Are Poilievre’s conservative allies the real gatekeepers?

For months now, Pierre Poilievre has railed against the role so-called “gatekeepers” play in delaying the construction of much-needed new housing in Canada’s cities. He has a point, given the smothering influence of NIMBYism on local planning decisions and their resistance to new townhomes, condominiums and other forms of built density in supposedly “mature” neighbourhoods. The success of NIMBYs has come at an incredibly high price for younger and new Canadians, who have to contend with rising rents and ludicrously high home prices in our big (and increasingly, not-so-big) cities.

There’s just one wrinkle in Poilievre’s argument: a lot of these “gatekeepers” happen to be his fellow conservatives.

Take Calgary, where the city council’s most conservative members helped vote down a proposal to accept recommendations from its Housing and Affordability Task Force that included pro-affordability measures like removing parking minimums and making R-CG zoning — a standard that allows for rowhouses and duplexes as well as single detached homes — the base residential standard city-wide. Among those who voted no was Dan McLean, a councillor who once described Poilievre as the “best MP in Canada” and employed his brother Patrick as a communications and community liaison.

Awkward!

Greg McLean, the CPC MP for Calgary Centre, did his best to justify council’s decision to engage in some pretty obvious gatekeeping. “I recognize the need for more housing and affordable housing,” he said in a statement. “But there is a right way and a wrong way. The wrong way is blanket rezoning and eliminating parking requirements.”

Two of his colleagues, Conservative MPs Michelle Rempel-Garner and Scott Aitchison, weren’t having it. “Calgary City Council was presented with a series of recommendations to deliver more housing,” Aitchison tweeted. “It would have made it easier to build the homes that people need. But the gatekeepers stood their ground.”

Rempel-Garner was even more explicit in her condemnation of the city’s conservative councillors. “I call upon colleagues on that council who I share constituents with to buck up and be actual leaders and show our communities what courage and leadership look like. Vote for housing and hope, not for NIMBYism.”

This volley of friendly-ish fire appears to have worked. Calgary’s city council reversed its decision the very next day, with only Sean Chu — a councillor who shares constituents with Rempel-Garner — still voting against. But it speaks to the schism within the conservative family on this issue, especially when the interests of suburban homebuilders — traditionally the bedrock of their financial support at the municipal level — conflict with the need for the federal party to make inroads in places like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

Make no mistake: this fight is far from over. Calgary city council will vote in September on the specific recommendations in the report, most notably the upzoning and removal of parking minimums, and you can be sure the same conservative councillors who voted against the report the first time will be the ones mounting resistance to the proposed changes. Even if they’re approved, it’ll still take a year for the new bylaws to be drafted and implemented.

Council’s decidedly languid pace stands in stark contrast to the speed at which council is moving on its arena deal, one that shovels $853 million in public money to a hockey team owned by billionaires. Coun. Sonya Sharp, who leads the arena negotiation process, has said it will move at “the speed of business.” But she seems more than happy to slow-roll the work done by the city’s expert panel on affordability. “It’s a leap to think we should just accept the expert recommendations with no further debate on what it all means, on whether Calgarians support those recommendations,” Sharp said.

This is another important contrast. For some reason, there won’t be any public consultation on the massive arena-shaped giveaway to some of the city’s wealthiest people. But changes to the zoning and parking bylaws will be exposed to the full weight of public scrutiny, most of which will come from self-interested homeowners looking to protect their neighbourhoods from the apparent scourge of new people. Funny how that works.

This total lack of urgency is at odds with the scale of the problem, one highlighted in a CBC Calgary piece on the city’s white-hot rental market. For many Calgarians, especially those on the economic margins, waiting a few years for improvements isn’t an option. According to a recent Calgary Economic Development report, “379,200 working Calgarians would be stretching their financial resilience to independently access even the most affordable of market housing currently available.”

Time is not a luxury these people have, and the decision to fast-track the arena while simultaneously slow-walking efforts to build more housing speaks volumes about where this council’s priorities really lie.

The good news, if there is any here, is that a municipal election is only two years away. Every single councillor who votes against measures that will improve affordability, increase density and curtail sprawl should be held accountable for that decision.

If Poilievre and the Conservative Party of Canada actually want to get rid of the “gatekeepers” and build more housing in Canada’s cities, they should start with the ones in their own backyard — literally and figuratively. If they don’t, it's proof that they’re really more interested in replacing one set of “gatekeepers” with another.