Poilievre Will Build 2.3 Million Homes In Five Years
Poilievre’s groundbreaking housing plan will build 2.3 million new homes for Canadians over the next five years to restore Canada’s promise.
Scarborough, ON – Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre announced today that his new Conservative Government will build 2.3 million homes over the next five years. And unlike Mark Carney, who followed the old Trudeau playbook and just plucked a number out of thin air, Poilievre has an actual plan to get it done. Poilievre’s plan will get gatekeepers out of the way to speed up homebuilding, cut taxes on homebuilding to lower costs, and free up federal land to build homes on.
“Over the Lost Liberal Decade, the dream of home ownership has died for too many Canadians. Housing prices doubled, and it now takes 25 years to save up for a downpayment,” said Poilievre. “I have a plan to build the homes Canadians need and restore the Canadian promise. We will get gatekeepers out of the way, cut taxes on homebuilding, and sell off land to build 2.3 million homes over the next five years.”
Housing has not been this unaffordable in more than 40 years. Today, Canada has the worst housing inflation of any country in the G7. Young people are forced to rent, but rent has doubled too.
Since 2015, the Liberal government has put in place costly government programs that build bureaucracy, not homes. As a result, Canada has the second-slowest building permit approval time out of 35 countries, as measured by the OECD. And when compared to the United States, Canada’s approval times are over 3x longer. Poilievre’s plan to fix this will:
- Reward cities that permit over 15% more homebuilding each year with additional federal funding, while reducing infrastructure funding proportionally for cities that miss their targets.
- Require cities to permit high-density housing around federally funded transit stations as a condition of receiving federal funding.
- Require cities to pre-permit housing as a part of getting federal funds for related roads, bridges & transit.
In Canada’s largest provinces, government taxes now make up more than 30% of the cost of a new home. The Liberals gave billions to cities with no requirement to lower housing taxes. As a result, many cities took the Liberal funds and raised taxes instead. Conservatives will axe homebuilding taxes to build more homes and bring down costs. We will:
- Axe the GST on new homes under $1.3 million, saving Canadians $65,000 on the price of a new home.
- Incentivize municipalities to cut building taxes by reimbursing municipalities with 50% of every dollar spent up to $50,000 in savings for new homebuyers.
- Axe the GST on new rental housing construction to build thousands of affordable rental units.
After three Liberal terms, the Liberal government has only marked 90 federal properties to convert to housing, even though The Globe and Mail managed to identify hundreds of unused or underutilized sites that could unlock 288,000 more homes. The federal government owns over 11,000 federal properties, many of them in prime urban locations near transit and jobs. A Conservative Government will sell these federal lands in cities to developers who will build affordable homes quickly. We will:
- Identify 15% of federal land and buildings to sell in cities within the first 100 days of a new Conservative Government.
- Work with municipalities to pre-zone that land so builders can break ground immediately.
- Prioritize homebuilders who will build affordable homes, especially for young Canadians priced out by the Liberals.
Poilievre also pledged that his government will fix Canada’s broken building code. After three Liberal terms, Canada’s National Model Building Code has ballooned to over 1,500 pages, loaded with costly, excessive rules that do little to improve safety but dramatically increase costs. This red tape has paralyzed homebuilding and has caused housing starts to collapse. To fix this, Conservatives will:
- Simplify the National Building Code, making it more affordable to safely build homes, while giving maximum flexibility for new materials and building methods.
- Cut red tape for builders and tradespeople, working with provinces to harmonize building code regulations.
This plan is based on real numbers and achievable reforms.
Canada started building 245,000 homes in 2024. A Poilievre government will add 36,000 more each year by axing the GST on new homes under $1.3 million, and another 25,000 by encouraging cities to lower development charges, totalling 306,000 homes in year one.
We will tie infrastructure dollars to cities permitting 15% more homes annually. More building will mean more funds—less building will mean less. We’ll also unlock at least 288,000 new homes by selling federal land, using estimates from The Globe and Mail, which reviewed only a portion of federal sites. This adds up to over 2.3 million homes built in five years.
“Canadians face a choice in this election,” said Poilievre. “A fourth Liberal term where Mark Carney continues to block housing construction with red tape and sky-high taxes. Or, a new Conservative Government that puts hard-working Canadians First–For a Change; unlocking federal land, cutting bureaucratic red tape, taxing less and building more.”