2025 Federal Election Housing Advocacy

Canadian Political Landscape

The Canadian political landscape is structured as follows:

• The Conservative Party of Canada is a right-leaning party with a focus on fiscal restraint, small cost-effective government, and economic diversification.
• The Liberal Party of Canada is left-leaning and has focused on environmental policy, social provision, and, in more recent days, business resiliency and trade diversification.
• The New Democratic Party is traditionally strongly left-leaning, focusing on issues such as national dental care and rental protections.
• The Green Party of Canada is typically left-leaning with a social and environmental consciousness.
• Bloc Quebecois has focused significantly on issues of Quebec sovereignty, and has shown support for the Kyoto Protocol, LGBTQ rights, and abolition of the Canadian Senate.
• Others: There are a variety of additional political parties in Canada. You can read more about them here.

Below you will find our list of important housing questions for candidates. We also outlined ten CREA issues and two BCREA issues of organizational concern that we would like to see addressed by the next Canadian government.

Questions for Political Candidates

1. Will your government support initiatives like the Housing Accelerator Fund?
2. Will your government support initiatives like the Home Buyers’ Plan and the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive?
3. Good infrastructure is critical to addressing supply issues. Would your government commit to tying infrastructure agreements to housing development projects to encourage the creation of more accessible housing supply across the housing continuum?
4. With housing prices at or near all-time highs, what is your plan to support first-time homebuyers?
5. What sustainability and environmental considerations would your government make when adopting and implementing policies that aim to address the housing and homelessness crisis in Canada?
6. Recently, the federal government delayed the capital gains inclusion rate increase, from one-half to two-thirds on capital gains realized annually above $250,000, to January 2026. Would your government continue to support this policy?
7. If elected, would your government continue to support the prohibition on the purchase of residential property by non-Canadians, set to expire by January 2027?

CREA Federal Housing Plan

CREA has endorsed the following ten-part housing plan, which provides a blueprint for the next federal government:

1. Creating an immediate housing safety net to protect Canadians from the impacts of an economic shock. This includes introducing housing-focused benefits, bolstering social assistance, putting up guardrails to protect mortgages, and preparing Canada for an increase in asylum seekers.
2. Protecting renters from falling into homelessness. With the risk of increased predatory market practices commonly seen in times of economic vulnerability, Canada needs to introduce measures including a freeze on no-fault evictions, support for rent banks, and introducing funds to support the acquisition and preservation of lower-rent housing, to ensure that people can keep their housing.
3. Doubling the share of community housing. Through new policy tools such as a housing bond and an affordable housing tax credit, along with expanding and modifying existing Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation programs, Canada can support the building, acquisition, and preservation of community and affordable housing.
4. Ensuring access to the land and infrastructure needed to build communities. This includes expanding the Build Canada program, supporting the repurposing surplus and underutilized lands for housing, and identifying and incentivizing the use of municipal land to build community and affordable housing.
5. Creating resilient housing material supply chains that can withstand tariffs and trade barriers. This could include reducing interprovincial trade barriers and measures to facilitate better access to products from non-American importers.
6. Developing a housing skills agenda for Canada that equips our workforce. This would support the re-skilling of displaced manufacturing workers into housing-related careers and efforts to recruit skilled trade workers wishing to leave the United States.
7. Reforming taxes to facilitate homebuilding. We must ensure that governments have the revenue they need for infrastructure and support, while also ensuring that taxes, charges, fees, and levies around homebuilding do not hinder development. This includes introducing incentives and supporting new models to build infrastructure instead of relying on development charges.
8. Streamlining permissions to facilitate homebuilding. Through regulatory streamlining, communities can incentivize development and create improved housing outcomes.
9. Accelerating innovation to build faster, less expensive, and better homes. There is no sustainable solution to Canada’s housing crisis that does not involve increased innovation. Through tax credits, investment funds, and improved procurement practices, Canada can incentivize low-carbon housing and accelerate the adoption of innovative and new homebuilding technologies and practices.
10. Rapidly Expand Indigenous Urban, Rural and Northern (URN) Housing to meet the housing needs of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples and communities. Beyond the other mechanisms that exist to bolster affordable and community housing, targeted investments and distinct supports are needed to rapidly increase and meet the housing needs of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples and communities, including taking a for-Indigenous, by-Indigenous approach and expanding federal investment in URN.

You can review CREA’s full Election Toolkit here.