“Today is going to be the first time that we’ve done something like this in Canada,” Fraser told reporters Wednesday morning.
“This (afternoon) announcement is one of a series of measures we’re going to be advancing over the course of the fall that are going to have a meaningful impact to get more homes built in this country.”
Justin Trudeau’s administration has been recently facing surging pressure to come up with an answer to current housing situation nationwide.
He was speaking between meetings the Liberal party is holding behind closed doors as MPs get ready for the fall parliamentary sitting amid some of the lowest polling numbers the party has seen since forming government in 2015.
He noted that it hits, above all, Canadians with variable-rate mortgages, who have seen their payments increase dramatically as interest rates have risen. “It’s about building housing, not just for low-income Canadians in affordable housing projects, but across the housing spectrum,” he said.
Such a renewed approach, the minister said, would not contain a “silver bullet” but would require all levels of government, the private sector and the not-for-profit sector to work together.
“We’re going to need to advance measures that are going to help change the financial equation for builders who are dealing with a lot of projects that are actually approved but have been put on pause because of a higher-interest rate environment,” Fraser said.
Fraser added the government will need to be “investing in innovation, like building homes in factories so we can actually be more productive with the assets that we have, with the investments that we make.”
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