Justin Trudeau’s new housing policy—to incentivize Canadian cities to build more homes near transit hubs—sounds awfully familiar.
His plan involves giving federal funding to cities, but only if they change their laws to permit more homes to be built near transit areas. This plan nearly mirrors a proposal from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre last year.
“We’ve put money on the table to help cities build more public transit, with a catch. To get that funding, cities have to change their by-laws to unlock more apartments and homes near that transit,” Trudeau announced on X.
The plan is similar to Poilievre’s proposed Building Homes, not Bureaucracy Act and his general message of getting rid of the “government gatekeepers.”
Last year, Poilievre posted a 15-minute video on the housing crisis.
“What if we incentivized good behaviour instead of reinforcing the bad?” Poilievre said in the video. “The federal government spends about $4.5 billion on direct and continuous municipal infrastructure transfers. Big city politicians care about getting that money more than anything else. They’ll only permit more homebuilding faster if their federal money depends on it.”
Poilievre also recorded a video outside an apartment he lived at when he was in university, located near a Calgary transit station, to drive home the point further.
Deputy Conservative leader Melissa Lantsman said the Liberals could have supported Poilievre’s bill in the House of Commons if they wanted to see his policies implemented.
“When Common Sense Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre proposed sensible legislation to build the homes by pressuring the gatekeepers into speeding up permits, among other measures, the Liberals voted unanimously to stop it,” she said.
“It is only now that their desperate and flailing government (is) closer to facing Canadians in an election that Trudeau’s Liberal government (is) taking conservative policies and representing them as their ideas.”
The difference between Trudeau’s and Poilievre’s proposals lies in the latter’s emphasis on results rather than only zoning law changes required to access the funds in Trudeau’s plan.
“Require federally funded transit stations to be permitted for high-density apartments all around it and withhold federal transit grants until the apartments are built and occupied,” Poilievre said in his list of ways to combat the housing shortage.
He also proposed that big cities complete 15% more homebuilding annually to get federal infrastructure money and that cities exceeding the 15% target receive building bonuses.
“Dollars should be based on housing completions, not promises,” Poilievre said.
He also proposed the government sell off 15% of federal buildings and 1000s of acres of “surplus federal land” that is suited for housing.
“Instead of funding promises, the federal government should find results,” he said.
Lantsman thinks people will see through what Trudeau is doing.
“Canadians won’t be fooled, and they know Trudeau is to blame for nine years of failed policies and the hurt and misery he has caused,” she said.
The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to True North’s request to comment.