BY SHANE WENZEL 

Housing has now become the PM’s latest expertise. He has declared ‘their plan’ to solve the housing crisis. With no background in the housing industry, his Party has outlined steps they intend to take to accomplish ‘his plan’. Canadians have been building, buying, selling and renting homes for years without direction from the federal government. Their role is to assist Canadians’ needs, not tell us how to accomplish it. 

His plan reflects inexperience by demanding affordable housing for home purchasers and renters to the tune of four million homes by 2031. This is impossible! To propose such a number despite the fact Canada currently only has the capacity to build 1.6 million homes in that same timeframe represents an expected 150% increase in capacity. 

Their plan for accomplishing affordability is to bring down the cost of homebuilding by making it easier to manufacture homes, a concept that has been around for years. They are called ‘mobile homes’. Unless he is referring to the 1926 Sears Roebuck catalogue when an entire home comes via train along with assembly instructions. His plans include: 

– Changing the national building code and introducing a standardized housing design catalogue (sounds familiar) 

– Launching a new fund to support innovative technology that makes it easier to build modular and prefabricated homes (I told you so) 

– Launching a new ‘public lands for homes’ strategy that would open up surplus and vacant federal government land across Canada for new housing units or sub-divisions, including renovating old buildings 

Build Force Canada estimates this unachievable goal of 1.6 million homes would require 500K ‘more boots on the ground’, not including additional administrative and professional services such as planners, architects and others. 

He claims he has immigrated 1,500 workers set for the task. However, they have all been turned over to the unions, so I suspect that is to accommodate the manufactured homes. Someone in their group even suggested ‘wartime housing’ as a solution. Seriously? This is the 21st century. 

While they are being built, Canadians will remain renting while they save. The government vows to launch a ‘tenant protection fund’ for legal services and advocacy groups with a ‘bill of rights.’ They will change the rules to allow rental payment history to improve ‘credit scores’ to help qualify for mortgages. The only good part of this portion is they will increase the amortization rate to 30 years and ease off the GST. For those who cannot qualify, they will create more government rental housing along with a $1.5-billion fund to purchase affordable rental buildings. 

They forgot to mention the ‘net zero requirements’ in their plan. Under the new national building code that raises the cost of any home by $30,000+. Not exactly affordable housing! 

What we need is: 

– For the government to stay out of our business. End the red tape and government fees that account for roughly 30 per cent of the cost of any new home 

– To freeze immigration for a few years, then resume normal levels with a focus on skilled trades 

– To leave 1 to 2 per cent more tax dollars with the cities for growth 

– To send money to provinces to fund short-term blue seal schools for 4- to 6-month training currently done on site 

In other words: Stay in your lane! Canadians will do the rest!