Like many Canadians, I was prepared to give Gregor Robertson a second chance. As a born and raised Vancouverite and someone who has been writing (and warning) about the housing market for almost two decades now, the appointment of Robertson as Canada’s new housing minister didn’t exactly fill me with optimism. His track record as mayor of Vancouver includes a 179 per cent increase in home prices that effectively priced an entire generation out of that city’s housing market — and, in effect, out of that city.
In fairness, nobody’s track record during that period was very good, and much of the increase in home prices was due to inaction or indifference by the federal and provincial governments. Even so, given his obvious association with the period where Canada’s housing market started to run away from millions of people, he was a risky choice as housing minister. His first few days on the job have shown why.
For all of his well-documented telegenic charm, Roberston has never been a particularly effective communicator. That was on full display during his interview with the CBC’s David Cochrane, where he seemed conspicuously short on answers and long on excuses. “It’s going to take years,” he told Cochrane. “This is decades of building up a problem, so it’s not going to be fixed overnight.” He refused to give a specific date when asked when his government would deliver on its promise to double home building. “We’re years away,” he reiterated.
Cochrane captured the stakes of his new job at the end of the interview. “I think every Canadian under 40 is counting on you,” Cochrane said, to which Robertson replied, “Including my kids.” But, of course, Robertson’s kids will be just fine. In Gregor Robertson’s Vancouver, the children of wealthy and privileged homeowners were more than fine, actually; they were lottery winners. It was everyone else struggling — and, often, failing — to keep their heads above the economic waterline.
When asked if Robertson’s appointment was a signal that housing prices should not go down, Carney said that “you would be very hard-pressed to make that conclusion.” Robertson then went out and made that conclusion for everyone the very next day, telling reporters that he doesn’t think house prices need to go down — and that Canada needs to deliver more supply instead. That, of course, would make prices go down, all other things being equal.
This is the truth that most federal politicians are still afraid to say out loud. If we’re actually going to address housing affordability in this country, and especially overheated markets like Vancouver and Toronto, prices have to come down. Yes, that might mean that homeowners will miss out on some of the equity that’s accumulated in their homes. But as former Housing Minister Nate Erskine-Smith said back in January during an interview with the Toronto Star, “It’s not the government’s job to protect a certain amount of equity that has built up in a person’s home.”
Unless and until Carney and his new housing minister are willing to say the quiet part out loud, as Erskine-Smith did, it’s going to be hard to take their housing pledges and policies seriously. No, they’re not going to be able to single-handedly transform Canada’s housing market overnight. It may well take years, as Robertson said, to see real progress on affordability. But they could change the way they talk about the issue right now, and in so doing let Canadians know they actually understand what needs to be done.
That’s why, if Robertson is going to win the trust and confidence of Canadians, he needs to acknowledge some of the mistakes he made as mayor of Vancouver, from his decision to initially downplay the risks associated with foreign investment to his habit of cozying up with the city’s real estate developers.
(So far, at least, he seems more interested in defending that record than learning from it.)
Robertson needs to be honest about the tradeoffs involved, and stop pretending that we can somehow massively ramp up the construction of affordable housing without impacting the broader housing market and its often ludicrous prices. And if he won’t do these things, Carney needs to find someone who will — and fast.
The next election, whenever it comes, will be a referendum on the progress Carney’s team has made on housing and other key cost of living issues. And this time, good intentions and big plans won’t be nearly enough to placate young voters. The Liberals were given one stay of political execution on this issue, both because of Justin Trudeau’s resignation and Donald Trump’s menacing threats. They will not get a second one.
Comments
Jeeze this government just had its first meeting, Poilievre hasn't even moved from Stornoway, nor has Scheer been acting interim leader yet and here' s Max talking about the next election. That's all everyone has done in the news media is pounce and criticize and nothings happened yet. It tooks years to get to this point of crisis housing, along with hundreds of thousands of new Canadians entering through immigration, and a Conservative Opposition that think the word 'opposition' means obstruction. All they Opposition has done is obstruct for the last 10 years so that the Liberal agenda would stand still.
Come on journalists, write about something else and give this government a chance to get on its feet otherwise you are just part of the problem with all your 'what ifs' negativity.
I don't think asking the housing minister to address the elephant in the room is negativity. I think its what we all need to get up to scratch on.
If the cost of housing stays where it is today........no amount of new builds will solve the housing problem. That is kindergarten math....and an invitation for the international wealthy to purchase rentier property in Canada.
If the average cost of a home is approaching a million dollars.....and to get into a condo is circling the half a million mark, my grandkids risk homelessness. We middle class apolitical Canadians need to get up to speed about the economy we claim to vote for. Many Canadians do not make enough money to qualify for either a house or a condo in the current market.
Our housing minister needs to have something to offer other than platitudes of how many years it is going to take to reach affordability. He needs to understand that housing needs to ditch the 'free market' and the rich private developers............go back to the drawing board and come up with affordable homes built with public money.......for public consumption.
There are models for this approach. Our media needs to focus there.........and help us all stop believing that just doing more of the bad policies we've been pursuing under privatized neoliberalism is going to solve anything for our working class fellow citizens.
If that is expecting too much from Carney's Liberals, well then I'd suggest we've been sucker punched......one more time.
