Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said cabinet helped millions of Canadians with the National Housing Strategy (NHS), according to Blacklock’s Reporter. “We are going to continue as we have done it,” said Trudeau at a press conference. “There is no moment to stop.”Trudeau pledged the Canadian government will continue “to invest in working in even better partnerships with municipalities and provinces across the country.” “We put in place a National Housing Strategy in 2017 that delivered for millions of Canadians as we moved forward into difficult years,” he said. “Following the pandemic, the housing challenges really exploded across this country and we needed to do even more.”Records show the NHS did not create millions of homes. Cabinet said in an inquiry of ministry tabled in the House of Commons in May 106,377 housing starts were financed under the NHS.Figures were released at the request of Conservative MP Marty Morantz (Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley, MB), who asked how many residential units constructed through the NHS have been completed. The province with the most homes completed was Quebec at 32,598 units. After Quebec was Ontario (27,643 units). This was followed by British Columbia (22,540), Alberta (6,917) and Saskatchewan (4,085). “It is not clear the National Housing Strategy will reduce the prevalence of housing need relative to 2017 levels,” said the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO). Parliament passed the National Housing Strategy Act (NHSA) in 2019 to enshrine a right to adequate housing into federal law. The PBO said the NHSA “does not create any enforceable individual rights that would give rise to statutory spending.”Figures published in May showed the NHSA financed the construction of 106,000 homes since 2019.READ MORE: Trudeau's National Housing Strategy failed to build enough housingHowever, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) said there is an estimated shortage of 400,000 homes per year and builders are not meeting the demand.“This figure does not represent the total number of homes built, as it only encompasses those formally funded under the National Housing Strategy,” said the CMHC.
