Canadian Politics Thread

[The Lock]

3 minutes ago, Boudrias said:

Hard question. It was just announced that Cranbrook will get a rebuilt extended care facility with a $152 million cost. 182 beds. Let's face it those 182 beds will be filled with boomers. A good cause but should that money go towards educating more doctors who will in turn treat the entire demographic? The boomers, or the majority of them, will be mostly gone in 15 - 20 years. Currently the federal government is paying more on debt service than they are transferring to the provinces. +/- $50 billion a year (CTV Question Period). Many of us fear a very serious debt crisis. That will lead to very hard choices. Oh, I am a boomer by the way.   

 

I don't disagree with you. I think just adding beds is tiptoeing around the problem rather than solving it. There's a reason why a lot of doctors and nurses hightail it to Alberta. There's a lower cost of living there, cheaper housing, and higher wages generally.

 

Of course, if we base things on that, then we realise the REAL problem is actually the housing market and prices there. Solve that and I bet a lot of dominos fall into place. It's amazing how everything connects with each other.

Edited November 27, 2023 by The Lock

[Optimist Prime]

2 minutes ago, Boudrias said:

Hard question. It was just announced that Cranbrook will get a rebuilt extended care facility with a $152 million cost. 182 beds. Let's face it those 182 beds will be filled with boomers. A good cause but should that money go towards educating more doctors who will in turn treat the entire demographic? The boomers, or the majority of them, will be mostly gone in 15 - 20 years. Currently the federal government is paying more on debt service than they are transferring to the provinces. +/- $50 billion a year (CTV Question Period). Many of us fear a very serious debt crisis. That will lead to very hard choices. Oh, I am a boomer by the way.   

our neighbour to the south owes an incredible amount more per capita and as a % of GDP than us, we just went over a milestone round number, making everyone freak out but our number is among the lowest debt per capita and among the lowest debt relative to GDP in the world. Just an FYI. 

[Boudrias]

5 minutes ago, The Lock said:

 

Separate views or not, he's still the leader of the party and, as such, a lot of Canadians are going to view his views as being the party's views. It won't matter if the party itself is different than him. The average person is not going to do their research about it. It'll be "Do I vote for Trudeau or someone else?"

When you consider the power in the PMO your observation is bang on. Our PM has more power than the POTUS with how they run their respective countries. Trudeau has a record he has to defend and PP does not. It becomes incumbent on PP to explain and defend his platform. 

[Boudrias]

3 minutes ago, Optimist Prime said:

our neighbour to the south owes an incredible amount more per capita and as a % of GDP than us, we just went over a milestone round number, making everyone freak out but our number is among the lowest debt per capita and among the lowest debt relative to GDP in the world. Just an FYI. 

It is worth looking at debt in aggregate. When you add federal, provincial and municipal debt in Canada together the figure is around $2.3 billion. Consumer debt is over $2 trillion. In the USA their federal debt is over $33 trillion I believe. USA state and municipal governments are more restricted on how they fund but those numbers are not known to me. I remember cases of cities in California not being able to pay their bonds. Needless to say both are in a scary spot IMHO. I believe the USA Social Security fund is in bad shape. 

 

I don't believe a $ of GDP is worth as much in Canada as in the USA. I say that because Canada is still primarily a resource based economy which is a global price taker. The American economy deals in higher margin production and exports far less than Canada does on a % basis. The USD is the currency of international settlement and floats many trillions of $'s around the world. They are kinda like the Swiss and can run their printing presses and create money for free.  

[Elias Pettersson]

1 hour ago, aGENT said:

 

It is true. I said it STARTED then, I didn't say houses were $1m+ 30 years ago. 

 

How exactly did it start 30 years ago?  30 years ago is when the city started to do presales of condos.  Condos were all over the place in the mid 1990's.  There was a glut of them and some couldn't even be sold.  The problem that happened in the 1990's is that TOO MANY condos were being built, and the city and the builders took shortcuts to get as many condos out there as possible.  That is what started the leaky condo crisis of the 1990's.  Inferior building codes and shady building practices by developers caused hundreds of buildings to start leaking.  The government needed to step in to write cheques to these homeowners to make sure they could afford to fix their condos.  That's when the HPO was created, a government agency that basically wrote cheques to leaky condo owners to help then pay for their special levies.  Some owners were faced with $40-50k in special levies just to fix the building they were living in.

