The Liberal Housing Plan
With the 2025 Federal Election in the rearview mirror and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals set to form our next government (whether in the form of a majority or minority remains undetermined at the time of writing), the attentions of the Canadian electorate will now turn to how the Liberal platform will look in practice.
There’s no doubt that U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent antics cast a long shadow over the election this year; his not-so-subtly expressed desire to see Canada become the 51st state was the primary catalyst for the Liberals’ remarkable reversal of political fortune. Less than four months ago, the Conservative Party of Canada appeared set for a massive showing at the polls, with projections putting them well above 200 seats. But that was before January 20th and the start of Trump’s second term introduced many Canadians to the notion of tariffs, and before Mark Carney assumed the mantle of Liberal leadership from the outgoing Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
While tariff talk and Trump’s antics have dominated Canada’s political discourse in recent weeks, just beneath the surface remain a whole slate of issues which had been previously expected to headline the election’s key ballot box questions – the cost of living, inflation, energy policy and, most importantly for this blog’s purposes, the housing crisis.
Over the course of the campaign, each of Canada’s national parties tabled an individual plan to tackle the conjoined issues of the supply shortage and sky-high housing costs. As you’ll probably have seen in the party’s advertising on television repeatedly in the past month, the Liberals have promised to take a near-wartime approach to boost the number of new affordable housing units being built in this country – to grow new housing starts to levels “not seen since the Second World War.”
There are four key components to the Liberal plan to more than double the rate of homebuilding to 500,000 homes per year within the next decade:
- The creation of a new federal government body called “Build Canada Homes”, or BCH. This entity is proposed to act as a developer/builder of affordable homes, to manage projects, and to partner with homebuilders in the construction of these new units. The Liberal plan emphasizes their readiness to open up public lands to housing development, and to focus on the repurposing of existing property as residential housing.
- In aiming to facilitate the first point, the Liberal platform also emphasizes cutting red tape to get housing projects off the ground. Streamlining permitting, eliminating redundancies in the review process, and slashing municipal development fees all play a major part in this goal.
- In its new role, BCH will act as a sort of clearing house for federal funds allocated to housing – including debt financing and equity financing for Canadian prefabricated home builders, financing for Canadian technology and resource firms, and increased support for trades and apprenticeship programs.
- The elimination of the GST for first-time homebuyers on transactions at $1,000,000 and below.
It’s an ambitious program. And, as with all campaign promises, much easier said than done.
How these new entities and policies will end up looking in practice will only be known in time. Here in Ontario, housing starts have been at historical lows in recent years, in spite of promises made on behalf of the provincial government to prioritize this department. And, as we all know, intergovernmental cooperation rarely occurs as a smooth path from A to B. Any federally-led effort to lean on municipal governments to cut development fees is sure to meet local opposition.
We’re not pessimists by nature, but there’s no doubt that the country is facing generational economic headwinds right now. Any attempt to tackle the housing crisis will take a monumental effort and unprecedented cooperation between all levels of government. We sincerely hope that the new government and our Prime Minister are up to the task, and we wish them the best.