The Federal Budget 2022, released April 7, 2022, had a significant focus on housing for Canadians.  Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland laid out how the government is planning to address housing affordability by adopting policies in three categories: building, saving and anti-flipping/foreign investment.“This was a housing-focused budget and there’s considerable detail within the document that we need to analyze and better understand,” REBGV Chair Daniel John said. “We support the government’s recognition that we need to create much more abundant and diverse forms of housing supply in the country. We also support actions to help young people save for a down payment in Canada.”

“Where we urge caution is in policy measures that insert the government into the sale of private property. That kind of intervention should be done seldomly, carefully and with the rights of all parties in mind,” John said. “We look forward to being involved in the ongoing conversation around improving housing affordability and how these measures will be implemented.”

• Read a summary of the Federal Budget 2022.
• Read the Federal Budget 2022 (Opens 304-page pdf)

Our Government Relations team has begun a comprehensive review of these housing policy announcements. We’ll provide more information and analysis as we complete this work.Here’s our initial summary of the housing measures announced on April 7, 2022.

The goal is to double housing construction by 2032. This will require investments and changes to existing systems that prevent more housing from being built, including:

• A new Housing Accelerator Fund: $4 billion over five years, starting in 2022-23. This will provide support to municipalities, such as an annual per-door incentive or up-front funding for investments in housing planning and delivery processes that speed up housing development.
• Extension of the Rapid Housing Initiative: $1.5 billion over two years, starting in 2022-23 to create at least 6,000 new affordable housing units, with at least 25 per cent of funding going towards women-focused housing projects.
• A new Multigenerational Home Renovation Tax Credit: provides up to $7,500 to support construction of a secondary suite for a senior or an adult with a disability, starting in 2023.

• Flipping tax: anyone selling a property they’ve held for less than 12 months will be taxed on their profits as business income, applying to residential properties sold on or after January 1, 2023. There will be exceptions for Canadians selling their home due to life circumstances such as a death, disability, the birth of a child, a new job, or a divorce.
• Foreign ownership restrictions: to prohibit foreign commercial enterprises and non-Canadian citizens or permanent residents from acquiring non-recreational, residential property in Canada for a period of two years. This will apply to detached homes and stratas. Permanent residents, foreign workers, foreigners buying their primary residence, and students will be excluded from the new legislation.

The government will have the power to implement penalties for non-compliance.

• Review of housing as an asset class: to better understand the role of large corporate players in the market and the impact on renters and homeowners, the government plans to look at options and tools, including potential changes to the tax treatment of large corporations investing in residential real estate. 

To help prevent financial crimes in the real estate sector, the federal government plans to extend anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing requirements to all businesses conducting mortgage lending in the next year. The goal is to limit the exploitation of the real estate market by criminals, which can affect housing affordability across the country.

GST/HST on assignment sales: Budget 2022 proposes to make all assignment sales of newly constructed or substantially renovated residential housing taxable for GST/HST purposes, effective May 7, 2022. The federal government wants homes to be lived in and not commodities to be traded and profited upon by housing speculators. The GST/HST has not been applied if the buyer initially intended to live in the home, which may have led to speculator dishonesty and the uneven application of GST/HST to the full and final prices of new homes.Two new tax measures are expected to raise $6.1 billion over five years:

• Canada Recovery Dividend: a new, temporary, one-time 15 per cent surtax on banks and insurance companies on taxable income above $1 billion for the 2021 tax year. It will be paid in equal installments over five years.
• Corporate income tax rate increase: the government will permanently increase the tax rate by 1.5 percentage points (to 16.5 from 15 per cent) on the taxable income of banking and life insurance groups above a threshold of $100 million. This is expected to raise $445 million ongoing.