Nova Scotia Liberals highlight housing plan, NDP talks support for small business

Nova Scotia's Liberal and NDP leaders highlighted platform pledges related to housing and support for small businesses Friday, as Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Houston campaigned outside of Halifax.

During an announcement at party headquarters in Halifax, Zach Churchill confirmed that the Liberals' plan to get 80,000 homes built in order to ease a provincial housing shortage by 2032 would not include the construction of more public housing.

Churchill said he isn't philosophically opposed to public housing, but he thinks it costs more and takes longer to build.

"We have to build more quickly," he said. "We have to empower the private sector to develop market housing and we have to lean on the models that are working the best in our province, and that is the not-for-profit model and co-op options."

As of May this year, the Progressive Conservative government had committed to building 273 new public housing units — the first to be built since 1993 — with the intent of housing 700 people.

"We are not going to adjust the current plan for public housing that this [Tory] government has initiated, but we know that government housing is not the answer," Churchill said.

The Liberal plan, which was previously announced in the party's platform, would build homes faster and make them more affordable, he argued.

Churchill said a Liberal government would establish provincewide municipal zoning standards and spur housing innovation through the use of modular and factory-built housing. It would also offer $37.5 million a year to build more non-profit housing and $20 million over four years to build and support co-operative housing.

Churchill said there would also be a review with the intent of lowering property taxes in order to encourage the building of more housing or additions to homes.

The Tory platform has few measures to address the province's housing crisis aside from a plan to make more vacant land available to communities and reduce the minimum down payment for a home to two per cent.

The NDP meanwhile, has promised to build 30,000 new affordable rental homes as part of a plan that will also expand public housing stock by giving priority to the use of prefabricated housing.

Also in the Halifax area on Friday, NDP Leader Claudia Chender discussed her party's promise to cut the small business tax to 1.5 per cent from 2.5 per cent. Chender said the move is important because the money spent at small businesses helps drive Nova Scotia's economy.

"People have been working harder but they are often falling further and further behind," Chender told reporters, adding that small businesses can often not afford to hire the workers necessary to expand their companies.

She said the NDP would also work with local businesses to build a program that would encourage Nova Scotians to buy local.