Acquah, who bought a 2024 Tesla Model Y, shares a frustration many owners of electric vehicles (EVs) in Alberta feel: they live in one of only two provinces in the country—the other is Saskatchewan—in which you’re taxed for simply owning a zero-emissions vehicle.

It’s not so much the existence of the tax that annoys Acquah and other EV owners. Instead, they say it’s a symptom of a larger anti-electric-car attitude in Alberta’s UCP government, which is actively stifling local EV adoption. The effort is marked by heated rhetoric by conservatives who see the vehicles as part of a Liberal anti-oil conspiracy. Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, for example, once claimed an EV sales mandate would be akin to “banning the rural way of life.” Danielle Smith called federal EV adoption targets “environmental extremism.”

But if the UCP is hostile to EVs, they’re swimming against a global tide. One in four new cars sold around the world in 2025 were electric. Some 20 million EVs were sold globally that year. In China fully half of new cars are EVs. Alberta lags far behind not only that rate but even other Canadian provinces. BC has 195,000 registered EVs on the road, for example, nearly 10 times Alberta’s meagre total of 20,000.

EVs remain polarizing in Alberta, says Andrew Batiuk, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Alberta (EVAA), where they pit environmentalists and tech fans against supporters of oil and gas who perceive a threat to the province’s economy. As the naysayers see it, the more EVs there are, the less fossil fuel that gets burned. And that’s a sore spot for Albertans who rely on oil and gas for their livelihoods. That’s partly why the province aggressively opposed the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard—the so-called EV sales mandate—that Justin Trudeau’s government introduced in December 2023 to reduce air pollution and fight climate change. Prime Minister Mark Carney has since cancelled the mandate.

Opponents aren’t wrong that the cars reduce the world’s demand for oil. It’s estimated that EVs already displace somewhere between 1.3 and 1.8 million barrels per day of oil consumption. That’s a fraction of the over 100 million barrels of oil currently being burned daily. Nonetheless, the trend has been noticed in the oil industry, which provides 144,000 jobs in Alberta. It also threatens a government that relies on that industry. Alberta is projecting $13.2-billion in non-renewable resource revenues in 2026/2027, 18 per cent of its total revenue.

All of this biases our government against EVs. Premier Smith has even gone so far as to aggressively promote the production of so-called blue hydrogen from natural gas for use in hydrogen-powered vehicles. Across the world, sales of these rivals to EVs are faltering. The cars are virtually absent from Alberta. The province’s only public hydrogen refuelling station, at Blackjacks Roadhouse in Nisku, which Smith’s government helped fund, closed down permanently in early 2025.

The economic impact of oil and gas gives the industry an outsized influence on provincial policy. Charges Daniel Breton, president of Electric Mobility Canada: “I see the premier of Alberta more or less as a puppet of the oil and gas industry, and her government as well.”

But for all of this hostility, EVs may yet prevail—even in Alberta.

Anti-EV campaigners often draw on outdated anecdotes and at times deliberate misinformation. One favourite claim is that EVs—with their multiple battery packs—are worse for the environment than gas-powered vehicles. Initially, an EV does indeed have a higher carbon footprint, Batiuk says. Making the batteries is energy intensive and requires rare-earth minerals. But the gap with gas-powered vehicles evens out within one to two years of ownership, depending on distance driven. After that, the carbon footprint of an EV becomes substantially smaller, especially since Alberta has converted its electricity generation from primarily coal-fired plants to natural gas, solar and wind.

The EVs-are-worse argument has been debunked by no less than the Trump-era Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whose website announces: “FACT: Electric vehicles typically have a smaller carbon footprint than gasoline cars, even when accounting for the electricity used for charging, plus they are far more efficient when it comes to energy use.”

Other biases are almost comical. Angie Dean, president of the Tesla Owners Club of Alberta, says someone once asked her if it was OK to wash her electric car.

Ironically, the people who make and sell EVs don’t always help. “Misinformation is a huge problem, even when it comes to car manufacturers,” says Electric Mobility’s Breton. He argues some manufacturers are “spreading crap” about EVs—even their own models—because they don’t particularly want to build the vehicles, or are frustrated by “unrealistic” government EV sales mandates. The “green halo” effect of having an EV in, say, Ford’s lineup might be good for the company’s marketing image. But EVs are costlier to make, and many, such as the F-150 Lightning, are sold at a loss. (Ford recently announced it is ending production of the truck.)

