It was a noble effort by Premier Doug Ford: build 1.5 million new homes by 2031. But they’ve already fallen short of yearly requirements to meet that target. With 71,800 housing starts being forecast for this year, the province is thousands of homes short of what it needs to make 1.5 million homes a reality.

This sobering fact reflects the fact that government has only so much influence on the private sector. Not only that, but there are unforeseen side effects downstream from major government decisions as the private sector recoils from attempts at manipulation.

Hollywood doesn’t make many films about the government effects on private sector industry, but perhaps it should. The film “The Big Short,” shepherded into existence by Brad Pitt, details the finance world. “The Wolf of Wall Street” talks a little about small-cap stocks. It’s possible to have dialogue in a film, you know.

For example, attempts to “freeze” prices at the common retail level have been tried before (I believe Nixon attempted it in the Seventies in America) but bad shit clogs up the pipes after such a decision. By bad shit I mean shortages of goods, other problems. Venezuela fucked up in this way too, more recently.

There have been a quarter of a million new housing starts in the 3 years since the announcement of the 1.5 million new homes was made. That’s better than nothing, but it’s definitely looking like we’re going to end up with 50% of the homes we need.

Housing Minister Rob Flack must be feeling the heat from the Premier. (The Premier of a province is equivalent to the Governor of a U.S. state.) He made promises he can’t keep. Flack doesn’t want to be a lowly… P.R. Flack. Heh heh heh. But anyway.

Premier Ford is the brother of the late deceased Rob Ford, crack-cocaine sampling mayor of Toronto. Both men are large and proud, with the man-boobs to prove it.

Part of the incentive to build homes comes from funding for necessary municipal infrastructure such as water mains. The Ontario government has been fast-tracking approvals for new construction in general, a welcome relief from red tape that throttles new projects like a coiled-up snake, the kind of interference the left-wing is known to love indulging in with their regulatory mania.

The previous government, a Liberal one, did not act fast enough to head off the housing crisis which grips the province. For this they can be faulted.

The current government is a right-of-center one. Ontario has voted for far left parties before, but often has a right-wing government in power. Certain cities such as Burlington, Ont. have voted Conservative for eons now without interruption.

Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy denies that the government is stalled on its objectives, stating firmly, “We’re not going to relent on trying to achieve that goal.” But what can the government do to move from 750K new homes to 1.5 million? How can it fill the stopgap? The construction industry in Ontario is only so large. Tens of thousands work it, but in order to meet the goal of 1.5 million new homes the sector would have to double its size. This isn’t in the cards.

Today’s youth have been brainwashed to believe that a university degree is the only way to go. The trades — the skilled apprenticeships that go into building new structures — have been denigrated for far too long. Typically, students are filing into booksmart higher education programs like English and History, which are useless for 99% of applicants. Internet commentator Aaron Clarey, in his book “Worthless,” goes over the degrees which actually make you money, and I don’t think English or History are two of them.

My youngest sister Marianne took Political Science at university up to the Master’s level, which she successfully leveraged into a plum government job in the provincial capital of Toronto. She commutes to work. From Oakville, Ont. to downtown Toronto, first by Toyota car and then by GO train into the big city, and then a short distance to her offices. But I imagine the old girls’ network helped her get this cushy job. If Marianne’s male coworkers had gone into the trades instead, we might have our 1.5 million new homes on-track rather than mounds of useless new paperwork reaching up to the ceiling fluorescents…