On Monday, former federal Liberal finance minister and a candidate for the next leader of the Liberal Party and next prime minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland said she would limit the number of immigrants arriving to Canada based on housing availability as part of her plan to remedy Canada’s housing shortage. Another way of saying it would be that Freeland has ripped off an idea from Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre's housing plan, which he announced last fall, that included tying immigration numbers to housing starts. It’s not the only housing strategy that Freeland ‘borrowed’ from Poilievre. In her 10-point housing plan released on Monday, she said cities should reduce development charges that apply to new home construction or she would withhold money from the federal infrastructure accelerator fund. Last fall, Poilievre suggested tying federal transfers to municipalities to the number of housing starts they report. But wait, there’s more. Both have said, Freeland on Monday and Poilievre last fall, if elected prime minister, they would do away with the GST charged on newly built homes for first-time buyers. Freeland’s plan would be to drop the GST from sales of new homes worth up to $1.5 million, while Poilievre’s plan removes the tax from sales of new homes priced under $1 million. In Canada, homebuyers only have to pay the GST/HST when they purchase a new house directly from a builder. Home builder associations estimate government-imposed taxes and fees account for approximately 20% of the average new home costs. Poilievre said his tax cut could save $40,000 in total costs or $2,200 per year in mortgage payments on an $800,000 house and help build 30,000 new homes each year. Interestingly, on December 10 last year, Conservative Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman introduced an opposition motion to enact Poilievre’s GST idea but it was defeated when the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals — Freeland included — voted against it. One of Freeland’s plans is to cut red tape and take back housing accelerator funding from municipalities that are not following through on their commitments, as well as work with cities to automatically approve standardized new home designs and in major urban centres, there must be a minimum of four units per lot. (Ideas that sound like they’re straight out of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.) In Calgary, it's called blanket upzoning.Last fall, Poilievre promised to cut red tape as well, by cutting bureaucracy and cutting the Housing Accelerator Fund and other programs that Liberals themselves admit haven’t built any homes (which is one and the same as bureaucracy). You can bet that these Poilievre ideas will not be 'borrowed' by Freeland.
