BINDA: Carney’s west coast condo bailout is robbing the poor to pay the rich

Prime Minister Mark Carney and BC Premier David Eby are pulling a reverse Robin Hood with their west coast condo bailout. 

Instead of taking from the rich and giving to the poor, they’re taking money from Canadian families and businesses and giving it to luxury condo developers. 

Carney looks a lot more like the bad Prince John than Robin Hood. 

In Carney’s words, developers “don’t want to sell at a loss” to Canadians unwilling to pay a million dollars for 520-square-foot, one-bed, one-bath, shoeboxes in the sky. 

The BC and federal governments are planning on using your tax dollars to buy 2,200 luxury condos on the west coast that are currently sitting vacant. The program will cost up to $1.45 billion, with the provincial taxpayer covering $1.3 billion and the feds kicking in a further $145 million. 

Carney claims that the government will turn the condos into “affordable” homes, which could include “innovative financing tools” like renting or buying them outright.    

Carney made the announcement during a press conference with BC Premier David Eby where they pledged a total of $5 billion toward infrastructure in BC over the next 10 years.  

But buying already-built condos does not create new supply. It just shifts the losses from developers’ balance sheets onto taxpayers’ balance sheets. This is not about affordability for families trying to get a roof above their heads. It’s a corporate welfare handout to developers who have built expensive condos that no one wants or can afford. 

Taxpayer bailouts for condo developers will not fix BC’s broken housing market. Developers who charge more for homes than families can afford to pay are eventually forced to drop prices. That is exactly what’s been happening in Metro Vancouver, where condo prices have dropped steadily since 2024. 

Prices in Vancouver are falling, inventory is rising and buyers are finally gaining leverage. But politicians just torpedoed that progress. Carney and Eby are using taxpayer money to stop condos from naturally becoming more affordable. 

Bailouts to developers distort that process which has finally been pushing prices lower. Falling prices are not a bug in the system, it is the system finally working and giving buyers a shot. 

Condo prices in Vancouver decreased about 3.7%  year-over-year to $772,000. Declining condo prices are a good thing that give families a chance at entering Canada’s most expensive housing market. 

Now that condo prices are finally falling, Carney and BC Premier David Eby want taxpayers to pay for developers’ losses.

What message does that send to developers? Build tiny, luxury condos and list them at fantasy prices. When the buyer says no, wait for Ottawa to come knocking with taxpayer cash. That isn’t a housing strategy, it’s a reward for bad decision making. 

And here’s the real kicker: politicians paying for it on the taxpayer credit card. The federal government added $65 billion of new debt last year, bringing Canada’s total up to $1.4 trillion. Interest alone on that debt is costing taxpayers a billion dollars every week. That’s as much money as Ottawa takes in GST or sends to the provinces in health transfers. 

BC is no better, it’s adding about $30 billion of debt to the taxpayer balance sheet this year, bringing the total tab up to $186 billion — about $32,000 for every British Columbian. 

They aren’t just bailing out condo developers, they’re putting taxpayers like you deeper in debt to do it. 

If governments at all levels were serious about reducing the cost of homes in Vancouver, they would cut the taxes and fees that make it so expensive to build homes in the first place.

Carney and Eby did commit $3.2 billion towards reducing development taxes, but those are only part of the problem. 

Building a new home in Vancouver involves nine different government taxes and fees which adds $70 per square foot to the cost, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. That’s $36,400 in taxes for a 520-square-foot apartment. 

Instead of using taxpayer money to buy overpriced condos, Carney and Eby should be cutting the taxes, red tape and delays that make it so expensive to build in the first place. 

Families do not need Ottawa to bail out developers who made bad bets on shoeboxes in the sky. They need affordable places to live. 

Carson Binda is the BC Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.