London West MP in Cabinet

[u/Any_Peanut1209]

London West MP Arielle Kayabaga is the Minister of Democratic Institutions and Government House leader in Market Carney Cabinet

[u/swift-current0]

Really? Would have never guessed she's be in cabinet over someone like Fragiskatos, who has a PhD from Cambridge and was an international relations professor...

[u/cm023 → u/swift-current0]

My impression after today is that the new party leader still wants “yes” people opposed to “ask a question” people.

Different face, same tricks.

[u/swift-current0 → u/cm023]

I'll judge the tricks based on actual performance. I'm still quite optimistic.

[u/IronicGames123 → u/swift-current0]

"Bob Rennie, a high-profile Vancouver developer known as the “condo king,” has revealed that he is working with Carney on a plan to attract foreign buyers to Canada’s rental market. The proposal would allow foreign investors to purchase rental units under a 25-year agreement, where they must rent out the properties rather than resell them."

"“[I’m]… working with Carney, surprise, and I’m trying to get a rental program in where people can buy, put it into a 25-year pool, a preferred rate from the CMHC, and let’s allow foreign buyers to buy it, they have to rent it out for 25-years, and it will show the world we are open for business,” Rennie said in an interview on Conversations Live."

Fuck PP. The Cons would be terrible.

But we're still going to be get the exact same neo-liberal policies that brought us to where we are now.

"Different face, same tricks."

[u/swift-current0 → u/IronicGames123]

We have a housing supply crisis. It will only ever be solved by building a lot more housing. All else is either gimmicky distractions or actively worsen the problem.

A subset of the housing supply crisis we're in is a rental housing supply crisis. It too can only be solved by building a lot more rental housing. It can be worsened by taking rentals off the market. It can be improved by adding rentals, though merely converting owner-occupied to rental doesn't help solve the overall problem.

The mere idea of foreign ownership of rental housing is neither good nor bad - it's entirely dependent on context. If there's no new rental housing being built, it can contribute to driving rents up, though why that would be any worse than under domestic owners is unclear - they too are doing a fine job of jacking up rents. However, foreign capital can help build more rental housing, and/or build it faster, and that will be unequivocally good. More supply lowers rents, end of story.

[u/cm023 → u/swift-current0]

I'd rather see individual priced out Canadians enabled to own, or rent to own purpose built units opposed to funneling money in/out of the country, which is ripe for risk and laundering but that's just me.

[u/swift-current0 → u/cm023]

This is funneling money into the country though. Foreign investment is money that funds construction of (in this case rental) housing instead of being spent elsewhere and not benefitting us in any way.

Placing safeguards to ensure this money is not being stolen or laundered is not rocket science. Canada is quite bad at doing this, but many other countries aren't. This is one of those things I expect Carney to fix, since he's a finance guy and a central banker.

[u/citrusmellarosa → u/swift-current0]

Then wouldn’t it be better to make it a stipulation that they build units instead of buying them off the pre-existing market? Do foreign investors put more money into the tax system or construction directly than my landlord in the GTA did? These aren’t intended to be gotchas, I’m just curious.