(Ottawa) A growing number of organizations are calling for the various levels of government in Canada to coordinate to solve the country’s housing crisis as the construction sector seems to be lagging behind.
As things stand, Canada is not on track to build the 3.5 million additional homes needed to restore affordability by 2030, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation ( CMHC).
Agency officials said last week that a “Team Canada” type strategy would be needed to turn the tide. All levels of government must work together to address the housing shortage.
While the various authorities are proposing many solutions that are shared by many experts – increasing city population densities, encouraging private investment in housing, increasing public funding for social housing – no one has yet presented a plan to achieve these ambitious government-wide changes. Politicians prefer to blame each other, particularly targeting municipalities that oppose new construction projects.
“No level of government controls all of the policy levers that influence housing demand and supply. If it’s such a difficult problem to solve, it’s because of this scapegoat designation, argues Mike Moffatt, an assistant professor at Western University. We need some kind of national round table or a unified plan involving the federal government, the provinces and some of the largest cities in the country. »
The pr Moffatt is sounding the alarm: there will be political consequences for failure in this area. He says that young people may well no longer believe in the political system because of the housing crisis.
“I’ve never seen a cohort of 22-year-olds so angry and ready to burn the system down like the one I’ve taught over the past few years. I can’t blame them. They feel like their future has been stolen from them, that they will never be able to buy a house. »
The former economic adviser to Justin Trudeau says the Liberals were elected in 2015 in part because young people rallied around the party’s progressive commitments, including the legalization of cannabis. These same young people are struggling to find a property they can buy.
“There is a real risk that those who elected the Liberals in 2015 will be those who contribute to their defeat in the next federal election,” says the Pr Moffatt.
Demands for urgent action on housing come from all walks of life. The International Monetary Fund recently recommended that a permanent discussion forum be established between the various levels of government and shareholders in order to find ways to encourage housing construction.
In May, the Mouvement Desjardins published a report in which one could read that “housing is much less affordable for young people today than for those of previous generations”.
“We do not expect any noticeable improvement over the next few years,” the authors write.
The report also points out that this affordability problem has an influence on the choices of young people. Young people who must devote more than 30% of their budget to housing have children at an older age, for example.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre sees this as an opportunity to make electoral gains. He often addresses them when he refers to “those 35-year-olds who live in their parents’ basement” in the House of Commons.
According to the Pr Moffatt, young men may be receptive to this discourse, even if the Conservatives are not so different from the federal government in their proposals to solve the crisis.
“There are so few differences between Liberals and Conservatives when it comes to housing policies. Both essentially want to use federal spending powers to try to bring about change in municipalities. »
Poilievre threatened to withhold federal funding from cities that don’t build enough housing. For its part, the federal government launched the Fund to accelerate the construction of housing offering money to municipalities to encourage them to increase the supply of housing.