Less than a week after naming his new cabinet vowing a renewed focus on the concerns of Canadians, the one name Prime Minister Justin Trudeau couldn’t keep out of his mouth on Monday was Pierre Poilievre. At a housing announcement Trudeau brought the Conservative leader up multiple times, from panning his policy proposals, to his leadership style.
Housing is a provincial issue, there’s very little the federal government can do about it.
@Tavarin @Mongostein
The feds can legally purchase apartment blocks in any city and operate them as low income housing.
They can do something about it … the feds just don’t want to become landlords because it’s complicated.
Real leadership would recognize that leaving it up to provincial/municipal money-hungry airheads is just passing the buck.
They have virtually no way to control supply, they don’t control zoning, don’t control infrastructure. Even if they buy up some apartments, which they would need to convince people to sell, it would be a tiny drop in the housing problem bucket.
If we want housing solved we need to do it at the provincial and municipal levels, and stop electing conservatives in at those levels.
@Tavarin
Winnipeg, like Montreal, etc, has a ton of older apartment blocks (or 3 story walk-ups in Montreal) that need no rezoning or increased infrastructure. Purchasing a few of those in strategic areas would help to bring down rents.
There are a ton of options available, and since municipal/provincial gov’ts aren’t doing anything the feds need to step up to the plate.
And people already live there, the government would have to ask them to sell. There aren’t a bunch of empty unowned blocks for the federal government to buy, and they can’t force the legal owners to sell.
@Tavarin
I’m speaking of apartment blocks that are rented, not condo units that are purchased.
And someone owns those units. You can’t just force the unit owners to sell.
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Not in any way applicable in this context.
@Tavarin
Yes the gov’t can, if they implement rules limiting how many units/blocks any single entity can own.
There are ways to do this.
And there are many many ways around those rules, shell companies, family members, friends. You can put other name son the ownership to get around limits easily.
Provinces need to update zoning, and build units. That’s how you get prices down. The Federal government can’t do much.