The Conservatives didn’t waste much time before seizing upon Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent comments on skyrocketing housing costs—one of the most impactful issues Canada is grappling with.
“Housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters on July 31, seeming to shift the bulk of the burden for solving Canada’s affordability crisis on other levels of government.
He made the comment while announcing a $45 million federal investment in housing projects in Hamilton, while also saying his government “can and must help” with housing.
Shortly after, the Conservatives posted a
montage of Mr. Trudeau during the 2015 and 2021 election campaigns promising to solve housing affordability, versus today where he implies it’s the responsibility of other jurisdictions.
“The biggest housing agency in Canada, CMHC [Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation], is federal. Mortgage insurance: federal. Taxes, fiscal, and monetary policy: federal, federal, federal. Immigration: federal. Infrastructure money: federal,” Mr. Poilievre
told reporters on Aug. 1.
“All these things are federal, and yet the federal prime minister claims he has nothing to do with it.”
With polls over the past few years showing housing affordability to be a high priority for many voters, and the Liberals falling 10 points behind the Conservatives in the latest Abacus
poll, shifting responsibility on the file may not be a feasible plan for the Liberal government.
Housing Woes
Mortgage interest costs rose 30 percent year over year in June, and rent was up 5.8 percent,
according to Statistics Canada in a July 18
news release.
The national average home price was
$709,218 in June, up 6.7 percent from June last year and up 55 percent since Mr. Trudeau took office in
November 2015, when it was $456,186.
The prices have come down, however, since they peaked in
February 2022 with a national average home price of $816,720. Bank of Canada rate hikes will likely continue to slow price increases,
said CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart in a July 14 press release. But he still expects prices to rise rather than fall.
Immigration is one of the major factors expected to increase demand and strain on the market.
Canada aims to accept 465,000 new permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024, and 500,000 in 2025, particularly those with skills needed for the labour market.
After Mr. Trudeau shuffled his cabinet on July 26, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser became the new housing and infrastructure minister.
Mr. Fraser told reporters during his swearing-in that he’s committed to building more housing to meet the needs of newcomers.
“When I talked to developers, in my capacity as a minister of immigration before today, one of the chief obstacles to completing the projects that they want to get done is having access to the labour force to build the houses that they need,” he said.
Meanwhile, provincial and municipal leaders are also looking to the feds for more funding to support local housing projects.
Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi and Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, along with Jason Nixon, Alberta’s minister of seniors, community, and social services, jointly
wrote to Mr. Fraser on July 27 expressing disappointment that CMHC only approved six of Alberta’s 39 applications for federal Rapid Housing Initiative funding.
A group of
mayors in northern Ontario banded together in June to push for more federal housing funds, echoing earlier calls from the
provincial government. They said Ontario is missing out on its proportional share of national housing strategy dollars, to the tune of some $490 million.
B.C. Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon also recently called on Ottawa for more funding for housing construction, suggesting in March, ahead of the federal budget release, that immigration goals be tied to both housing starts and funding for affordable housing.
Voter Priority
Housing has been one of the top issues for voters in recent years. It was among the top five priorities for 52 percent of Ontarians who responded to a
Postmedia-Leger poll released in April 2022.
Future Majority, a national non-partisan organization encouraging young people to vote, found in polls last year that affordability is a top issue for young people.
Even during the pandemic, many voters said affordable housing was the issue of greatest urgency.
About 40.8 percent of respondents to a Nanos Research poll in the Greater Toronto Area published in August 2021 said affordable housing was the single biggest issue in the region.
