In addition to the new concerns of Trump’s tariffs and attack on Canadian sovereignty, housing affordability continues to be a perennial issue at the top of mind for many Canadians, especially Millennials (aged ~30-45) and now many more Gen Z as well (aged ~15-30). It’s also important to recognize, especially for those of us in the real estate industry, that housing affordability isn’t just about home ownership – it’s also about rental affordability. As I have done many times before in my analysis, I consider both segments of housing (ownership and rental) in my review.

My disclosure: the views within are based on my own research and perspective, with acknowledgement that I may have biases coming from 15 years in selling real estate and a family history that has been in the development and construction business (although I myself have not financially benefited from this association). The views are not reflective of my brokerage, Real Broker, nor of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board.

Extended disclosure: I stated this back in 2021 and will state it again – housing affordability is obviously not the only reason to vote for a party – it’s just one of many variables. I am not an expert in crime, immigration, social welfare, or economic policy. Technically I am not even an expert in housing policy. I am just a guy who lives and breathes real estate with a passion for creating a more economically and environmentally sustainable future for the generations to come.

Looking Back at 2021…

During the last federal election I wrote a pretty comprehensive 6,873 word analysis of the housing plans put forward by the major Canadian political parties, entitled, “Election 2021: Will Campaign Promises Help or Hurt Housing Affordability?”. I graded each party based on my perspective of the real solutions, while critiquing the populist ones, for housing affordability. I make that caveat about housing affordability because more affordable homes aren’t necessarily “good” for everyone. Notably, if you’re a current homeowner, why would you want homes to be less expensive? That’s a homeowner’s equity. While there are ways to help starting homeowners get into the market, there is no way to reduce housing values on the private market without hurting current homeowners.

Additionally, the values of homes generally decrease when supply dramatically outweighs demand, which can either be a result of people being out of jobs or could result in people losing jobs. Investors lose money, the economy suffers, etc. It’s due to these very inconvenient facts that political parties will more often than not promise to and/or actually implement policies that don’t actually make homes more affordable – they know its not in the best financial interest of the majority of their voters nor the overall economy. To find a balance, both the Liberal Party and Conservative Party need to find ways to curb exponentially increasing home values while not destroying the economy: easier said than done.

The real point of my 2021 article was, however, that we need to cut through the partisan propaganda and really consider the most likely consequences of the plans, if implemented (while also analyzing how realistic the execution is). In the conclusion to that 2021 article, I had graded the incumbent Trudeau Liberals a very harsh “F”, O’Toole’s Conservatives an almost respectable “C+”, and the NDP a barely passable “C-“. The Green Party hadn’t fielded a complete slate of candidates and were scrambling to put forward an updated platform so I did not fully analyze or grade them.

This time around I have decided not to “grade” the plans. Although my favouritism towards one of these plans is obvious, I felt that I will attempt to show a bit more impartiality by dropping the grading system. The reason that I mention my previous grades from 2021 is so that my readers can see that my favouritism towards one plan over another is not due to the party, but solely on the plan.

4 Years Later…

So what’s change since then? First, two of the three major national parties have switched leadership. Instead of a more stoic, measured Kevin O’Toole, there is an obviously more populist and antagonistic Pierre Poilievre for the Conservatives. Meanwhile, a more fiscally conservative Mark Carney has replaced the embattled Justin Trudeau. Meanwhile, Jagmeet Singh continues to lead the NDP, albeit with polls showing his popularity rapidly waning.

Second, the polls have experienced two major shifts twice in the last four years. Trudeau fatigue appeared to have taken root in early 2022 and the Liberal Party started a slow decline. Poilievre won the leadership later that fall, which gave the Conservatives a boost in the polling. It wasn’t until mid-2023 that the Liberals really saw things fall apart before hitting an all time low at the start of 2025. None of us really need a history refresher with what happened at the start of this year.

Over the last few weeks of reading and listening to Carney, Poilievre, and Singh’s housing plans, I can emphatically state two things right away: (1) the parties with new leadership both present housing platforms that are extremely distinct from their predecessors and (2) all three platforms are radically different from each other.

