Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland just made Canada's housing crisis worse

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is more than the two roles we most often associate with; being Fluffy’s brain, and being a Ukrainian Freedom Fighter. She’s also our Finance Minister! Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland today announced measures that would enable more first-time buyers to get into the housing market. Hmm… so demand will go up. And how are we doing on the supply side? Not so great… How’s that for astute fiscal management! This measure, intended to alleviate the housing affordability crisis, can’t possibly do anything other than make it worse. Mind you, it’s bound to be a very modest increase in demand. Raising the RRSP limit on what you can withdraw for a down payment from $35k to $60k will impact an infinitesimal number of people. How many twenty of even thirty-somethings have $60k in RRSPS? Likewise, raising the limit on the housing savings account to $8k per year only helps people who can save that much in these hyper-expensive times. This is a PR exercise designed to create the illusion that Team Trudeau is “doing something” about the housing crisis. They are. They’re exacerbating it. What they should be doing is what government used to do from the fifties right into the nineties – build affordable rental housing. Governments own lots of land and control the approval process. There are no excuses.