As Housing Starts Collapse in Ontario, Carney Promises More of the Same
Ottawa, ON – Melissa Lantsman, Conservative Party Candidate for Thornhill, issued the following statement on new housing start data today:
“After the Lost Liberal decade, housing costs have doubled. Rent has doubled. Down Payments have doubled. Mortgage payments have doubled.
“This is a supply problem. Canada doesn’t build enough homes, and now our home prices are rising too quickly for Canadians’ paycheques to keep up.
“This problem is only getting worse. In Ontario, homebuilding is down 38% from January to March of this year. In Windsor, it is down 54%. In London, it is down 69%. In Toronto, that number is down 58%. Less than half as many homes have been built this year in each of these cities as were built at this same time last year. That means increased home prices, increased homelessness, and families forced to cut costs elsewhere so they can pay for their home.
“This is a failure of leadership from the Trudeau-Carney Liberals. Their policies have not built the homes Canadians need. Now, while Mark Carney pretends he will change things, he promises to keep Justin Trudeau’s failed photo-op fund and brags about bringing Justin Trudeau’s disastrous Housing Minister out of retirement to run once again under the Liberals’ banner.
“Only Conservatives have a real plan to make housing affordable:
- We 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 massive new homebuilding boom.
- We will sell off 6,000 federal buildings, thousands of acres of federal land to build new homes.
- We will incentivize municipalities to speed up permits, free up land, and cut housing taxes so homes can be built faster.
- We will bring more Boots, not Suits, backing 350,000 positions for trade schools and union halls to train red-seal apprentices to build homes, and we will bring back the $4,000 apprenticeship grant that the Liberals have eliminated.
- We will unlock billions of dollars in the private sector by allowing anyone who reinvests in Canada to defer tax on capital gains to invest more in home building.
“Only a new Conservative government will axe the sales tax on new homes for everyone, remove the gatekeepers who block home building and build homes that Canadians can afford, for a change.”