RSVP
Ottawa Housing & Land Meetup
📅 Wed June 24, 2026, 6:30-9 PM
📍 Impact Hub Ottawa, 123 Slater St., 6th Floor (Maps)
Agenda
6:30 • Doors
7:00 • Remarks by Liam Wilkinson & Ken Yang, Common Wealth Canada
7:15 • Monopoly (Landlord’s Game): Ottawa Edition
Dr. Francis K. Peddle, President of the Henry George Foundation of Canada
Mike Bulthuis, Executive Director of the Ottawa Community Land Trust
Brandon Bay, former Chair of Make Housing Affordable
7:45 • Meet & Mingle
Please RSVP so we have an accurate idea of headcount.
Ottawa’s housing crisis starts with land: how we use it, what we allow to be built on it, and who benefits as it rises in value. Join us for a meetup of advocates interested in how land policy can help us build more homes, support affordable housing, reduce speculation, and return publicly created land value to our communities.
Organizing Partners
Common Wealth Canada advances policy ideas that turn publicly created wealth into broad public benefit, including land value return and sovereign wealth funds. Its work focuses on how Canada can capture economic rents from land, natural resources, technology, and finance to build shared prosperity for current and future generations.
The Henry George Foundation of Canada promotes the ideas of economist Henry George, including land value taxation and the public capture of economic rent. Its work connects land, tax reform, and shared prosperity through the goals of a more just, green, and prosperous society.
The Ottawa Community Land Trust is a non-profit working to preserve and increase affordable housing in the Ottawa region. OCLT acquires rental properties, secures land for future housing, and partners with local groups to keep homes affordable for the long term.
Make Housing Affordable is a pro-housing advocacy group in Ottawa working to fix the city’s housing shortage and make life more affordable. Their “Six Big Moves” platform focuses on getting more homes built, fighting sprawl, and pushing policymakers toward practical housing solutions.
Past Common Wealth Meetups
Why shift taxes to land value?
Land value is generated from the work and investments of the community around it, like public infrastructure and economic activity. We can capture and reinvest some of this publicly created value to fund tax relief for workers and builders; rebates to every household; and housing, transit, or other public needs. We call this land value return.
One way to do this is a land value tax (LVT), a levy on the value of land itself, excluding the buildings or improvements on it. Unlike taxes on income or buildings, which discourage work and construction, LVT doesn’t penalize productivity. It encourages efficient land use and development over idle speculation. That’s why economists often call it “the perfect tax”, one that could help address key drivers of the housing crisis. Variants of LVT have been successfully implemented around world including in Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, England, and Estonia.
For a quick primer, read the Land Value Tax One-Pager by the Center for Land Economics: “To spur housing growth, tax buildings less and land more”.
How can LVT benefit the housing market and overall economy?
By shifting taxes onto land, away from income or buildings, we can realign incentives in our economy to:
build more housing and improve affordability
discourage anti-productive land speculation
increase returns to employment, business activity, and construction
Research by Common Wealth Canada shows how an LVT in BC could generate enough revenue to replace all property and income taxes in the province. Read more at commonwealth.ca/bc-lvt.