 

The leaky condo market caused the market to crash in the late 1990's.  It didn't recover until 2002.  This is why prices of homes didn't change much from 1993 to 2003.  The market started getting alot busier in the 2000's until 2008 when the financial markets crashed.  Again, that caused the housing market to crash.  This is why in 2013 the price of a house in Vancouver was only $800,000.  

 

However, after 2013, the market exploded, and prices started to rise exponentially.  This is when the government got caught with their pants down with not enough building going on.  The other issue was that the government was more than happy with all of the foreign investment, which is a big reason why prices went up so quickly.  Foreigners were scooping up presale condos left and right.  They were flipping them for massive profits as well.  Same with houses.  Houses were being bought and flipped with a $200-300k profit in only a matter of a couple of months.  It was crazy.  This all happened during the Christy Clark days under the Liberal government in BC.  The government was making billions in revenue through the property transfer tax as well as through capital gains from all of the flippers.  That is why the Liberals had a surplus budget all those years.

 

Finally, people had enough and forced the government to institute a foreign buyers tax.  That slowed down the market for a short time, but with lower interest rates, the locals kept the train going and prices kept rising.  The only thing that stopped prices from going up further was COVID.  But that only lasted a short time.  As the government printed all that money to keep the economy going, inflation ensued, causing interest rates to go up exponentially.  Finally, with these higher rates, the market has slowed down and prices have flattened out and gone down a little bit.

 

During all of this time, developers were not able to get enough market housing out to the public.  This is due to all of the red tape that is involved with building a high rise.  It takes 8 years for a developer to buy land and eventually build the high rise.  So much red tape is involved just to get the permits and the rezoning from the city.  Plus, on top of that the city takes around a 26% cut in development fees which is added to the price of the condos.  So not only is the government responsible for all the delays in getting housing out to the market, but they are also directly responsible for the rising costs of building the condos, which of course the developers pass along to the consumers.

 

This Liberal government under Trudeau has done nothing to solve the housing problem since they were elected in 2015.  In fact, things have gotten worse under Trudeau's leadership.  Empty promises have been the story for 8 years.  People have had enough.  PP may not be the answer, but I can assure you that Trudeau will lose the next election in a landslide no matter who the opposition leader is...

Edited November 27, 2023 by Elias Pettersson

[4petesake]

29 minutes ago, The Lock said:

 

I don't disagree with you. I think just adding beds is tiptoeing around the problem rather than solving it. There's a reason why a lot of doctors and nurses hightail it to Alberta. There's a lower cost of living there, cheaper housing, and higher wages generally.

 

 

There aren’t as many doctors heading to Alberta as you think. I can’t find the numbers for 2022 but with Smith and the UCP vowing to dismantlle Alberta Health Services  I can’t imagine they have improved.

 

 

[The Lock]

Just now, 4petesake said:

 

There aren’t as many doctors heading to Alberta as you think. I can’t find the numbers for 2022 but with Smith and the UCP vowing to dismantlle Alberta Health Services  I can’t imagine they have improved.

 

 

 

Fair enough, and I can see things having been changed; however, we also have to consider the fact that the housing crisis we've had has been going on for quite a while at this point, arguably long before 2017. Then we have to consider the pandemic which would likely have been a major factor in the changing of those numbers as well.

 

It doesn't really change the fact that physicians are moving elsewhere rather than moving to BC, which is really the point I was making.

[4petesake]

15 minutes ago, Elias Pettersson said:

 

How exactly did it start 30 years ago?  30 years ago is when the city started to do presales of condos.  Condos were all over the place in the mid 1990's.  There was a glut of them and some couldn't even be sold.  The problem that happened in the 1990's is that TOO MANY condos were being built, and the city and the builders took shortcuts to get as many condos out there as possible.  That is what started the leaky condo crisis of the 1990's.  Inferior building codes and shady building practices by developers caused hundreds of buildings to start leaking.  The government needed to step in to write cheques to these homeowners to make sure they could afford to fix their condos.  That's when the HPO was created, a government agency that basically wrote cheques to leaky condo owners to help then pay for their special levies.  Some owners were faced with $40-50k in special levies just to fix the building they were living in.

