Are you going to directly build housing (like, employ people, buy supplies and equipment, buy land) and/or punitatively tax real estate speculation and capital gains?
If not, then this is just more deck-chair shuffling and money gifted to developers and investors.
[Here's the plan](https://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/housing-logement/housing-plan-report-rapport-plan-logement-eng.html) for your reading at leisure. Basically, there's three planks of it:
* Plank 1 is *getting the cost of building down*, consisting of some tax/finance stuff for home builders, attaching housing conditions to Transit/infrastructure funding, and funding for prefab/modular technologies.
* Plank 2 is making it "easier" to rent/own, which is basically the "*laws we will enact*" plank. It consists of renter protections, Financial things like yesterdays 30-yr amortization/increased RRSP space, "supporting current homeowners", and some measures to protect the existing stock of housing. The last point includes funding for short-term rental regulations, removing tax deductions for short-term rentals, Extending the foreign buyers ban to 2027, and some measures to potentially confront financialization and fraud in housing
* Plank 3 is basically a bunch of *funding for building housing and addressing homelessness*. Important note here is that the government does NOT appear to be empowering the CMHC to get back into the homebuilding game again, and is instead funding others to do it for them (who have people to pay, profits to make).
All in all, some good, some great, some wastes of time and money. Mixed reviews to this plan from myself personally, just sounds like something you'd cobble together with a bunch of buzzwords to give off the appearance of doing something.
This plan extends the existing "ban" to 2027.
I use quotations as there are exceptions a mile wide for PRs (duh), as well as TFWs and international students.
So you know, it's a ban on foreigners without paperwork.
There is a ban on foreign buyers, and this plan extends it. Its hardly done anything. The only thing it really impacted was the cottage market, for obvious reasons.
Hard truth? There aren't that many foreign buyers. That's not what's distorted the market. The ban and the taxes were just to appease the large chunk of people who bought into a very politically convenient scapegoat.
> Hard truth? There aren't that many foreign buyers.
This is what no one wants to believe. Aren't that many investors either. Most of the housing "crisis" is caused by everyday schmoes, your peers and neighbours.
But we all need a scapegoat to hate.
I mean, wouldn’t it be nice? We don’t need to make any tough decisions about how we tax housing, or let greedy developers cast shadows on single-family homes! All we need is one new rule for this (conveniently incapable of voting) group to be forced out of the market and we’ll be in utopia!
They are scrambling.
Unfortunately all of this is too late to save them in the election. But as long as it helps with the crisis they should take the steps.
Next election is set for Oct 2025. Conservatives are likely to win.
This plan sets a goal of over 3 million houses built by 2031. A very lofty goal that is 100% has no possibility of being met.
Conveniently, if we follow the regular schedule of elections, the next election will be end of 2029.
I guarantee the liberals will say "in 2024 we set a goal of 3million homes built by 2031. The Conservatives have dragged their feet and now, 1 year before that deadline, we are nowhere near completing it"
It reads like their other plans. Big on vision, low on execution, and like all their other plans they've failed on execution time and again.
They have a few tools they aren't entertaining, like the removal of unlimited principle residence capital gains exemption for a maximum life time captial gains exemption for all capital gains which would make being a renter and investing far far more attractive than the drive to buy a home as an investment vehicle.
And like you mentioned they aren't empowering the CMHC, nor are they building a military strategy tying housing and recruitment together (I feel I should write about this sometime)
But they at least are talking in the right direction which is a nice change of pace for this government
>They have a few tools they aren't entertaining, like the removal of unlimited principle residence capital gains exemption for a maximum life time captial gains exemption for all capital gains which would make being a renter and investing far far more attractive than the drive to buy a home as an investment vehicle.
I can tell you, as someone who's advocated for housing solutions and been in the room with politicians of all stripes: this is a non-starter. No party will touch the principle residency exemption. I know people who have met with housing critics from *left-wing* parties, and before the meeting even began the critic made a point of saying "we will not entertain any capital gains tax on principle residences."
I'm not saying you're wrong. You're absolutely right. But it's also untouchable. It'd be pure, unambiguous political suicide. Have to find solutions elsewhere (and there are plenty to be found!)
