The federal government is pushing back against criticism of its plan to purchase thousands of vacant condominiums in British Columbia and convert them into affordable housing, with Prime Minister Mark Carney insisting the initiative is designed to benefit ordinary Canadians rather than the real estate industry.
Ottawa and the B.C. government jointly announced a proposal to finance the acquisition and conversion of more than 2,200 unsold condo units into affordable housing. Speaking to reporters on June 25, Carney put the total cost of the initiative at roughly $1.5 billion, with the federal government chipping in approximately 10 percent of that figure.
“Of course, developers are not going to admit that they’re going to have distressed condos. But we don’t care about the developer we care about the person, the family that can potentially move into the home,” Carney said.
The prime minister acknowledged that his government had not done a strong job explaining the policy to Canadians, adding that his government would look for situations where buying up unsold units represented the best use of public money.
The proposal has drawn sharp criticism from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who wasted no time framing the buyout as a taxpayer-funded lifeline for wealthy developers. Speaking the same day, Poilievre argued the Liberal government had inflated Canada’s housing market into a bubble and was now asking working Canadians to cover the cost of that excess.
“Bailing out these condo developers who have made billions over the last several decades,” is how Poilievre described the plan, accusing Carney of using public funds to rescue what he called the prime minister’s “developer friends.”
Conservative MP Scott Aitchison, his party’s shadow housing minister, also weighed in, writing a letter to federal Housing Minister Gregor Robertson and demanding transparency around the plan. Aitchison raised pointed questions about who actually conceived the policy, given Carney’s own admission that no developer had approached him directly requesting it. He also noted that Ottawa had pledged to build half a million homes annually, yet current construction numbers sit at roughly half that target.
Premier David Eby, whose province initiated the proposal, conceded that the rollout had been muddled. “The plot has been lost a bit there,” Eby admitted, referring to the confusion stemming from a lack of policy details made public so far.
Still, Eby defended the underlying logic. His government’s goal, he said, is to acquire units below the cost of construction meaning developers would not be turning a profit on the sale and pass those savings on to buyers who would otherwise be priced out of the market entirely.
“If people hate it, that’s ok, we don’t have to do it. But I actually think that ultimately, we’ll be buying below the cost of construction, no developers will be profiting from us, and it will give people an opportunity to buy a home that would otherwise not have it,” Eby said.
The B.C. premier also shed light on why Ottawa’s funding could not simply be redirected to a GST exemption on new homes a route the federal government had taken in Ontario. In British Columbia, a GST exemption for new homes already exists for first-time buyers, meaning such a policy would only benefit those who already own property.
With details still sparse and political tensions running high, the initiative faces scrutiny from multiple directions. Carney’s own admission that his government struggled to explain the plan has done little to quiet the critics, and opposition voices are pressing for clearer answers on cost, oversight, and who ultimately stands to gain.
For now, the debate over whether this is a genuine effort to house Canadians or a quiet lifeline for struggling developers appears far from settled.