You may ask why – since it is so unlikely that they will form government – I should bother reviewing the NDP platform? Apart from the fact that I think the 3-5 party system is good for democracy, the reality is that we have seen how influential a third party can be when they hold the balance of power in a minority government. Due to their supply-confidence agreement with the Liberal Party, the NDP was able to swing many policies to the left over the last 4 years. It is therefore important to analyze that party for this potential. However, I’m sorry to say that for the sake of time and space, I will not be reviewing parties with less than 12 seats in Parliament, which is the threshold for official party status in the House of Commons – this includes the Green Party of Canada and the People’s Party of Canada. I also will not review the Bloc Quebecois due to the lack of candidates outside of Quebec. This isn’t out of disrespect for those parties – I simply only have so much time to put into this extensive research and analysis.

The Incumbent: a “New” Liberal Party Takes Housing Seriously

I made the claim above that the Carney Liberals are quite distinct from the Trudeau Liberals – in at the very least on housing. Since I gave the 2021 Liberals an “F” on their housing policy, they can really go nowhere but up, right? The failure I found with Trudeau’s housing policy is something I now see elsewhere: populism. The 2021 Liberal plan was more about looking like they are doing something for the average Canadian while likely hurting them more instead. So what changes has Carney’s Liberals made?

Liberal “Build Canada Homes” Plan:

• Work with the private & public sector to double the pace of construction, to a goal of 500,000 homes per year
• Continue the Housing Accelerator Fund, plus further reduce bureaucracy & zoning restrictions
• Standardize affordable housing efforts federally
• Crown Corportion to build affordable housing
• $25 Billion for financing prefabricated homes builders
• $10 Billion for financing affordable home builders
• Prioritize mass timber and softwood lumber technologies
• Cut municipal development charges in half for multi-unit housing for 5 years
• Reintroduce major tax incentives for purpose built rental housing
• Convert existing structures into affordable housing
• Eliminate GST for first time home buyers on new homes at or under $1,000,000.
• Full document link here

The Carney plan to build 500,000 homes per year is not just ambitious: I think it’s unrealistic. Even if this goal came with some significant capital put into public housing, the numbers simply don’t add up. I don’t even question whether its a responsible goal or not because I can all but guarantee it can’t be done – especially the plan is to reduce immigration targets. Regardless, I admire the ambition and I’ll choose to focus on the “how”.

On top of pushing the Housing Accelerator Fund farther in regards to requirements, a Carney government plans to get back into the business of housing development. This is something that I have advocated for as a response to what I believe are the most significant reasons for our housing crisis. Public housing last peaked in 1980, falling by almost half the number of units in 1983 before completely being decimated in the 1990s.

I’ve written about the fact that Canada already has a housing development arm in the Canada Lands Company – a very successful and well-respected organization that pays off for the taxpayer. I’m not sure if Carney is going to expand this crown corporation with increased funding or going to have a different organization structure. The point, however, is that the history, the framework and the model is all there. I believe this is something we should have been doing for the past 50 years and, if done well, could be the biggest impact on long term housing prices without “correcting” the market.

Moving on, Carney has talked a big game about prefabricated home builds for affordable housing. Unfortunately in our day of hyper-partisan spin, some detractors have suggested this is somehow a bad thing or a promotion of “cheap” homes. I don’t see it this way. In my region we have a lot of families that live in basement suites in a long term situation. A prefabricated home is not a “cheap”, substandard house. It is a smart, streamlined way to build a home.

Despite all the technology we have and over a century of assembly line manufacturing in various sectors, mainstream housing construction hasn’t really evolved. I believe that the investment of $25 billion into prefabricated homes could be a major game changer for setting off a trend in construction that the private sector must take notice of.

The last positive I want to highlight is the Liberal promise to eliminate GST for first time home buyers on homes under $1 million. These are the Canadians that (a) struggle the most to access the market and (b) also drive the market. The result is balancing the “damage” of the GST to a lesser degree while focusing the benefits on those who need it most – those who don’t have the down payments from the sale of a property. I believe this is a far superior proposal than the Conservative GST plan, which I will explain in greater detail below.

