Poll finds Poilievre housing plan could win votes from Liberals, NDP and Quebec residents

A public affairs consultancy says Pierre Poilievere's housing policy is an especially popular idea to Liberal and NDP voters and Quebec residents.Political Intelligence released the poll findings February 6 in a post entitled Housing affordability: the perfect wedge.The firm polled 947 Canadian adults using automated telephone interviews on January 25 and 26. Respondents were asked, "Would you support a plan that ties federal funding to a municipality's housing starts, requiring high growth municipalities to increase new housing by 15% per year?"The poll found that 38% of Canadians strongly supported the idea and 30% somewhat supported it. Opposition was minimal, with 8% somewhat opposed, 8% strongly opposed, and 16% who did not know. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.2% with a 95% confidence rate for its overall totals.Strong support for the idea was lowest among Conservative voters (34%), prairie residents (21.2%), and Albertans (25.1%), and strongest among Quebecers (48.9%) and Liberal voters (44%). Support varied little when distinguished between gender, age, education and income. Emrys Graefe, managing partner of Political Intelligence, said the idea is a political win.“To be clear, this is the Pierre Poilievre housing strategy we asked about. When it was first proposed, this plan was heavily criticized by other parties," Graefe said."After years of rising housing costs and other affordability concerns, it appears Mr. Poilievre and his team have found the perfect wedge. In fact, NDP and Liberal voters now support this in greater numbers than Conservatives. That is smart politics.”Quito Maggi, Chairman and CEO of Political Intelligence, and pollster for Mainstreet Public Research, greeted the results with surprise.“It’s ironic that these results suggest Liberal and NDP supporters now embrace a plan to tie municipal funding to housing starts, that is unheard of.”In September, Poilievre introduced a private member's bill to advance the proposal, telling reporters the Trudeau Liberal government had lowered Canada into "housing hell."Bill C-356, the Building Homes Not Bureaucracy Act, was tabled September 20, 2023 and calls for the following, verbatim.(a) establish a target for the completion of new homes in high-cost cities that increases 15% every year and ties federal infrastructure funding allocated to high-cost cities to that target;(b) provide for the reallocation of $100 million from the Housing Accelerator Fund to municipalities that greatly exceed housing targets;(c) require that federal transit funding provided to certain cities be held in trust until high-density residential housing is substantially occupied on available land around federally funded transit projects’ stations; and(d) make it a condition for certain cities to receive federal infrastructure and transit funding that they not unduly restrict or delay the approval of building permits for housing.It also amends the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act, the National Housing Act and the Excise Tax Act in order to(a) eliminate executive bonuses unless housing targets are met and to reduce executive compensation if applications for funding for new housing construction are not treated within an average of 60 days; and(b) provide a 100% GST rebate on new residential rental property for which the average rent payable is below market rate.This bill also requires the Minister of Public Works to table a report on the inventory of federal buildings and land, to identify land suitable for housing construction and to propose a plan to sell at least 15% of any federal buildings and all land that would be appropriate for housing construction, subject to certain exceptions. The minister would have to place these properties on the market within 12 months of tabling the report.

Poll finds Poilievre housing plan could win votes from Liberals, NDP and Quebec residents

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