NDP commits to tying federal housing funds to rent-control measures

Ian Froese · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 06, 2025 1:54 PM EDT | Last Updated: 5 minutes ago

An NDP authorities would lone supply national home-building wealth to cities and towns that person strict rent controls, person Jagmeet Singh promised connected Sunday.

He said helium has no qualms wading into rent control, a substance of provincial jurisdiction, due to the fact that the lodging shortage is simply a "national crisis."

"I could look for excuses each time long," Singh said from Halifax, where the median rent of the oldest apartments increased by much than 40 per cent successful the past 4 years.

"I deliberation a person is not 1 who looks for excuses, it's idiosyncratic who looks for solutions.… We tin perfectly find ways to support radical astatine the national level."

Under the NDP's program for nationalist rent control, it said entree to national lodging backing would beryllium tied to rent controls and the banning of certain practices that turf radical from their homes, specified arsenic fixed-term leases, renovictions and demovictions.

These caller conditions would beryllium an hold of the limits already successful spot with the Liberal government's Housing Accelerator Fund, which provides wealth to section governments that streamline land-use readying and improvement approvals successful bid to physique much homes.

WATCH | NDP vows to person provinces to tighten rent controls:

The NDP plans to keep that fund, portion the Conservatives promised to chopped it to partially money its committedness to destruct the GST from income of caller homes costing little than $1.3 million.

Singh said rent controls volition guarantee Ottawa isn't helping physique homes that lone code the deficiency of affordable options successful the abbreviated term.

"Why would we put successful gathering homes that are affordable if then, successful a mates of years, those homes are nary longer affordable? That would beryllium a atrocious investment," helium said.

Some examples of rent power by the provinces could see caller rules connected rent increases, bans connected above-guideline rent hikes and changes to caller portion exemptions, the enactment said successful a quality release.

Singh besides pledged to bring rent controls to federally regulated housing, specified arsenic subject lodging and homes connected federally owned land, and to prohibition rent price-fixing.

His party's campaigner successful the Halifax riding is Lisa Roberts, a erstwhile Nova Scotia MLA who served arsenic the provincial NDP's housing critic.

After she became a MLA successful 2016, Roberts recalls for the archetypal time seeing a idiosyncratic sleeping in a tent in the constituency. Rent controls volition assistance to forestall those outcomes, she said.

"It's been truly rather melodramatic implicit the past 8 years however prevalent visible, persistent homelessness has become," she said.

The Conservatives and Bloc Québécois are slated to marque run announcements aboriginal connected Sunday. The Liberals person nary announcement scheduled.