After 8 years of Justin Trudeau, housing prices have doubled. We are facing an unprecedented housing shortage. The median price of a house in Quebec was $230,000 in 2015. It reached $415,000 at the start of 2023.
With rising interest rates, the monthly cost of a mortgage has jumped 28.5% since April 2022.
On the eve of the big move on July 1, the lack of housing is also driving up rents; up 14% on average in Montreal since the spring of 2022, 19% in Quebec, 17% in Saguenay and 24% in Trois-Rivières. For many Quebecers, the possibility of becoming homeless is real.
Big space
This discrepancy cannot be explained by a lack of space or by global market trends: although Canada has the lowest number of housing units per capita of any G-7 country, we have the most available square footage. to build. It is explained even less by richer buyers; as your columnist Michel Girard has pointed out. The average salary of Quebec workers has risen 23.7% since 2018, while house prices are 71% higher.
The problem is a lack of supply; we are not building enough and municipal regulations are blocking housing starts. The Conservative Party of Canada is the only federal party to offer solutions.
Proposed solutions
Ottawa pays more than a billion dollars a year in transfers to Quebec’s municipal infrastructure programs, including the Gas Tax Program (TECQ) and the Quebec Infrastructure Plan (PQI). As Premier, I will renegotiate the applicable agreements with the Government of Quebec to make them less restrictive, but I will demand new conditions to encourage municipalities to eliminate barriers to the construction of new housing.
Municipalities that change their zoning bylaws and grant more building permits will receive bonuses. But the largest cities, including Montreal and Quebec, will see their funds withheld if they do not increase by at least 15% per year the construction of new housing on their territories. If they exceed this target, they will receive bonuses.
A Poilievre government will also sell more than 6,000 federal buildings in Canada to convert them into affordable housing. Finally, it will take eliminating Justin Trudeau’s inflationary deficits that are driving up interest rates and the cost of building materials, and fixing the immigration system he broke in order to address labor shortages in the sector.
The housing crisis is one of the greatest challenges of our time, one that threatens to rob an entire generation of young Canadians of the opportunities their parents took for granted. Let’s work together to give them hope.
Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada