19-04-2025
Federal election fact check: Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's record on housing attacked
Hedy Fry, the longtime Liberal MP for Vancouver Centre, has called out Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre on his housing record.
In a post on the social-media platform X, Fry said it was strange to see Poilievre suddenly talking about enticing municipalities to get housing built.
'He not only voted against Liberal housing, partnering with municipalities, but forbade his MPs to help their (municipalities) get Lib housing grants. Funny what u do when u are desperate,' wrote Fry.
This is misleading.
It's true that Poilievre voted against some Liberal housing policies but he also supported some Liberal policies. And he proposed his own housing policies as leader of the Conservatives, which weren't supported by the Liberals.
That's a matter of different policy approaches to increasing housing, not whether Poilievre supports more housing being built.
In 2023, as Opposition leader, Poilievre proposed Bill C-356, dubbed the Building Homes Not Bureaucracy Act, to establish targets for completion of new homes in high-cost cities that would increase 15 per cent each year and tie federal infrastructure funding to those targets.
The Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebécois voted against the measure.
In 2023, Poilievre supported a Liberal bill that called for a federal framework on housing for individuals with non-visible disabilities. All parties supported the bill.
In 2022, Poilievre didn't vote in favour of Liberal Bill C-31 that proposed a one-time rental benefit of $500 for low-income earners.
Before the snap election was called in March, Poilievre had announced that if his party formed government, he would tackle housing affordability by slashing the GST on home purchases under $1 million. He has bumped that up to $1.3 million in the election campaign.
Poilievre pledged a Tory government would pay for the GST cuts by axing the Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund as well as the Housing Accelerator Fund, which provides billions of dollars to municipalities and First Nations.
However, some Conservative MPs had written to the federal government in support of municipalities' applications for the accelerator funding, something that Poilievre has since barred his MPs from doing.
Twice in 2021, under the Justin Trudeau-led government, the Conservatives proposed bills on housing supply, including one to review and consolidate all federal properties in Canada in order to make at least 15 per cent available for residential development. That bill, as well as another, also proposed banning foreign investors from purchasing Canadian real estate.
The Liberals, including Fry, voted against those bills, although in 2023 the Grits did bring in a ban on foreign buyers. In 2024, the Liberals also said they would free up federal land for housing.
In 2017, also under a Liberal-led government, the NDP sponsored a bill that proposed a change to the Canadian Bill of Rights to guarantee the right to housing at a reasonable cost and free of unreasonable barriers.
The Conservatives, including Poilievre, voted against the bill. So, did the Liberals, including Fry.
In 2019, another NDP-sponsored housing bill that called for building 500,000 units of quality, affordable housing within 10 years was voted against by the Conservatives, including Poilievre, and the Liberals.
Poilievre and the Tories also voted in 2013 against an NDP-sponsored bill to create a national housing strategy that the Liberals supported. The Conservatives had a majority government at the time.
This election, Poilievre has said cities should free up land, speed up permits and cut development charges to build 15 per cent more homes a year. If they don't, federal funding will be withheld. Poilievre also plans to sell 15 per cent of the federal government's 37,000 buildings to be turned into affordable housing.
The Grits, under Leader Mark Carney, propose to double the pace of home construction to 500,000 new units a year with the help of a new federal government agency, modelled on a program used to build starter homes after the Second World War. Carney has also promised to encourage cities to cut housing construction red tape and lower development charges, as well as eliminate the GST for first-time homebuyers on homes under $1 million.
ghoekstra@
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