The Hongcouver | Equity before affordability: Justin Trudeau’s vacuous response to Vancouver’s housing crisis

There is something deeply worrying about the recent response by Canada’s new prime minister to Vancouver’s housing affordability crisis.

Vancouverites are used to the apparent lack of interest from their leaders in challenging the forces that have driven prices into the stratosphere,  regardless of their political inclinations, so Justin Trudeau’s following suit shouldn’t come as any great surprise. But his justification for this failure represents a new kind of logical contortion.

Prior to the election, his Liberal Party promised to “review escalating home prices in high-priced markets, like Toronto and Vancouver, and consider all policy tools that could keep home ownership within reach”. Then in an interview that aired on Global TV on Christmas Day,  Trudeau cited a lack of “concrete data” about foreign investment as a reason not to immediately impose curbs on these flows.