OTTAWA \u2014 Prime Minister Mark Carney admitted he and his government did a poor job rolling out a controversial federal-provincial program to acquire unsold B.C. condo units and panned by critics as a \u201ccondo bailout.\u201d<\/p>\n
The prime minister made the rare admission during a 45-minute press conference with reporters Thursday to mark the end of the parliamentary session.<\/p>\n
In this case, the error was doing a poor job explaining part of a $3.2 billion suite of measures for the B.C. housing market that would see Build Canada Homes and BC Housing partner up to \u201cconvert\u201d 2,200 unsold condo units into affordable housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to say up front: I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve done, myself included, a particularly good job of rolling this out and explaining exactly what it is,\u201d Carney said of the program announced with B.C. Premier David Eby last week. \u201cI think it\u2019s important to say a few words of what this is and what this isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time, the announcement lacked any detail on whether these condos would be acquired at market price or a discounted rate and what the total cost of the measure would be. There was also no clarity on what \u201cinnovative financing tools\u201d would be used in the endeavour.<\/p>\n
There was also much confusion as to how much either government was earmarking for the acquisitions. The lack of clarity had critics up in arms about the program, with one mortgage specialist telling National Post this week<\/a> the program appeared to be a \u201cmoral hazard\u201d that is \u201csocializing losses while the profits flow to developers\u201d.<\/p>\n Asked to explain the program, Carney quickly obliged while admitting the government\u2019s poor communications around the program.<\/p>\n He said the total acquisition budget is $1.45 billion, with the federal government\u2019s portion tagged at 10 per cent, or $145 million, of that. He also said the government was targeting \u201cdistressed condos\u201d and buying them at a discount.<\/p>\n \u201cThe province of British Columbia, which initiated the idea, sees an opportunity, potentially given what\u2019s happening in that market, to convert some of these condos that are lying unsold to affordable housing, particularly rent-to-buy affordable housing\u2026 people who don\u2019t have money for a down payment but can build that equity over time,\u201d Carney explained.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, buying them at a discount at the right time, financing, terming that out, setting up a rent-to-own structure for truly affordable housing,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n He told reporters that he had not been lobbied \u201cdirectly\u201d by developers for the program and argued that it wasn\u2019t designed for the benefit of developers either.<\/p>\n The Greater Vancouver Area condo market is currently experiencing a correction. A report by the Toronto-Dominion Bank published earlier this month, forecasts roughly 15 per cent peak-to-trough decline from the 2023 high by mid-2027, marking the deepest correction on record since 2005.<\/p>\n There are currently over 4,000 unsold condo units in Vancouver.<\/p>\n National Post, with files from Jordan Gowling.<\/p>\n cnardi@postmedia.com<\/p>\n Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com<\/a> and sign up for our politics newsletter, First Reading, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2014 Prime Minister Mark Carney admitted he and his government did a poor job rolling out a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[841,7053,111],"class_list":["post-103605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-affordable-housing","tag-condo-units","tag-mark-carney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}