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October 7th, 2019

Vaughan and Liberals Can’t Escape Empty Promises on Affordable Housing

In June, the independent Parliamentary Budget Office found that Justin Trudeau and Adam Vaughan’s housing plan spends 19% less as a percentage of GDP than the Conservative plan did.

Since then, Adam Vaughan has worked overtime to discredit the independent PBO’s analysis.

But it’s not just the PBO that says the Liberals have failed.

University of Toronto Professor David Hulchanski said that “the Liberal Party and even CMHC have mixed all these together into big sounding amounts, as if a great deal is happening. But not much is happening in terms of meeting housing need and existing spending on housing remains at a historically low percentage of the federal budget.”

Hulchanksi has also described the housing strategy as “a public relations gimmick.”

In August, Vaughan claimed a planned sale of the Queens Quay lands without affordable housing was out of government’s hands. The next week, the Liberals reversed course in the face of pressure from Jagmeet Singh and Councillor Joe Cressy.

Meanwhile in Toronto, there are no neighbourhoods left where a person putting in full-time work for minimum wage can afford a modest one-bedroom apartment.

With a record this bad, it’s no wonder that Vaughan and Trudeau got caught inflating housing numbers “to rhetorical advantage.”