Alberta government has ‘deep concerns’ about federal housing announcement Achi-News

The Alberta government says it has “deep concerns” and insufficient information about a $6-billion federal housing announcement made Tuesday morning.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the announcement while in Dartmouth, NS, as part of the government’s pre-budget tour. Trudeau says that although the fund will help address the housing shortage plaguing Canada, provinces and territories will have to adopt certain housing policies in order to access it.

The offices of Jason Nixon, the Minister for Older People, Community and Social Services and Ric McIver, the Minister for Civic Affairs, responded to the announcement in a joint statement shortly before 7 pm on Tuesday, saying they had “deep concerns.”

“The federal government has so far not provided adequate or appropriate funding to Alberta for housing, and they are once again evading provincial jurisdiction by not consulting or even notifying provinces about the new program,” the statement read.

“This is another example of the federal government’s long history of ignoring provincial jurisdiction and playing politics with important issues like housing.”

The federal government’s announcement plans to make $1 billion available directly to cities for urgent infrastructure needs, with that money flowing in the 2024-25 fiscal year.

The remaining $5 billion would be allocated to agreements with states and territories meant to support long-term priorities. That funding would flow over a longer period of time, with those details being hammered out during the negotiations.

In response to the Alberta ministers’ statement, a spokesperson for the deputy premier’s office and the finance minister said in a statement that everyone wants an affordable place to call home.

“In 2022, we committed to tying infrastructure funding to provincial and municipal action on housing,” Katherine Cuplinskas said in a statement.

“We hope that the provincial governments support these goals and that we can work together.”

Alberta’s statement says the federal government has not been clear on how they plan to distribute the funding and says this will “only make it harder and more expensive to build homes and will also severely restricts the types of homes that can be built. “

“It is a continuation of their punitive green agenda by trying to ban natural gas by 2030 and nationalize housing. Unlike the federal government, we know that at a time when purpose-built home building and rents are at an all-time high, building barriers will shut people out of the rental and housing market and discourage people from build new houses, making the problem worse,” the statement said.

In addition, the statement says the province is already on the right track and “leads the country in having the fewest regulations and fastest permit approval times” and they do not believe the federal government should be is part of the decision.

“If the federal government really wants to get rid of red tape and make housing more affordable as they claim, they would rather listen to our calls to get rid of the carbon tax so that building costs get lower them, and shovels can actually come in quicker.”

Cuplinskas said in her statement that “any claim that a carbon price is contributing to the housing challenge is categorically false.”

Municipalities have been aggressively urging the federal government to commit more dollars toward infrastructure, noting that their communities cannot significantly increase housing construction to match population growth without things like water supply and roads.

While Tuesday’s announcement appears to be a response to a plea from municipalities asking for more infrastructure support, it is also being pushed back by some other premiers who are unhappy with the conditions on states and territories.

– With files from Canadian Press, Allison Jones in Toronto, Hina Alam in Fredericton and Ashley Joannou in Vancouver

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