Poilievre’s housing plan doesn’t hold up

GUY WAS NOT AN ORDINARY SUPERSTAR. — ANDRÉ PRATTE

Pierre Poilievre spoke with his usual show of certainty last week, when questioned about the involvement he and his wife have in the real estate market.

The Poilievres both have investments in rental properties. According to CTV News, his wife, Anaida Poilievre, paid $238,000 in 2012 for a semi-detached home in an Ottawa suburb, which has grown in value, allowing her to borrow $425,000 against the property last June.

Questioned about the loan, Poilievre rejected any hint of incongruity. “She followed all of the rules and used the equity that she has built up through a very responsible and intelligent investment to maximize the best interests of her financial position,” he said.

Absolutely. Nothing wrong with cashing in on an investment, right? Except Poilievre has been touring the country denouncing people who use their homes as investment vehicles rather than a place to live and raise a family.

He has supported basement suites and allowing multi-unit buildings on lots previously reserved for single-family homes, but earlier this month, he shot a video perched outside a tattered-looking house in Vancouver that had somehow been listed for $4.9 million, citing it as an example of a property world gone crazy.

Again, fair enough, but the difference between deriving income from a small rental in Ottawa and hitting the motherlode with a potential gold mine in Vancouver is one of degree. Both are being used as income-enhancing investments; one is just much more lucrative than the other. Where does Poilievre put the dividing line between a “responsible and intelligent” investment and crazyland?

This is not the only area of Poilievre’s housing crusade that can seem perplexing. His newly announced remedy for the supply crunch is to use federal pressure to force “severely unaffordable big cities” to change local regulations that he blames for making construction too difficult and expensive.

“A Poilievre government will make clear to big city politicians that they will not get what they want until the people get what they need: homes built,” he said in Toronto last week. He would require large cities of over 500,000 with “overpriced real estate” to add 15 per cent more houses or be punished by losing federal infrastructure funding; cities that build above the 15 per cent target would get their promised cash plus a “building bonus” of $10,000 per extra house. “Only carrots and sticks will get results,” he declared.

This is the same politician who is running on making Canada the “freest country in the world” by getting intrusive, overreaching politicians out of Canadians’ hair. Yet what else would you call it when Poilievre says that as prime minister, he’d withhold promised funding for infrastructure to specific cities unless local politicians bend to his will?

Municipal governments come under provincial authority, and there is already a heady current of discontent among Canadian premiers over the degree to which the Trudeau government has seen fit to muscle its way into their jurisdiction. Toronto Mayor John Tory and Ontario Premier Doug Ford are both Conservatives; does Poilievre presume they’ll be pleased to take dictates from him that they wouldn’t abide from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?

Toronto is unquestionably a “severely unaffordable city,” ranking No. 1 or 2, depending on how you stack it against Vancouver, but we’ll need extra detail on how the difference between pricey, overpriced and “severely unaffordable” is calculated and whether the computation is based on price alone, or is geared to local conditions.

The Conservative premier of Nova Scotia is proposing a special tax on out-of-province property owners, claiming holiday homes are pushing prices out of reach for locals. The average sale price of homes in Halifax in January was under $400,000. You couldn’t get a junior condominium in Toronto for that price, yet it’s a 23 per cent hike from last year. So is Halifax “severely unaffordable,” or still a screaming buy by Ontario standards?

And while Toronto has well over the 500,000 residents required to qualify for punishment, how about the smaller suburbs adjoining it with smaller populations but prices that are just as out of control? Milton, a Toronto suburb that is among Canada’s fastest-growing communities, has just 145,000 people, but the average price of new listings in April approached $1.2 million.

Details, details. Dozens of members of Parliament own rental properties. The housing minister has one. The finance minister has two. A third of the Liberal cabinet has real estate investments. It’s not illegal and it’s not usually considered unethical or immoral. Poilievre maintains such practices don’t inflate prices, saying that he and his wife are “helping solve the problem by providing affordable rental accommodations to two deserving families,” but Statistics Canada says otherwise.

“Owners seeking additional properties contribute to increased competition in already tight real estate markets, making it more difficult for prospective homeowners to purchase a home,” the agency says.

Poilievre is only running for the Conservative leadership at the moment, which isn’t precisely the same as running for prime minister. His rhetoric is therefore geared to rousing the passions of party members, or those who might be lured into becoming members. There’s no need at this point to deliver the sort of detailed and fully costed package of policies required of a leader heading a national campaign. But the pledges he does make should at least stand up to a rudimentary examination.