Ottawa, ON – After a decade of rising housing costs that pushed homeownership out of reach for a generation of Canadians, Carney said we needed to build “at a pace not seen since the Second World War,” and promised to double housing construction to 500,000 homes per year.
Today, his own housing agency showed that last year, Canada started building just 259,028 homes, half of the number Carney promised. In Toronto, starts were down 31 per cent compared to 2024, while in other major Ontario cities, starts fell 13 per cent.
The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation says housing starts need to reach between 430,000 to 480,000 units per year over the next decade to meet projected demand, yet Canada hasn’t even issued enough building permits to meet that target, despite the fact that the number of permits will be significantly higher than the number of starts. Instead of sticking to his promises to Canadians, Carney backed down to gatekeepers who have blocked the housing we need.
The Canadian Homebuilders Association noted that “the budget unfortunately retreats from the Liberal platform’s commitment to work with municipalities to reduce development taxes by 50 percent. Over the past two decades, these taxes have soared by 700%, pricing countless Canadians out of the market.”
As a result, buyers are paying over $130,000 per apartment in Toronto, almost $98,000 per condo in Mississauga and over $62,000 per unit in Coquitlam just on municipal taxes. It’s even worse for single-family homes. Toronto and Markham are charging over $180,000 per home, while Mississauga adds $135,000 to the cost of a new home and Coquitlam levies almost $113,000 in taxes.
In return for hiking prices for buyers, the Liberals rewarded cities with millions. Cities in Metro Vancouver were given nearly $400 million. Now the region is planning to triple development charges from the 2024 rates, which developers say will add another $14,000 to the price of a unit and stall housing construction across Vancouver.
With builders unable to build and buyers unable to buy, sellers are now also unable to sell. Home sales have fallen 10 per cent in Metro Vancouver, marking the lowest year in over 20 years. It’s no surprise that Scotiabank reports that more than half of first-time buyers who intend to purchase in the next five years feel buying a home is still out of reach.
The situation is no better for those renting, as the average rent for two-bedroom units rose 5.1 per cent last year. A person earning the average income in the GTA will need to spend 42 per cent of their after-tax income just to afford a one-bedroom, while two-thirds of a minimum wage paycheque would be required to pay for a studio.
Carney’s solution is another multi-billion-dollar bureaucracy that the Parliamentary Budget Office found will build just 5,000 homes per year, 1 per cent of what the Liberals promised. Far from lowering costs, the PBO found that a two-bedroom under the Liberals’ affordability formula would cost $2,168 per month for the median household, nearly double the $1,100 per month national median for market rent.
The same Liberals who created the housing crisis – including the Minister of Housing who hiked development charges by 141 per cent and increased housing costs by 149 per cent while mayor – will never fix it.
Only Conservatives will restore the dream of homeownership by axing taxes on homebuilding, requiring municipalities to issue more permits and letting builders build the homes we need.