Would help cities avoid a post-COVID commercial real estate disaster while also addressing the pre-COVID housing crunch

The economic havoc from COVID-19 has made the 2008 financial crisis look like a hiccup. Along with airlines and live entertainment, commercial real estate may end up being one of the hardest-hit sectors. Businesses we rely on in good times, both large and small, are facing foreclosure and bankruptcy. Retail locations, restaurants and commercial office space will become vacant and there is no guarantee demand will come all the way back to fill the void.

Part of our new reality is that millions of Canadians have seen the viability of working from home, or at least working from the office at a significantly reduced level. E-commerce giant Shopify announced last month it would become a remote-by-default workplace, with CEO Tobi Lutke going so far as to say that “office-centricity is over.” So long as productivity can be maintained, other corporate entities are likely to follow Shopify’s lead and forego the expensive overhead of downtown office space. That means a potentially significant increase in office vacancies, especially in places like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.

If demand does wane, firms that own office towers in major Canadian cities will be left with empty space and hemorrhaging costs. What to do? Un-zoning or rezoning such spaces would be a way to make the overall real estate market more dynamic.

At the moment, it is very difficult and time-consuming to navigate the zoning restrictions that prevent firms from converting commercial spaces into residential units. Toronto, for example, has thousands of pages of zoning rules and regulations that limit how space can be used. Applying for a space to be rezoned is onerous and takes a minimum of nine months to be completed and reviewed. In order to apply to have the city rezone a property from commercial to residential, the applicant often needs to provide: an archeological assessment, a services and facility study, an environmental impact study, an energy strategy, a heritage impact statement, a natural heritage impact study, their planning rationale, their public consultation report and a transportation impact study — on top of their own formal plans. Un-zoning or rezoning swaths of commercial space without requiring this regulatory rigamarole could be a way for local governments to help industry survive the worst of the economic downfall.

Relaxing zoning for most of these commercial real estate spaces would also ease pressures on the supply side of the housing market. In cities like Vancouver and Toronto, the supply of housing has seldom kept up with demand, which is why residential vacancy rates in these major cities are usually at or below one per cent. In Toronto, the Toronto Real Estate Board has shown how demand has generally outpaced supply by tracking average home prices. The average price of a home in Toronto has tripled since 2005. Toronto’s inability to build new housing stock hurts renters more with each passing day. In January, it was forecast that rents in Toronto would rise seven per cent in 2020, well above the rate of inflation — though of course now all bets are off.

Rather than insist that commercial real estate sit empty, rezoning could: provide flexibility in terms of occupancy, increase the housing stock to better keep up with demand, and eventually put downward pressure on home and rental prices citywide — not to mention reduce the economic hit to the owners of such space.

What makes this solution even more attractive is that un-zoning and rezoning existing buildings would be tricky to oppose. New developments in major cities like Toronto undergo months, if not years, of review and community consultation. At every turn, NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) activists roadblock housing developments for such dubious reasons as a building’s height, shadow or footprint.

In the Long Branch neighbourhood of Toronto, NIMBY activists pushed to block the splitting of a residential lot because it would “threaten their community character and trees.” In the much-coveted Yonge and Lawrence area, the creation of eight semi-detached units was opposed because it threatened the community’s character by being 16 centimetres “too tall” and 13 centimetres “too wide,” according to the zoning bylaw. Obstructionism is so bad in Vancouver that the only way to build at a large scale (in the thousands of units) is on Indigenous land, beyond the reach of city council, which is too easily captured by NIMBYs.

Luckily for housing realists, i.e., those who understand that major Canadian cities need to increase supply, rezoning existing buildings is largely immune from these roadblocks. Buildings that have already been built are not a new imposition. All we have to do is let people move into them.

Giving rezoning and dezoning a serious look would help cities avoid a post-COVID commercial real estate disaster while also addressing the pre-COVID housing crunch. This is a win-win scenario — if only city councils have the courage and imagination to make it happen.

Originally published here.

The Consumer Choice Center is the consumer advocacy group supporting lifestyle freedom, innovation, privacy, science, and consumer choice. The main policy areas we focus on are digital, mobility, lifestyle & consumer goods, and health & science.

The CCC represents consumers in over 100 countries across the globe. We closely monitor regulatory trends in Ottawa, Washington, Brussels, Geneva and other hotspots of regulation and inform and activate consumers to fight for #ConsumerChoice. Learn more at consumerchoicecenter.org

The federal government’s approval process for medicines, treatments, and vaccines is broken, and red tape at the Food and Drug Administration is to blame.

