Ottawa, ON – Scott Aitchison, Conservative Shadow Minister for Housing, released the following statement in response to Prime Minister Carney’s housing re-announcement:
“Owning a home was once part of the Canadian promise. If you worked hard, played by the rules and paid your taxes, you could afford a good home in a nice neighbourhood on a safe street. Yet after more than a decade, Liberal policies have driven up the cost of everything and pushed homeownership further out of reach, especially for young Canadians.
“Today’s re-announcement of more government spending on Mark Carney’s fourth housing bureaucracy offers no relief to Canadians struggling to afford a home. We’ve already seen the lack of homes and the lack of results from increased Liberal spending on housing bureaucracy, which has failed to speed up the construction we need.
“The government’s own housing agency predicts that national housing starts will decline 18.1 per cent over the next two years as developers face high costs, softer demand and elevated inventories. While the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation says we need to build 480,000 homes a year until 2035 to restore home affordability, Canada is expected to build just 247,000 this year.
“More spending on Carney’s fourth housing bureaucracy won’t fix our housing slump, with the Parliamentary Budget Officer finding that Build Canada Homes will only build approximately 5,200 units a year over five years. That’s a far cry from the 500,000 new homes Carney promised to build each year during the 2025 election.
“That’s despite Canada already having the workers ready to get homes built. There are 127,100 Canadians already trained with a trade certificate or diploma who are unemployed as of Q4 2025. Meanwhile, 131,300 Canadians who used to work in construction were now unemployed in April, with 47 per cent of homebuilders and their contractors reporting layoffs in the first quarter of the year.
“Canadians are looking for real results that build homes and restore affordability, not more re-announcements and Liberal bureaucracy. After promising to build at speeds not seen since the Second World War, the Carney government’s policies and bureaucracy have moved homebuilding in the wrong direction.
“Canada has the workers, materials and land available to build the homes Canadians need. Conservatives are ready with a plan that will unleash homebuilding to restore our country’s promise: where stronger take-home pay buys an affordable home that families can finally call their own.”