Pulling out all the stops: Liberals on housing supply and affordability crisis
Ahead of Budget 2024, the Liberals are pulling out all the stops when it comes to addressing the housing supply and affordability crisis, writes Ken Polk.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes a housing announcement in Calgary, Alta., Friday, April 5, 2024.
In politics, nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of defeat. When it comes to the housing supply and affordability crisis, the Liberals seem to have gotten the message.
The last two weeks have seen a slew of pre-budget housing announcements. It began with renter-friendly measures and continued last week with the roll out, among other things, of a $400 million top-up for the Housing Accelerator Fund and the launch of a new $6 billion Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund.
The Liberals also announced plans to enrich by $15 billion the application of the Apartment Construction Loan Program, which aims “to support partnerships with provinces and territories that launch their own ambitious housing plans.” They will also launch a new $1.5 billion Canada Rental Protection Fund to protect affordable housing and create thousands of new affordable apartments.
The announcements continued the trend of attaching housing-friendly conditions that provinces and municipalities will have to meet to access federal housing and infrastructure funding.
With the government trailing badly in the polls, the government is seeking to propose new policies or pick fights that has the potential to shake up the political landscape in its favour. The Liberals will surely be hoping that this week's flurry of announcements will fit that bill.
The quest to get more homes built faster has sparked several political and jurisdictional spats.
The Globe and Mail reported, for example, that details of the housing infrastructure announcement prompted “some provinces, including Quebec and Ontario, to quickly reject the program as an intrusion into their jurisdiction.”
The story quoted Quebec ministers Jean François Roberge and France-Élaine Duranceau saying: “We could never accept that the federal government interfere in our areas of jurisdiction while urgent issues under its responsibility are not taken care of. If the federal government wants to help solve the housing problem, it should correct, as of right now, the outsized proportion of asylum seekers directed to Quebec.”
Ontario Housing Minister Paul Calandra's office was quoted on the various federal conditions saying: “We know that local municipalities know their communities best and don’t believe in forcing them to build where it doesn’t make sense.”
