Trudeau has played defense on the issue this summer, appointing a new housing minister last week and shifting some of the blame to other levels of government on Monday. But with his party already sinking in recent polls, housing has become a serious vulnerability for Trudeau.
The benchmark price for a Canadian home has more than doubled over the past decade, reaching $760,600 in June. Trudeau’s government, which took power in 2015, has also steadily raised its annual immigration targets, with more than one million people arriving last year, straining an already tight housing supply.
To be sure, skyrocketing housing costs have many causes beyond Trudeau’s control. Provinces and cities — responsible for land-use planning, zoning and permitting — bear some of the blame, as do real estate investors, foreign buyers, years of rock-bottom interest rates and other factors. Former Liberal lawmaker Adam Vaughan, who helped craft Trudeau’s $82 billion national housing strategy released in 2017, argued the country is better off today than it would have been without his party’s policies. If it had done nothing, federal spending for social housing this year would have been just $1 billion, he said.
The federal government has a range of tools it could use to address the housing shortage without swelling its debt, said Mike Moffatt, senior policy and innovation director at the Smart Prosperity Institute. Marci Surkes, who formerly worked as Trudeau’s policy director, said she suspects the government is working on a housing plan as a central plank of its fall budget update.
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