The housing crisis isn't just a public issue – it’s a full-time job. At least, that’s how William Liske sees it, describing himself as “an in-house counsel who’s in the middle of a housing crisis.” As vice president and general counsel at Losani Group, Liske spends his days navigating a maze of regulatory upheaval, legislative shifts, and community opposition – all while trying to keep projects alive in a market showing signs of exhaustion.
The pressure isn't new, but it has intensified. Governments at all levels keep shifting the goalposts. “Every few months, there’s another bill coming out to change charges and planning applications,” he says. His department has to read through relevant bills, revise contracts, and recalibrate timelines, agreements, and marketing materials to meet new demands. The sheer velocity of change has transformed his role into something closer to legal triage, working in lockstep with urban planners, engineers, and finance teams across more than 30 subsidiaries.
Losani Group, a family-run company approaching its 50th anniversary, operates across southwestern Ontario, building everything from rental housing to subdivisions and high-rise towers. Liske joined in 2011 after 15 years working in Toronto and Ottawa. “It struck me that people were going to have to move farther out from the Toronto area to afford a house,” he says. That intuition proved correct. “Hamilton, Brantford, Niagara, Burlington… these areas really became areas of growth in the past decade. I’ve just ridden the wave.”
But in-house counsel at a homebuilder isn't the same as working from a downtown law firm. “I had to pivot from operating within structure to creating it,” he says of the transition to the top legal seat. Now, he’s both architect and operator of the legal function. His team – currently down one associate lawyer – is lean and stretched across a legal landscape where many matters end in litigation. “Statistically, last year, 83 percent of our approvals… were all [through] the Ontario Land Tribunal, not through the normal municipal process.”
Liske doesn’t romanticize the role. There’s little about it that’s “typical,” and most of it resembles the structure of a battlefield more than a boardroom. “We have over 60 litigation matters and about 17 matters at the Ontario Land Tribunal,” he says. He uses the word “war” without hesitation. “I think I’m really at the forefront in the center of a war right now to interpret those bills… and do the right thing to push housing through.”
Behind the legal battles are mounting tensions between layers of government. The federal and provincial governments are aligned – for now. But Liske is blunt about where the resistance lies: “The municipal governments we work with are not aligned… for reasons that we refer to as NIMBYism.” He defines the term without sugarcoating it. “As soon as you propose a project in a neighbourhood… the local people there… don’t want it. They tell their councillor, who is now the decision maker of your planning application.”
For Liske, winning that fight often means preparing for appeals before an application is even filed. He describes it as “pre-servicing,” a way of staying ahead so that when the market rebounds, new homes can hit the ground quickly. “We’re preparing for the market to pick up… as soon as the market does pick up, home buyers will have more volume of choice, and they’ll have quicker closings,” he says.
Still, he isn’t waiting on the sidelines. Even in a slower market, Losani continues to develop. His team handles more than planning applications – they’re deep into employment law, tax, construction union negotiations, and more. “There’s a significant amount of joint venture-related work – management agreements, progress draws, monthly reports and the like,” he says, noting that his job touches almost every operational surface of the company. “Each day is different, which makes it a very interesting and fulfilling career.”
That level of engagement has sharpened his expectations for external legal partners. “What I look for is intermediate counsel that are hungry for work… bright and personable and communicative,” he says. But his priority is clear: “Care with time. Being busy makes keeping track of external counsel hours and costs difficult, especially with litigation.”
The influx of hearings has also shifted the traditional dynamics between in-house and external teams. “I’ve seen external counsel become overwhelmed and welcome a collaborative approach… that trend is only growing,” he says. With in-house staff managing drafting, evidence prep, and reporting, law firms are becoming more like tactical partners than distant advisors.
Liske’s view of technology is more measured. Virtual meetings may be efficient, but he isn’t sold on their effectiveness. “There are very few, if any, in-person meetings anymore… I struggle with that because of the nuances of communicating… I just think something’s missed,” he says. On AI and automation, he’s cautious. The tech may streamline operations, but when it comes to the nuances of communicating with stakeholders, judges, tribunals, adjudicators, and opposing counsel, face time still matters.
As someone who moved in-house back in 2000, Liske sees this career path as widely undervalued – especially in real estate. “A lot of [companies] don’t have in-house legal departments. They have a captive law firm,” he says. For Liske, that’s a missed opportunity. “We were able to take all the customer service and the small stuff and deal with them… from a legal perspective in-house, and it’s been very functional.”
That functionality has turned into necessity. The industry’s most serious bottlenecks – development charges, parkland assessments, zoning appeals – are legal ones. And every dollar, every decision, and every delay flows through Liske’s office. “Parkland appeals… can result in as much as tens of thousands of dollars into the cost of a single house,” he says. It’s granular, sometimes thankless work, but essential to building homes in a market that increasingly resists them.
At the core of Liske’s approach is a belief in being embedded. “Being in land development and homebuilding means you can build out a project… and you can say, ‘I wrote those condo docs… and I went to the tribunal and got that approval.’” There’s no gloss in his delivery, but there’s ownership. “Creating something that lasts is great,” he says. It may not be calm, but for now, it’s a front-row seat to the fiercest legal battles in Canadian housing.