There is another player in the housing game that has not been mentioned, and they have an equal part in the housing problem. The Banks.
One of the biggest problems has been the reduction in mortgage qualifications so that the banks have offered larger mortgages than the customers would have qualified for under the rules. I have a sneaking suspicion that the rules were relaxed during the high interest rates in the 1980’s, when customers were defaulting, and cutting into the banks’ profit margins.
So the housing market adjusted to the larger mortgages being made available, allowing the prices to climb, a rise that was encouraged by governments because their property tax rolls increases in step.
From personal experience, my first home cost $72,000 in 1999. I sold it for $210,000 in 2016. The bigger house in the same neighbourhood cost $315,000. Our household income went from around $32,000 in 1999 to around $135,000 in 2016. That is how much the rules changed.
So now the federal government has to look at the banking behaviour can that’s been kicked down the road for the last 40 years. I hope PM Carney and his Cabinet are ready for bringing the bankers on side or if needed, to heel.
You've named a real player the piece didn't, and you're right to put the banks in the frame — they belong there. The mortgage qualification rules are exactly the kind of lever that decides how much house a family can chase, and loosening them pours buyers into the market at higher prices, which feeds the very problem everyone blames on supply alone. That's a fair and important addition.
One honest flag on the 1980s timeline, only because I hold myself to it: the instinct that the rules were relaxed to protect bank margins during the high-rate defaults is a plausible read, but I'd want to pin when and which rules actually changed to a primary source before stating it as fact — qualification rules have moved several times (and tightened sharply after 2008, with the stress test), so the history is worth tracing carefully before we build on it. The suspicion is a good lead. Let me run it down properly and it could be a dispatch of its own — the banks' hand in the housing price.
Good one Vertical Dispatch. While I really hate to give anything to Poilievre, I at the same time must honestly accept facts. So good on you throwing them in so dispassionately! My black heart 🖤 to you. The black heart is my yin/yang “living by” symbol.
So the answer, in this moment, is there is no answer. But for me, you raised a different question. Did Polievre, under Harper, walk the philosophy through and cut the fees?
I don't know the answer but feel that is a valid question this dispatch should consider. It speaks to the credibility of the man who insists now we build the homes.
That's a sharp question, and you're right that it's the one worth asking — a man who insists “build the homes” now invites us to look at what he did when he had a hand on the file. It speaks exactly to credibility, as you say. So let me trace it honestly, because the record gives a more interesting answer than either “he did” or “he didn't.”
The fees he points at — development charges, municipal levies, zoning gatekeeping — are real, and economists across the spectrum credit him for naming them early and correctly. But here's the catch the credibility question runs into: those fees are almost entirely municipal and provincial. They aren't Ottawa's to cut. A federal minister, even one who saw the problem clearly, had no direct lever to lower a development charge a city sets. So “did he walk the philosophy through and cut the fees under Harper” partly rests on a power he didn't hold in that chair.
What the federal level can do is incentivize — tie its funding to cities that cut their own fees. And that's exactly what he later proposed, in opposition, with Bill C-356 (defeated May 2024): conditional federal funding to push municipalities to build. Tellingly, it's the same mechanism as the Liberals' Housing Accelerator Fund he criticizes.
So the honest read, and I think the one a dispatch could hold: the consistency is in the diagnosis, held for years — he's been right about the gatekeepers. The limit is that the lever he points at was never primarily federal, so his Harper-era record is light on direct building because direct building was never mostly Ottawa's to do. The credibility question is real — but the answer is closer to a jurisdiction mismatch than a broken promise. Thank you for raising it; it's a thread worth pulling, and you pulled it well.
Thank you. So to follow the thread further, he is demanding the current government do something he knows they've not the lever to make happen. That is disingenuous at best, and an outright lie at worst. Demanding someone else achieve what you could not and you know why it couldn't be done - that's dishonest. It's not a broken promise, no. It's worse than that.
During his entire time in office with Harper PP was responsible for the housing portfolio. Through Direct Government subsidies they built a grand total of 6 non-profit or community houses. Government supported through partnerships built an additional 3700 non-profit homes and 500 co-op units. And to be honest nearly 200,000 housing units were built during that time but they were built by the private sector.
Since Harper left office PP has voted against every housing bill the Liberals have brought in.
There is another player in the housing game that has not been mentioned, and they have an equal part in the housing problem. The Banks.