 

The leaky condo market caused the market to crash in the late 1990's.  It didn't recover until 2002.  This is why prices of homes didn't change much from 1993 to 2003.  The market started getting alot busier in the 2000's until 2008 when the financial markets crashed.  Again, that caused the housing market to crash.  This is why in 2013 the price of a house in Vancouver was only $800,000.  

 

However, after 2013, the market exploded, and prices started to rise exponentially.  This is when the government got caught with their pants down with not enough building going on.  The other issue was that the government was more than happy with all of the foreign investment, which is a big reason why prices went up so quickly.  Foreigners were scooping up presale condos left and right.  They were flipping them for massive profits as well.  Same with houses.  Houses were being bought and flipped with a $200-300k profit in only a matter of a couple of months.  It was crazy.  This all happened during the Christy Clark days under the Liberal government in BC.  The government was making billions in revenue through the property transfer tax as well as through capital gains from all of the flippers.  That is why the Liberals had a surplus budget all those years.

 

Finally, people had enough and forced the government to institute a foreign buyers tax.  That slowed down the market for a short time, but with lower interest rates, the locals kept the train going and prices kept rising.  The only thing that stopped prices from going up further was COVID.  But that only lasted a short time.  As the government printed all that money to keep the economy going, inflation ensued, causing interest rates to go up exponentially.  Finally, with these higher rates, the market has slowed down and prices have flattened out and gone down a little bit.

 

During all of this time, developers were not able to get enough market housing out to the public.  This is due to all of the red tape that is involved with building a high rise.  It takes 8 years for a developer to buy land and eventually build the high rise.  So much red tape is involved just to get the permits and the rezoning from the city.  Plus, on top of that the city takes around a 26% cut in development fess which is added to the price of the condos.  So not only is the government responsible for all the delays in getting housing out to the market, but they are also directly responsible for the rising costs of building the condos, which of course the developers pass along to the consumers.

 

This Liberal government under Trudeau has done nothing to solve the housing problem since they were elected in 2015.  In fact, things have gotten worse under Trudeau's leadership.  Empty promises have been the story for 8 years.  People have had enough.  PP may not be the answer, but I can assure you that Trudeau will lose the next election in a landslide no matter who the opposition leader is...

 

Other than your comment on Covid and the Feds printing money to keep the economy going (agreed to by all three parties) leading to inflation everything you’ve stated here is Municipal or Provincial yet you lump it all together and blame it on Trudeau.

[The Arrogant Worms]

Jagmeet Singh and his Versace bag set Canadians off

https://canoe.com/news/national/jagmeet-singh-and-his-versace-bag-set-canadians-off/wcm/b997516b-6f92-4358-8d0e-e32cead0bf52

 

It’s one thing to hear people, whether it be celebrities or politicians, say they are just like us normal folks.

 

But when it’s not backed up, the regular average Joes and Jills will always have something to say.

 

Take federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who blames the rich for everything and moans and groans about unaffordability for Canadians but then sports a Rolex on his wrist and rides a fancy folding bike.

 

He has tried to paint property investors as the worst of the worst yet his wife owns a rental property in B.C.

 

It’s fine if Singh wants to wear expensive, tailored clothes or that Mrs. Singh is a landlord; it’s the hypocrisy that results in eye rolls.

 

So to no one’s surprise, a photo of Singh surfaced on social media last week, showing the NDP leader was in Toronto holding a Versace bag — and that had many seeing red.

 

It’s unclear if it is a Versace shopping bag or a tote with the designer name emblazoned loudly on the side but whatever the case, it rankled those who like to bust Singh’s chops over his champagne socialism.

Edited November 27, 2023 by The Arrogant Worms

[Elias Pettersson]

1 hour ago, 4petesake said:

 

Other than your comment on Covid and the Feds printing money to keep the economy going (agreed to by all three parties) leading to inflation everything you’ve stated here is Municipal or Provincial yet you lump it all together and blame it on Trudeau.

I didn’t blame anything on Trudeau. He wasn’t around in 1993. 
 

What I did say was that his government has done nothing to help the housing crisis and housing affordability since he became PM in 2015. 
 

If you would like to refute this argument with some facts to back it up I’d be more than happy to listen. 