FDA bureaucrats are stonewalling the search for cures for COVID-19 and other illnesses by forcing drug companies to conduct expensive and misleading testing on dogs. The FDA has gone so far as to force this upon drug producers even when it is not necessary, when efficient alternatives are available, and it has punished companies for challenging this mandate.

One company had a drug (now a potential COVID-19 treatment) held up for years and lost tens of millions in stock value because it refused to conduct an unnecessary $750,000 test on dogs after it had already run extensive animal and human testing. The company has argued that “[t]he animal studies the FDA demands … have been considered routine in the pharmaceutical industry for decades, despite the growing body of evidence discrediting such studies’ scientific value.”

The FDA’s current dog-testing mandate for drug companies traces back to 1938, in the days when doctors regularly performed ice-pick lobotomies to treat mental illness and pregnancy tests were done by injecting women’s urine into frogs. Luckily, medicine has come a long way. But even now, although companies may choose to conduct limited animal testing at times, it’s widely acknowledged that animal testing of human drugs is often wasteful and unnecessary.

The National Institutes of Health, for example, writes that “petri dish and animal models often fail to provide good ways to mimic disease or predict how drugs will work in humans, resulting in much wasted time and money while patients wait for therapies.” The NIH, the FDA, and others estimate that over 90% of drugs that pass government-mandated animal tests fail in humans because they are ineffective or dangerous, costing companies billions of dollars and decades of lost time.

Recognizing this waste, in recent years the pharmaceutical industry has increased research & development spending while also decreasing animal testing by using cutting-edge technologies such as organs-on-chips and computer models that better mimic human drug responses.

The problem is that the FDA often won’t allow these new technologies to be used, even though it claims to support them and has the authority to do so. The FDA’s decade-old ”nonbinding” guidance document that includes dog tests also states, “You can use an alternative approach if the approach satisfies the requirements of the applicable statutes and regulations.”

Yet, as the Government Accountability Office and others have documented, the intransigent FDA has refused to allow companies to use these high-tech tools to fulfill regulatory requirements. Instead, the FDA treats its nonbinding, outdated guidance as a regulation and forces drug makers to pay for unscientific dog tests that field experts, doctors, and scientists deem misleading and wasteful.

The tests demanded by the FDA cost millions and entail force-feeding puppies experimental drugs every day for up to a year, providing no pain relief, and then killing and dissecting the dogs. Approximately one-third of all dog testing in the United States is done to fulfill useless and burdensome government regulations such as these.

These slow and misleading tests also cause unnecessary delays that drive up the cost of drug development and, in turn, medical care. Estimates are that each day a drug is kept off the market due to FDA bureaucracy costs companies between $1 million and $13 million in sales. The GAO has also reported about how safe and effective medical products have been kept from consumers because of FDA’s unnecessary animal testing demands and that “manufacturers may face backlash from animal rights groups and shareholders if animal testing is conducted.” The FDA’s dog-testing red tape is creating liability, not mitigating it.

Taxpayers who pay the FDA’s bills want reform, too. According to a May 2020 national poll, 67% of taxpayers — 73% of Republicans and 66% of Democrats — support ending the FDA’s dog-testing mandate.

In the fight against COVID-19, President Trump has called on the FDA to “slash red tape like nobody’s ever done before.”

The FDA’s burdensome dog testing, which is not required by law and could be lifted at any time, has allowed dangerous drugs to reach patients and prevented safe ones from coming to market. FDA red tape can’t be allowed to hold patients, industry, and puppies hostage any longer.

Originally published here.

The Consumer Choice Center is the consumer advocacy group supporting lifestyle freedom, innovation, privacy, science, and consumer choice. The main policy areas we focus on are digital, mobility, lifestyle & consumer goods, and health & science.

The CCC represents consumers in over 100 countries across the globe. We closely monitor regulatory trends in Ottawa, Washington, Brussels, Geneva and other hotspots of regulation and inform and activate consumers to fight for #ConsumerChoice. Learn more at consumerchoicecenter.org

“Лікарі без кордонів” (фр. Medecins sans frontiers, MSF) неймовірно успішно захищають інтереси пацієнтів по всьому світу. Організація має зразковий досвід залучення лікарів на передових бойових зон, а також під час голодоморів та пандемій — допомагаючи тим пацієнтам, які залишилися самі та постраждали внаслідок руйнівних криз.

