Canada's Neoliberal Housing Crisis

Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre would like us to believe Canada’s housing crisis is all Trudeau’s fault. It started with the Mulroney Conservatives in the mid-1990’s.

Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre would like us to believe Canada’s housing crisis is all Trudeau’s fault. It started with the Mulroney Conservatives in the mid-1990’s.

“In the 1990s neoliberal policies emerged that resulted in very dark years of housing policy in Canada. There was a high-level government reluctance to spend money and social housing lost its support. Since the early 2000s this has gradually begun to shift back towards social housing support again”—Google

‘“What this indicates to me is that we’ve normalized neoliberalism,” Clifford said, referring to the term for a political ideology that emphasizes reducing government spending, deregulation and relying on free-market capitalism. “It’s been totally incorporated into the body politic.”’ -The Tyee

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Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre is playing a very wicked partisan game with Canada’s housing crisis. He spends most of his working day pulling the heart strings of Canadians with stories of the homeless and the dire circumstances more and more Canadians are experiencing. He is playing the issue hard, fast and with outrageous piety as he sees it as his ticket to the PMO. He likes to portray it as the Liberal disaster; but it started under Brian Mulroney in the early 1990’s and continued under Stephen Harper with help form successive Liberal governments.

Liability for this fiasco lies on both sides of the House as both parties are practitioners of neoliberalism where they have abandoned the public interest in favor of the corporate interest.

As the above chart shows housing in Canada was in steady decline over Mulroney’s tenure(1984-1993). It flat-lined under the Liberals, and Stephen Harper’s tenure. (2006-2013).

For eighteen years housing starts flat-lined only to start rising in 2017 and even then too little to late.

Canada is admitting a million refugees a year; but where is the housing to accommodate them? It would appear sensible that housing starts have to be proportionate to the inflow of refugees, and new home buyers and renters.

How is it we can only built 12000 homes in 2019 where we built 35,000 in1980?

Where has the money gone? Where has responsible government gone?

Neolberalism is the answer, where the wealth of nations is stolen and ends up in corporate coffers and squandered on foreign wars.

We Canadians live in a corporate welfare state where corporations set social priorities and are parasitic on our society.

While the country was suffering through the Covid corporations still banking profits and flush with cash.

Over its tenure the present Liberal government has hired 100,000 new civil servants— why and what for? (Their average salary is125,000, per annum)

This past January the Canadian Government signed a 19 billion dollar contract for the purchase of F35 jet fighters. Over the life of the contract their total cost will be 88 billion. The first will not be delivered until 2026, the first squadron will not be in service until 2029, and the last aircraft not delivered until 2034. By the time they come into service they will be obsolete as the present face of war is changing fast as missiles, drones and artillery are determining out comes. Tanks and fighter aircraft are becoming relics of past wars.

Meanwhile Canadians are going without housing !

With the Ukraine conflict, Canada, on a per capita basis, has spent almost as the much the US.

Meanwhile Canadians are going without housing!

We might also remind ourselves that war by definition is inflationary as governments are printing money to pay for them they don’t have— wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all have credit cards with no limits ?

Canadians and Americans have a lot in common these days— more than ever— we are both slave states to Washington’s wars, and neoliberalism is the tool for stealing our wealth and financing endless wars.

This is not Canada’s first housing crisis there was another in the late eighties and early nineties that saw tens of thousands of Canadians lose their homes. The same is happening now as 1.5 million people are affected and it get worse as people go to renew their mortgages.

We Canadians should be asking the neoliberal choir boys some very tough questions.

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