Edited November 27, 2023 by Elias Pettersson

[King Heffy]

6 minutes ago, Elias Pettersson said:

I didn’t blame anything on Trudeau. He wasn’t around in 1993. 
 

What I did say was that his government has done nothing to help the housing crisis and housing affordability since he became PM in 2015. 
 

If you would like to refute this argument with some facts to back it up I’d be more than happy to listen. 

Why do you expect the Feds to solve something that's a municipal and provincial issue?

[4petesake]

10 minutes ago, Elias Pettersson said:

I didn’t blame anything on Trudeau. He wasn’t around in 1993. 
 

What I did say was that his government has done nothing to help the housing crisis and housing affordability since he became PM in 2015. 
 

If you would like to refute this argument with some facts to back it up I’d be more than happy to listen. 

 

Nope, I agreed with your post. Just sounded like you were laying it at his feet in your last paragraph. I’m not sure what he could’ve/should’ve done nor have I heard a plan from the other side of the aisle. I would like to though…

[RupertKBD]

1 hour ago, 4petesake said:

 

There aren’t as many doctors heading to Alberta as you think. I can’t find the numbers for 2022 but with Smith and the UCP vowing to dismantlle Alberta Health Services  I can’t imagine they have improved.

 

 

 

Not only that, but I wouldn't want to be any kind of Health professional in Alberta when the next pandemic hits and Smith starts talking about how it's no worse than the common flu.....

[UnkNuk]

Speaking of doctors, one idea of Poilievre that I did find interesting was this:

 

Poilievre calling for national standardized test to license doctors, nurses trained outside of Canada

 

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling for a national standardized testing process to be created in order to speed up the licensing process for doctors and nurses who are either immigrants or were trained abroad.

Poilievre said in a press conference Sunday that this would help to address the doctor shortage currently affecting our health-care system.

 

“In Canada today, we have a doctor shortage of about 40,000,” he said, speaking outside the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa. “In other words, if we had all the doctors that are here today in Canada, but trained abroad, working in our health-care system, we could reduce our doctor shortage by half.”

 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/poilievre-calling-for-national-standardized-test-to-license-doctors-nurses-trained-outside-of-canada-1.6319764

 

If there are about 20,000 foreign trained doctors who are competent to practice here in Canada, then by all means let's speed up the process that allows them to practice.

[RupertKBD]

35 minutes ago, Elias Pettersson said:

I didn’t blame anything on Trudeau. He wasn’t around in 1993. 
 

What I did say was that his government has done nothing to help the housing crisis and housing affordability since he became PM in 2015. 
 

If you would like to refute this argument with some facts to back it up I’d be more than happy to listen. 

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fall-economist-statement-housing-1.7033392

 

Quote

 

The fall fiscal update, to be presented Tuesday by the federal finance minister, will include billions of dollars in loans and direct funding for the construction of affordable housing, a senior government source has told CBC News.

New measures will include $15 billion for 10-year loans for new rental housing construction, a $1-billion fund dedicated to getting more affordable housing built, and new mortgage rules for lenders dealing with homeowners at risk, according to the source, who is not authorized to speak publicly about the fall economic statement before it is tabled.

 

 

[Optimist Prime]

I feel like the "housing crisis" is more of a "i want to live in the town or city i was born in and not move to better my self and my life'' crisis. 

Thirty years ago I left the area I was raised in and moved to Ontario, joined the army, travelled the world and only came back to, in my case, Vancouver Island, when I could buy a house here. It was a condo, and then with prudent measures and financial work I bought a three bedroom rancher on an Acre 35 minutes away from Victoria just in August 2022. My nephews and nieces who left the area, to drop it back a generation, are also all home owners now, albeit not on The West Coast where they were born and raised, but in the North and in Alberta. My cousins back east just bought a house for 210k, but you gotta want to live in the Maritimes. 

 

So yeah there is a crisis if you refuse to leave greater Vancouver, where crack houses are over a million bucks, and your working at Starbucks or Tim Hortons..but if you felt like trying your luck in Newfoundland, not only would you generally get a better job as they are very short on people there these days, but you will be able to buy a house on acreage for under a quarter million. 

 

/endrant

[Optimist Prime]

46 minutes ago, RupertKBD said:

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fall-economist-statement-housing-1.7033392

 

 

This is strait from the Liberal Party of Canada website:

Quote

Making housing more affordable by building more homes, cracking down on speculation, and banning foreign investment.

