Roundup: A housing plan to challenge the provinces and municipalities

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In one of the last pre-budget announcements, the federal government delivered their overall housing plan for 2024, which was a mixture of previously made announcements over the past couple of weeks, with a few more added in—such as plans to lease and not sell public land—to offer a more complete picture of the things that they are doing as a federal government to “unlock” the construction of hundreds of thousands of homes. And I am going to make the point that the term “unlocked” is interesting and deliberate, while most media outlets keep using the term “build” incorrectly, because they’re not saying they’re going to build x-number of units, because they have no way to actually guarantee that because they have very few levers at their disposal to actually build. The other part of “unlock” is that it very much puts the onus on the other levels of government, who do have those levers, to do the work now that the federal government has cleared the way for them.

A lot of this has shown that they have been listening to expert like Mike Moffatt, and while you can read his full thread, I did think it was nice that they put out a chart as to whose responsible for what, because there are a lot of people who are ignorant about these kinds of jurisdictional questions (or pretend to be in any case), so it’s handy that they actually spell it out.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1778804892183748617

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1778808362668306508

And a couple more thoughts from Jennifer Robson in this thread:

Ukraine Dispatch:

Shortages of air defences is leaving Kharkiv in particular more vulnerable to Russian attack. A drone attack hit an energy facility in Dnipropetrovsk in the south. Reuters has another photo series of the front lines.

Good reads:

  • Mélanie Joly is warning Canadians to avoid travel to Israel and the West Bank, in particular because of concerns over Iranian retaliatory strikes.
  • Ahmed Hussen announced $132 million in aid for people fleeing the civil war in Sudan, particularly for those who have fled to neighbouring countries.
  • CSIS director David Vigneault returned to the foreign interference commission, reiterated that two things can be true at once, and took swipes at media leaks.
  • The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Blood Tribe’s treaty claims were time-barred by statute, but offered declaratory relief because of the Crown’s conduct.
  • Jagmeet Singh backpedalled about his comments on the carbon levy saying he still supports it, but has other plans they’re working on around big polluters. (Sure, Jan).
  • NDP MP Lori Idlout and Green Party deputy leader Jonathan Pedneault are asking the government to reform Indigenous class-action lawsuit rules.
  • Danielle Smith says that she expects a future Poilievre government to work with provinces and not municipalities directly. (Good luck with that).
  • Susan Delacourt gives her reading of Trudeau’s performance at the foreign interference inquiry, and his alternating between prime minister and party leader.

Odds and Ends:

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