Trudeau, Poilievre Spar Over Canada’s Housing Affordability Crisis

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre greet each other in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sept. 15, 2022. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre sparred over the ongoing housing affordability crisis across Canada during question period on March 22, with the leader of the official opposition calling on Trudeau to find ways of bringing down rising mortgage costs.

Poilievre said Trudeau promised to bring down housing costs when he first took office eight years ago, but has so far failed to do so.

“It cost $1,400 to pay an average mortgage [in 2015],” said Poilievre. “How much does it cost today?”

Poilievre later pointed out that Canada’s average mortgage price has risen to over $3,100 since then.

“Either he doesn’t know or he’s too afraid to admit,” Poilievre said, adding, “That’s over a 100-percent increase.”

Trudeau responded by referencing the Housing Accelerator Fund his government announced last week, which is a $4 billion initiative intended to provide municipal governments across the country with funding to “fast track the creation of 100,000 new homes.”

“We know that there’s still more work to be done,” Trudeau added.

Poilievre later asked Trudeau why the prime minister is “continually giving billions of dollars to municipal-government gatekeepers to block construction for Canadian homes.”

Trudeau said the question went straight “to the heart of the disagreement on housing” between himself and Poilievre.

“We need to work with municipalities to help them change zoning laws, to help them accelerate their permitting processes,” Trudeau said.

A February Statistics Canada report said that average home prices across Canada cooled slightly at the beginning of 2023, but added that rising borrowing prices are impacting the demand for housing.

“Higher mortgage rates continued to put downward pressure on new house prices,” the federal agency wrote in its “New Housing Price Index“ for January 2023, published on Feb. 22.

In its Consumer Price Index for February, Statistics Canada wrote that Canadians paid more in mortgage interest costs in February than they did in January—caused mainly by the Bank of Canada raising its key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.5 percent on Jan. 25.

Rahul Vaidyanath contributed to this report.