Conservative MPs discuss housing challenges at Vernon roundtable

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Aitchison said the supply crisis has driven homes to unaffordable levels in much of Canada, including Vernon, adding he learned the local challenges include geography and water capacity.

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“There’s some unique challenges to the geography here and there’s also some limitations. There’s a lot of man-made limitations to where we can and can’t build, the agricultural land, protecting certain areas,” Aitchison said.

“Frankly one of the other huge geographical challenges here is water capacity, that’s one of the issues you face here. So we need to be working together at all levels of government along with the private sector to find solutions to these challenges to get the cost of housing down and get more built.”

Another issue mentioned at the roundtable was the steps needed to take in order to just build more homes.

“Everything from the cost of the process — say the processing of applications, the development approvals process — there’s some similar themes here as there are across the country, but the carbon tax and the bureaucracy of government that add to the costs,” the Shadow Housing Minister said.

“We heard some very specific things about constant changes to the building code under the guise of safety. So you see an awful lot of added expense to not just the efficiency of a home but what we talk about the safety of a home. All kind of examples of new rules that just make it more expensive to build.”

To address this challenge, Aitchison said the Conservative Party, under leader Pierre Poilievre, would “use federal spending power to motivate municipalities to make the development approval process a lot easier, and therefore cheaper, but also to reduce the burden of the federal government on the cost of everything.”

MP Arnold added another issue labourers face is not having their credentials recognized when moving from one province to another, and said a Conservative government would implement a “Blue Seal” process that would allow all workers, including those from other sectors like health care, to be able to carry over their certifications when moving through the country.

The Conservative MPs also put blame on the carbon tax for driving up costs of manufacturing and transporting materials, which is later passed on the consumer.

They acknowledged that B.C. has its own provincial carbon tax, but claimed getting rid of the federal tax would benefit Vernon and British Columbia.

“The provincial carbon tax is going to have to go up to meet the federal standards, which I think is going to add in another 23 per cent, on April 1st,” Arnold said.

“If the provincial government chooses to continue with the carbon tax, I guess that will be a choice the voters can make at the next election, but we as a federal government have fully pledged to axe the carbon tax when we form government.”

Aitchison added there’s “no silver bullet” to solving the housing crisis, saying “it’s multi-faceted, and a supply and demand crisis.

“We need to up our supply, we need to manage our demand, and we need to get government out of the way. There are unique ideas all over the country and Ottawa does not know best, the people on the ground do,” he told Vernon Matters.