Liberals, NDP pitch housing promises as Conservatives eye energy corridor – National | Globalnews.ca
As the second week of the federal campaign gets underway, the Liberals and NDP were touting housing promises from the campaign trail while Conservatives focused on plans for an energy corridor.
Liberal Leader Mark Carney says his government would double Canada’s rate of residential construction housing over the next decade to nearly 500,000 new homes per year.
The plan announced Monday would create a new federal housing entity that the Liberals say would oversee affordable housing construction, speed up construction and provide financing to homebuilders.
Carney said the new agency, Build Canada Homes, would act as a developer to build affordable housing at scale, including housing on public lands, and would develop and manage projects.
He said the “lean, mission-driven organization” would provide more than $25 billion in financing to builders of prefabricated homes and $10 billion in low-cost financing and capital to builders of affordable homes. A Liberal-led government would transfer all affordable housing programming to the new agency from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, he said.
Carney said his government’s program would emphasize the use of prefabricated and modular housing, which he said can be built quickly, affordably and sustainably using Canadian materials.
The party is also proposing to lower the cost of homebuilding by cutting municipal development charges, facilitating the conversion of existing structures and building on the housing accelerator fund. The fund offers communities federal dollars in exchange for changes to bylaws and regulations that boost home construction.
Housing was also at the forefront for the NDP on Monday, with Leader Jagmeet Singh promising to retrofit 3.3 million homes.
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Singh says 2.3 million low-income households would get free energy-saving retrofits like heat pumps, air sealing and fresh insulation under the NDP plan.
Another one million households would be able to finance those retrofits with low-cost loans and grants.
Singh says the program would save a family up to $4,500 annually on their energy bills and help to relieve the impact of U.S. tariffs and fight climate change.
The NDP says it plans to pay for these retrofits by cutting $1.8 billion in annual subsidies and tax breaks for the oil and gas industry.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre spent Monday pitching his proposal to pre-approve development on a national energy corridor, saying it would fast-track approvals for projects such as transmission lines, railways, pipelines and other critical infrastructure.
He said companies don’t have an incentive to build pipelines in Canada “even as pipeline construction is booming all over the world because pipelines are, of course, so wildly profitable.”
Under his energy corridor proposal, all levels of government would provide legally binding commitments to approve projects within the corridor.
First Nations also would be involved, ensuring that economic benefits flow to them and that their approval is secured before any money is spent, Poilievre said.
Andrew Leach, an economist who teaches at the University of Alberta, said he wonders how any potential infringements on First Nations’ rights could be dealt with without a detailed application before a project is given a green light to go ahead.
Leach also questioned what would happen if several firms apply to build the same kind of project, like an oil pipeline, along the same route, or if a company wants to build on land owned by someone else.
Poilievre said the corridor would help speed construction of infrastructure needed to sell Canadian natural resources to new markets and would result in billions of dollars in new investment.
Adam Legge, the president of the Business Council of Alberta, said he believes anything that can improve federal-provincial co-ordination for large infrastructure projects is helpful, but only if it’s insulated from future challenges.
Legge added that he believes Canada should have been focused on building infrastructure to get its products to non-U.S. markets long before the current Canada-U.S. trade dispute.
At a press conference Monday morning, Poilievre said that if he were prime minister, he would present U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration with a choice: pursue tariffs against Canada and weaken both economies, or increase trade and co-operation across the border.
–With files from The Canadian Press’ Lauren Krugel and a file from Global News
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