Poilievre Pledges to Speed Up Housing Approval Following CMHC Report on Slow Times for Toronto, Vancouver

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks to reporters in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 8, 2023. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

Following a report by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) saying Vancouver and Toronto have the slowest approval times for building new homes, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pledged to speed up the process of building homes in Canada.

“Slow permits mean higher prices. Higher prices mean Canadians can’t afford to put roof over head,” Mr. Poilievre said during a press conference in Vancouver on July 14.

“A Poilievre-led government will incentivize our cities to speed up and lower the cost of building permits to free up land so builders can build, build, build.”

The CMHC and Statistics Canada’s Municipal Land Use and Regulation Survey, released July 13, estimated that an additional 3.5 million new units (pdf) are needed by 2030 for affordability in Canada to be restored.

The report noted that long approval times for new developments can make building projects more costly, and that among the surveyed land use regulations, approval time for new projects is the most important survey factor to explain differences in housing affordability between regions.

The CMHC found that the Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver Areas have the longest approval times in Canada—almost four times as long as regions with more affordable housing. The “approval delay index,” which is normalized as 100 for the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area, is used to compare the time it takes to approve new projects. It is 101 in Vancouver, and 60 for the rest of B.C. For Ontario, excluding Toronto, the index is 52.

Average Asking Rents in Canada Hits Record High

Mr. Poilievre also referenced a new report by Rent.ca, which found that average asking rents in Canada hit a record high of $2,042 in June 2023, which surpassed the previous record of $2,024 that was set back in November 2022 by 0.9 percent.

“It now takes 25 years in Canada’s biggest city to save up for a downpayment. It used to be, before Trudeau, 25 years is what it took to pay off a mortgage. Now it’s what it takes just to get a mortgage,” Mr. Poilievre said. “Nine in 10 of our young people believe they will never afford a home. This is the first generation of youth in Canadian history that has given up on homeownership.”

Mr. Poilievre said he would require big cities like Vancouver and Toronto to boost home building permits by 15 percent per year or lose access to federal grants. He also repeated his promise to require every federally funded transit station to have high-density apartments built “all around and sometimes even on top of them.”

The Conservative leader pointed out that Squamish Nation has its own reserve land and doesn’t have to follow the “bureaucracy” at Vancouver city hall. As a result, the nation is building the largest indigenous-led housing retail development in Canadian history, which will supply 6,000 housing units.

“The gatekeepers are out of the way and the Squamish use common sense to get a project approved and shovels in the ground. That’s what we’re going to replicate,” Mr. Poilievre said, highlighting his plans to sell off 6,000 federal buildings and thousands of acres of federal land to build more housing units.

“The dream of homeownership, which was achievable only eight years ago, will be realized once again,” he said.