HANNAFORD: Poilievre's tax-cut plan to put more people in their own homes

Removing the GST from new homes under a million dollars may or may not do everything that Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre promises it will. But heaven knows, it’s a step in the right direction — potentially a $50,000 step for some buyers. .UPDATED: Poilievre promises to axe GST on new homes under $1M and reverse ‘Trudeau’s housing hell’.And importantly, it shows again the fundamental difference between the way Conservatives and Liberals think, a distinction with much wider implications.Faced with a problem, Liberals instinctively invent a government program. Conservatives instinctively take government out of the way. The Conservative idea is far more likely to produce more new homes.To be specific, in April this year, the prime minister announced what he’s marketing as Canada’s Housing Plan. You can read the whole thing here, but the gist was that there would be an additional $15 billion going to the federal apartment construction program already set at $55 billion, and even more big money going to municipalities that agreed to allow multi-family buildings in single-family residential zones. The Western Standard’s Myke Thomas did a number of thorough take-downs of all this, including how the promise of $228 million under another new $5 billion government program, induced City of Calgary aldermen to go along with a vastly unpopular blanket rezoning program. (The Liberal incentive was in fact, widely adopted in cities across Canada.).THOMAS: You can fight Calgary's blanket zoning bylaw with restrictive covenants.Billions here, billions there, with on top the not-inconsequential administrative costs stemming from a bloated civil service. But that's always the default option of this government that's here-to-help-us — spend money and of course tack it on to the debt. (Or raise taxes.)As for the specifics of Poilievre's plan, it's — well, don't charge GST on new homes under a million. How might this look in practice?In 2023, there were just under a quarter of a million homes of all types completed, down slightly from the year before. As prices vary regionally, averages are not particularly instructive. Nevertheless with the national average for homes of all types coming in at under $700,000, Poilievre's announcement will have legs. Only in places like Vancouver might it land with a dull thud. But in Vancouver there are other issues. The Vancouver Homebuilders Association claims that “Government fees and charges typically can contribute 30 per cent of an overall construction build."Poilievre is aware of this problem, and campaigns on it..Slight decreases in home prices puts the Greater Vancouver Area on the cusp of a buyers’ market .Meanwhile, he claims the removal of GST from the price of new homes will "spark 30,000 extra homes built every year.”Let's hope so. Knocking off the GST doesn't produce tradesmen out of a hat, free up development land or run off the gatekeepers. But it wasn't supposed to. The problem of affordable housing is far too large to be settled with a single initiative. When taxes account for 31% of the price of a new home in some provinces, any tax reduction is going be part of the solution and a welcome addition to the end the carbon tax.So, tax cuts are good. Now let's see something from the Conservative team about where they're planning to cut spending... Balanced budgets are also a conservative value.

HANNAFORD: Poilievre's tax-cut plan to put more people in their own homes

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