Perspectives: A Canadian Journal of Political Economy and Social Democracy

Perspectives Journal sat down with Professor Carolyn Whitzman to dive deeper into her Globe and Mail article published last August entitled Canada’s progressive parties have lost the plot on the housing crisis. This was a response to Prime Minister Trudeau’s earlier blunt statement that “housing is not federal responsibility” while ordinary Canadians experience an unprecedented housing crisis.
In her piece, she asked:
What’s with the silence from allegedly more progressive parties on the doubling of the quantum of non-market housing, a policy that has been recommended by everyone from the industry body for community housing to one of Canada’s big banks?
Why not talk about housing in terms of industrial strategy (something we love to talk about here at Perspectives Journal) and the role of government in building more housing supply, instead of trying to outflank Pierre Poilievre’s inconsistent policy slogans from the right wing?
Since then, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has stated that “governments should get out of home building,” even after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau already confirmed that, so clearly that hasn’t solved anything.
And meanwhile, progressives have yet to propose big plans to get government back into housing while 2/3rds of Canadians surveyed by Leger in early December wanted the federal government to spend more money on its Housing Strategy.
But in recent months, a number of new spending announcements and policy changes have come from social democratic administrations in BC and Toronto, talking about big spends and policy changes to jump start building out the supply for decommodified, non-market housing.
Is this even close to enough, and what exactly are progressives getting wrong, and right, about housing affordability?
From Singapore to Sweden, and British Columbia to Toronto, we talk about what other countries have been doing to build non-market housing, and how governments can get back into the business of home building.
Carolyn Whitzman is a housing and social policy consultant, expert adviser to the Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART) project at the University of British Columbia, and adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa.
Show note links:
The Globe and Mail - 'Canada’s progressive parties have lost the plot on the housing crisis', by Carolyn Whitzman, 18 August 2023.
Housing Assessment Resource Tools project at the University of British Columbia.
YouTube explainer by Uytae Lee - 'The Non-capitalist Solution to the Housing Crisis'

Earlier this fall, the federal Liberal government tabled Bill C-56, the Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, with the aim of jump starting construction of purpose built rental homes with a GST rebate on these kinds of projects, and increasing competition in the grocery industry by strengthening the federal Competition Bureau, upgrading its ability to investigate companies and closing loopholes in the merger approval process that may contribute to rising prices and profits.

The federal NDP doesn't think this bill has gone far enough and have requested a number of amendments to the first draft to include more non-market housing and removing political influence on the Competition Bureau, among a list of other measures, in order to pass the House.

What will this amended piece of legislation do for ordinary, working-class Canadians to make groceries affordable again, and does it go far enough? How has market concentration contributed to higher grocery receipts? Why should incentives for building more co-op housing be included in the final version of the bill?

Social democratic commentator and columnist Tom Parkin spoke to Daniel Blaikie, Member of Parliament for Elmwood—Transcona and NDP finance critic, about Bill C-56, grocery competition, and building non-market housing.

Show Note Links

• Bill C-56, Affordable Housing and Groceries Act (Government House Bill)
• Bill C-352, Lowering Prices for Canadians Act (Private Member's Bill introduced by MP Jagmeet Singh)
• Beyond Simply Building More: Policy Options for Combatting the Financialization of Housing in Ontario, (March 2023) - Broadbent Institute analysis on the contributing factors behind the housing affordability crisis, by Tsahai Carter.
• Canadian Grocery Profitability: Inflation, Wages and Financialization, (September 2023) - Broadbent Institute analysis of the Canadian grocery retail industry in the context of the "seller's inflation" economic phenomena, by Alex Purdye.
• 'Growing Grocery Profits, Shrinking Pay Cheques', Opinion by Clement Nocos in Perspectives Journal from October 12, 2023.

The housing crisis is apparent for most ordinary Canadians, especially for those paying rents and mortgages that feel increasingly out of reach. Recent data shows that among wealthy countries, Canada's housing cost increases have seen the fastest decoupling from income growth, and with that accelerated price inflation, according to Jeremy Withers, a new class of housing investors has grown.

According to the data, more and more new housing is being purchased without the intention of being the home that they buyer lives in. This trend has increased over time, all across Canada, and investors have become a very big proportion of home owners. It isn't just new condos that investors are buying—single-family homes are increasingly owned by families that don't live in them.

