https://www.readthemaple.com/the-conservative-party-has-no-real-solutions-for-the-affordability-crisis/
'Powerful paycheques' is a catchy slogan, but the Conservatives lack the ideas needed to make it come true.
Not surprised at all. They just want us to get angry and vote the current government out.
I hope people learned from Ontario but probably not.
This is what our "democracy" has morphed into .... we are no longer told who to vote for .... we are instead told who NOT to vote for.
All to ensure that we never actually talk to the person we do vote for. "Oh, yeah, the problems are totally a result of you chosing the wrong party and not because the person you elected isn't a mind reader and was left to guess about what you wanted."
I mean you can talk to the people you elect, it just doesn't do anything. I talked to my MPP just the other day about if he would support back to work legislation for teachers, they've been working for over a year without a contract and all he would say about is "we're trying to keep students in the classroom". He never did give me a straight answer about it.
That's just pruning the worse ideas until we have a clear last-loser.
We should not have people voting on a single issue (for the cons, it's whether corporations and rich people should continue to skate on their tax obligation) but "people vs monoliths" is kinda it.
I hope people learned from Ontario but probably not.
Learned to not elect the federal Progressive Conservatives? I think they learned that back in 2002. Remember, the party gave up after that?
If the Canadian conservative party is anything like the American conservative party then they don't have a plan for...anything.
That is objectively not true. They have a plan to weaken the rights of the marginalized and to enrich themselves and their cronies. C'mon now >_>
They do have a plan.
It's called "You're wrong and I will vote against it 100% of the time."
Dude was being sarcastic. He's pointing out the rest of the shit they do is just a smokescreen for not having a platform.
"The Conservative Party has no real solutions for the affordability crisis"
... sure maybe, but do the Liberals? They've had a long time to fix things. Maybe it's time we start electing someone other than the two parties that brought us here.
That's crazy talk. The Two Parties Plus False Hope system has served Canada well for generations.
The Liberal solution is to maximize the return on investment for real estate speculators, thus transferring as much wealth as possible from the poor to the ruling class. That's literally the whole reason the Canadian government was created by corporations and foreign rulers in the first place.
Conversely the CPC solution is the exact same thing, but favouring a different set of cronies.
They have a “solution” and it’s massive breaks for development companies funded by all us losers who didn’t plan ahead by owning one.
I mean, they've tried nothing else, they may as well try that (again).
Though I suppose, if they're really pressed, they could try to sell of whatever assets prior governments haven't already fire-saled. Maybe we can sell the St. Lawrence Seaway? Or sell off the NCC buildings to Cadillac Fairview? Or, better, call Doug Ford and ask if Di Gasperis has any interest in federal lands?
I fucking love that bootstrap saying. Like if you take even 3 seconds to think about it, it's obvious that pulling yourself up by the bootstraps is physically impossible.
But they'll happily keep parrot it nonetheless.
That's the point. It's started out as satire, but someone didn't get the joke.
It's like how the Republicans thought that "Born in the USA" or (more recently) Twisted Sister's "We're not gonna take it!" are good right-wing anthems.
The fact that this post title could fit so perfectly into UK politics also probably speaks volumes.
So much so that upon first glance I just assumed this was in the UK politics community.
The states, too. Clicked the link and saw the Maple leaf, was depressed at how we may have exported our brand of idiocy to Canada.
Newsflash: none of our political parties have any solutions to the crises of capitalism.
Colonialism and capitalism is the basis of the major Western societies.
Also China is working on Africa the same way lol
Colonialism and capitalism is the basis of the major Western societies.
yes, I know, and it's not a good thing.
People keep saying this but it rings hollow to me. There are plenty of ways to attack the CPC, but this meme is not one of them.
Poilievre has specific plans on how to force cities to get more housing built. Now, obviously, if you don't believe in market solutions this sounds dumb, but most people with even the most basic, minimal centrist respect for economics will believe that more housing will help with prices.
