The federal government, in its spring economic update delivered a week ago by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, offered little new for affordable housing. It reiterated some previous housing announcements and sped up a bit of spending. However, the government continues to lack a plan that lays out measurable, long-range goals and annual targets for ending housing need and homelessness, and then funds it at a scale vastly larger than the spending it has so far announced. And as the Toronto Star’s Althia Raj reported, it looks like the government will let pharmacare lapse; won’t fund any expansion of the national child care program; has reduced the growth in health transfers to the provinces; and won’t renew the $1.2 billion in annual transfers to the provinces that help finance mental health and addiction services, as well as home and community care, nor the $600 million in annual transfers for long-term care. These aren’t policies that support “Canadians who are under pressure from everyday expenses.”
The government’s big housing item this spring is the previously announced removal of the HST applicable to newly-constructed homes for ownership, which might help some young families who already have a downpayment in hand. However, it will not help those most in need, the large majority of whom are renters.
Here’s what’s new for housing in the statement:
- Finally launching this spring the previously announced and badly needed Rental Housing Protection Fund, to enable non-profit and co-op housing providers to buy existing buildings with affordable or near affordable rents to keep them permanently affordable.
- Launching a program to recruit, train, and hire 80,000 to 100,000 new Red Seal skilled trades workers by 2030-31 which may help, a bit, to ease the labour crunch for housing construction as many current workers retire
- $42 million to enable factory-built housing, make homebuilding more efficient and innovative, and to improve the responsiveness of housing markets.
- Moving forward some low-cost loans under the Apartment Construction Loan Program to speed up the construction of up to 16,500 new rental homes.