Quote

Built new affordable housing through Canada’s first-ever National Housing Strategy.

https://liberal.ca/our-progress/

[4petesake]

1 hour ago, RupertKBD said:

 

Not only that, but I wouldn't want to be any kind of Health professional in Alberta when the next pandemic hits and Smith starts talking about how it's no worse than the common flu.....

 

Not to mention downloading decision-making on masks and other Covid safety requirements to local acute care facilities. You know the ones with lower paid part-time workers who work at multiple different care homes and were largely determined to be the main source of spread into these homes. So zone and site leaders will be left holding the bag knowing that Smith and the UCP are clearly hostile to public health measures to mitigate the spread of Covid or other infectious diseases. 

 

 

[Yoshiyoshi]

20 minutes ago, Optimist Prime said:

I feel like the "housing crisis" is more of a "i want to live in the town or city i was born in and not move to better my self and my life'' crisis. 

Thirty years ago I left the area I was raised in and moved to Ontario, joined the army, travelled the world and only came back to, in my case, Vancouver Island, when I could buy a house here. It was a condo, and then with prudent measures and financial work I bought a three bedroom rancher on an Acre 35 minutes away from Victoria just in August 2022. My nephews and nieces who left the area, to drop it back a generation, are also all home owners now, albeit not on The West Coast where they were born and raised, but in the North and in Alberta. My cousins back east just bought a house for 210k, but you gotta want to live in the Maritimes. 

 

So yeah there is a crisis if you refuse to leave greater Vancouver, where crack houses are over a million bucks, and your working at Starbucks or Tim Hortons..but if you felt like trying your luck in Newfoundland, not only would you generally get a better job as they are very short on people there these days, but you will be able to buy a house on acreage for under a quarter million. 

 

/endrant

Actually I recently had to look into options for moving and no matter where you look, the rents are still high, just not as high as Vancouver, Toronto, etc. You have to go really far away from towns to see anything below 1000 unless you are ok with living in a tiny little space or renting a room from someone. I was a week away from being homeless about 2 years ago because even having money I wasnt able to get a place over other people.

 

Maybe the housing crisis didnt start 30 years ago like someone earlier said, but it definitely started around 2010 or so. All the political parties failed to take action to prevent it from occuring and now will have to spend at least 5 years and probably a lot more trying to fix it, ruining a lot of peoples lives as a result.

 

I dont even know who to vote for anymore. Every party has pissed me off recently.

[the destroyer of worlds]

2 hours ago, The Arrogant Worms said:

Jagmeet Singh and his Versace bag set Canadians off

https://canoe.com/news/national/jagmeet-singh-and-his-versace-bag-set-canadians-off/wcm/b997516b-6f92-4358-8d0e-e32cead0bf52

 

It’s one thing to hear people, whether it be celebrities or politicians, say they are just like us normal folks.

 

But when it’s not backed up, the regular average Joes and Jills will always have something to say.

 

Take federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who blames the rich for everything and moans and groans about unaffordability for Canadians but then sports a Rolex on his wrist and rides a fancy folding bike.

 

He has tried to paint property investors as the worst of the worst yet his wife owns a rental property in B.C.

 

It’s fine if Singh wants to wear expensive, tailored clothes or that Mrs. Singh is a landlord; it’s the hypocrisy that results in eye rolls.

 

So to no one’s surprise, a photo of Singh surfaced on social media last week, showing the NDP leader was in Toronto holding a Versace bag — and that had many seeing red.

 

It’s unclear if it is a Versace shopping bag or a tote with the designer name emblazoned loudly on the side but whatever the case, it rankled those who like to bust Singh’s chops over his champagne socialism.

So I guess we should bow to the rich overlords and blame poor people and immigrants for all our problems, like the rich CON overlords decree.

 

Or the only politicians who can be critical of the rich are poor.  They wear cheap knockoffs and live in their car.

 

Lol

 

Just like how only people who live in a hut and ride a bike made of recycled materials can talk about climate change. 

 

Such a terrible argument. 

[Elias Pettersson]

2 hours ago, RupertKBD said:

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fall-economist-statement-housing-1.7033392

 

 

 

That's a good "start", but about 8 years too late.  What about the last 8 years?

