Additional Requirements

In addition to this three-pillar plan, there are two more requirements to ensure affordability.

  • To ensure that everyone in Canada can afford a home that meets their needs. Indigenous, federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments need to work together.

    Intergovernmental collaboration can be difficult at the best of times, and the governments who are closest to the housing issue (local and indigenous governments) often have the least resources and authority to address it.

    Many would say the value of housing investments by federal, provincial and territorial governments is still inadequate, often with too much red tape in the way of accessing it.

    One way to reform housing governance would be to increase the amount of provincial and especially federal funds dedicated to the issue. Another way would be to rethink the current division of powers such that local and indigenous governments have more direct authority and resources to achieve the goal in locally-tailored ways.

  • While there are ongoing efforts to improve the amount of housing data collected, synthesized and shared between governments and the public, some feel there are still too many gatekeepers, and large data gaps, making it difficult to make evidence-based decisions.

    Additional efforts should include a federal beneficial ownership registry, robust information on global capital flows into Canadian residential real estate, robust data about the influence of monetary policy, the mortgage market and lending on rising home prices, better information on evictions, housing discrimination and equity, secondary rental market, rigorous assessments of local housing needs, and more.