Canada

If that’s the case, then I actually don’t disagree with what you’re getting at.

And I was thinking that you started the mention of federal politics by quoting “Build Baby Build”, and that’s why I mentioned it.

And I don’t disagree with your take, and wouldn’t even dissuade your doubts that the LPC wouldn’t be effective at addressing the problem either, and exactly due to their policies of the past, and how it’s abundantly clear that there’s no political appetite from all the major parties to even point to the elephant in the room. I also agree that we are absolutely at risk of a hard rightward shift should this government fail to address our poly-crisis to a point where enough people would feel like they’ve gotten to a more decent place in life.

What I don’t think, however, is that people actually think that we should just build whatever. If anything, right now, I think most people don’t even have a good idea of what sort of houses are even needed, given Canada’s long history of just building SFH and condos, with nothing in between.

I do hope that whatever Carney’s planning with the Build Canada Homes initiative, that it would be based on informed plannings based on learnings we can bring in from around the world and not just Canada. Not holding my breath for it, but that would definitely put my mind at ease. There is, ofc, a lot more to expect out of this: how do you prevent opportunistic investors, individual and corporate, from buying out these units and essentially scalp the housing market; can we make sure that the most vulnerable amongst us can put a roof over their heads through this initiative, and not just helping those who are close to home ownership get over that barrier and we just end up with the same situation with a larger crowd of homeowners; how much resources are we actually talking about that would be required for this initiative, where are we sourcing them, and how will this affect our environment; zoning law changes; missing middle? Again, not holding my breath, cause there’s, so far, quite little proof to who have they talked to, and there’s very little message at the moment about all this. So I guess we will find out.