[aGENT]

4 hours ago, D.B Cooper said:

I’ll ignore the couple of petty little personal stabs you are trying to take, and just respond like a person. 
You should try it. 

 

I don’t see it as sad at all.  
The ‘woke’ thing has gone too far and has jumped the shark.  
I can’t take most of it seriously anymore.  

I am fine with the party.  

Personally, I’ve completely had it with him.  
He is a horrible leader, a full blown hypocrite, and one of the most wishy washy wankers ever.  

I have zero faith in him whatsoever, and seeing as he is the leader of the party, it’s hard to not conflate his views with the platform.  He is the face of it, and his face fucking annoys me.  

As for easily distracted by dumb shit, maybe.  Possibly. Probably.  

 

 

Nothing personal there at all. This faux victimhood, "woke agenda Boogeyman" is a waste of everyone's time and only there to distract people and riie them up. You've (royal you) been suckered.

 

I'm not here to defend Trudeau, though most of what people are upset about with him isn't even his responsibility, a good swath is the above side show you've been sold. Really, he's a pretty big "meh" and not worth the amount of time and energy spent discussing him.

 

Congrats?

[aGENT]

4 hours ago, Elias Pettersson said:

 

How exactly did it start 30 years ago?  30 years ago is when the city started to do presales of condos.  Condos were all over the place in the mid 1990's.  There was a glut of them and some couldn't even be sold.  The problem that happened in the 1990's is that TOO MANY condos were being built, and the city and the builders took shortcuts to get as many condos out there as possible.  That is what started the leaky condo crisis of the 1990's.  Inferior building codes and shady building practices by developers caused hundreds of buildings to start leaking.  The government needed to step in to write cheques to these homeowners to make sure they could afford to fix their condos.  That's when the HPO was created, a government agency that basically wrote cheques to leaky condo owners to help then pay for their special levies.  Some owners were faced with $40-50k in special levies just to fix the building they were living in.

 

The leaky condo market caused the market to crash in the late 1990's.  It didn't recover until 2002.  This is why prices of homes didn't change much from 1993 to 2003.  The market started getting alot busier in the 2000's until 2008 when the financial markets crashed.  Again, that caused the housing market to crash.  This is why in 2013 the price of a house in Vancouver was only $800,000.  

 

However, after 2013, the market exploded, and prices started to rise exponentially.  This is when the government got caught with their pants down with not enough building going on.  The other issue was that the government was more than happy with all of the foreign investment, which is a big reason why prices went up so quickly.  Foreigners were scooping up presale condos left and right.  They were flipping them for massive profits as well.  Same with houses.  Houses were being bought and flipped with a $200-300k profit in only a matter of a couple of months.  It was crazy.  This all happened during the Christy Clark days under the Liberal government in BC.  The government was making billions in revenue through the property transfer tax as well as through capital gains from all of the flippers.  That is why the Liberals had a surplus budget all those years.

 

Finally, people had enough and forced the government to institute a foreign buyers tax.  That slowed down the market for a short time, but with lower interest rates, the locals kept the train going and prices kept rising.  The only thing that stopped prices from going up further was COVID.  But that only lasted a short time.  As the government printed all that money to keep the economy going, inflation ensued, causing interest rates to go up exponentially.  Finally, with these higher rates, the market has slowed down and prices have flattened out and gone down a little bit.

 

During all of this time, developers were not able to get enough market housing out to the public.  This is due to all of the red tape that is involved with building a high rise.  It takes 8 years for a developer to buy land and eventually build the high rise.  So much red tape is involved just to get the permits and the rezoning from the city.  Plus, on top of that the city takes around a 26% cut in development fees which is added to the price of the condos.  So not only is the government responsible for all the delays in getting housing out to the market, but they are also directly responsible for the rising costs of building the condos, which of course the developers pass along to the consumers.

 

This Liberal government under Trudeau has done nothing to solve the housing problem since they were elected in 2015.  In fact, things have gotten worse under Trudeau's leadership.  Empty promises have been the story for 8 years.  People have had enough.  PP may not be the answer, but I can assure you that Trudeau will lose the next election in a landslide no matter who the opposition leader is...

 

I don't care about Trudeau (or the Liberals) FYI. And no, the Cons aren't the answer.