Anti-EV campaigners often draw on outdated anecdotes and deliberate misinformation.

Dealers sometimes discourage buyers from choosing EVs. Doug Green, dealer principal of High Country Chevrolet Buick GMC in High River, says he invested $250,000 in equipment upgrades at the dealership to service EVs at the urging of GM, but he has sold only three of the vehicles, at a net loss of $10,000. “I was so happy to be rid of those,” he says. He also paid $6,000 to ship three additional unsold EVs to dealers in Quebec. Green says one customer in town bought a Blazer EV, only to discover she’d have to shell out $3,000 to install curbside charging from her duplex, which doesn’t have a garage. “She was unprepared,” Green said. Meanwhile, he says, the only public EV-charging station in town was out of commission. Chargers have since been added at the Ford and Chrysler dealerships.

Angie Dean wasn’t surprised to hear of the GMC dealer’s attitude. “I’ve heard so many stories from people who have gone into car dealerships and been excited about an electric car and [are told], ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me show you this gas car here.’”

And then there’s the myth that EVs don’t work in cold weather. Green claims an electric SUV with a rated 500-km range is really only capable of travelling 300 km, because you shouldn’t fully charge the battery. And, he contends, it will suffer dramatic power losses in the cold. “If you drive in the wintertime, and you put winter tires on, then it’s going to go in half,” he says. “If it’s cold out, then it’s going to go in half again, and if there’s snow then it’s going to go in half again.”

Dean scoffs at Green’s doomerism. She said her Tesla Model Y might lose 40 per cent of its range when the temperature hits minus 40, but that’s “extremely uncommon.” In Calgary’s more typical winter temperatures, she says she sees an estimated 15–20 per cent loss of range. Yet some people just don’t believe her. She recalls an incident in February 2025 when she parked at a local Home Depot. “This guy walks up to me and says, ‘You know those things don’t work here in the winter.’ And I was, like, I’m right here! Do you think I just pushed the car here?”

Dean’s experience reflects research by Recurrent, a US-based organization that tracks EV performance. The study, conducted during the winter of 2025–26, analyzed data from more than 30,000 vehicles across 34 models from 13 automakers. Although performance varied by make, the study found that EVs maintain on average around 80 per cent of their rated range in freezing conditions.

Meanwhile an underreported fact is that gas-powered cars are likewise less efficient in colder weather. The EPA estimates that a drop in temperature from 24°C to 7°C can increase gas consumption by 12–28 per cent. And EVs actually start more reliably than gas cars do in the winter, because they aren’t affected by cold-sensitive oil and have no sparkplugs, which are especially susceptible to low temperatures.

Even when people appeal to facts to disparage EVs, their assertions are often only half true. The UCP government claims, for example, that electric vehicles do more damage to roads than gas-powered cars do, because they’re heavier. An EV does tend to weigh more than its internal combustion engine equivalent—perhaps 10–15 per cent more. But as Breton notes, EVs are lighter than the giant pickup trucks so common in Alberta, and the province isn’t levying a special tax on pickups. “Alberta and Saskatchewan are both taxing EVs under some dubious excuse,” Breton says. “It has a lot more to do with politics than facts.”

Horner, the Alberta finance minister, also justified the $200 tax when he introduced it in February 2025 as a way to offset revenue lost by drivers who don’t buy gasoline or diesel, which is taxed by the province. But Breton questions why the flat rate is disproportionately high. Albertans, on average, drive 15,200 km per year, consuming 1,216 litres of fuel in a typical mid-sized vehicle. Under the province’s current fuel tax of 13 cents per litre, that would translate into $158 in road taxes—21 per cent less than what EV owners must fork over. Says the EVAA’s Andrew Batiuk: “It seems punitive.”

In an emailed statement, Horner claims the tax is “fair” and states: “Alberta’s tax on electric vehicles is in line with what drivers of a typical internal combustion engine vehicle pay in fuel tax annually.” EV proponents find such stonewalling typical. Batiuk says his organization just can’t get the ear of government: “We don’t have much of a relationship with them.”

