- What The Conservative Party of Canada released its platform Tuesday
- Why It includes incentives to encourage purpose-built rentals
- What next If elected, the party pledges to sell thousands of government buildings
Following is Green Street News’ analysis of the Conservative Party’s platform relating to housing. Read about the Liberal Party’s platform here.
The Conservative Party of Canada released its full election platform on Tuesday, promising to sell 6,000 government buildings and thousands of acres of land to help finance building the country out of the housing crisis.
About 2.3m homes would be constructed under the strategy, the Conservative Party said, which also would include tax cuts aimed at saving homebuilders $100,000 per home and eliminating red tape.
The plan comes as the 2025 election campaign sees the country’s two chief rivals vie for support in an election overshadowed by economic uncertainty due to U.S. tariffs.
Part of the issue around housing issues in Canada is a lack of rental housing, particularly in cities such as Toronto and Vancouver.
“The whole thing about rental homes and the federal government is one about finance,” Andy Yan, director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program, told Green Street News. “What are the returns? What is the tax forgiveness in terms of development?”
Yan also pointed out that the lower incomes of typical renters in cities make it difficult to build new rentals they can afford.
Removing taxes on rental home starts
Part of the CPC plan is to remove the GST on new rental homes, which the party said will create thousands of new rental units.
It also includes allowing “reinvests” in Canada to defer capital-gains taxes to invest in homebuilding.
It’s an idea Tony Quattrin, vice chair of capital markets for CBRE, said could work to create more residential units.
Quattrin said it harkens back to the Multi-Unit Residential Building program of the 1970s and early 1980s.
“Under that program, they built 240,000 homes in five years,” he said. “These programs will work.”
The big problem right now isn’t density, he said; it’s affordability, and the two need to go hand in hand for success.
Quattrin said anything easing taxes and getting red tape out of the way will help the country reach the goal of greater affordability and more housing stock.
He said the sale of 6,000 federal buildings also could help the situation, depending on where the properties are located.
In general, he said, the government itself getting into the homebuilding industry is not a good idea.
New development taxes to be cut
Mike Moffatt, the founding director of the Missing Middle Initiative at the University of Ottawa, said the Liberal Party and Conservative Party have been fairly “light” on their housing plans this campaign.
Moffatt has been pushing for cities to cut their development charges.
The CPC platform stressed it will “incentivize” municipalities to cut building taxes on new homes by reimbursing them at 50% on the dollar up to $50,000 in deferred costs to new homebuyers.
It did not mention whether the policy would apply to rentals.
Other initiatives included more federal funding for cities that permit more than 15% in additional homebuilding each year and working to harmonize building code regulations.
