Canadians unable to find housing should contact their respective City Halls for help, according to federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser.
At a
press conference on Sept. 18, Mr. Fraser faced questions on what his government will do to address Canada’s housing crisis.
“What are you going to do for people who can’t find housing today?” asked a reporter, as first covered by Blacklock’s Reporter. “A lot of these measures are two years, three years down the road—it takes a long time to build apartment rentals.”
“People who are without an option today need to reach out to their local authorities who are actually managing the on-the-ground supports,” the minister replied. “And the situation varies, obviously from community to community.”
He acknowledged that the Liberals’ housing plan will take a “significant time to grow the housing stock.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
announced on Sept. 13 that his government has reached a $74 million agreement with London, Ont., to build 2,000 new homes in the city within three years, and thousands more over the next several years.
“I want to challenge other mayors right across the country to step up with their proposals so we can get building more homes, increasing supply and lowering the prices for families,” said Mr. Trudeau in London at the time.
The fund was first announced during the
2021 election campaign, with a vow to construct “100,000 new, middle-class homes by 2024-25.” It was then introduced in
Budget 2022 to “target the creation of 100,000 net new housing units” by 2027.
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the country will need
3.5 million new homes built within seven years to make homeownership affordable, forecasting supply gaps.
“An important reason for this decline is the current shortfall in housing construction,” said the CMHC in a
report published on
Sept. 13. “Materials have gotten more expensive, labour is in short supply, and it’s hard to get financing for construction.
In an attempt to lower labour and material costs, Mr. Trudeau announced, on Sept. 14, the suspension of $383 million in annual GST on new purpose-built apartment buildings.
The Liberals’s slumping
poll numbers suggest Canadians believe the Conservatives would do a better job dealing with affordability and housing concerns.
During
question period on Sept. 18, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre took a jab at Mr. Trudeau, saying house prices, mortgage costs and rents have doubled since the prime minister took office in 2015, despite his promise to make housing more affordable.
“[The prime minister] said housing is not his job. And then he panicked when he plummeted in the polls and recycled promises that he broke six years earlier,” Mr. Poilievre said.
“It took him eight years to cause this housing hell, how long will it take to fix it?”
Neil Sharma, Noé Chartier, and The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
