For years, a metaphysical question has hung over Ottawa: Who, exactly, is Nathaniel Erskine-Smith?
He’s the 40-year-old three-term backbench Member of Parliament for Beaches—East York, yes. But he doesn’t look or act like any of the other 150-odd Liberal MPs in his caucus. He is one of Canadian politics’ . He’s arguably the only elected Liberal, apart from Trudeau himself, who is willing to pitch novel policy ideas in public. He’s a maverick, an iconoclast, and he was .
And now, he’s Canada’s minister of housing. Despite what naysayers in his party may utter under their breath, Erskine-Smith’s new job is great news for the country. Clever, able to speak like a human being, and unwilling to be a lemming, Erskine-Smith is exactly the kind of Liberal that the country needs right now.
At the same time, Erskine-Smith’s appointment is a cruel joke. He arrives in the twilight of the Liberal’s mandate, amidst historic unpopularity and mounting calls on the prime minister to follow his father’s footprints in the snow.
Erskine-Smith will be lucky to stay in the job for 10 months. (If Jagmeet Singh’s perpetually-clueless NDP makes good on their threat to vote against the government in the new year, it could be sooner rather than later.)
“I understand there’s going to be a short runway,” Erskine-Smith said Friday outside of Rideau Hall. But, recognizing that the housing crisis is tightly linked to rising homelessness and declining productivity, Erskine-Smith said his goal was “to make the biggest difference that I can.”
There’s some dramatic irony to his appointment. “It strikes me that we need more honesty in our politics,” Erskine-Smith told housing researcher Carolyn Whitzman on his podcast earlier this month. Eschewing some “quick solution,” he said: “No politician should stand at the microphone and say ‘we’re going to build the homes we need,’ without really overhauling how we do things.”
Now, Erskine-Smith is being asked to do some very big things in a very short period of time.
But the upside of Erskine-Smith’s appointment — particularly in a muddled cabinet shuffle that is more about electoral math than policy — is that he’s already told us what he wants to do.
Last year, the Trudeau government unveiled its Housing Accelerator Fund, a $4 billion project aimed at financing new home construction whilst also encouraging provinces and municipalities to improve zoning bylaws to fit more homes into their cities. The Conservatives, for their part, would rather threaten to withhold tax dollars from cities who don’t build enough dense housing.
Whitzman was complimentary to the Liberal plan, but wished it was a bit more willing to “bully some municipalities,” like the Conservatives propose. Erskine-Smith agreed. “I’m okay with the firm carrots and sticks. And we should be firm with municipalities that don’t do their jobs on any restrictive zoning.”
In a sit-down interview with former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney — the man who, twice, turned down an offer to be Trudeau’s finance minister — Erskine-Smith made a heretical observation. “It’s something like is tied up in mortgages,” he observed, noting that this debt is being added to chase existing goods. “Do you worry about just how much we have invested as a country in the real estate sector?”
Carney replied with a lot of words, but didn’t answer. Erskine-Smith, with his journalist hat on, pushed an alternative: “We want to get new housing built, as opposed to competing with first time home buyers for residential resales.” Carney responded “yes,” but continued to skirt around the fundamental problem: Ottawa is subsidizing too much demand, not enough supply.
Trudeau’s government has, since it first took office in 2015, incentivized Canadians to acquire more debt to finance the sales of existing assets. Its First-Time Home Buyer Incentive, First Home Savings Account, Home Buyers’ Plan, 30-year amortization for mortgages all flooded the housing market with more cash.
This is great politics, because the various incentives and savings schemes help paper over these rising prices and put more funds into the pockets of, among others, the well-to-do Liberal-voting landed gentry. But make no mistake: These housing price subsidies are increasing the inflationary spiral in the real estate sector while doing preciously little to increase the supply. Erskine-Smith is one of the only politicians in Canada — Liberal or otherwise — willing to say this.
We have more than just his wonky podcast interviews to go on, as we anticipate what Erskine-Smith might do with his short time in the job. Last year, he mounted a bid to lead the Ontario Liberal Party, finishing in a strong second place. (After Bonnie Crombie’s lacklustre first year in the job, many may wish they had picked him instead.) In the campaign, Erskine-Smith promised to legalize four-plexes straight across the province, with an eye to permitting six-plexes. He further vowed to tax investors who do not contribute to new construction, crack down on demolishing homes to make way for mansions and to get the government back in the business of building homes.
Erskine-Smith rightly notes that these policies would take years, maybe decades, to fully actualize. But these proposals were some of the most ambitious in the country, and were particularly bold in contrast to the thin gruel being offered by Crombie, Doug Ford, and even Erskine-Smith’s boss.
The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation has estimated that we will need about additional units of housing by 2030. Housing starts, however, . And yet the Parliamentary Budget Officer has found that the Trudeau government’s $15 billion Affordable Housing Fund will have succeeded in building a paltry by the end of 2027.
The fact that Erskine-Smith has been openly, and publicly, willing to point out his own party’s shortcomings, and offer an alternative, is fairly exceptional over the near-decade the Liberals have been in power. That candidness has given him a level of cachet in a caucus where backbenchers are generally expected to be seen and not heard. It’s also made him a subject of disgruntlement in caucus, as some MPs believe he is not a team player. There was certainly some grumbling upon news of his appointment, according to one MP I spoke to.
Those are the complaints of cult members, and should be ignored with vigor. Erskine-Smith’s appointment comes too late, and from a deeply delusional and moribund government. But the fact that we now have a minister in cabinet who is willing to criticize his own government, and who has no problem slaying sacred cows in order to achieve actual progress on a genuine crisis? That is good news.
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