming up, including our Fusion Flavours culinary showcases in March (details below).

Hayley Wickenheiser talking to the CBC in her iconic post-2002 Winter Olympics interview: "The Americans had our flag on their floor in their dressing room, and now I wanna know if they want us to sign it."

thinking about her

So, the Charlottetown Area just had its best month for housing starts in almost four decades. 🏗️🏘️

With 199 starts, January 2025 was the best for any month in the region since at least 1990. It was also the best month for apartment unit starts and for purpose-built rentals.