It makes sense for the federal government to include an interprovincial mobility clause when funding provincial housing. 

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 3, 2024.

OTTAWA—Half of the residents in Canada’s major cities are ready to move for more affordable living.

Thunder Bay, Ont., is the best destination if you are trying to reduce the cost of housing as a percentage of your monthly income.

According to a Royal LePage affordability study released last week, you can live in that city and pay only 22.2 per cent of your income for a mortgage.

The study polled Canadians living in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver asking whether they would be prepared to move for more affordable accommodation.

Some 54 per cent of Greater Montreal residents said yes, while 51 per cent in Greater Toronto and 45 per cent in Greater Vancouver were willing to move for cheaper accommodation.

Edmonton was the only large city that made the cut as one of the 15 most affordable living locations in the nation.

Not surprisingly, it also polled at the top when people were asked which of the 15 they would move to.

In my own family, my daughter made an affordability move from Toronto to Montreal earlier this year. She purchased a duplexed apartment in Verdun with a budget that probably would have gotten her a shoebox in Toronto.

And Montreal is not even included on the list of potential destinations for affordable housing.

But the reality is that the quality of life in a major urban centre like Montreal often trumps the simple issue of affordability.

I have family living in Thunder Bay, and it is a wonderful place if you enjoy the great outdoors with easy access to fishing, hunting, and hiking.

But if you are an urban type, this most affordable community is somewhat remote. For example, I once took a train trip from Toronto to Thunder Bay, and the excursion took 17 hours. The city is also 700 kilometres away from Winnipeg, which is the nearest community with a professional theatre company, dance group, and other attractions attached to living in major urban centres.

If urban life is important to you, the choice of the cheapest mortgage is not the only reason to make a move.

But the survey does show Canadians that there are options when it comes to housing affordability.

Too bad those options are not built into the country’s public policy framework.

With every housing agreement signed with individual provinces, there is absolutely no incentive to encourage people to cross provincial borders in search of affordable housing.

If anything, the larger the local population, the more funding is focussed on providing services to that population.

When Toronto lays claim to a population larger than most provinces, it is correct.

But it would make sense to encourage people to move out of the GTA in an effort to tackle the affordability issue.

Housing prices in nearby Hamilton have long been a magnet for Torontonians who want to be able to live in an urban centre without spending a million dollars.

The investment in rapid transit between communities also makes the affordability move painless as it includes the possibility of either remote work, or actually commuting to a job in Toronto if necessary.

Just last week the federal and Ontario governments finally signed an agreement which transfers $357-million into provincial coffers for housing projects.

The agreement had been stalled for months because of a dispute over what Ontario was actually spending on social housing, which the feds alleged was less than other provinces.

The new agreement includes an “action plan” that both governments are happy with, but municipal partners in housing are asking to “fundamentally re-think the way that community housing is funded in Ontario.”

That fundamental re-think should involve a deeper dive into portability for affordability.

If it is less expensive to live in Windsor, Ont., or Thunder Bay, as evidenced by the Royal LePage survey, why not encourage people to move to those locations?

A bonus system for municipal affordability would ensure that governments are investing in the communities that provide the greatest housing return.

Why not include interprovincial movement in that equation?

It is cheaper to live in St. John’s, N.L., so why not provide incentives for people who are prepared to take the risk and make that move?

Housing solutions involve thinking outside the box.

Either you get a condo box in Toronto, or more spacious, affordable accommodation elsewhere in Canada.

It makes sense for the federal government to include an interprovincial mobility clause when funding provincial housing.

Canadians should be encouraged to migrate to affordable cities.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

The Conservatives have already started their pre-election communications strategy and are well-funded to keep it going. If the government wants to remain in the game, it needs to get in the game.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on December 11, 2023.

OTTAWA—P.T. Barnum once said that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Oscar Wilde followed suit with this zinger: “There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre followed Barnum’s advice by vowing to bring in thousands of amendments to legislation until the Liberals change some elements of their pollution pricing strategy.

Poilievre didn’t call it “pollution pricing,” but rather “carbon tax,” which is how most Canadians seem to be viewing the issue.

Government House Leader Karina Gould was quick to repudiate Poilievre’s tactic, accusing him of being a bully, and “not a serious politician.”

She also pointed out that Canadians earning less than $50,000 are actually receiving more in their pockets because carbon pricing includes personal rebates.

Poilievre seems to be winning the ground war, and has not been damaged by his bully tactics on parliamentary bills.

Most Canadians are not watching the machinations of Parliament on a daily basis, but they are feeling the pinch of inflation, and a hike in cost for basics like food and housing.

On the housing front, Poilievre dominated the headlines again, for good or for bad.

He released a 15-minute docudrama on housing which was widely quoted by pundits in both positive and negative news columns.

Globe and Mail columnist Gary Mason called the video “a dime-store analysis of our housing crisis.”

Globe columnist Andrew Coyne, on the contrary, called it, “extremely impressive. Simplistic, tendentious, conspiratorial in places, but by the standards of most political discourse, it is a PhD thesis.”

The video had legs. Within days of its posting, the docudrama had received more than three million views.

That compares with a prime ministerial upload the same day that received fewer than 100,000 views.

Liberal Housing Minister Sean Fraser joked that the Poilievre video got multiple views because of the opposition leader dialling in to watch himself perform.

Anyone can manipulate social media to inflate the number of views.

But the fact that the video occupied so much ink in mainstream media means that Poilievre was getting out his message.

The media and positive polling numbers have emboldened the Conservatives in the House of Commons.