And if Alberta’s government were truly interested in a full accounting of the costs and benefits of EVs vs. traditional vehicles, it would consider other facts. Pollution from gas- and diesel-fuelled cars and trucks is killing people. A March 2022 federal report analyzed data from 2015 and found that 1,200 Canadians, including 82 Albertans, died prematurely that year from the effects of pollution from cars and trucks. Another 2.7 million people suffered from acute respiratory symptoms. Breton argues considerations such as marginally higher EV weight need to be weighed against the $9.5-billion annual health cost to Canadians from gas-powered vehicle pollution.

Horner’s statement dismissed pollution and health concerns. “Alberta has some of the cleanest air in Canada and the world, and that isn’t changing,” it read. “Our transportation emissions have declined 12 per cent since 2015 and will keep falling.”

But the main barrier to EV adoption in this province isn’t special punitive taxes, uninterested EV dealers or disinformation. Alberta drivers won’t fully embrace EVs until there are enough public chargers available across the province to ease so-called “range anxiety”—the fear that one’s car battery will deplete far from home. Similarly, the extent of the local charging network affects whether or not we will attract EV-driving tourists from places like BC, says Danielle Wiess, director of transportation initiatives at the Fernie-based Community Energy Association. “EV drivers go where they can charge.”

But the UCP government is offering no help to expand Alberta’s charging network. The province had 429 EV charging stations in December 2025. That’s just 6 per cent of the 7,000 chargers found in BC, which has 5.7 million residents versus Alberta’s five million.

In 2020 the Community Energy Association managed the Peaks to Prairies charging network, which connected communities from Canmore to Medicine Hat and south to the US border. Working with local municipalities, ATCO installed 20 direct-current fast-charging sites across southern Alberta. The $1.2-million contribution from the then-NDP government was the last time Alberta has funded any EV charging infrastructure, says Wiess.

Charging one’s EV at home also remains a vexing problem for Alberta’s renters and condo dwellers. Provincial building codes don’t require EV charging capacity to be added to new multi-unit residential buildings—condos and high-rise apartments. “We’re still building condos and apartments without charging infrastructure considered,” says the EVAA’s Batiuk. “At [a single-family] home, you can plug in an EV. But when you live in a condo or apartment, you don’t have the option to charge at home. Selling that person an EV is a more difficult task.”

The situation is even more challenging in rural areas that lack the fast EV chargers found in the Peaks to Prairies network. “If I have a boat to pull to a lake, and I pull it to Little Bow Provincial Park, there’s no chargers down there,” says Green, the GMC dealer.

Under a joint federal/municipal program, incentives cover up to nearly half the cost of installing chargers at businesses, condos, Indigenous communities, public facilities and not-for-profit organizations. But remote communities that install such infrastructure can encounter sticker shock just to keep their chargers operating. In December 2025 a City of Cold Lake committee reported that it would need to quadruple the rate the city offers at its city-owned EV charger. Wiess says Level 3 (also known as DC fast) chargers incur high demand costs if they’re used infrequently.

Alberta is also at odds with provinces that have created incentives to purchase EVs. BC offered rebates of $4,000 to buyers of electric vehicles but scrapped the program in May 2025 under budget pressure. Before the program ended, zero-emission vehicles accounted for almost one in four new vehicles sold in BC. In 2025 BC registered almost as many EVs in just its fourth quarter as Alberta’s overall number of EVs. (Alberta and Newfoundland are the only provinces that don’t provide Statistics Canada with data on new EV registrations. They only report total registered EVs.) Quebec, with a population of nine million, has even bigger incentives than BC did, and registered 82,700 EVs in 2025.

The feds announced in January they will allow 49,000 Chinese EVs into Canada. Previously tariffs made these prohibitive.

The ingrained resistance to EVs in Alberta manifests in some of the most unlikely places. Batiuk discovered that the owners of Ol’ MacDonald’s Resort and Campground, on Buffalo Lake about an hour northeast of Red Deer, imposed a $60/night EV surcharge in 2024. A notice on the resort’s website stated its “electricity etiquette” rule is “a small price to pay to ensure the fair and sustainable use of these shared resources.” (The Alberta Motor Association reports that the typical cost to charge an EV in Alberta ranges from free—at roughly half of Calgary’s public charging stations—to $15 at fast-charging sites such as those in the Peaks to Prairies network.)

Messages left at the resort for listed owner Jean MacDonald were not returned. “We [also] tried to talk to them,” says Batiuk, “and they weren’t interested in talking to us.”