Під час епідемії еболи у Західній Африці 2014-2015 рр. MSF була провідною організацією боротьби за права пацієнтів та зробила набагато більше, ніж Всесвітня організація охорони здоров’я (ВООЗ), яка є бюрократичною і часто реагує занадто повільно. За це та попередні 48 років служби MSF потрібно аплодувати стоячи.

Однак їхнє нинішнє опозиційне ставлення до патентів на ліки від COVID-19, витікає з неправильного розуміння значення прав інтелектуальної власності для медичних інновацій.

MSF також проводить кампанію щодо доступу до лікарських засобів, яка спотворює реалії ринку ліків, закликаючи до рішень, які завдають шкоди науковим інноваціям. Кампанія “за доступ до основних лікарських засобів” хоче зробити лікарські засоби у країнах, що розвиваються, більш доступними, вирішуючи питання щодо ціни на ліки та прав інтелектуальної власності. На думку MSF, виробники та дослідники збагачуються за рахунок тих хто не може собі дозволити лікарські засоби.

MSF помиляється в тому, що права інтелектуальної власності та патенти перешкоджають інноваціям. Навпаки, саме вони дозволяють забезпечити прогрес у галузі медицини.

Десятки фармацевтичних компаній не тільки почали шукати вакцину проти Covid-19, але і залучили багато ресурсів для отримання мільйонів тестів. Вони також досліджують потенційні препаратами проти коронавірусної хвороби, і жертвують гроші та матеріали для покращення системи охорони здоров’я в усьому світі.

Насправді, благодійні зусилля фармацевтичних компаній вражають. Вони пропонують благодійну підтримку, в тому числі організаціям, які працюють з пацієнтами на місцях. Однак “Лікарі без кордонів” заявили, що не прийматимуть пожертв у формі лікарств від фармацевтичних компаній, а натомість купуватимуть їх за ринковими цінами. Донори MSF, ймовірно, будуть приголомшені дізнатись, що їхні пожертви витрачаються на ліки, які MSF могло б отримати безкоштовно.

У той час як фармацевтична індустрія також дуже піклується про доступ, нефункціональні системи охорони здоров’я, однак інфраструктура часто є бар’єром між пацієнтом та лікуванням чи вакциною. Ми повинні усвідомити, що благодійні дії можливі лише за умови заохочення права на отримання прибутку. Фармацевтичні компанії розробляють препарати, захищають свої винаходи та отримують прибуток. Якщо забрати патентні права, стимул до інновацій зникає, а рятувальні ліки, ціна створення яких приголомшливо велика, не потрапляють на ринок.

“Лікарі без кордонів” закликають не допустити заробляння на новому коронавірусі, ігноруючи при цьому значні благодійні пожертви, які допомагають зупинити цей вірус. Насправді, більшість зусиль витрачених на боротьбу з хворобою — це державно-приватні партнерства, як і у випадку з еболою.

Потрібно також пам’ятати, що позбавлення компаній можливості отримувати прибуток від ліків виключає стимули та ігнорує ризики, а також витрати на роботу над новим препаратом. Чи маємо ми право очікувати від працівників лабораторій безкоштовно приходити на роботу, коли з нею та з взаємодією з колегами пов’язано безліч ризиків?

Ідея так званих примусових ліцензій, яка фактично відбирає патент у виробника в одній країні та передає його іншій, може навіть ще більше затримати введення вакцини від COVID-19. Для виготовлення та доставки робочої вакцини потрібні ноу-хау та ланцюгові поставки. Сумнівно, чи вакцина, виготовлена ​​за примусовим ліцензуванням, насправді буде дешевшою, ніж оригінальна.

Багато можна сказати про виробництво ліків та доступ до основних лікарських засобів. Але належну дискусію потрібно проводити на основі певних основних фактів. Серед них є те, що фармацевтичні компанії вкладають величезні суми грошей у забезпечення життєво необхідних ліків а також вживають заходів для допомоги тим, хто цього потребує. COVID-19 призвів до однієї з найбільших криз у сфері охорони здоров’я всіх часів- інновації та медичні прориви потрібні зараз як ніколи. Нівелювання прав інтелектуальної власності або їх знищення, безумовно, тільки погіршить ситуацію і не призведе до проривів, які в кінцевому рахунку могли б вивести нас із цього кошмару.