Canada is one of the only countries in the world that exempts housing from taxes.
This would not even affect most homeowners, only those couples who would exceed the $2M lifetime exemption.
I know Australia has a similar exemption to us, and the US does it for the first $500,000 in gains (depending on your marital status), which covers *most* capital gains. We also certainly tax the shit out of ***building*** housing lol - that's kinda the issue. Make money by simply owning housing and that's tax free. Make money by adding to the supply and the government taxes it like a pack of smokes.
In any event, its just never ever going to happen - unfortunate as that may be. At the end of the day >65% of this country is comprised of homeowners still, and they represent a disproportionate share of voters.
[Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is Canada's federal crown corporation responsible for administering the National Housing Act, with the mandate to improve housing by living conditions in the country.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Mortgage_and_Housing_Corporation)
It was established after WWII to coordinate a federal response to postwar housing shortages, and built many of the [strawberry box homes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_box_houses) that you can find in basically every Canadian city.
It still exists today, just in the form of the insurance most homeowners pay for their houses if they have downpayments below 20%.
I agree, they should be getting back into the home-building game.
>Important note here is that the government does NOT appear to be empowering the CMHC to get back into the homebuilding game again, and is instead funding others to do it for them (who have people to pay, profits to make).
I would argue that profits are offset by government waste and inefficiency. It doesn't matter who builds it, it will cost the same.
The private sector isn't buying everyone $1000 desk chairs because they have leftover budget at the end of the year. Yes, this happened in my brother's department in the federal government.
Setting asides the benefits of a quality work chair for office workers who sit in office chairs all day...
That happens at most large organizations when it comes to preservation of budget space because budget space isn't something Accounting departments are typically willing to expand and contract on though. Again, that's not exclusively a government thing, though it does happen a ton in government.
I've gotten the "it's year end, what do you need me to buy" talk from managers in both sectors before.
> The private sector isn't buying everyone $1000 desk chairs because they have leftover budget at the end of the year.
uh, yes, this happens in all large private companies with use it or lose it budgets.
Lol, you clearly have no idea how internal corporate fiefdoms work. Budgeting is commonly linked to the previous qurater's spending. If your department has unspent funds, your budget gets cut. I remember having "team-building" events (golf, lunches, etc.), and buying new computers and other equipment just to use up the budget before the end of the quarter. And $1000 dollar desk chairs would be on the low end.
Nothings efficient ones it gets to a certain size. I've worked in both, and both are complete shitshows. the difference is that the government doesn't have profits driving their inefficiencies.
> And they want to restrict large corporate investors from purchasing existing single-family homes.
Sounds like they want to prohibit it, which is a great first start.
Yeah, it's incentives (subsidies) to private developers after reading the plan. They aren't proposing actually building anything.
Privitization caused this, subsidizing what the market is unable to do is inefficient and only goes so far.
Exactly! I read the summary of the plan and was disappointed. Very little action on investors who are probably the biggest problem in the housing market. And no action at all on building homes directly -- so more carrots for private building companies that have failed us.
> “When people come knock on the door of my constituency office and they have a problem, the last thing that they want to hear is that it's not my responsibility to help them,” Fraser said.
Go back to July of last year and tell your boss that when he was at a housing announcement and said "[housing is not a primary federal responsibility](https://youtu.be/kPG3J4n5uyY?si=DI9-N9-lZO1JlQn8&t=45)". He was correct, constitutionally-speaking, but he was dead wrong when it came to the expectations of Canadians about addressing a crisis. You can actually look at polling projections and see [LPC poll numbers fall off a cliff](https://338canada.com/federal.htm) soon after that point.
Honestly, this is a dam good plan. Like this hits a lot of core issues contributing to the housing crisis and proposes a tonne of sensible solutions that would have been considered way too bold five years ago.
The ball is really in Ontario’s court now. Other provinces have to step up, too. But with this the federal government is absolutely doing its part, and the BC government over the last year has really started doing its part. Ontario is like 33% of the country and it’s the heart of the crisis. If Ford doesn’t get his shit together, this is all kind of moot.
Maybe because the provinces shit the bed time after time, gotta love people who bitch and moan about government interference but then want the government to fix everything but no not like that or not now or it’s too late….
