Poilievre To Axe GST On New Homes Under $1.3 Million
Poilievre will axe the GST on all new homes under $1.3 million, saving homebuyers up to $65,000 on the purchase of an average home in our big cities and sparking 36,000 new homes built every year.
Vaughan, ON – Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre announced today that he will axe the federal sales tax (GST) on new homes up to $1.3 million. This tax cut will bring hope to new homebuyers after Liberal inflation drove up the benchmark housing price in Vancouver and Toronto to over $1 million.
“The choice facing Canadians: do the Carney Liberals deserve a fourth term after they doubled housing costs and made Canada poorer and weaker, or is it time to elect a new Conservative government that will build homes and put Canada First – for a change,” said Poilievre. “Under my plan, it will be easier for a young couple in Surrey, a single mom in Oshawa, and a tradesman in Regina to get on the housing ladder, just like their parents did.”
Axing the GST will save homebuyers up to $65,000 on the purchase of an average home in our big cities, and save them roughly $3,000 every year in mortgage payments. It will also boost the number of new homes built each year, sparking the creation of 36,000 extra homes annually and generating income for construction workers and businesses. That will raise an extra $2.52 billion in income tax revenue from those trades workers and home builders.
A Poilievre government would fund this homebuyers’ tax cut by eliminating $8 billion of the Liberals’ bureaucratic housing schemes that have only driven up housing prices. Conservatives will also incentivize municipalities to free up land, speed up permits and cut development charges to build 15% more homes each year.
After the Lost Liberal Decade, the dream of a decent home on a safe street in a beautiful community has been broken. Housing costs have doubled, rising faster in Canada than in any other G7 country. It used to take 25 years to pay off a mortgage, but now it can take 25 years just to save up for a downpayment on a home.
When Poilievre was housing minister, 39 percent of the median household’s income would cover the cost of homeownership. But with Carney’s advice and Trudeau’s leadership, the median household now has to spend up to 60 percent of their income. In Vancouver, you now need to earn $243,300 just to qualify for a mortgage on the average home, while in Toronto, that number is nearly $223,290. And that’s on top of saving for the downpayment itself.
Meanwhile, the Liberals have given billions of dollars to local government gatekeepers that build bureaucracies, not homes. Charges by local governments mean Canada has the fewest homes per capita, even though we have the most land to build on. In Ontario and BC, for example, government charges account for almost a third of the price of a new home.
One of the biggest government-added costs is the federal GST, which adds $50,000 in costs to a $1 million home. Carney and Trudeau have only made it worse, pushing the benchmark price in Vancouver to $1.195 million and Toronto to $1.089 million. There are now many places in Canada where a million dollars is not enough for the average home.
“Nobody can afford this,” Poilievre said. “Mark Carney is out of touch and doesn’t understand that Canadians are being forced to move away from the towns and cities they grew up in. This ends when we elect a Conservative government. Only Conservatives will stop punishing the dream of home ownership and restore the Canadian promise by building more, taxing less and getting the government out of the way.”