By Canadian Press

Singh focuses on housing in Vancouver battleground

Oct 19, 2019 | 12:34 PM

VANCOUVER — NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh left his political rivals to trade barbs Saturday, focusing instead on housing policy in a key battleground in desperate need of help with the issue.

He spoke with young people in Vancouver struggling under the weight of the housing market there. The NDP is starting to see some traction in the polls and Singh said he believes his message is resonating because he rejects the idea that Canadians should settle for less.

“I think we’ve captured the imagination of the country because we’ve asked Canadians to dream bigger,” Singh said.

“I’m fighting for them with everything I’ve got, and my team is fighting for them because we know they deserve so much more. We can deliver it. That’s the positive thing in all of this. We got here because of choices that were made by Conservatives and Liberals. We can get out of here with choices that are made by New Democrats, for people.”

The leaders of two of the other major parties, meanwhile, focused on each other Saturday. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer warned, without evidence, that a hypothetical Liberal-NDP coalition would raise the GST and personal income taxes, and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau spoke of stopping “Conservative cuts.”

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The NDP is proposing to build 500,000 affordable housing units over 10 years, with half of the units coming in five years, at a cost of $5 billion in the first year and $3 billion in subsequent years. The NDP has also proposed a rental subsidy of up to $5,000 for half a million families and individuals.

Singh acknowledged those are lofty goals.

“We need to be ambitious,” he said. “We are in a crisis and when we are in a crisis we can’t respond with half measures.”

Singh is spending the waning days of the campaign targeting a key issue in a key battleground — his party is thought to be in a tight race with the Greens in several British Columbia ridings. While there are Canadians across the country struggling with housing, the average home sale price in Metro Vancouver is nearly $1 million.

The NDP is also promising to introduce a national foreign buyer’s tax and tackle money laundering.

The provincial NDP government in B.C. launched a public inquiry after commissioning two reports that revealed an estimated $5 billion in dirty money was funnelled through real estate in 2018, driving up prices by at least five per cent.

Real estate is useful to money-launderers because even legitimate transactions can involve large sums and it’s hard to say definitively when a price is inflated.

This report by The Canadian Press was originally published on Oct. 19, 2019.

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press