To understand more about what's behind these trends, Clement Nocos spoke with Jeremy Withers, a housing policy researcher and PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto’s Department of Geography & Planning

Withers' article Addressing the Rise of Investor Ownership of Housing, Part 1: Assessing the Scale and Impacts across Canada was published in the inaugural issue Perspectives Journal, where he analyzes these stark realities and trends for home ownership in Canada.

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The 2024 Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize is awarded to economist Dr. Isabella Weber for critical research on economic shocks and inflation that equip Canadian progressives with alternatives that push back against anti-democratic policy choices and help to empower workers.

Each year’s prize recipient also delivers the Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture. We invite you to join us on Thursday, May 30 for the 2024 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture at Toronto Metropolitan University, at the Sears Atrium (3rd Floor, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre), starting at 7pm EDT, followed by a reception with light refreshments.

Professor Isabella Weber is an economist and a leading voice against corporate profiteering, identifying economic shocks as the cover that the rich and powerful use to raise prices and put the working-class through an affordability crisis.
Her analysis has come to accurately illustrate the forces behind today’s price inflation, and why governments have not effectively addressed the affordability crisis.

Weber has advised policy makers in the United States and Germany on questions of price stabilization, and is now a regular feature in the business papers. For her work on “Sellers’ Inflation,” she has been profiled in the New Yorker, Jacobin Magazine, and recognized as one of TIME100 Next by US Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Tickets to the 2024 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture are now available: 2024-ellen-meiksins-wood-lecture.eventbrite.ca

Perspectives spoke to Ed Broadbent, founder of the Broadbent Institute, former leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, and co-author of Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality.

Part memoir, part history, part political manifesto, Seeking Social Democracy offers the first full-length treatment of Ed Broadbent’s ideas and remarkable seven decade engagement in public life.
In dialogue with three collaborators from different generations, Ed Broadbent leads readers through a life spent fighting for equality in Parliament and beyond: exploring the formation of his social democratic ideals, his engagement on the international stage, and his relationships with historical figures from Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro to Tommy Douglas, René Lévesque, and Willy Brandt.
From the formative minority Parliament of 1972-1974, to the contentious national debate over Canada’s constitution, to the free trade election of 1988, the book chronicles the life and thought of one of Canada’s most respected political leaders and public intellectuals from his childhood in 1930s Oshawa to the present day.
Ed Broadbent’s analysis also points toward the future, offering lessons to a new generation on how principles can inform action, and how social democracy can look beyond neoliberalism.
The result is an engaging, timely, and sweeping analysis of Canadian politics, philosophy, and the nature of democratic leadership.
You can order your copy today at seekingsocialdemocracy.ca

Corporate tax breaks and loopholes in Canada have contributed heavily to the affordability crisis argues Silas Xuereb, researcher at Canadian for Tax Fairness, PhD candidate at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of a new report entitled, How tax breaks are worsening Canada's housing affordability crisis. Outside of calls to build housing supply, Xuereb draws attention to a lesser discussed issue within the broader debates in Canadian housing: financialization. Without tackling financialization, housing may very well remain unaffordable despite changing supply and/or demand.

Financialization refers to the process by which a commodity, like housing, becomes a financial tool for investment rather than remaining as social or human good. Xuereb points to Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) as the main driver of this transformative shift in the real estate market. What makes REITs so popular and effective is the tax system in Canada, which gives real estate investors tax breaks on housing investments as an apparent incentive to increase supply. However, despite a 700 percent increase in real corporate capital gains since 2002, these entities have pocketed most of the profits while prices go up and supply remains insufficient.

Closing the tax loophole is an important step in fighting rising costs, as a part of a comprehensive policy set that includes investment in non-market housing and caps on single-entity ownership of multiple dwellings.

Listen to our interview with Silas Xuereb on how the current Canadian tax system favours corporate landlords and what we need to do to fix financialization driving the housing crisis.
Notes:

• REPORT - How tax breaks are worsening Canada’s housing affordability crisis, by Silas Xuereb, Canadians for Tax Fairness, September 2024.
• REPORT - The Financialization of Housing in Canada, by Martine Auguste, Canadian Human Rights Commission, June 2022.
• "Addressing the Rise of Investor Ownership of Housing, Part 1: Assessing the Scale and Impacts across Canada" by Jeremy Withers, Perspectives Journal no. 1, April 2024.
• REPORT - Dreams and Realities on the Home Front: Canadians’ Call for Government Action on Housing Affordability, Broadbent Institute & Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, March 2024.
• Alternative Federal Budget 2025, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, September 17, 2024.