The Liberals and NDP need to up their housing game before the next election. They’re more worried about protecting paper gains for existing homeowners than than getting prices back to affordable levels.
Why is the Liberal Party still droning on about protecting high home values while promising to make new home ownership easy? The Liberals should drop this obvious lie – voters can see the impact of housing speculation on increasing generational wealth inequalities for themselves – and heed their own legislation by focusing on the federal role in ensuring renters’ equal rights.
And why is NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh prioritizing owners’ returns over renter rights? British Columbia, which is the only NDP government in power in Canada, is the most pro-housing supply province. Build on that. Income-based housing targets, leasing public land to scale up non-market housing, and tax change to lessen wealth inequalities should be talking points for the “workers party” right now.
Typically by tying federal funding of municipalities and provinces to bare minimums of legislation. That’s what the feds did with the last round of provincial health funding, for example.