Root cause versus band-aids.

According to an April 4, 2024, CBC news report, "Federal government to launch $1.5B fund to protect affordable rentals," the fund will provide "$1 billion in loans and $470 million in contributions to non-profits and other partners to help them acquire affordable rental units."

Decoded, this means that holders of aging apartment buildings that will soon require major repairs and promise little if any upside in tearing them down and replacing them with upscale condos – because evicting squatters dug into rent-controlled units is becoming increasingly difficult politically – get to walk away from this dilemma while being paid top dollar to do so.

Deep in the same report is this gem: "Trudeau said the Liberals would add another $15 billion to an apartment construction loan program, bringing available funding to $55 billion."

This $15 billion top-up of Ottawa's apartment construction loan program (ten times more dollars than those allocated to preserve existing affordable housing), will finance building "market rate" – meaning unaffordable – housing with which private-sector developers will lift profits from the pockets of the self-same public whose tax dollars will have made constructing that unaffordable housing possible.

Housing policy for Lester B. Pearson's government was explicitly stated to be "…the necessity for everybody to have a decent dwelling; not to make all homes mansions, but to ensure that none of them will be hovels. It is only a very rare soul that can expand in a hovel. This objective of decent housing simply has to be achieved in our democratic society." Ottawa's housing policy in the 1960s, in other words, was to house Canada's population. This is not Ottawa's housing policy today.

Ottawa, and the provinces, serve the interests of an enormous, multi-tiered FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) sector whose business is not housing Canada's population but making money. Ottawa and the provinces twist themselves into pretzels slapping band-aids on the gaping wounds financializing housing has inflicted – and continues to inflict – on Canada's population while assiduously avoiding even acknowledging, let alone addressing, the root cause of Canada's never-ending housing crisis: that the function of housing is not to house people anymore but to generate unearned income for FIRE sector actors exploiting the housing sector.

If we are talking about housing, we need to talk about housing and stop predicating housing people on underwriting rent-seekers' booty.