There's been a lot of commentary on Robertson, and very little of it has been positive. Erskine-Smith seemed to get the scope and gravity of the housing problem, and was a good communicator as well as policy-maker. I find myself wondering why Carney put Robertson in the job. Any ideas out there?
p.s. of course home values in Toronto and Vancouver have to come down. That should be the starting point (and I speak as a long-time Toronto homeowner)
If you've been following Nate Erskine-Smith's record for the past ten years, it might make you wonder whether Carney's priority was to get Robertson into the job, or to get Erskine-Smith out of it.
We stay with the free market and nothing is going to change for the better........in my upper middle class neighbourhood, mansions are already going up. I look forward to having neighbours across the park who will have to be millionaires to share our community.....in Calgary, its more McMansions, skinny three story condos, or rental skyscrapers.
Nothing that looks affordable to own....never mind anything approaching net 0, as we continue fracking for the methane gas we burn to stay warm in the winter, and shill for pipelines to export the bottom of those greenhouse gas barrels. We're racing to the bottom.....while continuing with the boom in unaffordable abodes.
How to engineer a slide in House prices? Supply and demand market forces in the housing market will affect prices but other markets may have a bigger impact. Are we still headed for a 40% reduction in employment by 2030 with the widespread adoption of automation? Have to look at industries where automation may be simple and those industries where the Net Return is huge.
Automation....with AI generated algorithms is one more plank in the unaffordability big developers intend to continue ramping up. It's a recipe for revolution...devolution...or perhaps the end of civilization as we know it.
Exciting for some; tent encampments for the majority.
Carney campaigned on building more housing in a program that hasn't been as ambitious since WWII. $10B in up front public funding for social housing, including homes for the homeless. $25B in public funding to incentivize private sector investment in housing. Some call that seed money. Others call it subsidies. All with caveats on efficiency in construction methodology and energy.
Just three weeks out of the gate and already journos like Max Fawcett are half ways to dismissing 35 billion bucks in effort.
It takes two to three years to design, conduct land assemblies, coax cities into being more flexible with zoning, get all the permits then build houses. No politico has a magic wand.
Provinces and cities need to participate. In Vancouver, much of the asking price is in the land, of which there has been a shortage for decades. Fawcett will not be able to suggest that land prices will come down by making more land. There isn't any left ... unless he suggests filling in English Bay.
The rest -- developer focus, corruption mainly with the provincial government that peaked under Christy Clark, etc. -- is largely true. But Robertson, warts and all, did find a way to house hundreds of homeless by buying old SRO hotels and renovating them into modern self contained housing units and by using modular construction methods on new sites. Funny. Fawcett didn't mention that.
Robertson is right, it will take years to see lots of housing appearing on the ground. At least two for the furst wave. For that reason it is far too premature to judge Carney/Robertson. I will wait until before the next election when, theoretically, there should be a fair amount of progress on the ground.
The alternative will be to allow the Conservatives to rule. Good luck with the housing file then.
"...the first wave."
Provinces and cities own huge swaths of land in cities. They could really help by donating land for the federal program. However, privatizing public land is never a good idea. Therefore, affordable housing built there will likely mean owners will pay a lease for the land component.
There are things that could be done immediately, such as a ban on foreign ownership. A ban, or serious regulation limiting their numbers, on short-term rentals. A ban on "investment" properties.
Sure, Carney has made promises -- note how he's already acting to "remove obstacles" (read environmental assessments and GHG caps) to "traditional" (read oil & gas) energy infrastructure -- but if you look at the notion of affordability, as Max pointed out, he has so far not said that the actual cost of housing must come down. He has given tax holidays which reduces gov't revenue, but doesn't reduce the price of the property.
I've yet to read any plans to increase the skilled trades in a meaningful way to effectively double the numbers to have the people to build the new homes while renovating millions of existing structures.
While I accept that Carney was a better tactical choice this election -- a very low bar-- I don't view him as anything approaching a saviour, as many Canadians apparently do. There are too many questions remaining unanswered regarding his beliefs.
Here's a Walrus article:
https://thewalrus.ca/mark-carney-cutthroat-capitalist/
If you have the time, I recommend highly you read the book, "Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World", then consider where Carney's beliefs lie in that context (recall that both he and Chrystia Freeland were trustees of the World Economic Forum; Freeland as recently as last December).
We have very good reasons to keep an eye on what's happening in the new gov't. I'm concerned that Carney may be yet another neoliberal, which bodes ill. Time will tell.
Poilievre would, without doubt, have been worse.
Other authors to read: Wendy Brown; Joseph Stiglitz; George Monbiot's latest.
Do a web search on "critics of neoliberalism" or similar to find other educated polemicists.
You're right, time will tell.
My attitude is let Carney et al run with the exceedingly generous housing policy, which has very little to do with national O&G and/or clean energy provincial boundary crossing infrastructure.
I see the $10B for social housing as pure democratic socialism of the kind we really need because the development industry will not build it on its own. BC is building supportive housing as such, but its taking a hit on Vancouver's west side and with Vancouver's latest council, which swung conservative.
The remaining $25B will no doubt stimulate housing with a proportion supposedly being affordable. You may have missed Carney's announcements on modular housing and innovation in mass timber which virtually eliminates waste and the majority of emissions in the construction industry. Carney also made a major announcement on clean energy at a steel plant that eliminated coking coal and rebuilt using electric arc furnaces.
Davos or not, we will see.
I stopped subscribing to the Walrus years agowhen they hired a conservative editor who cut long form investigative pieces in favour of puff pieces on sports and editorialized against anything "green."
I have several of Stiglitz's books.