One of the biggest problems has been the reduction in mortgage qualifications so that the banks have offered larger mortgages than the customers would have qualified for under the rules. I have a sneaking suspicion that the rules were relaxed during the high interest rates in the 1980’s, when customers were defaulting, and cutting into the banks’ profit margins.
So the housing market adjusted to the larger mortgages being made available, allowing the prices to climb, a rise that was encouraged by governments because their property tax rolls increases in step.
From personal experience, my first home cost $72,000 in 1999. I sold it for $210,000 in 2016. The bigger house in the same neighbourhood cost $315,000. Our household income went from around $32,000 in 1999 to around $135,000 in 2016. That is how much the rules changed.
So now the federal government has to look at the banking behaviour can that’s been kicked down the road for the last 40 years. I hope PM Carney and his Cabinet are ready for bringing the bankers on side or if needed, to heel.
You've named a real player the piece didn't, and you're right to put the banks in the frame — they belong there. The mortgage qualification rules are exactly the kind of lever that decides how much house a family can chase, and loosening them pours buyers into the market at higher prices, which feeds the very problem everyone blames on supply alone. That's a fair and important addition.
On the broader money story, I'd point you to our seven-part series, The Price of Everything — https://glenroberts911399.substack.com/p/the-price-of-everything?r=1pgr4n&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web which walks the whole machine from the economists to the debt in your own pocket. If I had to send you to one part first for this thread, it's the one on the global monetary machine and debt — that's where the banks-and-credit engine sits most directly.
One honest flag on the 1980s timeline, only because I hold myself to it: the instinct that the rules were relaxed to protect bank margins during the high-rate defaults is a plausible read, but I'd want to pin when and which rules actually changed to a primary source before stating it as fact — qualification rules have moved several times (and tightened sharply after 2008, with the stress test), so the history is worth tracing carefully before we build on it. The suspicion is a good lead. Let me run it down properly and it could be a dispatch of its own — the banks' hand in the housing price.
I look forward to what you find. Good luck and good hunting.
Good one Vertical Dispatch. While I really hate to give anything to Poilievre, I at the same time must honestly accept facts. So good on you throwing them in so dispassionately! My black heart 🖤 to you. The black heart is my yin/yang “living by” symbol.
So the answer, in this moment, is there is no answer. But for me, you raised a different question. Did Polievre, under Harper, walk the philosophy through and cut the fees?
I don't know the answer but feel that is a valid question this dispatch should consider. It speaks to the credibility of the man who insists now we build the homes.
That's a sharp question, and you're right that it's the one worth asking — a man who insists “build the homes” now invites us to look at what he did when he had a hand on the file. It speaks exactly to credibility, as you say. So let me trace it honestly, because the record gives a more interesting answer than either “he did” or “he didn't.”
The fees he points at — development charges, municipal levies, zoning gatekeeping — are real, and economists across the spectrum credit him for naming them early and correctly. But here's the catch the credibility question runs into: those fees are almost entirely municipal and provincial. They aren't Ottawa's to cut. A federal minister, even one who saw the problem clearly, had no direct lever to lower a development charge a city sets. So “did he walk the philosophy through and cut the fees under Harper” partly rests on a power he didn't hold in that chair.
What the federal level can do is incentivize — tie its funding to cities that cut their own fees. And that's exactly what he later proposed, in opposition, with Bill C-356 (defeated May 2024): conditional federal funding to push municipalities to build. Tellingly, it's the same mechanism as the Liberals' Housing Accelerator Fund he criticizes.
So the honest read, and I think the one a dispatch could hold: the consistency is in the diagnosis, held for years — he's been right about the gatekeepers. The limit is that the lever he points at was never primarily federal, so his Harper-era record is light on direct building because direct building was never mostly Ottawa's to do. The credibility question is real — but the answer is closer to a jurisdiction mismatch than a broken promise. Thank you for raising it; it's a thread worth pulling, and you pulled it well.
Thank you. So to follow the thread further, he is demanding the current government do something he knows they've not the lever to make happen. That is disingenuous at best, and an outright lie at worst. Demanding someone else achieve what you could not and you know why it couldn't be done - that's dishonest. It's not a broken promise, no. It's worse than that.
During his entire time in office with Harper PP was responsible for the housing portfolio. Through Direct Government subsidies they built a grand total of 6 non-profit or community houses. Government supported through partnerships built an additional 3700 non-profit homes and 500 co-op units. And to be honest nearly 200,000 housing units were built during that time but they were built by the private sector.
Since Harper left office PP has voted against every housing bill the Liberals have brought in.