 

It did start 30 years ago with nixing the CMHC social housing budget. Then it's snowballed from there with the foreign the investment etc etc you listed.  Big problems don't start big. Nor is it usually just one thing that causes them. We've been ignoring the looming, growing, housing crisis for 30 years and no, neither the Cons before, or the Liberals more recently, have done sweet fuck all about it.

 

We probably shouldn't elect either party.

[Elias Pettersson]

3 hours ago, King Heffy said:

Why do you expect the Feds to solve something that's a municipal and provincial issue?

 

Isn't the federal government responsible for the millions in new immigrants that have moved into Canada?  How did Trudeau and his government think they were going to house all of these people?

 

Trudeau says feds aren't primarily responsible for housing, but how responsible are they? | CBC News

 

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), which is responsible for implementing Canada's National Housing Act, is a federal crown corporation. CMHC says it "exists for a single reason: to make housing affordable for everyone in Canada," according to its website. The organization provides mortgage insurance, sets rules for who can qualify for mortgage insurance, collects data about housing in Canada, and more.

 

Immigration, an area of federal jurisdiction, has also been a contentious issue when it comes to housing. Canada welcomed 437,180 newcomers in 2022, and the number of non-permanent residents increased by a net 607,782 people.  The record number of immigrants is a factor pushing up demand for housing. 

 

"You can't just dump a bunch of newcomers in Canada when we have a housing shortage, and expect the provinces to sort of pick up the slack," Miljan said.

 

Housing is a direct federal responsibility, contrary to what Trudeau said. Here’s how his government can do better. (theconversation.com)

 

History of federal housing engagement

 

Trudeau seems to have forgotten about the federal government’s previous involvement in housing. After the Second World War, the Canadian government helped create a million low-cost Victory Houses using government land, direct grants and industrialized production processes that allowed new homes to be assembled in as little as 36 hours.

 

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, between 10 and 20 per cent of new construction was non-market housing — public, community and co-op — supported through federal land, grants and financing partnerships with provincial and municipal governments.

 

Read more: New study reveals intensified housing inequality in Canada from 1981 to 2016

 

As a result of federal government actions, the average home cost 2.5 times the average household income in 1980. Today, the average home in Canada costs 8.8 times the average income, with homes in Toronto and Vancouver costing 13.2 and 14.4 times respectively.

 

The production of non-market housing fell off a cliff in 1992 when the federal government downloaded responsibility for affordable housing to provinces.

 

Five priorities for the federal government

 

There is an opportunity for real federal leadership with the recent announcement that Sean Fraser will take on a combined Ministry of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities. Rather than dodging responsibility, the federal government should pursue five priorities.

 

First, the federal government must return to using a single income-based definition of affordable housing in its programs, as it did from the 1940s to the 1990s.

Evidence-based supply targets for provinces and municipalities would reflect the fact that 78 per cent of households in need of housing can afford no more than $1,050 a month for rent and homeless people no more than $420 a month.

 

The housing crisis has its roots in the federal government’s abandonment and ongoing neglect of affordable housing. 

 

Second, delivery of genuinely affordable housing — including a fair share of Indigenous housing built by and for Indigenous people — will require land from all three levels of government, grants to non-market housing providers and low-cost financing.

 

Scotiabank’s recommendation to double non-market stock with 655,000 new or acquired homes over the next decade is a starting point to eradicating homelessness by 2030 and reducing the core housing needs of 530,000 families by 2028.

 

Third, a progressive surtax placed on the most expensive homes in Canada, or redressing the $3.2 trillion capital gains tax shelter for principal residences, could fund an improved National Housing Strategy with a stronger focus on those who need housing the most. (funny, I suggested this in this thread a few days ago and got laughed at)

 

Fourth, the government must meet the needs of its rapidly growing population and ensure middle-income families can afford to raise their children in urban areas.

Taxation reform and offering long-term, low-cost financing for purpose-built rental homes are both federal government responsibilities. So is supporting Canadian firms to become world leaders in prefabricated modular housing.

 

The final priority the federal government should consider is using conditional agreements for infrastructure funding to encourage other levels of government to do more.

Provincial and territorial welfare rates and minimum wages don’t match housing costs. Insufficient provincial funding for health and social supports has put federal rapid housing initiatives at risk.

[Alflives]

IMHAO austerity is coming. Has to.