Budget's housing focus

Photo: The Canadian Press

Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau.

The Trudeau government will take steps in Tuesday's federal budget to make home-buying more affordable with changes affecting supply, demand and regulation, The Canadian Press has learned.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau has promised the budget will focus on ways to help improve housing affordability for Canadians, and particularly for millennials, who are now in their mid-20s to late-30s.

The changes, along with expected measures on adult skills training, pharmacare and supporting seniors, will be included in the Liberals' fourth and final budget before the October federal election.

The budget's housing measures could grab a lot of attention. Polls have suggested affordable home ownership is a key concern for millennials and could be a vote winner with the increasingly critical demographic.

Morneau has heard housing-policy recommendations from numerous sources, including academic, real estate and mortgage experts, on how best to help more people buy homes.

The budget will respond to issues in the housing-related areas of supply, demand and regulation, says a government source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the plan ahead of its release. They declined to provide specifics on the measures.

The government, however, faces a delicate task of introducing changes that avoid destabilizing housing markets, driving up prices or enabling already overstretched households to pile on more debt.

Internal briefing documents show Morneau was warned in November that Canadians' heavy debt loads are a key risk that have made abrupt shocks to incomes, house prices or interest rates a "significant concern." The memo was obtained by The Canadian Press through access-to-information law.

Morneau has been feeling pressure to act on housing.

On the demand side, the real estate, mortgage and home-building industries have urged Ottawa to ease or eliminate stress tests that have tightened mortgage qualification rules and, as a result, cooled once-scorching markets in cities like Toronto and Vancouver.

The federal changes, combined with provincial and municipal guidelines, were brought in to improve the quality of mortgage debt and to lower risks to the broader economy.

Morneau has insisted the stress tests were needed as a way to keep prices in some markets from rising at an unsustainable clip. He's shown no signs that he's prepared to dial them back.

There have also been industry calls for the reintroduction of insurance on 30-year amortization mortgages as a targeted way to help people at the lower end.

But Paul Kershaw, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia, said many experts, himself included, have discouraged the government from weakening the stress tests or extending amortization out of fear such moves would only encourage people to borrow more.