Poilievre says he'll pay cities to lower 'homebuilding taxes'

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre returned to one of his signature issues Thursday, promising to incentivize city halls to lower municipal housing development charges if he becomes prime minister. Poilievre said in a video posted to social media on Thursday morning that cash-hungry municipal governments are driving up homebuilding costs in Canada’s major cities, resulting in fewer housing starts and higher listing prices. “City hall bureaucrats also take their cut. They’re called development charges, paid before a shovel even hits the ground,” said Poilievre. “Let’s call these charges what they really are, homebuilding taxes.” Poilievre said that a Conservative government would pay city halls half the cost of cutting their building taxes, with the goal of getting them down by $50,000 per home. Combined with the previously announced GST cut on new homes up to $1.3 million, Thursday’s announcement means that home buyers could get up to $115,000 in tax relief under a Conservative government. Poilievre has also said he’ll eliminate the Liberal Housing Accelerator Fund and other “bureaucratic” federal housing program if he becomes prime minister. Meanwhile, the Liberal campaign has promised to waive GST on first-time home buyers, for homes up to $1 million. Liberal Leader Mark Carney has also promised to launch Canada’s most ambitious homebuilding plan since the Second World War, building 500,000 new homes each year for a decade. Toronto-based housing advocate Eric Lombardi says that, while the Conservative proposal has its merits, it doesn’t go far enough. “The real problem is that cities, often Canada’s worst-run governments, still have the power to levy these taxes in the first place,” said Lombardi. “Without a federal-provincial deal to take that power away, we risk spending billions without meaningfully lowering housing costs.” Housing starts have been slow to start 2025 after seeing a modest year-to-year increase in 2024. The pace of homebuilding has been especially slow in major cities . Housing starts fell 68 per cent in Toronto and 48 per cent in Vancouver in February, versus the same time last year, with both multi-unit and single-detached starts down. National Post rmohamed@postmedia.com Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.