When it comes to housing policy, our federal leaders have been slow to wake up to the reality of how broken things are in this country.

Unfortunately, having woken up, they are flailing around, throwing blame, and tripping on their own feet more than they鈥檙e solving anything.

Here鈥檚 a quick recap of how we got here, starting more than 40 years ago: Land and gas used to be cheap; the suburbs expanded as Baby Boomers started families en masse.

In 1980, a house in Metro Vancouver cost about 6.7 times the average Canadian household鈥檚 annual income.

Today, that same ratio is about 19 times annual income, at least in the Fraser Valley. 

We all know this is bad. We鈥檝e known for years that it was bad and getting worse. But Ottawa鈥檚 responses to this have been pretty awful.

As recently as August 2023, PM Justin Trudeau blurted out that 鈥渉ousing isn鈥檛 a primary federal responsibility.鈥�

Gosh, sorry to bother you with a crisis that鈥檚 been building for decades and has warped our entire economy! Guess that鈥檚 one for the provinces to deal with!

The Liberals have spent the past year rushing out programs and spending, and it鈥檚 not nothing. But it鈥檚 not nearly enough. The Liberal government鈥檚 plan to see Canada build 3.87 million new homes in under a decade implies a level of homebuilding that is flat out impossible 鈥� we don鈥檛 have the skilled workers required to almost triple annual construction, for one thing, and we can鈥檛 just summon them out of the ether.

Meanwhile, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has responded with rhetoric and a plan that is, if possible, even worse.

The linchpin of Poilievre鈥檚 plan is to force communities to build 15 per cent more housing than the year before, each and every year, or lose federal funding transfers.

Everyone immediately pointed out the problem with this plan: some communities, like 91原创 and Surrey, are building at high rates already. Telling them to push that number higher may not be possible and, to a large extent, is in the hands of developers and market forces anyway.

Meanwhile, cities that have fought new development tooth and nail would have a much easier time of it.

Cities doing everything right could be penalized, while scofflaws could be rewarded.

So these are our choices between the two largest parties in the House of Commons 鈥� a Liberal Party that stuck its head in the sand for years and then tried to hastily apply some Band-Aids to an arterial wound, or a Conservative Party that only has sound-bite solutions, which don鈥檛 stand up to the slightest scrutiny.