Private property owners in Ontario, including condo corporations, could find themselves paying a premium to keep their walkways safe this winter. Rock salt is expected to be less available locally and cost more to source after flooding and a strike hampered output at two out of three major mines, according to Landscape Ontario, a trades association whose members include snow contractors. 

There’s a new point person on the condo file in Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government after a cabinet shuffle yesterday. Premier Doug Ford has moved Todd Smith to the economic development, job creation and trade portfolio and named Bill Walker, MPP for Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, as the new minister of government and consumer services. 

Some condo managers who want to renew their licences next year will have to pass a multiple-choice test to demonstrate their knowledge of new legislation regulating the profession as well as recent changes to Ontario’s condo laws. 

Worrisome harbingers of borrower instability have faded somewhat since a mortgage financing stress test went into effect, Canada’s financial monitor reports. 

Sales of single-detached homes priced from $1-2 million have fallen 35 per cent year-over-year in Toronto and Vancouver, according to the 2018 RE/MAX Spotlight on Luxury Report.