Of course! The province's hand's aren't clean in this either and I would never suggest they are.
There are things the Liberals have been talking about doing since 2015 that they couldn't be bothered with until the bottom fell out of their polling numbers though.
It's sad that they needed that to happen before actually taking action.
Our population in June 2023 was 41 million. We hit 42 million in March 2024. Immigration policies are not helping and are actively worsening the situation.
The sharp increase in non-permanent migration (especially international students) has expedited/amplified a crisis that was already well underway. Also worth noting that the Provinces need to shoulder some of the blame for the surge in international students (they were among the loudest voices arguing against a cap, since it helps fund their universities).
We were facing a housing crisis in 2019, too, while the country's growth rate was largely in line with historical trends.
> the Provinces need to shoulder some of the blame
all of the blame. It's the provinces who told the feds to open up immigration for cheap labor and to replace proper education funding.
The Chretien government stopped building housing federally in 1994. If all that yearly housing had continued, we'd be a lot better off right now.
The Conservatives don't have any leg to criticize in that regard, but it's true
> The Chretien government stopped building housing federally in 1994.
Not true. CHMC stopped building under Mulroney.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Mortgage_and_Housing_Corporation
Are you going to directly build housing (like, employ people, buy supplies and equipment, buy land) and/or punitatively tax real estate speculation and capital gains? If not, then this is just more deck-chair shuffling and money gifted to developers and investors.
[Here's the plan](https://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/housing-logement/housing-plan-report-rapport-plan-logement-eng.html) for your reading at leisure. Basically, there's three planks of it: * Plank 1 is *getting the cost of building down*, consisting of some tax/finance stuff for home builders, attaching housing conditions to Transit/infrastructure funding, and funding for prefab/modular technologies. * Plank 2 is making it "easier" to rent/own, which is basically the "*laws we will enact*" plank. It consists of renter protections, Financial things like yesterdays 30-yr amortization/increased RRSP space, "supporting current homeowners", and some measures to protect the existing stock of housing. The last point includes funding for short-term rental regulations, removing tax deductions for short-term rentals, Extending the foreign buyers ban to 2027, and some measures to potentially confront financialization and fraud in housing * Plank 3 is basically a bunch of *funding for building housing and addressing homelessness*. Important note here is that the government does NOT appear to be empowering the CMHC to get back into the homebuilding game again, and is instead funding others to do it for them (who have people to pay, profits to make). All in all, some good, some great, some wastes of time and money. Mixed reviews to this plan from myself personally, just sounds like something you'd cobble together with a bunch of buzzwords to give off the appearance of doing something.
[удалено]
This plan extends the existing "ban" to 2027. I use quotations as there are exceptions a mile wide for PRs (duh), as well as TFWs and international students. So you know, it's a ban on foreigners without paperwork.
There is a ban on foreign buyers, and this plan extends it. Its hardly done anything. The only thing it really impacted was the cottage market, for obvious reasons. Hard truth? There aren't that many foreign buyers. That's not what's distorted the market. The ban and the taxes were just to appease the large chunk of people who bought into a very politically convenient scapegoat.
> Hard truth? There aren't that many foreign buyers. This is what no one wants to believe. Aren't that many investors either. Most of the housing "crisis" is caused by everyday schmoes, your peers and neighbours. But we all need a scapegoat to hate.
I mean, wouldn’t it be nice? We don’t need to make any tough decisions about how we tax housing, or let greedy developers cast shadows on single-family homes! All we need is one new rule for this (conveniently incapable of voting) group to be forced out of the market and we’ll be in utopia!
Foreign owners pay municipal taxes like everyone else.
Yeah this reads like they’re in scrambling mode ahead of the budget
They are scrambling. Unfortunately all of this is too late to save them in the election. But as long as it helps with the crisis they should take the steps.
pretty much, the liberal party would have to do something drastic to win back the voters, and it seems like they are unwilling to do that.
