A recent Leger poll found that 4 in 10 Canadians believe that the Trudeau government is to blame for Canada’s growing housing crisis and is responsible for fixing it.
The survey was conducted between Aug. 18 and 20, asking 1,537 respondents a number of questions regarding the rising cost of housing and how it could best be resolved.
When respondents were asked whether the blame should be placed on federal, provincial or municipal governments, 40% said that the federal government was the most at fault with 32% saying that it was the provincial issue. The least amount of respondents answered that they felt municipal governments were at fault, only 6%.
The remaining 22% said that they were unsure of which level of government was to blame.
Those who blamed their provincial government were most likely to be renters, whereas homeowners tended to blame the federal government.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been criticized by opposition parties over his recent comments that, “housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility,” saying that it’s up to both provincial and municipal governments to fix the issue.
Despite Trudeau’s claim, the National Housing Accord recently laid a number of recommendations for the Trudeau government to alleviate the housing crisis, including lowering taxes and cutting red tape for builders.
On Wednesday, the Liberal cabinet finished a three-day retreat in Prince Edward Island where they promised to find answers for Canadians’ concerns about the cost of housing, however the retreat did not provide any solutions.
“We are looking forward to continuing to do the work we’ve been doing on housing and do even more,” said Trudeau while speaking with reporters in Charlottetown on Wednesday.
“We recognize and Canadians know that there’s not one silver bullet that’s going to solve the housing challenges.”
The cabinet retreat came at a time when the Liberals have been steadily slipping behind the Conservatives in a number of polls nationwide.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has repeated his message that ‘Canada is broken’ under Trudeau’s government and he echoed that sentiment again on Wednesday while speaking in Ottawa.
“We have never seen it like this before and we were supposed to have solutions out of this big housing retreat Trudeau held,” said Poilievre.
“What was the solution? More speeches, more photo ops, more puff pieces for his incompetent housing minister.”
Trudeau dismissed Poiliever’s comments as just “slogans and buzzwords” designed to inflame Canadians’ anxiety about the rising cost of living without providing real solutions.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation projects that Canada will build around 2.3 million new housing units by 2030 based on the current rate of building but in order for the housing market to become affordable again, that number would need to rise to 5.8 million.
Trudeau said his government does plan to double the current number of housing units being built but has not yet provided details on how that will be accomplished.
