Housing might not be Trudeau's sole responsibility, but it's his problem

Justin Trudeau's recent observation that housing isn't a "primary federal responsibility" was something of a Kinsley gaffe — the act of inadvertently telling the truth or inconveniently confessing some private thought.

The prime minister was not wholly wrong, per se, when he said housing was not something the federal government has "direct carriage of." Housing is not like national defence or foreign policy or international trade — areas of policy for which the federal government has sole responsibility. It's a matter of shared jurisdiction and many of the policy levers and regulations exist at the provincial and municipal level.

There is also something to be said for pushing back against the tendency in Canadian debates to ignore the existence of provincial and municipal governments, which have their own laws, powers and responsibilities. Media coverage of Canadian politics is heavily tilted toward the federal level and demands for accountability now almost invariably roll uphill

The rest of Trudeau's answer emphasised a willingness on the part of the federal government to do something — "It is something that we can and must help with," he said. And if Trudeau had said something banal like, "We can't do this alone," he probably wouldn't have been scolded by multiple columnists over the past week.

But no elected leader has ever improved their situation by attempting to specify limits on their own responsibility for a significant problem. And a government that came to office on the promise to help the middle class with the cost of living can't be seen now trying to finesse responsibility for such a pressing concern.

It's also simply the case that federal policy does have a significant and, in many cases, direct impact on the affordability of housing in Canada. And Trudeau's Liberals have, since 2015, embraced the idea that the federal government can play a meaningful and constructive role in expanding access to housing (the word "housing" appeared 29 times in the Liberal party's 2015 platform). In 2017, the government announced a national housing strategy that now includes $82-billion in federal spending and commitments.

Trudeau can fairly say his government has shown more interest in housing than its Conservative predecessor. But Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has an easy retort: all those promises and investments haven't done enough to make affordable housing as accessible as it should be.

By the federal government's own account, its spending to date is expected to result in the creation of 107,000 new housing units. That's not nothing. But that also doesn't seem like a lot when set against the projected need to build 5.8 million new homes in Canada by 2030. 

Meeting that need could require even more federal funding. But, as Housing Minister Sean Fraser suggested this week, it might more simply involve the federal government doing a better (ie. faster) job of spending the money it has already committed.

Other ideas are floating around. The federal government could remove the GST from new rental units or make changes to the capital cost allowance for rental properties. It could put funds toward building housing for university and college students. Converting unused office buildings into housing might be easier said than done, but turning over more federal property to development might make a useful dent in the problem (there are already, for instance, nine federal properties for sale in Ottawa).

Fraser's appointment signalled that the Liberals know they need to re-seize the housing agenda. But part of a better federal response might involve dealing with that question of jurisdiction.

"There's a co-ordination problem," Mike Moffatt, director of the PLACE Centre and a researcher focused on economic development and housing issues, said in an interview this week. 

To illustrate the problem, Moffatt described his own conversations with municipal and federal officials.

"I will talk to municipal planners about reforms to get more apartment buildings built," he said. "And they'll say, 'Well, there's no real point to liberalizing zoning and things like that because we've already got so many projects that are approved but not built. The developers tell us that these projects just aren't financially viable because interest rates are too high or they need the GST removed on purpose-built rental — like we're not going to go through this process to just not have any new buildings built.'