THUNDER BAY – The Conservative, Liberal and NDP candidates in Thunder Bay–Superior North agree housing affordability is an important challenge, but they don’t agree on what to do about it.
Affordable housing is a top issue in the federal election, as it was in the Ontario election earlier this year and is at the municipal level.
According to Statistics Canada, nearly half of all Canadians are “very concerned about housing affordability because of the rising costs of housing or rent.” Almost 60 per cent of respondents aged 20-35 in a Statistics Canada survey last year reported being very concerned about their ability to afford housing.
In interviews with Dougall Media, Thunder Bay–Superior North candidates offered differing solutions to the puzzle of how to improve housing affordability.
Conservative candidate Bob Herman spoke of reducing taxes and red tape to improve housing affordability.
“Our party’s plan is simple,” said Herman. “It’s to remove the GST, which is 5 per cent on all new homes, up to $1.3 million, and also to provide incentives for municipal governments to basically make the process a lot smoother to reduce fees and to free up land in order that houses can be built.”
He said the Conservatives are committed to addressing homelessness, “but we need to work with the other levels of government, the provincial and municipal levels, to actually address it. It’s not something that can be done by one level of government.”
Liberal incumbent Patty Hajdu said her party’s government has “taken huge strides to be a strong partner to both provinces and municipalities on the issue of homelessness” as well as getting new homes built.
“In fact,” she said, “Thunder Bay and many outlying communities were recipients of the Housing Accelerator Fund, and Thunder Bay was recently recognized as being a leader amongst communities of its size for using that money to stimulate housing.
“These are the kinds of partnerships and relationships we need to continue.”
Hajdu said her party’s leader has announced “a number of investments and measures that will help accelerate the building of affordable housing.”
Joy Wakefield, on the ballot for the NDP in the April 28 election, said “the federal government hasn’t been involved in building houses over the last few decades. The NDP, on the other hand, has a plan to build close to a million units.”
Housing is crucial to leading a productive and happy life, Wakefield said. “It changes your life dramatically, and so we need to get Canadians in homes and we need to keep them there.”
She said economic security is one of “lots of factors that go into” homelessness, “and we also need to make sure that there are supportive health-care programs and other things like that for people who need to access that so that they can stay in their homes as well.”
The Green Party’s John Northey and People’s Party candidate Amos Bradley were not available for interviews.
