They are trying to solve the wrong problem.

Mainstream big developers will never build 'affordable housing' when they can sell every single 'non-affordable house' they can build, at huge profits. They have no competition. There are just too many people who CAN afford the expensive houses on the market. That is why the housing prices are so high - the demand is there.

The 'affordable housing' crisis will never go away until huge amounts of pre-development money are made available to not-for-profit housing developers. Big developers have absolutely no problem coming up with the initial development start-up money needed to get the housing developments through the land acquisition, planning, and pre-construction phases, but this money just isn't available to affordable housing developers.

Unless the initial funding bottleneck is solved, all of the downstream measures (subsidized mortgages, help with initial payments, and such) are fruitless, The units are not going to be built in the first place, so making it easier to purchase a non-existent unit is just meaningless.

One potential solution would be for the various levels of governments to introduce a new type of 'government-backed' bond, that people could buy like they used to be able to buy Canada Savings Bonds or War Bonds. The government would guarantee the interest, and the payout, like they guarantee bank deposits. The money would be made available to not-for-profit developers like Habitat for Humanity and community housing co-ops, as seed money to pay for the initial pre-construction costs of building affordable housing. Since they are government-backed, they could be included in tax free and RRSP plans. At the same time, it is not government money or a government hand-out, so it would not affect government budgets or taxes. It would all still be private money that bought the bonds. The bonds, along with interest, would be repaid when the units sold.