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this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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Really? From the guys who
Please. The Liberals know what they need to do to fix housing (regulation on investment & speculation, massive and direct public housing) and they know that it'll help the youth vote. They don't want to do it, though, because their donor class would scream and they--the Liberals--are allergic to direct public spending.
Until they can find a "market-based solution" they won't do a damn thing.
And anyone who looks to the conservatives when they're feeling "economically anxious" hasn't paid attention to the complete trainwreck that austerity policy is. Think things suck now? Wait until the conservatives get in and do the exact same thing, only with more service cuts and tax breaks for the very rich.
Almost everything you've listed is provincial jurisdiction. We don't have a national securities regulator because the last attempt at one was struck down by the SCC. Most business regulation is provincial, zoning is provincial, property taxes are provincial etc.
The BoC controls interest rates, but they act independently, the PM has no control over what they do beyond who they appoint to run it.
The only way they can get involved is with federal-provincial agreements. The provinces have deep connections with developers, so they're not going to do anything about the real issues of restrictive zoning and so on. Just look at Doug Ford and the Green Belt fiasco.
If you want to fix housing, go after the province. Agree or not with what they did, interprovincial pipelines are a federal responsibility.
I'm quick to pounce on both-sides-ism, but OP seems to make a clear criticism of the Liberals policy history without venturing there. On several portfolios, they have done pretty good work, but to imply that they can do nothing on housing affordability is disingenuous. The feds used to fund public housing, and they could do it again. They could work directly with municipalities if the provinces object (which they probably wouldn't).
They also regulate mortgage rules. Term lengths, stress tests, capital gains rules, etc. There are plenty of levers they could pull to make it easier for new home owners, and harder for real-estate speculators. They could also provide low interest mortgages, or interest relief, to designated groups.
The Feds have all sorts of their own levers they could pull to reign in the housing market. To date, the only levers they've pulled are to increase demand (RRPS withdrawls, shared equity (LOL), FHSA).
I think it should be clearer the Liberals has only done things where people pump even more money into real estate.
I really don't understand why there's any debate whether they would do anything for prices when the person who was their Housing Minister flipped houses and said investor like him was doing Canadians a solid.
Why can't they be financial?
They could cap tax exempt capital gains like the US does, not allow writing off mortgage interest on investment properties, add a flat tax for homes beyond primary homes (like Singapore), get back to building low income housing like they used to, mobilize a crown corp to build affordable housing etc etc.
They have all sorts of helpful options, and they have done none of them despite this issue being on the radar at the very start of the recent liberal rule. All they HAVE done is driven up demand with more programs that allow more and more debt to enter the market and prodded the banks to allow mortgage terms to swell up into 90 plus years in some cases.