Ottawa, ON – Canada is experiencing a historic housing crisis, but the NDP-Liberal Government is still failing to build enough homes for Canadians. After nine years of Trudeau, rent, downpayments and mortgage payments have all doubled, after the NDP-Liberal Government presided over the worst housing inflation in the G7, relative to income.
Now, Trudeau’s own Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) reported today that Canada had 30,000 fewer housing starts in 2023 as a consequence of soaring interest rates, directly caused by Trudeau’s inflationary spending. In 2023, the CMHC recorded that Canada had 240,000 housing starts, which is down 8 percent from the previous year. This is well below the Trudeau Government’s own targets of building 3.87 million homes by 2030, which Canada needs just to restore housing affordability.
To make matters worse, the NDP-Liberal Government’s inability to fire gatekeepers and cut red tape is making housing even more unaffordable. As the CMHC said in their report, “significant barriers to increasing housing supply include the long-standing challenges of regulatory costs and delays.” Yet, instead of dealing with this problem, the NDP-Liberal government gave billions of dollars to the same gatekeepers who caused this housing hell in the first place.
In some cases, like Toronto and Vaughan, Trudeau gave massive amounts of money to local government gatekeepers who then immediately raised development taxes. In Toronto, they raised their taxes by more than $20,000 and in Vaughan, less than a year after receiving $59 million from Trudeau to reduce red tape, the gatekeepers increased development charges by 17.5 percent. No wonder that Canada has the second slowest building approval times in the OECD. In Vancouver, these development charges and red tape can add as much as $1.3 million to the cost of a single-detached home.
Now, the NDP-Liberal Government has decided to increase taxes on homebuilding through their capital gains inclusion rate increase. As the CMHC stated, “small investors provide much of the funding to build condo apartments” yet Trudeau’s capital gains increase will cripple this investment. In Quebec, the Corporation des Propriétaires Immobiliers du Québec has called this tax increase a “severe blow” to housing construction. But Trudeau is refusing to listen.
Enough is enough. Only Common Sense Conservatives will fire the gatekeepers, incentivize homebuilding and bring homes that Canadians can afford.