It’s not all sunshine and roses. I have a critique of a few items in the Liberal housing plan. The first is a bit of a soft one. Not only was this part of the 2021 Trudeau plan, there is this continued idea about converting existing structures into affordable housing since 2015. Granted, Trudeau made a bigger deal about this than Carney, yet not only does it still seems over-emphasized, where are the results? After 10 years of this promise, how many affordable homes have been built due to these conversions? I don’t know. Last year I read about 56 properties that were identified for conversion to a handful of homes. This entire idea just doesn’t seem well thought out, at least not in anyway to have an impact on housing on a national level.

The more significant critique I have about the Liberal plan is the idea to cut municipal development charges by 50% for multi-unit housing over a period of 5 years. What this really means is that the federal government is going to use taxpayer dollars to, apparently, indiscriminately subsidize developers in the private market – so long as it is “multi-family” – their obligations to pay for infrastructure associated with their developments. Why? Development cost charges are not just some random tax that goes into a general revenue pool. They pay for roads, sewers, and utilities for the new development. Anyone with basic knowledge in market forces knows that this will not increase the number of homes nor decrease the value of end user properties. Yes, some developers will pocket more profits, but so will landowners. This will not benefit the average Canadian, yet it will cost everyone. This is literally stealing from the poor to give to the rich. If this program was solely for affordable housing, then I could get behind it. Unfortunately, at this time, I believe this is a waste of taxpayer dollars for the benefit of wealthy developers and land-rich landowners and speculators.

Overall, however, I believe that the Carney iteration of the Liberal housing plan is the best we’ve not only seen from the Liberals in a long time, but also easily the best in the 2025 campaign. My personal opinion is that if they had leaned into the specifics of this plan with more conviction, they could have potentially come up with one of the most impressive plans Canada has seen in generations.

The Challenger: What is a “Common Sense” Housing Policy?

Earlier I suggested that Poilievre is a “populist” – something that some might actually take offence to. I call it as I see it. Populism is inherently anti-establishment, intended to be for “the common folk”, and “anti-elitist”. I’m not sure how anyone can debate this isn’t at the core of Poilievre’s campaign. The reason this turns into a pejorative at times is because, well, if you do away with the stuffy “experts”, populism has the danger of falling prey to plans and policies that are, well, popular. Popularity and “common sense” should not be conflated with thought-out, well-researched wisdom.

Highlights:

• Require cities to free up land, speed up permits & cut development charges
• Withhold federal funding from cities that do not build 15% more homes every year
• Require cities to pre-approve building permits for high-density housing around transit stations & withhold federal funding for infrastructure if non-compliant
• Impose a “NIMBY penalty” for egregious instances of NIMBYism, and a “Super Bonus” for cities that greatly exceed housing targets
• Sell 15% of Canada’s 37,000 publicly owned buildings & require they are turned into affordable housing
• Cut bonuses, salaries, and employees of CMHC if they fail to approve housing applications in 60 days or less
• Eliminate GST for all home buyers of new homes up to $1.3 million
• Remove the Housing Accelerator Fund
• Full housing policy post here & 2023 plan here

In 2021 I gave the Conservatives the highest “grade” out of the three competing housing policies. It wasn’t wonderful, but it was the most thought out and realistic. Poilievre, however, definitely isn’t O’Toole. Boring fiscal conservatism is out, appealing to the masses with bread and circuses is in. With that comes the quite obvious ejection of advice on anyone with expertise in housing policy (and no, I don’t mean real estate professionals – sales people with real estate licenses are NOT arms-length experts in housing policy – myself included).

Starting with the only positive that I see in the plan is the requirement for cities to pre-approve… no, I see a massive problem in that too. Sorry, Poilievre. While there may be some positive silver linings in a bad plan, there isn’t one highlight of this plan that I can get behind without a significant caveat.

