Can the government make housing, groceries more affordable? Don’t hold your breath

Patrick Gossage • September 22, 2023

Pierre Poilievre, who is always good for a catchy line, recently commented on the Liberal cabinet ministers’ meeting with grocery titans to try and persuade them to reduce prices: 

“It’s an act and what we need is action.”

I would argue that so much political crowing about attacking high costs of living like housing and groceries particularly is just that – an act that is unlikely to produce reliable results for weary cash-strapped Canadians. 


The Liberals calling grocery chain titans to shame them has been called pure political theatre. An ebullient fast-talking Minister of Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, emerged announcing the members of the group had agreed to make plans  that would “stabilize” prices by Thanksgiving. In several interviews his boss, Justin Truedeau was led to say it would be nice if they lowered prices, but clearly cheaper turkeys are not in the cards. 


The PM hinted that  tax measures could be the punishment for them not showing this minimum action on rising food price, an idea he had rejected earlier since he assumed new taxes would be passed on to consumers. He also announced measures for the Competition Burau so it could act against measures that stifled competition and consumer choice, in particular situations where large grocers prevent smaller competitors from establishing operations nearby. These may be effective but lower prices don’t necessarily follow. 


We can expect gushing full-page ads from the grocery chains explaining all they are doing to ensure customer value and the difficulty in dealing with suppliers who have been raising prices that they cannot control. In any event , “stabilizing” prices will be easier given the already lower price increases month over month announced the day after the meeting by Stats Canada.


The Liberal government was at least being seen to do something that answered the public revulsion over the over grocery chains’ $100-billion plus profits while their prices rose substantially, and many had to access overburdened food banks for the first time to keep eating. Lower prices? Unlikely. 


The Liberal government, newly found inspiration to tackle the affordability issues that are actually distressing Canadians, announced their detailed intentions in a flourishing news release on September 14 which opened as follows: The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today announced a suite of new measures to support the middle class and people working hard to join it. This includes action to build more rental housing, …and drive down the cost of groceries.


There it is - the big promises and a seeming return to the badly defined middle-class Liberal focus. The “build more housing” promise was made the week before with a big announcement in London, Ontario. Justin Trudeau promises funding to build more than 2,000 new housing units there over the next three years. It is the first city in the country to sign a deal under the misnamed national housing accelerator fund, a $4-billion program first announced in the spring 2022 federal budget. Promises were made to negotiate similar deals with other cities – the qualification being local governments have to end exclusionary zoning and encourage building housing near public transit.


Rental housing construction will get a much lobbied for boost with the removal of the GST for purpose-built rentals. This move was applauded by the apartment building industry and should show increases in that sector. The changes to the Competition Bureau’s powers and the GST announcement were re-announced on Sept. 21st as proposed legislation. 


So for new housing, there will be a lengthy rollout for the “accelerator” fund’s benefits to be felt since cities have to have projects ready and be signed on one by one. No fast fix here. The need is challenging with major immigration numbers already straining the system. The government’s estimates the need of an additional 3.5 million more housing units over the coming decade. This will require doubling the number of homes built over that period.  The industry’s current performance is lackluster due to high interest charges and manpower problems. It is unlikely that it can meet these targets. 


Let’s remember that in politics it’s an ironclad rule that you don’t promise more than you can deliver. It appears that in grocery prices and housing the government has bitten off more than it can chew. The Leader of the Opposition will closely watch to see if there is any improvement in these two sectors and will pounce if predictably in the medium-term results are poor. They will have to show good results if the public’s attitude to the Liberals, now at an all-time low, is to improve in the next two years before an election.


More announcements are on the horizon from the young, dynamic housing Minister Sean Fraser. We can hope they have more optimistic timelines. The hard truth is that to bring housing affordability down requires prices to stabilize to allow earnings to catch up. Either this happens or the bubble owners have been enjoying really bursts. Neither is predictable. Inflation is up at four per cent indicating the possibility of more damaging interest rate hikes. Getting young people into homes and out of basements seems a long distant hope. 


There is little possibility of major new supply of affordable homes, or relief from high grocery prices. And supporters of the Conservative party await sensible plans from their leader. Canada waits and watches. Electoral success depends on real action where Canadians hurt most.   

Patrick Gossage Insider Political Views

Well-meaning Assault Weapons Ban and Buyback victim of poor timing and major opposition

