Canada’s new federal housing minister, Gregor Robertson, says he wants to make housing more affordable — just not by lowering prices. In a recent interview, Robertson argued that home prices don’t need to fall for affordability to improve. He’s not alone: Prime Minister Mark Carney recently restated that this is “not a yes-no question,” and that it depends on “different time horizons.”
But this kind of linguistic loopty-loop isn’t harmless. It’s a political strategy — one that dodges a simple but essential question: Is the goal of Canadian housing policy to lower home prices or not?
It is, in fact, a yes-or-no question. And the answer matters.
