Justin Trudeau shifts some of the blame for eye-popping housing costs

financialpost.com:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau heaped some of the blame for skyrocketing housing costs on high interest rates and inaction by other levels of government, signalling a more defensive tone on an issue where his main political rival has hit him hard.

Trudeau touted a federal investment in a housing project in Hamilton, Ont., on July 31, telling reporters that his government is focused on making housing affordable and bolstering the supply of homes for lower and middle-income Canadians.

But he repeatedly pointed to provinces and municipalities — which control land-use planning, zoning and permitting — as crucial in solving the issue. He also said the previous Conservative government — in which now-leader Pierre Poilievre was a cabinet minister — failed to address the issue for 10 years.

“I’ll be blunt: Housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility,” Trudeau said. “It’s not something that we have direct carriage of, but it is something that we can and must help with.”

I’ll be blunt: Housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility

The rhetoric is a shift for Trudeau, whose government jumped into the housing arena when it was first elected in 2015. He has since rolled out an $82-billion national housing strategy and made sweeping promises, including doubling the pace of housing starts over the next decade.

But his efforts haven’t made a meaningful dent in housing costs, with the benchmark house price reaching $749,100 in June, up two per cent from a month earlier. At the same time, he has set record-high immigration targets, welcoming more than a million people last year and straining already crunched housing supply.

The remarks show the government “is giving up on solving the housing crisis it created,” said John Pasalis,