Ottawa, ON – In the last election, Mark Carney promised Canadians he would build half a million new homes every year and double the pace of housing construction. The latest Statistics Canada numbers show that Canada is not just building fewer homes; we’re now permitting fewer, too.
Across Canada, the number of residential housing permits issued declined 26 per cent in November as 8,015 fewer housing units were permitted compared to the month prior. Since Mark Carney became Prime Minister, there has been a 27.7 per cent drop in permitted units, with 8,731 fewer permits being issued in November than in March.
Carney’s own housing agency says housing starts need to reach between 430,000 to 480,000 units per year over the next decade to meet projected demand. Yet today’s release reveals that even the total number of permits, which will be significantly greater than the actual number of housing starts and actual completion of new homes, fails to come close to what’s needed to restore affordability.
That’s because Carney has no plan to get more housing built. The Parliamentary Budget Office found that Build Canada Homes will build just 5,000 units per year, with their ‘affordable’ rents potentially being double the national median market rent.
The same Liberals who locked a generation out of ever owning a home to call their own will never deliver the solutions to restore the dream of homeownership. Only Conservatives will deliver homes, jobs and hope by axing taxes on homebuilding, requiring municipalities to issue more permits and letting builders build the homes we need.