By Patrick Gossage • April 14, 2026
In contrast to US inaction after almost weekly mass killings, it took one horrible shooting rampage at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, in 1980, to start the drive for public policy changes around gun control. But years delays between the mass shooting outrage and actual policy to rid the country of assault rifles doomed the eventual gun buyback program. The polytechnique horror was huge news in our relatively massacre-free nation. That December day, 25-year-old Marc Lépine stalked the hallways and classrooms of the École Polytechnique de Montréal with a semi-automatic rifle and murdered 14 women and injured another 13 people before killing himself. A year later, the Coalition for Gun Control was formed to push for stricter gun laws, led by survivors of the Montreal massacre. Later that year, the federal government passed Bill C-17, which imposed safety training and a mandatory waiting period to get a firearms licence-- not an effective means of controlling automatic rifles. Much later, in1996, Parliament passed the Firearms Act, Bill C-68, driven in part by a push for stricter gun laws following the Montreal massacre. The act created a national firearms registry and imposed new rules for obtaining a gun licence, including background checks. The former Conservative government, under prime minister Stephen Harper, abolished the long-gun registry, which it said placed an unnecessary burden on law-abiding gun owners. Quebec subsequently created its own provincial registry to replace it. It took another horrific killing nine years later in Nova Scotia to force Ottawa to take real action on miliary-style guns. On April 18 and 19, 2020, 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman committed multiple shootings and set fires at 16 locations, killing 22 people before he was killed by the RCMP. On May 1, 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, following through on a 2019 campaign promise, announced an immediate ban on some 1,500 makes and models of assault weapons.. The Canadian government sought to follow New Zealand's lead when at the same time it announced the ban it promised a plan to force gun owners to surrender military-style firearms. But while New Zealand acted quickly, in 2019, Ottawa only launched a long awaited buyback program in 2026. In contrast, the government of then New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda announced its firearms buyback program shortly after a white supremacist killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch in March, 2019. In order to move quickly, New Zealand set up mobile units where firearm owners could get refunds in exchange for their firearms. They worked hard to get co-operation from gun owners. Meanwhile, here, the firearms industry and individual gun owners vigorously opposed the project, and it was delayed for years. The program was finally initiated this year with little of the sense of urgency it could have had right after the Nova Scotia killings. It has not been going well. In April, the federal public safety minister's office said more than 67,000 assault-style firearms have been declared by 37,869 firearm owners across Canada. That's just under half of the 136,000 firearms the government had budgeted for when it set aside aside $248.6 million for the program. The precise number of banned firearms in Canada is unknown due to the end of the long-gun registry in 2012. There are other deeper problems. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have indicated they will not assist with the program, meaning police are not co-operating as in New Zealand. Conservative MPs and firearm owners say the buyback is a wasteful exercise that targets law-abiding citizens. The original gun-control advocacy group, PolySeSouvient, blames “weak political leadership” for what it calls “poor participation” in the compensation program. It looks like Ottawa - to put it mildly - has blown the opportunity to really reduce the number of people-killing guns in this country.

Two Opposites – Mark Carney and Donald Trump

By Patrick Gossage • March 12, 2026
One of the major differences between these two men is that Carney understands the value of well-thought-out strategy, abundantly clear in his Davos speech, which laid out one for middle powers to deal with the end of a rules-based international order and the rise of hegemony. Trump's lack of strategic understanding is clear in his bumbling attempts to justify the billion-dollar-a-day Iran war. His overall tactic of “flooding the zone” – mounting a new initiative or major announcement every day, or even several times a day to ensure press and opposition can never catch up. This tactic has served him well – confusing the world and his would-be opponents into submission under a valley of activity and harsh opinions from the leader of the world. Contrast this approach to leadership from Carney. He is systematically building a nation less dependent on US trade by travelling the world building new alliances and trading partners. And in the scare of Australia giving substance to his idea of alliances with middle powers. All laid out in the Davos speech. It is instructive to appreciate how much Trump was irritated by the Davos speech. Carney got a standing ovation; Trump’s rambling lengthy diatribe did not. He won’t soon forget being so upstaged. He surely recognized an intellectual power he could never match. Carney is a realist and pragmatic when he stated recently “We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.” He is dealing with the world that is being reshaped by an irrational power-mad president, a world the powerful Stephen Miller said “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.” Does Carney sometimes err on the side of supporting Trump likely to ensure that critical talks on free trade and tariffs have some chance of finding a sympathetic ear? Yes; first he seemed to fully support Trump’s war with Iran. He later made his support more nuanced, saying Trump’s actions were against the rules-based international order. He now says we will not get involved unless a NATO ally is threatened. But generally, Carney is highly rational in contrast to Trump’s self-centered irrationality. Take Trump’s bizarre ill-informed letter to the Prime Minister of Norway, who had no role in deciding if he got the Nobel Peace Prize: “I no longer feel obligated to think purely of Peace (he subsequently engaged in an ever expanding war against Iran). He then reiterated his demand for “complete and Total Control, of Greenland. Thank you!”. His late-night rants, complete with caps, on social media show a mind out of control. Thay are dutifully reported on US news media and often astonish with their non sequiturs and nastiness. One of his more unpresidential quotes came as he fingered White House drapes: “I chose these myself. I always liked gold." The big question for Canadians who are more and more disillusioned with the antics of the President: could these two opposite ever sit down and do a deal that works for Canada. The two do text, and Carney has admitted that in private Trump does listen. But there is also evidence that the trade people in the White House do not like Canada, and as Trump has said, we owe our very existence to the US. And we are “difficult”. They have said that the current trade deal is not good for the US and could be trashed entirely and -deals with Mexico and Canada could be separate and the current trilateral deal may be dead.  Canada was at the brink of reducing the heavy sectoral tariffs on steel, aluminum, and lumber when Premier Ford’s unfortunate ads during the Rose Bowl that featured President Reagan speaking against the usefulness of Tariffs led To Trump suspending talks. They only recently resumed. So can our world-renowned businessman and banker hope to sit down with the unpredictable and unstable President and cut a deal? Some hope that if we extend talks, the President, weakened by the midterms, the bad economic fallout from an unpopular war, and the fragmentation of the MAGA movement may be easier to deal with. On the other hand he may badly need a “win,” bullying big concessions out of Canada and reaping so-cabled benefits from a weaker free trade deal. There is a scenario where Trump gets a black eye if Carney simply walks away with the conviction, perhaps easily shared with an increasingly nationalistic and confident Canada that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” In any case, what a decisive and challenging future we face with Canada at play. Can Carney win for Canada against his opposite by losing a deal?"
More Posts