But EV advocates such as Batiuk, Dean and Breton believe EVs will eventually prevail—including in Alberta. The federal government recently committed $1.5-billion to expand Canada’s public EV charging network, so essential to driving the vehicles any distance, especially rurally. Mark Carney’s government also announced in January 2026 that it will allow 49,000 Chinese EVs into the country at a nominal 6.1 per cent tariff rate. Previously a 100 per cent tariff had made the cost of these cars prohibitive. Even premier Smith had called for Carney to drop the tariff and let Chinese EVs in—if only because she hoped it would enable Albertans to sell more canola and pork in China.

Major Chinese manufacturers such as Chery and Geely are preparing to enter the Canadian market. BYD, which in 2025 surpassed Tesla to become the world’s largest EV maker, plans to open 20 dealerships in Canada, first in Toronto, then in Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.

Those Chinese EVs may comprise just a fraction of the 1.8 million vehicles sold in Canada each year. But more significantly, federal EV incentives are being restored. Sales of EVs across Canada dropped by nearly one-third last year as provincial and federal incentives ended. In February of this year Carney introduced a new, $2.3-billion, five-year program that offers individuals or businesses up to $5,000 to purchase various types of EVs. At the time, the prime minister predicted EVs will reach 75 per cent market share in Canada by 2035 and 90 per cent by 2040.

By the time the federal incentives end in five years, Breton says, they may be unnecessary. This is a point on which EV advocate Breton and EV skeptic Green agree. “I’m not asking for special treatment,” says Breton. “Just don’t stand in the way of progress.” “I’m always interested in change,” says Green. “Just let the free market decide.”

Dean, a planner with the City of Calgary, says she sees beyond the personal benefits of driving an EV. She believes she’s helping future generations, and every effort counts. Someone once told her, “Your one electric car isn’t going to do anything,” she says. “And I replied, ‘But it’s what I can do. If I can do something, I’m going to do it.’ ”

Doug Firby has over four decades of experience in newspapers, including at the Calgary Herald. He’s now president of Troy Media.

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Neil Hetherington says YES

CEO of Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank

let’s start from an unusual place: agreement. We all want a country where everyone has the food they need and we don’t need food banks. But the sad reality is 8.7 million people in Canada are food insecure. The rising cost of living is far outpacing increases in wages and social supports, so more of our neighbours simply can’t afford sufficient food. I argue that food banks are essential interventions now and indeed a requirement for the lasting social policy action that will eventually put food banks out of business.

The old arguments against food banks must be dispelled. It’s said that food banks let government off the hook, yet there has been no case study that shows a jurisdiction where a food bank was shut down and the government stepped in to solve the issue. Also, some people call food banks a “Band-Aid” solution. That may be true, but that label doesn’t negate their necessity.

The first argument for food banks speaks to their effectiveness. When COVID hit, long lines formed outside food charities. They scaled to meet the extraordinary challenge, with an efficacy that any for-profit or government agency can only dream of—typically spending about $1 to distribute a meal.

But efficiency won’t end food insecurity. That can only be fought through systemic change, which charities in Canada have historically spearheaded. Before public education or healthcare, places of worship stepped in to create schools and hospitals for people who couldn’t afford these services. Charities then argued that their empathetic actions needed to become legislated rights, and Parliament agreed. Their personal experience gave them the credentials to call for systemic change.

In many respects this played out with food banks in Canada in the 1990s and 2000s. Food banks, alongside community leaders, argued for the Child Tax Benefit and the Guaranteed Income Supplement. They’d seen first-hand the people chronically requiring food banks and used that knowledge to petition for better supports. When these policies were implemented, national food bank use decreased markedly.

Because most food banks don’t receive government funds, they have an independent status that enables them to make life uncomfortable for people holding office. They can unabashedly and independently share with the public and elected officials what’s happening on the ground. When you distribute just under one million meals per week, as Daily Bread Food Bank does, you earn a seat at the policy table. The scope of our work grants us the opportunity, and obligation, to speak with governments to demand affordable housing, income supports and decent work. Food banks can apply pressure, as we did, to implement the Canada Disability Benefit, which will precipitate a big decline in food bank use once it becomes fully funded.

Food banks not only facilitate emergency food access, they are an essential part of the advocacy work that will help create the future we all desire, one in which no one goes hungry.