First off, what do the Conservatives mean by demanding that cities “free up land”? I have searched high and low for specifics, yet haven’t seen anything. As a B.C. resident in the Township of Langley, my concern with this is that there will be a concerted push for overriding our Agricultural Land Reserve to promote the suburban sprawl that was common for decades. I’m not fear-mongering here – I just don’t know what else they mean by this. We can’t build more land. I also don’t really see any specifics about committing to more progressive zoning strategies as other parties have proposed.

I have the same issue with the concept of “speeding up permits” and “cutting development costs” as I did with the Liberal plan, as well as the provincial NDP plan here in BC. From what I’ve seen in BC and especially in the Township of Langley, speeding up permits has come at the cost of public input, public transparency, environmental concerns, and good urban planning. The quality of development, nor the costs, have improved due to these policies. Also, as I stated earlier in regards to my critique of the Carney plan, simply cutting development costs generally involves subsidizing cities for necessary infrastructure while not promoting financially sustainable neighbourhoods.

Moving on to Poilievre’s draconian threats to municipalities who don’t follow his vague rules, I do wonder where all the BC Conservative supporters are who opposed the lighter version of the BC NDPs are. Poilievre has been promoting withholding ANY infrastructure funding to municipalities that don’t meet at 15% year over year growth for years. Growth at any cost? So if your community had 2000 units approved in 2026, it needs 2,300 in 2027, 2,645 in 2028, 3,042 in 2029, and 3,498 units in 2030 or else you get zero federal funding. Considering that development is market reliant, this means that in the soft markets we’ve experienced, cities will be going cutthroat against each other to receive limited funding for highways, bridges, large scale transit infrastructure and more. I’m sure this sound great in an Albertan-based right-wing think tank, but the reality of this policy is regressive at best and destructive at worse.

I’ll step back a bit for the next one: “Require cities to pre-approve building permits for high-density housing around transit stations & withhold federal funding for infrastructure if non-compliant.” At least in this one I do see a silver lining for a push to have more high density housing around transit stations. However, I am in already in opposition to our BC NDP’s Bill 47 which mandates minimum towers of 20 storeys around frequent transit stations. We don’t need more of perhaps the weakest part of BC NDP’s plan (at least in my opinion). Pre-approvals work for applications that are basic and have low level impact on their surrounding communities. Encouraging rubber-stamping of density for it’s own sake will, I believe, backfire on the urbanist movement. Again, the threat of withholding all federal infrastructure funding if this isn’t carried out is draconian and irresponsible. Many communities throughout the country need catch-up infrastructure and can’t handle doubling their growth rate in the next 5 years and if there are continued record low sales, the private market certainly isn’t going to help with this.

While the federal Liberals have been promising some sort of conversion of existing properties, especially publicly-owned properties, for years, the Conservatives are more specific. In their campaign, they state that 15% of an alleged 37,000 publicly owned buildings (5,550 buildings) can be turned into affordable housing. On the outset, this doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Unfortunately, I think the Conservatives will run into the same problems the Liberals have over the past decade: these buildings are being utilized for government functions. I have searched for a list of buildings and a costed program for this plan, but haven’t seen anything forwarded by the party. I don’t know how many units these 5,550 buildings would yield, the mechanism to do so, or the costs/benefits to the public involved. Without further details, this appears to be a fairly empty promise, especially if it involves a Canadian version of DOGE with abolishing or significantly reducing crown corporations such as the CBC, Council for Arts, CMHC, Canada Post, Dairy Commission, National Museum of Science and Technology, Telefilm Canada and/or others.

In the most Trump-like of housing policies, the threat to fire employees of CMHC if they fail to approve housing applications in less than two month is as backwards. These employees are at the mercy of budgets and processes that they have no control over. The CMHC has protected Canadians from multiple turns in the market that our nation needs to be thankful for, and as much as some of us hate to admit it, it is this bureaucracy that is responsible for it. Further to this principle, I am unaware of any affordable housing projects that are being held up by the CMHC without reason.

