Ontario Premier Doug Ford has marked the holiday season by posting a gingerbread house-building video to X, formerly Twitter — and he's already catching flak from users.
The two-minute-long video showed Ford carefully constructing and decorating the tiny, tasty home. "This reminds me of building modular homes here in Ontario, so quick it is," he said. "A modular home is probably easier to build than a gingerbread house."
Ford continued to praise modular housing during the video, adding: "You know, folks, modular homes are the most efficient way to build homes here in Ontario, most cost effective way."
After frosting and topping the house with candy, Ford then moved in a family of gingerbread people and finished by handing them a key to the property. "Mr. Gingerbread family, here's your key," he said. "Enjoy your home!"
"Will you be counting gingerbread houses towards your goal of 1.5M houses?" one commenter wrote, in reference to the province's housing goal by 2031. While Ontario housing starts were up, according to the province's fall economic statement, the pace of construction still falls well short of what is needed to build over a million new homes.
Ford may have a point about modular housing, as it can be built faster, using prefabricated components constructed in a factory and assembled on-site. Toronto launched a modular housing initiative in 2020, aiming to construct 1,000 prefab homes for homeless people and chronic shelter users. In the summer of 2023, a report found the project cost up to double what was originally planned, partly due to "insufficient planning."
The responses weren't all negative — some users called on their fellow commenters to tone down the criticism.
"Doug's job is not to solve all problems for you, and he can't fix things over night," one user wrote. "Merry Christmas Doug and to everyone actually doing something to make Ontario better."
Kevin Jiang is a Toronto-based staff reporter for the Star’s Express Desk. Follow him on X: @crudelykevin.
Kevin Jiang
is a Toronto-based staff reporter for the Star’s Express Desk.
Follow him on X: @crudelykevin.
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