Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has deflected blame once again, this time claiming that the housing crisis Canada is currently facing is former PM Stephen Harper’s fault.
Harper was the Prime Minister from 2006 – 2015. Trudeau’s Liberal Party of Canada formed government in 2015 and remains in power today.
“Construction takes a while,” Trudeau said on Monday. “And if you remove the federal government for 10 years under Stephen Harper from construction of affordable housing, no wonder, over the following ten years, there have been challenges around getting affordable housing for Canadians.”
Prime Minister Trudeau made his comments in In Gatineau, Quebec, while participating in a discussion at the annual conference of Canada’s Building Trades Unions.
Prime Minister Trudeau has regularly blamed former PM Harper for his own party’s failures.
His evergreen strategy comes despite documents revealing in 2023 that Trudeau was informed by the Secretary of the Cabinet, Janice Charette, that his immigration policy was directly causing the country’s housing affordability crisis.
“There is broad agreement among experts that homebuilding has been insufficient in comparison with housing demand in recent years, particularly with the increase in immigration since 2015,” referring to the year Trudeau took office.
Trudeau’s annual immigration numbers are more than double what Harper’s were.
Housing affordability is at its worst levels in the country’s history
According to the latest housing affordability report from RBC, soaring interest rates have skyrocketed ownership costs, making it the toughest time ever for Canadians to afford a home.
In fact, Canada is currently on its way to taking first place for having the most unaffordable housing market on Earth.According to data from the OECD, which tracks housing prices amongst developed nations across the globe, Canada currently has the second highest housing price-to-income ratio in the world, second only to Portugal, which is experiencing an unusual bubble that has already hit a ceiling and is expected to cool over the coming months.
