The federal Liberals have unveiled their plan to solve the housing crisis, building on recent announcements with new tax incentives, more than $1 billion for the homeless and a nationwide effort to build more housing on public land.
“Today we released the most comprehensive and ambitious housing plan ever seen in Canada,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in Vaughan, Ontario. on Friday.
“It is a plan to build housing, even for renters, on a scale not seen in generations. “We are talking about almost 3.9 million homes by 2031.”
The parliamentary budget officer released a report Thursday estimating Canada would need to build 3.1 million homes by 2030 to close the housing gap.
The 28-page document, which arrives days before the federal budget, is the minority government’s latest effort to set the agenda on affordability while losing significant ground to the Conservatives on cost-of-living issues.
Ottawa is also sending a message to provinces, territories and municipalities that they too will have to step up, calling the plan a “call to action.”
“There is no way that one level of government is going to solve the national housing crisis alone,” Housing Minister Sean Fraser said in an interview.
“But if we work together… and create incentives to encourage each other to adopt policies that help us get to where we need to be, I know we can accomplish this extraordinarily important task.”
The Liberals’ plan promises to address the spectrum of housing affordability challenges facing Canadians, from the unattainable dream of homeownership to rising rental costs and homelessness.
While much of the plan was announced during or even before the government’s pre-budget tour, the document sets out several new measures, including expanded tax incentives for housing construction.
The federal government intends to increase the capital cost allowance rate for apartments from 4 percent to 10 percent, which will increase the amount builders can write off on their taxes.
It is also extending the GST exemption on rent to student residences built by universities, colleges and public school authorities.
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The plan also allocates more money to address homelessness as communities across the country struggle with encampments and limited shelter spaces.
The Liberal government is topping out the Reaching Homes program, a federal homeless initiative, with an additional $1 billion over four years.
Another $250 million is allocated to help communities end encampments and transition people into housing. The federal government is asking provinces and territories to match that amount.
The Liberals are also promising a “historic change” in the way the government uses public land to build housing, which will involve making more land available for housing construction and leasing land rather than selling it.
And they want to prevent large corporate investors from buying existing single-family homes.
Other points of the plan include training more specialized workers, facilitating the recognition of foreign credentials and boosting productivity in the construction industry, measures that would presumably speed up the housing construction process.
Implementation of the Liberals’ housing plan will depend in part on the cooperation of the provinces and territories, some of which have already rejected the federal government for what they say is jurisdictional overreach.
Quebec, Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick were unhappy with Ottawa’s decision to condition access to new infrastructure funding on a number of conditions, including the legalization of quads.
But Fraser rejected that criticism, arguing that Canadians just want their problems resolved.
“When people knock on the door of my constituency office and have a problem, the last thing they want to hear is that it’s not my responsibility to help them,” Fraser said.
“So, from my point of view, it was important that we do everything we can to rise to the challenge and demonstrate to Canadians that even when there might be technical jurisdictional obstacles, that would not give us a reason to do anything less than the best we can.” .
As the Liberals aggressively sell their housing plan, whether it reaches Canadians will depend on whether they still have faith that the government of the day can solve their problems.
The federal Conservatives, who have maintained a double-digit lead in public opinion polls since the summer, appear to have managed to convince a large contingent of voters that the Liberals only make cost-of-living issues worse.
In the wake of the government’s recent housing announcements, federal Conservatives have dismissed them, arguing that pouring more money into “government bureaucracy” will not solve the housing crisis.
“Trudeau has been in power for eight years. And he’s been making ads like that since 2015. What are the results? conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said in a recent media interview.
Fraser acknowledged that the Conservatives have managed to capture the attention of Canadians on housing, but said their solutions do not cover what is needed.
“I think it is dangerous when politicians seek to take advantage of people’s real anxieties without doing anything to help them. He communicates to me that he is motivated more by his appetite to seize political power than to help people who are struggling,” Fraser said.
Poilievre has argued that the government should step aside and allow developers to build more housing.
His proposed housing plan focuses largely on requiring cities to increase housing construction by 15 percent each year to receive their usual infrastructure spending, or see their funds withheld. Those who build more than the target would be eligible to receive “bonuses.”
© 2024 The Canadian Press