Finally, I want to address the Conservative policy for GST on new homes that was recently co-opted (but arguable improved) by Carney’s Liberals with some quotes from something I previously wrote:

GST revenues on new homes in Canada provide approximately $5 billion annually. This is an estimate based on the number of new homes sold and the average sale price – so don’t hold this exact figure against me. So how much will these campaign promises cost? We don’t know. Why don’t we know? Why isn’t it mandated that political parties must provide the costs of every campaign promise? For every billion dollars loss in revenue, what will be cut? How much will be added to the national debt?

Beyond the financial costs, neither campaign addresses the ideological challenges that Canadians should consider…

…Developers already have some major advantages on the open market, with everything from looser legislation on sales tactics to rebates and then just the plain old fact that people, especially younger buyers, like new shiny objects. This proposal could potentially reduce the equity of current homeowners, especially those who own property in softer markets. In my region, this would likely hit resellers of smaller, newer apartment condos the hardest. As developers condo to flood the market with apartment condos, current homeowners must compete with the influx.

Second, this will, especially in a hotter or low inventory market, incentivize developers to increase the prices of homes. The VALUE of a home is different than a COST of a home. Developers sell properties for what the market will bear, not for a cost+established profit. If their costs go down, they don’t pass that down to the consumer – they sell it for it’s market value and pocket the profit. Do you believe that a developer who paid $3 million per acre for a property really gives buyers the savings compared to the developer who paid $5 million per acre? It doesn’t work that way.

With reduced GST, this means more buyers will be able to pay an increased amount for those properties. Developers will most definitely take advantage of this…

…The Poilievre plan is universal, which essentially creates a subsidy for developers at the cost of increase public services while further inducing higher housing values. All Canadians lose more services (since the cut will be higher and the government won’t receive more tax dollars for more development because there is no revenue) all so that developers have a more attractive product. Yes, this could be great for us in the business real estate sales, who benefit from higher values and more transactions. Yes, this will be great for the developers who are given a massive advantage over resale competition. But is it REALLY better for most Canadians?”

In conclusion to the Conservative housing plan for 2025, there is no way I can possibly see it as anything else than playing to a really frustrated subset of the population that is willing to vote for anything other than the current government. There isn’t a business case here for helping the average Canadian. Similar to the winning Liberals in 2021, Poilievre appears to be hoping that people buy into a under-developed, un-costed plan that won’t actually help the nation move forward.

Singh: Definitely Not Eby

Those of us in B.C. know that upon taking over for the late John Horgan, the provincial NDP’s David Eby has been tackling housing affordability with a very aggressive housing action plan. Eby certainly has his detractors who might refer to the plan as utilizing a “sledgehammer”. I’m on record as supporting the provincial NDP’s “Homes for People” plan. I don’t care which party supports a good plan if its a good plan. If I had to rank the provincial plan, it would probably be in the B+ range. Maybe even higher. It’s interesting to note that some of the more controversial aspects of the BC NDP execution, or at least those that I have the bigger issues with, are those picked up by the federal Conservatives, but I digress. Singh’s NDP weren’t really hitting it out of the park for me in 2021 and it appears that Singh is doubling down on some of the more outdated NDP talking points.

Highlights:

• 3 Million homes built by 2030 by speeding up construction, protecting existing rentals, and training workers
• Train 100,000 skilled workers
• Replace the Housing Accelerator Fund with a permanent $16 billion strategy with the Canadian Homes Transfer & Communities First Fund
• Require cities to allow more multi-family housing, more homes near transit, and allow for up to 4 units on residential lots
• Support building pre-fabricated homes
• Freezing the increase on development charges & work with provinces to halve development charges
• Committing to 20% non-market housing in every neighbourhood
• National rent control rules
• Ban fixed term leases, renovictions, demovictions
• Ban rent price-fixing & collusion by corporate landlords, including the use of shared data platforms
• Implement a Renters Bill of Rights
• Expand Canada Rental Protection Fund to $4 Billion for non-profit housing providers to buy affordable rental homes
• Ending Exclusionary Zoning
• Read full Housing Policy Post here & Fair Deal for Renters here

The idea to build 3 million homes is, similar to the other plans, another very unrealistic promise. I also don’t know what this means. Is this 500,000 homes per year (2025-2030 inclusive)? Or is this 600,000 homes per year (2025-2029 or 2026-2030)? Either way, I don’t see the mechanisms or level of investment for any party to reach this level of development.