So if you keep saying "he has no plan", what those voters hear is "leftist media is lying about Poilievre".
The LPC could very easily disarm him on this one issue: steal his plan and implement it. Bring out the stick. Start threatening cities that do not greenlight enough housing with cuts to their gas-tax funds. Because while Poilievre's policy is generally horrifying on a lot of fronts (LGBTQ issues, environment, poverty) his plan on this issue is better than anything anybody else has offered (to be fair, the bar is very low).
Progressive YIMBY activists and affordable-housing builders have been saying for decades: slow-walking approvals and restrictive zoning are driving up the costs of urban housing. Thid is a spot where PP is on the same side of the issue as Alexandria freaking Ocasio Cortez!
Yes, there are many publicly-funded ways we should also be fighting the housing crisis, things that PP is not going to do. But on this one specific issue: PP is talking sense, you look stupid to swing voters when you say he isn't, and you can disarm him by just stealing the idea wholesale. It works against the NDP every time, just do it here to the Conservatives.
edit: I just took another look and realized that TFA was written by Nora Loreto. Now it all adds up. The woman is a troll. People just get confused because this style of political trolling is almost exclusively conservative chuds, so seeing this kind of over-the-top hot-take nonsense is unfamiliar when it comes from this side of the aisle.
Yes, there are many publicly-funded ways we should also be fighting
Correct.
But we're going to disagree on whether the government should - and whether that government would - help regular people. Trending shows his party does not in any case.
So while there are emany ways the gov could and maybe should address housing as well as the environment, science and the social contract, I don't expect his bunch will suddenly start caring about any of it when that's not how they vote and it's not how theyre funded.
PP's biggest donor is a massive property developer, right?
Nice hair though.
After seeing this I completely agree with you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvFFGoAVeDY
They should just steal like you said
Well, in the case of "reward cities for fixing their processes" actually that's literally the Housing Generator Fund, which Hussen touted so much as the thing that would fix housing that he completely destroyed its utility as something they could celebrate. The entire media circuit started rolling their eyes at "housing generator fund". Beyond policy problems, the man had buffoonish political instincts.
But one thing that Poilievre's vicious political style works with here is that he wants sticks, not just carrots.
Municipal governments deserve that stick.
I haven't heard of these plans to force municipalities to build housing, but am curious how that is supposed to work.
Municipalities don't have their own construction crews, housing is built by private contractors and land developers.
Are municipalities supposed to buy up land and hire contractors to build housing themselves? Then sell it once completed? Or rent it out for little to no profit?
Force cities to allow housing to be built, technjcally. Basically, the YIMBY argument is that the private sector and non-profit sector are lining up to build housing that will help the housing crisis by both attacking the supply/demand problem with more market supply at large and also there are specialized affordable housing builders that will directly target renters needing affordable rent.
These people are being directly blocked by municipal zoning rules like height limits and ambiguous planning guidelines, and indirectly blocked by long and slow approval processes that are costing them millions in carrying costs owning expensive property they can't build on while they fight city halls.
I downloaded this great video from Xitter of an affordable housing builder giving a deputation to the city of Toronto about this -- it's posted on my Mastodon.
https://mastodon.social/@Pxtl/110300343308877005
A choice quote:
"$20 billion dollar intersection in Forest Hill; somebody said that should be a 7-storey and 70-unit building in 2018. How...where did that number come from? Somebody picked that number. Because it "conformed to the current planning policy for Forest Hill" and somebody adjacent to the site had a backyard swimming pool. That can't be our priority in 2023."
Relevant to this, PP's housing plan includes forcing cities to upzone such transit hubs.
To me that really only seems like half a solution.
The BC government already implemented a rule that any single home lot can have buildings which contain up to 4 separate dwellings to be built no matter the local zoning, which I find can have many issues down the road with providing infrastructure to areas with 4x more people than was planned for.
