By Kevin Lee, CHBA CEO
The federal election dominated CHBA’s advocacy recently, and we worked hard to keep members, the public and media informed.
As the parties updated their campaign platforms, CHBA updated our platform tracker and articles examining housing pledges on affordability.ca. We also stayed very active in the media, commenting on housing platforms in major national outlets such as Global News, The Globe and Mail and more. We got a lot of wins in the party platforms, and even received platform changes during the campaign. More than 1,000 members registered for CHBA’s webinar diving into what the election results mean for our industry, and next steps for CHBA’s advocacy.
Substantial progress
A few weeks later, David Coletto, one of Canada’s most respected public opinion analysts and pollsters at Abacus Data, offered members at CHBA’s Home Building Week an insightful take into what drove Canadian voters. He explained that concerns regarding high housing costs and the rising cost of living dominated the narrative early in the year, and while they dropped to “second priority” due to increasingly volatile rhetoric from the U.S., those concerns remained key through the election, and haven’t gone away, especially among younger voters.
Over the last few years, CHBA made substantial progress keeping members’ issues and priorities top-of-mind with the federal government. This has secured big wins, such as mortgage changes to help more Canadians access homeownership, measures to incentivize municipalities to reform their restrictive development processes, new financing incentives for accessory dwelling units and more. CHBA aims to build on that progress moving forward.
The Liberal Party’s housing plan took up many of CHBA’s recommendations (or variations thereof), including revising the GST on new homes. On the first day that parliament resumed, the government tabled legislative proposals to make good on its promise to introduce a new GST rebate for first-time homebuyers, removing the GST on new homes at or less than $1 million and lowering it on homes between $1 million and $1.5 million for all first-time homebuyers, effective May 27, 2025. This is a win for members and buyers looking to get into the market, but there’s more that can be done: CHBA’s recommendation is to extend the GST relief policy to all buyers of new homes (not solely first-time buyers), increase the limits to $1.5 million for the full rebate, lower through to $2.0 million in Canada’s most expensive markets, and include ADUs and secondary suites. Further, the relief should be applicable to all new homes under the thresholds whose sales have not closed.
Reducing red tape and bureaucracy
Also included in the Liberal Plan was the promise to build on the success of the Housing Accelerator Fund to reduce red tape/bureaucracy and audit the results from municipalities, work with provinces/municipalities to cut municipal DCs in half for multi-unit residential, and simplify the building code to speed up approvals. Other CHBA recommendations that made it into the Plan include an examination of the barriers to longer interest rate mortgage terms, the reintroduction of tax incentives for purpose-built rental, and $25 billion in debt financing and $1 billion in equity financing to factory-built home builders, while eliminating duplicative inspections and streamlining regulations.
There are also areas of the Plan where CHBA is seeking clarification or improvement, particularly the intention to create a new “Build Canada Homes” entity, which would see the federal government act as a developer of affordable housing, principally on crown land. There are certainly questions to be asked about governments acting as land developers (as they are known for excessive bureaucracy), so critical oversight will be needed should this come to fruition, and CHBA will be at the forefront of those conversations.
Going forward, CHBA aims to secure expansions to the measures of which we are supportive (for example, to cut DCs in half of all unit types, and not just multi-family housing), as well as secure new wins for members. Rest assured, CHBA remains well positioned to continue our momentum in maintaining strong relationships with federal officials, offering them real and actionable solutions.