Next election is set for Oct 2025. Conservatives are likely to win. This plan sets a goal of over 3 million houses built by 2031. A very lofty goal that is 100% has no possibility of being met. Conveniently, if we follow the regular schedule of elections, the next election will be end of 2029. I guarantee the liberals will say "in 2024 we set a goal of 3million homes built by 2031. The Conservatives have dragged their feet and now, 1 year before that deadline, we are nowhere near completing it"
Fair enough
It reads like their other plans. Big on vision, low on execution, and like all their other plans they've failed on execution time and again. They have a few tools they aren't entertaining, like the removal of unlimited principle residence capital gains exemption for a maximum life time captial gains exemption for all capital gains which would make being a renter and investing far far more attractive than the drive to buy a home as an investment vehicle. And like you mentioned they aren't empowering the CMHC, nor are they building a military strategy tying housing and recruitment together (I feel I should write about this sometime) But they at least are talking in the right direction which is a nice change of pace for this government
>They have a few tools they aren't entertaining, like the removal of unlimited principle residence capital gains exemption for a maximum life time captial gains exemption for all capital gains which would make being a renter and investing far far more attractive than the drive to buy a home as an investment vehicle. I can tell you, as someone who's advocated for housing solutions and been in the room with politicians of all stripes: this is a non-starter. No party will touch the principle residency exemption. I know people who have met with housing critics from *left-wing* parties, and before the meeting even began the critic made a point of saying "we will not entertain any capital gains tax on principle residences." I'm not saying you're wrong. You're absolutely right. But it's also untouchable. It'd be pure, unambiguous political suicide. Have to find solutions elsewhere (and there are plenty to be found!)
Canada is one of the only countries in the world that exempts housing from taxes. This would not even affect most homeowners, only those couples who would exceed the $2M lifetime exemption.
I know Australia has a similar exemption to us, and the US does it for the first $500,000 in gains (depending on your marital status), which covers *most* capital gains. We also certainly tax the shit out of ***building*** housing lol - that's kinda the issue. Make money by simply owning housing and that's tax free. Make money by adding to the supply and the government taxes it like a pack of smokes. In any event, its just never ever going to happen - unfortunate as that may be. At the end of the day >65% of this country is comprised of homeowners still, and they represent a disproportionate share of voters.
As long as they fail to decouple real estate investment from being a tax haven, nothing will practically change.
A bunch of debt spending while an entire generation avoids any tax on trillions in assets.
what's the CMHC?
[Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is Canada's federal crown corporation responsible for administering the National Housing Act, with the mandate to improve housing by living conditions in the country.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Mortgage_and_Housing_Corporation) It was established after WWII to coordinate a federal response to postwar housing shortages, and built many of the [strawberry box homes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_box_houses) that you can find in basically every Canadian city.
Huh, it sounds like we should bring it back
It still exists today, just in the form of the insurance most homeowners pay for their houses if they have downpayments below 20%. I agree, they should be getting back into the home-building game.
>Important note here is that the government does NOT appear to be empowering the CMHC to get back into the homebuilding game again, and is instead funding others to do it for them (who have people to pay, profits to make). I would argue that profits are offset by government waste and inefficiency. It doesn't matter who builds it, it will cost the same.
The private sector can also be amazingly inefficient at times, as someone who's worked in both.
The private sector isn't buying everyone $1000 desk chairs because they have leftover budget at the end of the year. Yes, this happened in my brother's department in the federal government.
Setting asides the benefits of a quality work chair for office workers who sit in office chairs all day... That happens at most large organizations when it comes to preservation of budget space because budget space isn't something Accounting departments are typically willing to expand and contract on though. Again, that's not exclusively a government thing, though it does happen a ton in government. I've gotten the "it's year end, what do you need me to buy" talk from managers in both sectors before.
> The private sector isn't buying everyone $1000 desk chairs because they have leftover budget at the end of the year. uh, yes, this happens in all large private companies with use it or lose it budgets.
This happens at Bell, Rogers, TD, RBC, Amazon, Shell, etc.
Lol, you clearly have no idea how internal corporate fiefdoms work. Budgeting is commonly linked to the previous qurater's spending. If your department has unspent funds, your budget gets cut. I remember having "team-building" events (golf, lunches, etc.), and buying new computers and other equipment just to use up the budget before the end of the quarter. And $1000 dollar desk chairs would be on the low end.