But you still need developers to buy that land and take the risk of funding the construction of houses and apartments and hire work crews which are already limited and can only build so fast. Developers are not willing to take out as many loans to fund these contractions which interest rates as high as they are.
We need to have low interest rate loans for home construction and some sort of incentive to get residential construction crews to expand or new construction companies to start up and the trades to train on more apprentices.
That's because real solutions would destroy the value of all current homes. Given that most people are still homeowners, that's not a winning political strategy.
I don't think a crash is inevitable. It could just plateau forever as long as our population doesn't decline.
I think we'll eventually see political reforms to reign in ownership profits, but not until we have a lot lower ownership percentage. Multiple decades at the very least, possibly half a century.
The same party hoping for the super soft 23-year landing also wants to curtail the immigration that will prevent the imminent collapse of the economy.
But nice thinking.
Rendering that home you bought back down to even double the inflation-adjusted price - so no loss at all - would be even more than we need, but thank you for suggesting we reduce it even more out of the goodness of your heart.
I bought my current home three years ago, it's got a hell of a lot more of a loss to me than that.
You'll still have a home, and presumably still be able to afford the payments. Fuck the loss, and let other people get a chance to actually have a place to live.
Yup, fuck me for working my young ass off to get a place when they're so expensive, and continue to fuck me for another 20 years to pay for the $700,000 remaining on my mortgage because I wanted to have space for my kids.
At that point I'd be better off abandoning Canada to get rid of the debt load.
That screws the people who benefitted least, and barely touches the people who benefitted most.
You think everyone else who is stuck renting and desperately wants a house isn't working their asses off?
And no, you're not fucked, you still have a place to live with your family, and you clearly can afford it regardless of if the sale price eventually drops. And it doesn't matter if it drops because once you sell it whatever place you move to will also have dropped in price.
Stop trying to fuck others with this fuck you I got mine attitude. I will be ecstatic if my condo halves in value, because it means my friends may actually be able to afford a place to live themselves, and it doesn't hurt me.
You clearly don't understand how economics works.
I don't have shit right now except a massive debt.
And we're still responsible for 400B in mortgage insurance. Wanna add that to our deficit when people stop paying their house that's worth less than they paid for it? Nah, didn't think so, me neither.
Except Poilievre is specifically saying he wants to lower housing prices and he's winning. So the game has changed and as always the LPC is too comfortable and slow to notice.
https://twitter.com/PierrePoilievre/status/1640811273666584578
And I want a pony.
Neither of us have a plan (and neither of us really want it anyway).
He has offered specific platform planks about this. You can disagree that they'll help (obviously they're a supply side approach) but to say he has no plan is false.
Let's look at past conservative history, should we believe any of their plans or promises? 🤔
I can work with that argument. Write that article and I'll read it. But people saying "the conservatives have no plan on housing" are just making themselves look dumb on this front, and the Liberals could disarm the conservatives by stealing the good parts of this plan and save us from a government of transphobes and anti-vaxxers and anti-environmentalists.
Dems meaning the New Democratic Party? The federal NDP has never been in a position to implement anything.
You know, I heard the same thing for decades in the US. Then one party removed a woman’s right to choose and gay marriage is signaled to be next. You’re headed down the same road we are if you aren’t careful.
OTOH it is the LPC that has lead us straight into this housing crisis. Social conservativism provides the boogie man that neo liberals use to financially exploit us into working in poverty at their shitty dead end jobs the rest of our lives. They're two sides of the same exploitive coin. They run back and forth over the same 50m of ground and both pretend like they are making progress, but neither of them really want to upset the status quo. Watch as the American Democrats fight tooth an nail to bring back abortion and protect gay marriage, and never speak a word about guaranteed income or free education. Only to let the GOP tear it back down again a few years after that. It's a scam.
Thanks for "both sides"-ing this one, Mr Trump..
But if you look closer you will find nuance in the history of each group that may show you a difference, if you want.
