Throne speech priorities
The first full look at the NDP’s postelection agenda shows the government is bound and determined to dive into the housing and childcare issues, spending whatever it takes to tackle them.
Tuesday’s throne speech declared “making life more affordable” the first and most urgent priority. Housing progress and a splashy promise on child care were big parts of the NDP election campaign, but the government is behind its original schedule on both fronts.
The platform last year promised immediate spending on a $400-a-year renters’ rebate. It didn’t materialize in the government’s first budget update in September and it wasn’t mentioned Tuesday. The throne speech identified housing as the single greatest challenge to affordability. It includes four pages of rhetoric that not only promises progress on all aspects of the problem, but sets the sights on a common enemy — speculators.
All the hand-wringing about how multi-faceted the housing-real estate crisis is are cleared away by the speech. Arguments about supply, demand and zoning delays are put to the background. The NDP is going to focus on real estate profiteers and curb them in a big way.
“Safe, decent housing is a right that is under threat by speculators, domestic and foreign, who seek windfall profits at the expense of people who work, live and pay taxes.”
The NDP blames speculators for distorted markets, sky-high prices and empty homes.
“Your government believes that people seeking to profit from B.C.’s real estate must also contribute to housing solutions.” Next week’s budget will include new measures to address speculation.
The position mirrors a key point in a report by municipal leaders last week, that the continual debate about supply and demand obscures the role speculation plays in making housing unaffordable.
It will likely be a popular move, because it simplifies all the complexities and distils the blame down to one easy-to-hate villain. Whether it works or not remains to be seen. The throne speech formally acknowledges for the first time that the real estate and rental markets are “out of control.”
So the main measure of success will be curbing the price spiral, or deflating the bubble. While waiting for that to happen, there will be a crackdown on real estate fraud, and a huge new investment in social and rental housing. Look for a big new residential building program at universities, where regulatory hassles will be cleared away to streamline more student residences.
A similarly large program is being assembled on child care. The campaign platform called for big spending in the current year on the “$10 a day child care” program. It didn’t materialize in the September budget update.
Although Tuesday’s speech outlined big plans to vastly enhance child care in the coming year, the “$10 a day” campaign phrase doesn’t appear in the speech, and there is a warning the “journey ahead will take time.”
Premier John Horgan said there’s more to come and “we’re not backing away from anything.”
It will start with a conversion of unlicensed spaces to licensed regulated day cares, and a “dramatic” increase in training child-care workers.
Horgan said he has spent “more time than I anticipated” defending his government’s threat to curtail diluted bitumen shipments through B.C., something that sparked a heated trade war with Alberta. But the speech downplayed the threat, relegating the oil war to four innocuous lines near the end. It’s not going away, though. With Ottawa bound to back Alberta in the looming showdown, Horgan’s government will be anxious to ensure that the federal commitments that are crucial to his housing and child-care plans don’t fade away.
Les Leyne covers the B.C. Legislature for the Victoria Times Colonist.