Memo To The Liberals: Build Some Fucking Housing

On The Only Housing Answer That Will Matter

On Monday, in an act clearly designed to solely piss me off and cause my mentions and inbox to explode, Justin Trudeau decided to put his foot in his mouth with a not-untrue but entirely needless quote about housing not being a primary federal responsibility. It’s not-untrue in the sense that it’s not, but Federal immigration policy is Federal responsibility, and at some point an acknowledgement that these things have to work in tandem is not too much to ask for. (Also, the party that touts the Canada Health Act is not the party that gets to wipe its hands clean of Federal overreach into provincial jurisdiction.)

Where I disagree isn’t with the consensus the quote’s a disaster – it’s a needless clip the Tories will have fun with – but whether it matters. I don’t think it will, because either the Liberals are seen to make progress on this or they won’t, but they can have the greatest comms operation in the world but if unit starts aren’t rapidly increasing they’re going to be losers on the issue, and they can have as many bad pressers as long as there are housing projects getting announced all over the country as often as possible.

Those saying the damage has been done are being nihilists, I think – there’s no arguing that there’s going to be a massive surge of units on market by the next federal election, but two years is plenty of time to get a shitload of building started. Whether the Liberals have the intellectual capacity to come up with the mechanisms to get it going and the institutional heft to pull it off in time is besides the point – there’s a lot of time to get this off the ground and to at least put the prospect of a better housing market in the window to young voters. If there’s half built, under construction rental towers full of units at every intersection of every major Canadian city on Election Day 2025, then the Liberals will be fine, even if there’s been few actual tangible benefits from the building yet.

Whether this government has that capacity is a massive question mark, or more accurately belief they have it is an act of faith, not an act of informed reasoning. It’s a government that’s been slow on this, in part because a MP’s salary and the $2000/month housing allowance inoculates from the consequences of housing market failure and in part because the NDP made dental and pharma priorities instead of housing (which is … odd, in hindsight, but the choice to not make electoral reform the red line for a deal and then use the permanent balance of power to get dental and pharma is more odd, so who knows). It’s a very typical Liberal aloofness – the victims of the policy failure are alien to them, so they don’t focus on it.

The instinct to bury this government is wrong – again, the history of bad midterm polls that get reversed when voters clue in to the choice is long, here and abroad. The idea that Poilievre has anything won is absurdist nonsense, as ahistoric as it is illiterate of the depth of the structural issues the Conservative Party faces. If the Government does fail to get anywhere on housing, it won’t matter, probably, but it’s still hard to reconcile a sudden bottoming out in the government’s polling with 5 byelections in 6 weeks where the Government’s up on average.

Is it impossible? No, because you could maybe make the case that Calgary Heritage isn’t that out of line with the polls (a modest LPC drop, a bigger CPC gain, and the NDP’s flat to down) and it’s really just the June four that are wonky, but like, the idea that anything in particular has happened to spike Poilievre seems lacking. Why would the last interest rate hike cause it when the government didn’t suffer dips around past ones, for instance. The idea the government is down with the economy isn’t shocking, but the question that needs answering isn’t why, it’s why now, and every answer feels insufficient.

So what we’re left with is a situation where the government has a massive, glaring governance problem, an electoral problem of some size, even if Abacus and Leger are a bit high on the size of it, and an instinct to deflect pressure when nobody will care. What the Liberals need to do from here is simple, but also deeply difficult – they need to abuse the federal purse to get what they want. It’s not pretty, and it’s not a precedent I love setting (a Conservative government doing the same to try and get a pipeline through unwilling provinces isn’t exactly a possibility I get super jazzed about), but it’s what has to happen. We need a federal government to bribe the fuck out of provinces and cities to get a fucking ton of houses, apartments, units built. If it means literally paying off reticent city councilors, at this point I’m not even really opposed.

There is no answer that isn’t a complete violation of the spirit of separation of powers, but most good things that have been done in this country have been one, so fuck it. At the end of the day, the Federal Government using their soft power to get done what it wants to, fuck the niceties, got Canada our most treasured public institution, and it’s cheap to now claim that there’s no ability to do something less difficult, but no less important.

The problem with the Trudeau Government is they’re both much easier to hate and much harder to hate than their immediate predecessor, because while Harper was mostly bad, he was bad in just normal, basic conservative ways. He led a government that was almost boring in its banality and its regularity – they couldn’t disappoint because there were no expectations, but they did occasionally surprise by being less terrible.

The Liberals on the other hand came into office with such promise, and even during COVID showed a seriousness of purpose that gives us just enough reason to continue to invest hopes into them as a viable vehicle for the necessary change this country needs. I may be cynical, but I’m not as cynical as those who believe this government has been bad – it has a legacy that will be hard to argue against, as the Child Benefit and the child care deals cement themselves in the years and decades to come. That said, they are fucking tone deaf on a good day and going to send me to an early grave, either from beating my head against a wall or liver failure if they don’t get their shit together.

A jurisdictional lecture will end with the Liberals on the opposition benches. Build some Goddamn fucking homes, or the PM should resign for a leader who will. There is no price too high to pay for it, no deal too crass, no standard to be obeyed. Get a fucking shitton of housing started as soon as possible, and the Liberals will make all of the columns about the slow march to opposition look foolish. Continue to give a civics lecture as a generation’s patience for the status quo runs out entirely, and the Liberals will be reduced to a whimpering mess.