File photo (image credit - CFJC Today)

By Michael Reeve

CANADA VOTES 2025

Election Issues 2025: Housing and affordability for younger generations

Apr 22, 2025 | 4:35 PM

KAMLOOPS — With advance polls now closed, Canadians have one more opportunity to have their say in who will form the next government, with polls open on general voting day next Monday, from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm.

On Tuesday (April 22), we continue our election issue coverage with the topic of housing. Each candidate was asked — younger generations are struggling to enter the housing market. What is your party’s plan to make the housing market easier to enter?

In 2025, the price of the average Kamloops home rose in price by 2 per cent, now valued at just under $700,000. Coupled with the rising costs of everyday goods, many younger people are questioning if owning a home is possible.

“Make investments in affordable housing, pre-fabricated homes — the sort of homes that were built after WWII are very simple in design. Some of them went up in 36 hours and yet they are still all across the country. Those homes are still standing now,” said Iain Currie, Liberal candidate in Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola. “We want to get the federal government back in the building business, work toward building 500,000 new homes every year.”

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The New Democrats are looking to increase supply while also ensuring those in the rental market are not priced out.

“We would support first-time homebuyers. We would create a housing market for people and not corporations. A lot of these new starts are put on by big corporations — we would eliminate that. We would eliminate ‘renovictions,'” said Kamloops-Shuswap-Central Rockies NDP candidate Phaedra Idzan.

The People’s Party of Canada is looking to reduce what they call mass immigration to Canada, in turn helping reduce the demand, all while questioning the other parties’ idea of dumping more money into the problem.

“Our largest issue is addressing mass immigration first, which will bring housing affordability into line by bringing demand down so that supply can catch up. Construction can continue to build housing units and there will be less demand for those housing units, so hopefully the price will come down,” said Chris Enns, PPC candidate for Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola.

The region surrounding Kamloops has seen the cost of arable land increased four-fold over seven years. That issue is in the crosshairs for the Green party.

“That is pure speculation. That isn’t you and me driving up those prices — that is companies, wealthy individuals, speculators seeing an opportunity and profiteering off our need to both farm and have a home. Our approach is to stop that, to get affordable homes built and keep them affordable,” said Owen Madden, Green candidate for Kamloops-Shuswap-Central Rockies.

The Conservatives are pledging to take the GST off the cost of new builds up to $1.3 million, resulting in approximately $65,000 in savings.

“We will work with municipalities to lower their development cost charges. Development cost charges are something that municipalities charge developers when they are going to build on a city lot. If the municipality is going to reduce their development cost charges, we will match that funding also up to an additional $50,000 per development,” said Conservative incumbent in Kamloops-Shuswap-Central Rockies Mel Arnold.

Election day is Monday, April 28.

More election issues will be discussed this week and Wednesday candidates from the five major parties discuss U.S trade relations, and how their party’s leader will deal with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Monday’s issue was affordability. That story can be found here.