CRD Watch Homepage

Robertson at the Federal Helm Will not Deliver Housing Affordability to the People

David Todtman
July 2, 2025

Sink the Dinghy, Get the Captain’s Hat

Someone recently asked if I thought Vancouver’s ex-mayor, Gregor Robertson, now Canada’s country’s Minister of Housing and Infrastructure, can make a difference in the housing crisis for the country? 

The short answer is no. One only needs to look at Vancouver’s record to confirm this.

Vancouver is rated as the worst housing market for affordability in Canada and the third worst in the world according to the 2024 Demographia International Housing Affordability Report. That report applies the unenvious label of “Impossibly Unaffordable” to the city Robertson lead for nearly a decade.

In running for office and while at Vancouver’s helm, Robertson swore his market-based proposals such as laneway housing, cutting red tape, cash transfers and other subsidies to the real estate industry, would change the city’s abominable housing affordability record. Robertson, unable to make a dent in the housing crisis in his own city, Prime Minister Carney duly elevated Robertson to carry on his failed efforts at the federal level this time.

Robertson sank the dinghy but having proven himself the faithful servant of the real estate industry has been rewarded with the captain’s hat.

Robertson, Not Really at the Helm

Robertson cannot control the housing crisis because he is not really at the helm. We like to think of our political leaders as actual leaders who can make a positive difference in the lives of ordinary Canadians. But this is a pretention, especially in the realm of housing. In reality, the capitalist market system is the driving force.

The housing problem is a systemic crisis that will only grow worse under Robertson’s time at the federal level. However, Robertson must pretend he can address the crisis and steer the ship though the building storm, because if he admitted the truth, he could never win office nor enjoy a comfortable stay there. Robertson is adrift on a sea of forces he cannot control.

Here is why.

Robertson’s Policies—Same Old, Same Old

Robertson uses the wrong analytical tools to assess the crisis. He believes that market mechanisms can be fathomed and then manipulated to reduce the impact of the very same market forces that play havoc on society in the first place.

A look at Robertson’s federal housing policies amply demonstrates they are market-based solutions that employ various incentives to do things like boost prefab construction and sweetheart loans to developers. Prefab housing construction is not new, not innovative. It has been around since the 1950s, yet somehow, Robertson thinks this is part of the solution. There is no point in talking about loans and loan guarantees for the fat cat in the development industry because the long and desultory history of such shenanigans is well-known. 

Worse, Robertson is on the industry bandwagon for gutting regulations to make it easier for the real estate industry to speed through their projects, including cutting what little democratic public input that currently exists.

Also included in Robertson’s policies are various other market manipulations to boost affordable housing. “Affordable” is an ill-defined and therefore favourite term for politicians and operators in the realestate/developer industry.

Think about it. For units that are pegged to 30% of income, the first problem that ordinary Canadians face, is that 30% is way too high anyway. When my wife and I were first married in the early 1970s we paid 19% of our student income for good housing in a large metropolitan centre close to downtown, the university, and the beach.

We were able to launch ourselves into adulthood from that platform. What we were able to do, cannot be done today when 30% is deemed “affordable” by the political class and the self-serving industry operators. At 30% of income going to the landlord class, there simply isn’t enough money left over at the end of the month to go beyond subsistence. Canada is creating generations of foreclosed and stalled lives for our young people and forcing them and others, including strapped seniors out onto the street.

The other aspect so-called “affordable” units is two-fold. First, a developer will only build a unit if their bottom-line profit is subsidized directly by already over-burdened working-class taxpayers. As we all know, the operators build for profit, not out of moral considerations or care for the broader social community. By proposing developer subsidies, Robertson has their back, ensuring their profits at tax payer expense.

Second, after 15 years, those “affordable” units are released from the obligation (if the developer does not cheat beforehand!). At that point, the developer charges full market rent on a unit that was, in essence, built for them in the first place by the taxpayer.

This is a variant on the P3 scheme. Your local office that houses social services, for example, was likely built by a private company on contract with the province, rented to the province for a guaranteed price which buys the building and allows the developer decades of high market profits once the government contract has expired.

In the final analysis, market reforms, like the ones Robertson proposes, perpetuate and deepen the crisis. Market players do everything in their power to boost prices as high as possible as fast as possible. There is no need to go any further to demonstrate this than to look at the now, long history, of the housing crisis. Regardless of which party holds office, regardless of which way they tweak or try to manipulate the market, and regardless of whether they genuinely care about the well-being of the people they claim to represent, the market system always uses its power to subvert whatever efforts have been employed by politicians. Worse, there is ample evidence that government housing policy is manipulated, formulated, and directed by well-heeled powerfully positioned industry operators.

Market Solutions: More of the Same That Has Not Worked

Market solutions cannot change the fundamental elements of the system–capitalism–that is designed to exploit and oppress the majority who are not of the privileged ruling class. Robertson is the current captain at the wheel of a ship he cannot control, and which will only toss more ordinary working-class Canadians heartlessly through the scuppers, for the profits and continued wealth accumulation of industry operatives.  

————————————————————————————————–


See also:

The UDI lobbies the Federal Government via Gregor Robertson the new Minister of Housing and Infrastructure, and the former Mayor of Vancouver – CRD Watch Homepage