Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman says Canada's housing crisis stems from high property taxes, excessive regulation, and underused federal land. She points to Toronto and Vancouver homes exceeding $1 million and household incomes needing to top $200,000. Her solution: cut development charges, reduce red tape, and partner with private developers on federal land.
I was able to get into the housing market when I was 26. I worked very hard. Smart. I lived for a time in a basement, one single room in a basement with no windows, just to save enough money for a down payment. But most people I know can't afford a house, right? The average price of a home in Toronto and a place like Vancouver is over $1 million. And to get a mortgage today, you have to have a household income of over $200,000 and a down payment of $200,000. Is there a realistic path to fixing that issue, and what would the Conservative Party do to solve it?
Yeah, look, homeownership is it's not a dream anymore. It's a sort of a nightmare for a lot of people. And rightfully so, because, you know, without a home, like, you can't do the other things. Like, a home is more than just like four walls. And it is like the key to everything else. It's the key to family planning. It's the key to like, you know, having a foothold in the world. And it's based on a very, very realistic dream that you can come here and work hard and get a house. Like, that's like— my parents moved here in the late '70s and they like, they moved to this neighborhood like in the early '80s, already buying a home for like a fraction of obviously the price of a downtown Toronto parking spot these days, but led them to be able to do everything else. And it led them to a certain kind of freedom that you can't enjoy. It led them to be able to, you know, have kids and raise them and like, you know, hold functions. Like it was more than just like the physical house. That's why the dream sort of exists for so many people. And again, like, it's not that complicated. The majority of a home, like a third of it is taxes. It's regulation. It's, you know, development charges from our municipalities. Like we have— like fundamentally the federal government has like a big, big tool and it's like the biggest part of the public purse. And so we can reward those who get out of the way of home building and punish those frankly with a bit of a stick approach of those who are in the way, cut development taxes, open up our own free land. Like the federal government sits on lots of their own land, lots of their own properties that aren't being used, being able to— to, you know, get partners in the private sector to develop that land. Like, there's lots of things that the federal government does, but all of this is like— I don't know the scientific term in it, I'm going to just use cuckoo bananas, um, is, is, is how I look at it. Like, it is taxes, it is regulation, um, it is the availability of, of land. And we've got land and we've got lumber and we've got, uh, labor. Like, we are rich with all of that. Putting it to, uh, to good use by getting out of the, of the way. Like, my— there's a theme in all of this. It's like, get government out of the business of doing stuff that it doesn't need to do.
