Critics fear Carney’s housing minister will nationalize Vancouver’s housing crisis

Carney’s appointment of former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson as Canada’s new housing minister has sparked fears that he may implement the same disastrous housing policies nationally.

Source: Facebook

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s appointment of former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson as Canada’s new housing minister has sparked fears that he may implement the same disastrous housing policies nationally that contributed to Vancouver’s affordability crisis.

Vancouver realtor Jay Coupar called Robertson in an interview with True North a “complete failure on all fronts” as mayor.

“When I first saw that he was appointed, I thought it was a joke,” said Coupar. “He’s probably the worst mayor second only to Kennedy Stewart, a complete abysmal failure on all fronts. He made all kinds of promises that he didn’t deliver on.”

During his reign as Vancouver mayor from 2008 to 2018, Vancouver became one of the most unaffordable housing markets in the world.

When he entered office, the average price of a home in Vancouver was $827,335 but reached $1,042,100 by the time he left, marking a 115 per cent increase. The average home price has since increased to $1,211,073, as of April 2025.

“This is the guy who pushed purpose-built rentals instead of homeownership. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same thing David Eby and the NDP are doing today — waiving the white flag on ownership and promoting rentals. Renting in Vancouver is financial suicide,” said Coupar. “I would like to be Gregor Robertson’s landlord for a few years and see how he likes it.”

Robertson also campaigned on ending homelessness but failed to deliver. Under Robertson’s tenure as mayor, the city’s homeless population also increased from 1,576 in 2008 to 2,181 in 2018.

Another concern of Coupar’s was Robertson’s heavy reliance on the use of modular homes as mayor, which he views as a ‘band-aid solution.’

“They want to get the government into the business of housing but they don’t have a good track record and that’s why we have a free market,” said Coupar, who said the best option for helping low-income Canadians would be to “cut them a cheque and let them rent from a private landlord.”

“There’s certain things the government does well and there are other things that are best left to the private sector.”

According to Coupar, the government is continuing to push rentals over home ownership and the market has now “pivoted towards that,” which is coming at the expense of stratified condos.

“They really want developers to build rentals,” he said. “If I look at downtown (Vancouver) there’s really not much in terms of condos being built and that’s going to push pressure on the existing inventory of condos. You’re going to see over the next few years that it’s going to drive up prices.”

Since the Liberals first formed government in November 2015, the average home price was $448,000, which has since risen to $718,400 in March 2025. In that span of time, many of Canada’s largest housing markets have seen extraordinary price growth, including Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Vancouver.

Robertson told reporters this week that he didn’t think housing prices needed to come down, the government simply needed to “deliver more supply” and “make sure that the market is stable.”

However, the supply he’s referring to may be Carney’s promise to reshape the future of homebuilding in Canada with prefabricated and modular homes, which he pledged to allocate $25 billion in taxpayer dollars for.

“The reality is, they’re afraid to bring prices down because they don’t want to upset homeowners, but they also don’t want to lose renters,” said Coupar. “So they talk about ‘stabilizing’ the market and building ‘affordable rentals’ — but it’s a fantasy. And while they pump out rentals, they’re killing condo supply, which means if you’re trying to buy a condo in the next decade, good luck — prices are likely going to explode.”

Modular homes have faced major scrutiny for their difficulty to insure, lack of insulation in winter months and the fact that lenders don’t want to finance such properties because of their rapidly depreciating value.

There is also speculation that the push for modular homes would benefit Carney’s former company, Brookfield Asset Management, which purchased a modular home company for $5 billion in 2021.

“Canadians should be owning real estate, not stuck paying someone else’s mortgage,” said Coupar. “Gregor failed Vancouver. Now he gets to fail all of Canada.”