Seniors Minister Seamus O’Regan Jr. was at a Saanich care home on Wednesday to promote an extra $15 billion in federal funding for an apartment-construction loan program to build at least 30,000 new apartments across Canada.
“We are turbocharging rental,” said O’Regan, one of many ministers travelling the country to announce new programs prior to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabling the federal budget April 16.
O’Regan spoke to a handful of seniors and media at Veterans Memorial Lodge on Chatterton Way just hours after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in Toronto the “Canada builds” initiative, which is meant to fast-track affordable apartment construction.
The additional $15 billion will bring the apartment construction loan program’s available funding to $55 billion. The goal is to build at least 131,000 apartments by 2031-32 — “that’s a lot, that’s ambitious,” O’Regan said in an interview.
The loan program was launched in 2017 and has helped create more than 48,000 homes so far.
Trudeau said the “entire pot of funding” would be made available for matching partnerships with provinces and territories “who come to the table with ambitious and fair housing plans.”
Those plans must include getting homes built quickly and at scale, building the right housing for the right places — whether lowrise or highrise, one or multi-bedroom — and building projects that are affordable for the middle class, Trudeau told reporters.
The government is also extending loan terms and expanding financing to include housing for students and seniors — “because the demographic is so big and because the demand is so big,” O’Regan said. That includes care homes such as Veterans Lodge, according to his office.
“We understand that there is a problem on affordability,” said O’Regan. “We are going to do our level best to meet that problem as quickly as we can.”
The reforms also include a portfolio-type approach to eligibility requirements so builders can move forward on multiple sites at once, and a new “frequent builder stream” to fast-track the application process for proven home builders.
Canada Builds is modeled after B.C. Builds, which is about fast-tracking much-needed affordable homes for all age groups.
“We are really here in B.C. to make this announcement because B.C. knows what it is doing,” said O’Regan. “We said we can do this on a national scale.”
Conditions for the low-cost federal loans include speeding up construction by reducing the permitting process to no longer than 12-18 months, for example, and making affordability, environmental sustainability and accessibility priorities.
“We have capital available that we can dedicate to this as the federal government, but we really need to get these things built,” said O’Regan. “We want to sign agreements with the provinces and territories.”
Many of the federal government’s key policies — from child care and housing to dental care and pharmacare — touch on areas of provincial and territorial jurisdiction and require co-operation. That’s not been guaranteed across the country.
The federal NDP has panned the announcement and the strategy behind it, saying 97 per cent of the units built under the loan program are not affordable.
Vancouver East MP Jenny Kwan, federal housing critic, said the housing strategy is dominated by loans to for-profit developers “that don’t help Canadians who need homes they can afford.”
The Conservatives said in a statement that more than half the available funds under the apartment loan program are not allocated.
Housing critic Scott Aitchison said such announcements “won’t come anywhere close to building the 5.8 million homes that are needed to restore housing affordability for Canadians.”
The Liberal government has said affordability issues are its top priority for months, and made housing a central feature of the cabinet retreat held before the fall sitting of Parliament began last August.
- with files from Canadian Press
