SCARBOROUGH — Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre on Monday promised a new Conservative government will build 2.3 million homes in the next five years.
Poilievre emphasized the necessity of having a much higher ratio of homes to immigrants, and said his government would cap immigration according to the rate of homebuilding.
Speaking to reporters in Scarborough, ON, Poilievre said his main opponent, Liberal leader Mark Carney, literally took a page out of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s playbook — including a copy-and-pasted platform that used the “find-and-replace” function to simply swap Trudeau’s name for Carney’s.
As a result, the party has not changed, and housing has not been this unaffordable in more than 40 years, said Poilievre.
He said the Conservative plan would focus on getting “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.”
The Conservatives will sell federal land to builders on the condition they build homes that Canadians can then buy and privately own.
“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 down payment,” 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.”
Canada has the worst housing inflation of any country in the G7, and young people are forced to rent — but the cost of rent has doubled too, he said.
The Tories will reward cities that permit over 15% more homebuilding each year with additional federal funding, reduce 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**,** and require them to pre-permit housing as a part of getting federal funds for related roads, bridges and transit.
Poilievre pointed out the federal government owns over 11,000 federal properties, including land in urban hotspots, and promised his government will identify 15% of federal land and buildings to sell in cities within the first 100 days.
“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.”