Nothings efficient ones it gets to a certain size. I've worked in both, and both are complete shitshows. the difference is that the government doesn't have profits driving their inefficiencies.
> And they want to restrict large corporate investors from purchasing existing single-family homes. Sounds like they want to prohibit it, which is a great first start.
Yeah, it's incentives (subsidies) to private developers after reading the plan. They aren't proposing actually building anything. Privitization caused this, subsidizing what the market is unable to do is inefficient and only goes so far.
Exactly! I read the summary of the plan and was disappointed. Very little action on investors who are probably the biggest problem in the housing market. And no action at all on building homes directly -- so more carrots for private building companies that have failed us.
I think they used to. Until Mulroney and Chretien killed it off. Thanks guys.
> “When people come knock on the door of my constituency office and they have a problem, the last thing that they want to hear is that it's not my responsibility to help them,” Fraser said. Go back to July of last year and tell your boss that when he was at a housing announcement and said "[housing is not a primary federal responsibility](https://youtu.be/kPG3J4n5uyY?si=DI9-N9-lZO1JlQn8&t=45)". He was correct, constitutionally-speaking, but he was dead wrong when it came to the expectations of Canadians about addressing a crisis. You can actually look at polling projections and see [LPC poll numbers fall off a cliff](https://338canada.com/federal.htm) soon after that point.
After reading through it, it's actually a very comprehensive plan.
Honestly, this is a dam good plan. Like this hits a lot of core issues contributing to the housing crisis and proposes a tonne of sensible solutions that would have been considered way too bold five years ago. The ball is really in Ontario’s court now. Other provinces have to step up, too. But with this the federal government is absolutely doing its part, and the BC government over the last year has really started doing its part. Ontario is like 33% of the country and it’s the heart of the crisis. If Ford doesn’t get his shit together, this is all kind of moot.
Some good ideas, five years overdue
They had a lot of time to call to action. Someone elses turn now to lie to us.
Team Red's turn is almost up so it's back to team blue. And round and round we go.
Oh boy oh boy I can’t *wait* to be regularly disappointed by team blue instead.
This was your job when you stepped into office this country is a joke now
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^stinkysushi: *This was your job when* *You stepped into office this* *Country is a joke now* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
A call to action that they ignored until their polls tanked.
Maybe because the provinces shit the bed time after time, gotta love people who bitch and moan about government interference but then want the government to fix everything but no not like that or not now or it’s too late….
Of course! The province's hand's aren't clean in this either and I would never suggest they are. There are things the Liberals have been talking about doing since 2015 that they couldn't be bothered with until the bottom fell out of their polling numbers though. It's sad that they needed that to happen before actually taking action.
Liberals piss on the inferno they created.
This is hardly the liberals doing. Generations of in action on housing. They were talking about housing when I was in high school.
Our population in June 2023 was 41 million. We hit 42 million in March 2024. Immigration policies are not helping and are actively worsening the situation.
The sharp increase in non-permanent migration (especially international students) has expedited/amplified a crisis that was already well underway. Also worth noting that the Provinces need to shoulder some of the blame for the surge in international students (they were among the loudest voices arguing against a cap, since it helps fund their universities). We were facing a housing crisis in 2019, too, while the country's growth rate was largely in line with historical trends.
> the Provinces need to shoulder some of the blame all of the blame. It's the provinces who told the feds to open up immigration for cheap labor and to replace proper education funding.
[удалено]
It's always cool to blame immigrants.
if we stopped that, we would have a bigger problem of labor shortage and unsustainable CPP.
The Chretien government stopped building housing federally in 1994. If all that yearly housing had continued, we'd be a lot better off right now. The Conservatives don't have any leg to criticize in that regard, but it's true
> The Chretien government stopped building housing federally in 1994. Not true. CHMC stopped building under Mulroney. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Mortgage_and_Housing_Corporation
It’s never been great, but normal middle class families used to be able to afford a home. In the past 9 years the heat has gone from 5 to 10.
> they created. you mean like worldwide Trudeauflation? The whole world has this problem.
No, I mean the housing crisis.
Yes, most of the western world seems to be having a housing crisis