Originally published in The Globe & Mail on October 30, 2026

Canada’s National Housing Strategy is approaching a crossroads. With the 10-year plan poised for renewal in 2027, governments must continue committing public money to housing – but also address the deeper issue.

It’s time for Canada to finally be honest that housing affordability will not be restored any time soon for anyone who is not already a homeowner.

To be sure, there has been progress, as indicated by data from Statistics Canada and the Canadian Real Estate Association. Adjusted into 2025 dollars, average home values peaked nationally at roughly $801,000 in 2021 and fell to about $680,000 by 2025. This 15-per-cent decline shows that housing affordability can improve.

But it does not mean housing has become affordable. Despite recent price declines, buying the average Canadian home still requires a mortgage of roughly $544,000, even after saving a 20-per-cent down payment.

Carrying that mortgage while spending less than 30 per cent of income on housing – the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s guideline for affordability – requires an annual income of around $131,000. The typical 25- to 34-year-old who works full-time earns only $68,500.

Despite the size of that gap, our policy makers primarily count on just one side of the ledger – earnings growth – to close it.

Housing Minister Gregor Robertson has explicitly rejected the idea that home prices should fall dramatically. Most politicians share a similar instinct. They want affordability to improve without substantially eroding the home equity accumulated by existing owners.

The challenge is that this approach takes a long time.

Assuming earnings grow at 3.5 per cent annually, roughly the average pace over the past decade, it would take about 26 years for earnings to catch up to current home values nationally. That means affordability would not be restored until 2052 – an estimate that is actually more optimistic than the 2060 timeline featured in a recent report prepared for Canada’s Federal Housing Advocate.

The timelines are even longer in the markets where affordability challenges remain most severe. Earnings would require approximately 36 years to catch up to home prices in Ontario and 45 years in British Columbia. The wait approaches 48 years in the Greater Toronto Area, 53 years in Victoria, and stretches to 66 years in Metro Vancouver.

This reality must change our national housing conversation. How affordability will be restored remains an essential question. Canada must continue building more homes, streamlining approvals, legalizing more density, expanding non-market housing, finding the sweet spot for monetary policy and curbing speculative demand.

But a second question is now unavoidable: What happens while young Canadians wait?

This is where Canada’s housing debate becomes uncomfortable.

Over the past half-century, many homeowners accumulated significant housing wealth as home values rose faster than earnings. These windfalls are only preserved because younger Canadians absorb higher rents, longer periods of saving, larger mortgages and greater housing insecurity.

The result is a political bargain that is seldom acknowledged openly. Governments of different political stripes have repeatedly prioritized protecting the housing wealth accumulated by existing owners, while expecting younger Canadians and newcomers to endure the resulting costs. The gains were privatized through rising home equity; the costs were socialized through worsening affordability for those not yet owners.

This is not an argument against homeowners. Most simply responded to incentives created by the housing system they inherited. Nor is it an argument for a housing crash. Sharp price declines would create macroeconomic risks for too many.

It is, however, an argument for reciprocity.

If younger Canadians are being asked to wait decades for affordability to return, governments should not merely promise that conditions will improve some day. They should also consider how to support the generation bearing most of the burden for protecting the housing wealth already accumulated by others.

That support could take many forms: stronger rental assistance, improved student grants, lower student debt, expanded $10-a-day child care, enhanced family benefits, targeted tax relief, or other measures that improve living standards for young people while housing affordability recovers.

The specific policy choices are open for debate.

The principle is not.

If governments continue to protect housing wealth accumulated by earlier generations, they should also acknowledge the sacrifices younger Canadians are making to sustain that protection.

That is the conversation the Carney government must confront when renewing the National Housing Strategy, beginning in the budget scheduled for Nov. 5.

Because the issue is not just how affordability will eventually be restored.

It is also how much an entire generation is expected to sacrifice before that happens.