Last week, one member was bounced out of the place for accusing the prime minister of lying on the carbon tax issue.

Alberta MP Damien Kurek ignored repeated invitations from the Speaker to withdraw his comments and was drummed out. Kurek almost immediately posted his exchange from the House on Twitter.

Meanwhile, a journalist for social media Insight has used the incident as a fundraising measure, inviting people who support Kurek to assist by sending money to a media PayPal account.

But this is no ordinary media strategy. Instead, Poilievre and the Conservatives plan to use every social media platform to promote their positions.

On these platforms there is no real rebuttal, so it doesn’t matter much that a number of statements in Poilievre’s housing video were simply false.

To follow the Barnum school of promotion, simply getting out the message on multiple platforms helps reinforce Poilievre’s status.

Screaming matches in the House of Commons are intended to reinforce the Conservative message that the carbon tax needs to be axed.

Liberals have some great talking points to deflate the video, but talking points will not carry this day.

Instead, they need to get serious on social media, attacking the falsehoods that are being perpetrated by Poilievre.

Fraser issued his own video in rebuttal to Poilievre’s housing claims.

But he is a single actor in the parliamentary story. Instead, the government needs to spend as much effort on rebuttals as it does on its own positive announcements.

As long as Canadians are talking about carbon tax and not a price on pollution, it is pretty simple to see who is winning this public relations battle.

But that doesn’t necessarily equate to winning the war.

A hard-hitting rebuttal to the “dime-store” housing analysis needs to come from the Liberals, and it needs to involve social media saturation and paid media messaging.

The Conservatives have already started their pre-election communications strategy, and by all accounts, are well-funded to keep it going.

If the government wants to remain in the game, it needs to get in the game.

Any winning team needs a defensive and an offensive strategy.

By leaving the offence to Poilievre, Liberals look defensive. Only by going into attack mode will they win.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Provinces may not like this budget, claiming encroachment into provincial jurisdiction. But with the municipalities on side, the federal government should be able to start delivering on a national housing strategy.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on April 11, 2022.

The federal budget’s $10-billion housing announcement should be nicknamed Back to the Future.

Most Canadians may be too young to remember the time more than three decades ago when the federal government was solely responsible for housing.

In the post-war period, the national housing drive spawned affordable housing for returning veterans which still stands today. The federal government funded housing for low-income families and seniors at a reduced rate, reflecting their income.

Canada was considered an innovator in the housing field. That progress ended in 1986, when the federal government devolved social housing responsibilities to the provinces.

With the exception of cooperative housing, which remained federal because of a successful co-op lobby, every other housing program was downloaded.

Unconditional cash transfers accompanied the transfer agreements, designed to finance housing initiatives that never materialized.

Even national Indigenous housing initiatives in urban centres were downloaded, with disastrous results in most instances.

Last January, the Ontario government announced a $10-million Indigenous housing investment. The urban-based Ontario Indigenous population is almost 800,000.

With that size of population, and that paltry investment, it is easy to see why the majority of urban aboriginal people live in substandard housing.

The country is still feeling the pain from a decision made years ago that took the federal government out of the housing market.

Justin Trudeau’s government was the first one to promise federal re-entry into social housing during the Sunny Days campaign of 2015. And this budget finally provides the financing to deliver on that promise.

While the two-year ban on foreign ownership is largely a symbolic measure promised during the last election, it will not dampen the speculative real estate market in large cities like Toronto and Vancouver.

Foreign buyers usually have connections in the country, making it fairly simple to bypass this anti-speculation measure.

The budget does provide an opportunity to explore new and innovative housing models. There is no reason why Indigenous urban housing cannot be funded directly through a national Indigenous organization.

The government’s decision to help municipalities navigate the challenges of the building permit system also has serious long-term potential to improve housing stock.

Instead of simply handing a cheque to each province, the federal government will be engaged with local governments, offering the tools they need to get affordable housing into the marketplace in a timely fashion.

It may also help tackle the problem of the pricing differential between large urban centres and smaller communities.

Federal building incentives targeted to assist low-income communities make a lot more sense than simply providing the same amount of money to every project.

Sherbrooke in Quebec, and Windsor in Ontario are currently the cities with the poorest residents in the country.

They obviously need more help than West Vancouver, Westmount, or Rosedale when the government is subsidizing the housing supply side.

By working directly with municipalities, the federal government will also be able to utilize knowledge transfer between provinces in a way that makes sense for new housing models.

The devil is obviously in the details. But one thing is certain: the Liberal government is making good on a campaign promise to invest in housing. This direct investment will go a long way to filling the hole created when the federal government vacated the housing field back in 1986.

The housing crisis is a good example of how a national government can help municipalities and provinces in the pursuit of knowledge transfer.

An innovative housing solution in New Brunswick could easily provide inspiration to northern Ontario. Both are areas with rural and remote communities largely dependent on natural resources.

They can learn more from each other than they could from Toronto or Fredericton.

A federal housing strategy that works directly with municipalities opens the door to a national solution. That does not mean one size fits all.

But it does mean that in the mobile world in which we live, Canadians will finally have a mobile housing platform wherever they reside.

Provinces may not like this budget, claiming encroachment into provincial jurisdiction. But with the municipalities on side, the federal government should be able to start delivering on a national housing strategy.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities got its first direct federal investment in greenhouse gas reductions 20 years ago, it was a $20-million baby step.

That program is now worth more than one billion dollars and is, arguably, the largest driver of municipal greenhouse gas reductions in Canada.

With this budget, the same will soon be happening for housing.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.