Children sit on swings, as a rally held by Liberal Leader Mark Carney takes place, during his Liberal Party election campaign tour at the Lusitania Portuguese Club of Ottawa in Nepean, Ont., on April 20.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
Fairness for every generation: That was the name of the game a year ago, when the federal Liberal government was trying to recapture the support of young Canadians increasingly flocking to the Conservatives.
The finance minister at the time, Chrystia Freeland, presented a federal budget named exactly that and gave a forceful speech defending her party’s proposed – and now abandoned – capital-gains tax hike.
“Do you want to live in a country where the only young Canadians who can buy their own homes are those with parents who can help with the down payment?” Ms. Freeland said.
“Do you want to live in a country where we make the investments we need – in health care, in housing, in old age pensions – but we lack the political will to pay for them, and choose instead to pass a ballooning debt onto our children?”
It was supposed to be the Liberal response to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s relentless prosecution of the government over the cost of living and its management of federal finances.
Mr. Poilievre – who frequently talked about 35-year-olds still living in their parents’ basements because they can’t afford to move out – had struck a chord with the same demographic that had first put former prime minister Justin Trudeau in office.
However, one year later, the plight of young people has faded into the background, as the trade war with the U.S. takes centre stage in Canada’s federal election. Meanwhile, political parties have said more about protecting seniors’ retirements than helping young Canadians get a head start.
Federal parties have unveiled ambitious plans to ramp up the supply of housing in Canada, with the Liberals saying they will double the rate of homebuilding to 500,000 units per year.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
Joshua Winters, a 33-year-old renter living in Surrey, B.C., told The Globe and Mail that while he supports the Liberals, he would’ve liked to see more proposals from federal parties tailored for young people, including help for renters to become homeowners.
“Things that are facing younger people just kind of fall to the bottom,” he said. “I think we’re getting forgotten in this campaign.”
The focus on the trade war, which Liberal Leader Mark Carney has particularly leaned into, appears to play into the priorities of older demographics in the country.
New polling conducted by Nanos Research for The Globe and Mail and CTV News suggests that while the trade war is the top issue for Canadians 55 years and older, the cost of living is the priority for younger Canadians. Only one in 10 Canadians polled under the age of 35 said the trade was their main issue.
Canadians under the age of 35 are also more likely to trust Mr. Poilievre (38 per cent) – who has made the cost of living a central focus of his campaign – than Mr. Carney (26 per cent) to help young people.
The trade war has “taken the oxygen out of the room,” said Mike Moffatt, founding director of the Missing Middle Initiative, a project housed in the University of Ottawa’s Institute for the Environment with the stated goal of reviving Canada’s urban middle class.
“Other than housing, there has been a real absence of any policy to help struggling young people.”
Federal parties have unveiled ambitious plans to ramp up the supply of housing in Canada. The Liberals have said they will double the rate of home-building to 500,000 units per year, while the NDP have promised 600,000. The Conservatives set a target of 2.3 million homes over the next five years.
Whether the next government will find success in building more homes depends on factors outside their control, such as the co-operation of other levels of government and the availability of workers to ramp up construction so rapidly.
An analysis conducted by the Missing Middle Initiative found that if home prices were frozen at current levels, it would take 18 years of annual 3-per-cent wage growth to restore 2005 levels of housing affordability in Canada.
“Prices have become so disconnected toward incomes, that the gap is so large that there’s really no way to get out of this unless prices go down,” Prof. Moffatt said.
But falling home prices, while almost certainly required to improve housing affordability, would likely pose other political challenges.
Generation Squeeze founder Paul Kershaw, who is also a professor at the University of British Columbia, said neither Mr. Carney nor Mr. Poilievre have acknowledged the “elephant in the room.” Rising home prices have made older Canadians wealthier – something all parties seem to want to protect, Prof. Kershaw said.
“The political bargain is we want to retain the home values where they are now, to safeguard the wealth that older homeowners have already accumulated,” he said.
For young Canadians who are looking to become first-generation homebuyers, the mountain to climb is even steeper. A Statistics Canada study published earlier this year found that Canadians born in the 1990s whose parents were homeowners were twice as likely to own a home in 2021 than those whose parents weren’t homeowners.
The Globe asked the Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats whether they’d like to see their policies bring down home prices. None of them answered the question.
“The housing situation is the core of why younger Canadians report quite lower, quite low happiness levels by comparison with their older counterparts in Canada,” Prof. Kershaw said.
“If we don’t acknowledge that sacrifice, then we don’t think about how we can compensate it.”
Canadians under the age of 35 are also more likely to trust Pierre Poilievre (38 per cent) – who has made the cost-of-living a central focus of his campaign – than Mark Carney (26 per cent) to help young people.DAVE CHAN/AFP/Getty Images
Outside of their housing plans, the federal parties have unveiled few measures directly targeted at young people. The Liberals have pledged to provide 100,000 youth a year with mental-health care. The NDP told The Globe that it would push for student loan forgiveness, but the party’s platform made no mention of it.
Meanwhile, the major parties have promised broad income-tax cuts, as well as fixed-income boosts or other incentives for retirees. The Liberals promised temporary measures to reduce the minimum amount that must be withdrawn from a registered retirement income fund by 25 per cent and to increase the guaranteed income supplement by 5 per cent, a tax-free annual boost of up to $652 for low-income seniors. The NDP have also promised to increase the GIS.
The Conservatives said they will allow seniors to earn up to $34,000 tax-free, marking a $10,000 increase. Mr. Poilievre has also said he would boost TFSA contributions by $5,000 for Canadian investments, a measure that would benefit older and wealthier Canadians the most.
“We’re seeing in this election all of the parties have policies around … trying to lower the tax bill for people in their 70s. But there’s not really a lot out there designed to lower the tax bill for people in their 20s,” Prof. Moffatt said.
The Nanos poll surveyed 1351 people between April 14 and 16, It is considered accurate to within 2.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Respondents were asked the following question: “From the following issues, what is the most important to you personally?” They were also asked: “Which leader and party do you trust most to help young Canadians?” The full methodology for all surveys can be found at: tgam.ca/polls.