The federal Liberals have unveiled their plan to solve the housing crisis, building on recent announcements with new tax incentives, more than a billion dollars for homelessness and a country-wide effort to build more housing on public lands.
The 28-page document, which comes days ahead of the federal budget, is the minority government’s latest effort to set the agenda on affordability as it loses significant ground to the Conservatives over cost-of-living issues.
Ottawa is also sending a message to provinces, territories and municipalities that they too will need to step up, dubbing the plan a “call to action.”
“There’s no way that one level of government is going to solve the national housing crisis on their own,” said Housing Minister Sean Fraser in an interview.
“But if we work together … and create incentives to encourage each other to actually adopt policies that will help us get us to where we need to be, I know that we can accomplish this extraordinarily important task.”
The Liberals’ plan promises to tackle the spectrum of housing affordability challenges Canadians face, from the out-of-reach dream of homeownership to skyrocketing rental costs to homelessness.
While much of the plan was announced during the government’s pre-budget tour or even prior to that, several new measures are laid out in the document, including expanded tax incentives for homebuilding.
The federal government intends to increase the capital cost allowance rate for apartments from four to 10 per cent, which will increase how much builders can write off from their taxes.
It’s also extending the GST exemption on rentals to student residences built by public universities, colleges and school authorities.
The plan also earmarks more money to tackle homelessness as communities across the country struggle with encampments and limited shelter spaces.
The Liberal government is topping up the Reaching Homes program, a federal homelessness initiative, with an additional $1 billion over four years.
Another $250 million is allocated to help communities end encampments and transition people into housing. The federal government is asking provinces and territories to match that amount.
The Liberals are also pledging a “historic shift” in how the government uses public lands to build housing, which will involve making more land available for home construction and leasing land as opposed to selling it off.
And they want to restrict large corporate investors from purchasing existing single-family homes.
Other planks of the plan include training more skilled trades workers, easing foreign credential recognition and boosting productivity in the construction industry, measures that would presumably speed up the process of homebuilding.
The implementation of the Liberals’ housing plan will be in part contingent on co-operation from provinces and territories, some of which have already pushed back on the federal government over what they argue is jurisdictional overreach.
Quebec, Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick were unhappy with Ottawa’s decision to make access to new infrastructure money contingent on a set of conditions, including legalizing fourplexes.
But Fraser pushed back on those critiques, arguing that Canadians just want their problems solved.
“When people come knock on the door of my constituency office and they have a problem, the last thing that they want to hear is that it’s not my responsibility to help them,” Fraser said.
“So from my point of view, it was important that we do what we can to embrace the challenge and demonstrate to Canadians that even where there may be technical jurisdictional obstacles, that wasn’t going to give us a reason to do anything less than the very best that we can.”
As the Liberals aggressively sell their housing plan, whether it lands with Canadians will depend on whether they still have faith that the incumbent government can solve their problems.
The federal Conservatives, who have have maintained a double-digit lead in public opinion polls since the summer, appear to have successfully convinced a large contingent of voters that the Liberals only make cost-of-living issues worse.
In the wake of the government’s recent housing announcements, federal Conservatives have dismissed them, arguing that pouring more money into “government bureaucracy” won’t solve the housing crisis.
“Trudeau’s been in power for eight years. And he’s been making announcements like that since 2015. What’re the results?” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said in a recent media interview.
Fraser acknowledged that Conservatives have succeeded at capturing Canadians’ attention on housing, but he said their solutions fall short of what’s needed.
“I think it’s dangerous when politicians seek to prey on the very real anxieties of people without doing anything to help them. It communicates to me that it’s motivated more by their appetite to seize political power than it is to actually help people who are struggling,” Fraser said.
Poilievre has argued that government should get out of the way and let developers build more homes.
His proposed housing plan centres heavily on requiring cities to increase home building by 15 per cent each year to receive their usual infrastructure spending, or see their funding withheld. Those who build more than the target would be eligible for “bonuses.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
