HANNAFORD: Poilievre's housing plan is not the help we should be asking for

Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre is dead right about the housing crisis and what caused it — policy confusion on many files from the Trudeau Liberals, notably immigration. (Seriously, why would you bring in more people when you don't have enough houses for the ones you've already got? And they all emit carbon, you know. Yes, that's confused.)But among the many workable solutions Poilievre is offering, there’s one he should drop — setting up the federal government to work things out with the municipalities. It’s not that it’s unprecedented. The problem is that Ottawa is already doing it, and shouldn't be. Last November for example, the City of Calgary announced a $228 million agreement under the federal Housing Accelerator Fund to support seven local initiatives with heavy emphasis on the city's densification priority. This is neither new — it's been going on for years — or unusual: Seven other cities have similar agreements.The problem is that as an Albertan, you can't have it both ways. It is logically inconsistent to be telling the federal government to stay in its lane when the discussion is over its fantasy net-zero grid, but to then welcome it into your own lane if they bring money. Worse, it also exposes provinces to a whole system of bait, switch and control. As noted economist and Queen's prof Tom Courchene described in 'Hourglass Federalism' (Policy Options 2004,) having lured the provinces into supporting the Canada Health Act in the 1980s, "Paul Martin’s landmark budget of 1995 cut federal funding for health care and other provincially delivered entitlements in such a way that Ottawa was able to balance its books while the provinces saw health costs rise to increasingly unsustainable levels — in many cases approaching half their budgets."(Alberta presently spends an option-limiting almost 40% of its budget on health care.)Courchene added, “The cuts compromised every provincial program except health care, since gutting medicare would spell certain electoral defeat.” And then? "Meanwhile, after balancing the books in 1997 and presenting surpluses ever since, Ottawa used the fiscal dividend to move into areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction, such as cities and education, while the cash-starved provinces look on, helpless to spend any new money in their own constitutional domains. “The cities fully welcome these initiatives,” Courchene writes, “because the provinces are effectively broke.” Don't they though? At the November announcement, Mayor Gondek spoke glowingly. "Today is a good example of how two governments working together is great, and three would be even better." (The government of Alberta is not part of this deal, you see. As the good professor said, when Ottawa has all the money, the ability of the provinces to do what they want to do is diminished.)Now, Poilievre is not speaking here as an Albertan, but as a national politician who has a reasonable hope of becoming prime minister in two years. Nor is he speaking particularly of Alberta. What he's proposing is a national policy.However, as a matter of principle, let's be clear. The direction of federal strategy from the end of the Second World War, regardless of the party in power, has been to enlarge the federal government at the expense of the confederate provinces. As a policy, it was seen as an antidote to the centrifugal tendencies inherent in Quebec federalism: Gather the money to the centre, then hand it back with conditions. This kind of Ottawashing of the people's money keeps the provinces — including le nation — in a permanent state of financial dependency upon the federal government.So what is really needed here, is not more federal programs for cities, or even for provinces. It is a reversal of a longstanding federal policy of grabbing control.To be fair to Mr. Poilievre, one could hardly expect him to make an abstract discussion of the principles of federalism a part of his election-winning strategy. However, one would have more confidence in his conservative creds if he wasn't pumping the continuation of federal encroachment upon provincial jurisdiction, in any guise.What Canada needs is more fiscal power in the hands of the provinces, and less in the hands of the Laurentian elites that presently have control. If Mr. Poilievre has an agenda for that, he would be right to keep it hidden. But do hope he actually has one.