Mostly in their own words, here are their housing platforms.
The Conservative Party will
- axe the sales tax on new homes, saving families up to $65,000 on the purchase of a home and $3,000 on yearly mortgage payments while spurring a homebuilding boom.
- sell off 6,000 federal buildings and thousands of acres of federal land to build new homes.
- incentivize municipalities to speed up permits, free up land, and cut housing taxes so homes can be built faster.
- back 350,000 positions for trade schools and union halls to train red-seal apprentices to build homes, and bring back the $4,000 apprenticeship grant that the Conservatives say the Liberals plan to eliminate.
- unlock billions of dollars in the private sector by allowing anyone who reinvests in Canada to defer tax on capital gains to boost investment in home building.
The Green Party will:
- set clear rules for what “affordable” means. When public money builds housing, an individual or family should be able to pay their rent or mortgage with 30 per cent of their regular income.
- use covenants to make sure housing built with public money stays affordable forever
- close loopholes to stop criminals from using real estate to hide dirty money
- eliminate the unfair tax advantages for Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
- stop corporations from buying up single family homes
- launch the biggest public housing construction program since the 1970s, creating good local jobs, using Canadian materials to build homes that people can actually afford.
The Liberal Party will:
- create Build Canada Homes (BCH) to get the federal government back into the business of home building, by:
- acting as a developer to build affordable housing at scale, including on public lands.
- catalyzing the housing industry by providing over $25 billion in financing to innovative prefabricated home builders in Canada, including those using Canadian technologies and resources like mass timber and softwood lumber, to build faster, smarter, more affordably, and more sustainably.
- provide $10 billion in low-cost financing and capital to affordable home builders.
- cut municipal development charges in half for multi-unit residential housing while working with provinces and territories to keep municipalities whole.
- reintroduce a tax incentive which, when originally introduced in the 1970s, spurred tens of thousands of rental housing across the country.
- facilitate the conversion of existing structures into affordable housing units.
- build on the success of the Housing Accelerator Fund, further reducing housing bureaucracy, zoning restrictions, and other red tape to have builders navigate one housing market, instead of thirteen.
- eliminate the Goods and Services Tax (GST) for first-time homebuyers on homes at or under $1 million.
The New Democratic Party will:
- offer low-interest, long-term mortgages to reduce monthly costs and cut tens of thousands of dollars over the life of a mortgage.
- ban corporations from buying existing affordable rental buildings
- cut off handouts – including low-interest federal loans, preferential tax treatment and mortgage loan insurance – for big corporate landlords who gouge their tenants
- boost the Rental Protection Fund – to help non-profits purchase affordable apartments when they come onto the market.
- set aside 100 per cent of suitable federal crown land to build over 100,000 rent-controlled homes by 2035
- redesign and double the Public Land Acquisition Fund, investing $1 billion over 5 years into acquiring more public land to build more rent-controlled homes on
- publicly finance new construction – with a new Community Housing Bank to partner with non-profit developers, co-ops, and Indigenous communities
- speed up approvals on lands owned by the federal government
- train 100,000 more people including newcomers and people displaced by Donald Trump’s trade war in skilled trades and improve working conditions
- use Project Labour Agreements, or Community Benefits Agreements to support good jobs and improve the impacts for communities
- announce in the weeks ahead plans to boost the housing supply to help first-time home buyers