Originally published here.

The Consumer Choice Center is the consumer advocacy group supporting lifestyle freedom, innovation, privacy, science, and consumer choice. The main policy areas we focus on are digital, mobility, lifestyle & consumer goods, and health & science.

The CCC represents consumers in over 100 countries across the globe. We closely monitor regulatory trends in Ottawa, Washington, Brussels, Geneva and other hotspots of regulation and inform and activate consumers to fight for #ConsumerChoice. Learn more at consumerchoicecenter.org

One of the fundamental questions raised by the pandemic is whether individuals can be entrusted to follow social distancing rules voluntarily or whether government force is necessary to accomplish that end. Most governments have channelled the latter assumption in the fight against COVID-19. After years of ratcheting our lifestyle of freedoms, that doesn’t come as a surprise.

From cannabis to tobacco and sugar consumption, lifestyle regulations infantilise consumers by “nudging” them toward what some government officials believe is best for them. The psychology behind such an approach is straightforward: if we continuously tell somebody they are incapable of choosing for themselves, they eventually come to believe it. Nannying consumers from A to Z and then all of a sudden expecting them to skip a Thursday pub night for the sake of social distancing is inconsistent, to say the least.

There are of course some good intentions behind various lifestyle regulations. Tobacco plain packaging and taxes, for instance, are meant to deter consumers because of both look and price. The plain packaging of sweets, crisps and sugary drinks is intended to drive down our consumption of sugar. Thus, branding bans are seen as a major tool by some in public health. But these measures beg two questions. First, do they have any propensity for success? Second, in light of the pandemic, can we afford to diminish the culture of individual responsibility through paternalism?

We know plain packaging doesn’t work. In 2012, Australia passed a nationwide plain packaging decree on all tobacco products. The goal was to reduce smoking rates. During the first years of the ban, more young people took up smoking. The smoking rates among Australians in the age range of 12-24-year-olds increased from 12 per cent in 2012 to 16 per cent in 2013, whereas it had been declining naturally in the years prior. Little or no improvement was made among people aged 30 or older between 2013 and 2016.

People aged 40–49 continued to be the age group most likely to smoke daily (16.9%) and the smoking rates among this age group went up from 16.2% in 2013. At the same time, Australia has seen an enormous increase in roll-your-own cigarettes: 26% in 2007, to 33% in 2013 and to 36% in 2016.

Consumers should have access to all the information they can get about products and then, crucially, have the freedom to decide for themselves. Branding bans block their access to information about the products they buy and consume. Information is dispersed through branding, and therefore branding bans remove that possibility.

We need individual responsibility more than ever. Our fast-developing and incredibly interconnected world is likely to face more pandemics, and we should be prepared as individuals. The line between collective responsibility — to socially distance for example — and individual responsibility is a thin one. The consequences of the former might affect other people, while the latter concerns only us as individuals.

When we choose to consume sugar, we are the ones responsible for the repercussions and we should be encouraged to bear that responsibility. Going out and shaking hands knowing that we have symptoms of COVID-19 puts at risk other people while staying at home limits our personal freedom. It is only through individual responsibility that we can learn to be socially responsible.

Paternalism destroys our ability to choose for ourselves and be burdened with the consequences. In the case of a pandemic, our failure to exercise our responsibility and sensibility leads to a collective failure and provides a ground for government force, lockdowns and all sorts of questionable interventions.

Ideally, aware of their responsibility and risks, each and every person could have voluntarily chosen to self-isolate, as many people did. But how can we expect individuals to follow public health decrees if we know some of them are ineffective?

First, governments paternalise us through branding bans and other nudges, and then they want us to act responsibly when the pandemic kicks in. This has to change, and we should encourage individual freedom followed by responsibility instead of infantilising consumers.

Originally published here.

The Consumer Choice Center is the consumer advocacy group supporting lifestyle freedom, innovation, privacy, science, and consumer choice. The main policy areas we focus on are digital, mobility, lifestyle & consumer goods, and health & science.

The CCC represents consumers in over 100 countries across the globe. We closely monitor regulatory trends in Ottawa, Washington, Brussels, Geneva and other hotspots of regulation and inform and activate consumers to fight for #ConsumerChoice. Learn more at consumerchoicecenter.org

On aime à opposer les deux côtés de ce choix binaire : défendre l’économie mondiale ou la vie humaine – or c’est une absurdité… dangereuse.