Of course, perfection shouldn’t be the enemy of the good. If the NDP is going to push for new skilled workers, that’s already a plus in my book. Of course, I’m not sure how they are going to accomplish this. The federal government doesn’t have a whole lot of say in trades programs. From what I understand, the lack of funding or lack of available jobs isn’t the problem in getting the current generations to work the trades.

Controversially, I do believe that the federal NDP copying the BC NDP on eliminating exclusionary zoning with small scale multi-unit housing would be a massive win for Canadian housing. This brings us closer to the Japanese model for housing, encouraging more sustainable gentle densification throughout many regions instead of depending on rapid densification while also not hurting current homeowners. As I’ve argue before, this policy won’t lead to more building permits by itself. It merely shifts the building style and provides more flexibility for average homeowners. This is a generational shift, not an overnight silver bullet.

On the neutral side of things, while I do appreciate the theoretical support for prefabricated homes, there isn’t enough detail in the platform for me to comment on my support. I also don’t have any support for replacing the Housing Accelerator Fund with another fund of a different name. Calling it “permanent” doesn’t really make it so. Any subsequent government can just come along and cancel it.

Similarly, I admire the commitment to have 20% of non-market housing in every neighbourhood, but how? And when would this be accomplished? The plan doesn’t say 20% of new housing – it says of all housing. Does this mean that the federal government plans on pushing 30-40% of all new housing to be public? What would the costs be for this? What are the mechanisms? These details really do matter. If they had stated, with specifics, that they will invest federal money to municipalities that approve applications with 20% of non-market housing (whether through density bonuses or other such mechanisms), then that is something I could not only get behind, but could see as one of the largest steps forward for Canadian housing supply and access to truly affordable housing.

Moving to the negatives, I again have to oppose the idea of having federal taxpayer dollars subsidize development cost charges. As I said before this, is money in the pocket or wealthy landowners and developers.

More so than the others parties, I’ve often had the feeling that the NDP has the best of intentions, but they don’t really understand the consequences of their policies. No more is this more apparent than their barrage of rent controls and other rental home related policies. Unfortunately rent control almost always backfires. I am all for tenant protection. However, I’ve watched how much more difficult it has to be a good landlord over the last 10-15 years. This has directly led to a reduced number of available units and inevitably leads to high rental prices. B.C. is becoming increasingly dependent on large corporate landlords because of the attack on small investors. The NDP goes have ma and pa investors as much as corporate investors. The problem with this is that this doesn’t leave anyone wanting to or able to be landlords. If you reduce the number of landlords, you reduce the inventory available for renters, which increases rent. Then they also go and attack those corporate landlords, which further reduces the incentives to create more rental properties.

In my opinion, almost all of the NDP’s “rental-friendly” policies don’t actually protect renters – they create chaos in the rental market without solving the underlying issue of a lack of public housing that would help push rental prices down. Many of the rent controls that the federal NDP are proposing are those that are already in place throughout Canadian provinces: BC, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and PEI. These are, notably, some of the most expensive provinces to rent. As far as I’m aware, only Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland & Labrador don’t have caps on annual rent increases.

The solution is mass investment in public owned housing, not targeting landlords.

Conclusion: Will They Actually Do it?

As a result of my disappointment with each of the 2021 campaign promises, my concluding headline 4 years ago was “Tough Choices Don’t = Votes, So Politicians Avoid Them“. This time around its a bit different. In a reversal from 2021, I at least see some positives with at least the Liberal Party and the NDP housing policies. The question is, will they follow through?

I’ve certainly cast doubt on the end goal of building 500,000 homes or more anytime soon. I just can’t see this happening in the next 5 or even 10 years. This doesn’t mean, however, that the mechanisms and policies implemented to make the attempt isn’t a good thing. Many of them are. However, I caution that we build just for the sake of building. We need the right kind of housing and we need to build in an economically and environmentally sustainable way. Giving a blank check to developers is not the best way to do this.