« Restez chez vous, sauvez des vies ! » – tel est le mantra répété par la classe politique, les médias et les réseaux sociaux. La peur du coronavirus a amené les citoyens à une justification d’un pouvoir accru donné à l’Etat, et provoqué une méfiance généralisée entre les personnes.

La police pénalise ceux qui se déplacent pour « des raisons non-essentielles » et des voisins appellent la police pour dénoncer ceux qui font du sport. Les dégâts sur notre tissu social seront eux aussi un sujet à discuter après cette crise.

Une des idées les plus répandues est celle de protéger des vies au lieu de protéger l’économie (les investisseurs ou les entreprises). Il ne manque plus que le sempiternel « vous ne pouvez pas manger votre argent » comme conclusion philosophique de la pensée du moment.

Au Royaume-Uni, le chroniqueur Toby Young a analysé les données de l’économie locale pour mesurer le véritable impact sur les « vies perdues » lors de cette crise (et celle à venir).

Vies perdues, vies sauvées

Lorsque l’économie se contracte, l’espérance de vie diminue en raison d’une augmentation de la pauvreté, des crimes violents et des suicides. Lors de la crise financière mondiale de 2007-2009, le taux de suicide avait augmenté de 4,8% aux Etats-Unis selon le Centre de contrôle des maladies (CDC), et de 6,5% en Europe selon l’Organisation mondiale de la santé.

Philip Thomas, professeur de gestion des risques à l’université de Bristol, a calculé que si le PIB du Royaume-Uni chute de plus de 6,4% par personne à la suite du confinement obligatoire, il y aura plus d’années de vie perdues que d’années de vie sauvées, en se basant sur les estimations du Dr Ferguson.

Le professeur Thomas souligne que le PIB par habitant a chuté de 6% au Royaume-Uni lors du krach financier de 2007-2009 – or de nombreux économistes prédisent que l’impact négatif du confinement obligatoire sera au moins deux fois plus important.

Il conclut :

« Le défi pour le gouvernement britannique sera de gérer ses interventions de manière à ce que l’inévitable récession imminente ne soit pas aussi grave que le krach financier de 2007-2009. »

Il convient donc de s’assurer que le remède ne soit pas pire que le virus.

Mauvaises conclusions

Cependant, cette réflexion est actuellement politiquement incorrecte. On nous demande de mettre nos vies en suspens et de pousser l’économie mondiale dans une récession mortelle sous peine d’être coupable de collaboration avec le virus. Ceux qui s’opposent au confinement obligatoire seront décrits comme des brutes sans cœur.

Pire encore sont ceux qui utilisent cette crise pour argumenter en faveur des pires politiques totalitaires, dont le socialiste Thomas Porcher, qui propose un large programme de nationalisation de grandes entreprises, comme si les fondamentaux économiques n’avaient plus cours en cette période.

Pour les ONG d’extrême-gauche comme les Amis de la Terre, c’est un renouveau complet de l’économie qui est désirable. Ils accusent même le système économique mondialisé d’être à l’origine de la crise sanitaire.

Assez ironiquement, on peut considérer que c’est l’inverse : cette crise a débuté par le manque de transparence d’une régime communiste totalitaire et la surrèglementation du secteur de la médecine. Les industries prêtes à aider le personnel médical sont confrontées aux normes étatiques les empêchant de produire du matériel d’urgence.

Au niveau des traitements, nous voyons que les pays possédant une mixité importante entre hôpitaux privés et publics se débrouillent mieux que ceux qui ont tout misé sur la suppression du secteur privé.

Les victimes du krach seront-elles ignorées ? Oui.

Pire encore, les Etats en tireront les mauvaises conclusions. Suite à la crise du Covid-19, nous allons nous retrouver avec moins de libertés individuelles, moins d’argent et un contrôle accru de la part de l’Etat.

Originally published here.

The Consumer Choice Center is the consumer advocacy group supporting lifestyle freedom, innovation, privacy, science, and consumer choice. The main policy areas we focus on are digital, mobility, lifestyle & consumer goods, and health & science.

The CCC represents consumers in over 100 countries across the globe. We closely monitor regulatory trends in Ottawa, Washington, Brussels, Geneva and other hotspots of regulation and inform and activate consumers to fight for #ConsumerChoice. Learn more at consumerchoicecenter.org