Elaine Power says no

Professor of kinesiology and health studies at Queen’s University

It’s a litany now so familiar that we tune it out: Food banks are desperate, unable to meet the demand for food. But despite their best intentions, food banks have inadvertently obscured the underlying problem. They direct our attention to food when the real issue is inadequate income.

Demand is “spiralling out of control,” Food Banks Canada reports. Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank is at “a breaking point.” Visits to Calgary’s Food Bank rose 200 per cent from 2019 to 2024. Nationally, over two million Canadians received food charity in March 2024, a million more than five years earlier. Food Banks Canada explains that this “unthinkable” growth can’t be sustained. Food bank usage has soared in tandem with record rates of food insecurity, now affecting over nine million Canadians, including over two million children.

While food bank demand has skyrocketed, the volume of individual donations has dropped, because the affordability crisis is affecting donors too. Corporate donations have also fallen off. Feed Ontario, the provincial food bank association, reports that almost 40 per cent of Ontario food banks have had to reduce the amount of food they give out. Nationally, almost 30 per cent of food banks ran out of food last year.

But food banks were never a solution to food insecurity (inadequate or insecure access to food). For a variety of reasons, the vast majority of food-insecure households don’t even use food banks. The food bank system is, unfortunately, scattershot. Food banks take root where there is a convenient space and a group of volunteers, not necessarily where food insecure households are. Despite their best efforts, food banks have limited capacity and hours. The variety and quantity of foods is limited. Most put strict limits on how often a household can use their services and how much food they can receive. For some Canadians, the idea of using food charity is a sign of hitting bottom, and they’d rather go hungry.

Households that use food banks remain food insecure. That’s because food banks can only provide temporary relief. Food insecurity is a symptom of the much broader household problem of inadequate income. Food-insecure households are less likely to be able to afford their necessary prescriptions. They’re more likely to fall behind in utility payments and rent, and to live in crowded, substandard housing.

The very existence of food banks has unintentionally sown the seeds of a chronic and increasingly desperate crisis. Instead of lobbying politicians to create effective income solutions to food insecurity, we’ve been busy with food drives, imagining that we just need to pitch more tins into the donation bin.

It’s hard to imagine that there are almost nine million food-insecure Canadians. The argument that we can’t close food banks because these people will go hungry ignores the fact that most food-insecure Canadians are already hungry. They’ll remain that way until we confront the real problem—poverty.

neil hetherington responds to elaine power

The Daily Bread Food Bank serves the people of Toronto. Sadly, we provide just under one million meals per week to the community. It is a staggering reality that one in 10 Torontonians now receives much-needed food from our organization and the network we support. The numbers for Alberta food banks are similar. These statistics are disheartening and maddening.

What has been uplifting is seeing volunteers, donors, advocates and staff at Daily Bread rise to the occasion. Collectively we have ensured uninterrupted weekly service of good food to 300,000 people through a shopping model that provides dignified, barrier-free access. Last year Daily Bread distributed over 43 million pounds of food to our network of member food banks, over half of which was fresh produce and protein. These nutrition-dense options can help build balanced meals, but they’re often inaccessible to people facing food insecurity.

Nationally it is a sad reality that Canada has now one food bank for every three grocery stores. The proliferation of food banks and the sophistication with which they operate has grown significantly over the decades. They are a tremendous resource to their 2.8 million clients each year. According to Statistics Canada, that client list is bigger than the number of severely food-insecure Canadians.

Some critics argue that food banks inadvertently obscure the underlying problem of food insecurity by redirecting attention to food itself rather than to the root cause: inadequate income. That critique is outdated, as food banks have taken their frontline experience to the frontlines of advocacy.

Food banks—our research and persistent lobbying within coalitions—are helping drive policy changes.

Far from distracting the public and policymakers from the root causes of food insecurity, food banks are in a unique position to document these causes and advocate for solutions that end poverty and hunger. This is exactly what we do. Throughout our networks, food banks are increasing our sophistication in research to complement what we learn from conversations with the people we serve. As a result, food banks have solid data on why Canadians need to avail themselves of food charity, who these Canadians are, and the policy interventions required to reduce lineups. Ironically, this is data that academic critics of food banks often cite. But I’m more interested when I see it cited by elected officials when they are committing to making legislative and regulatory changes to social policies. These are uplifting moments amid the despair of knowing that approximately 10 million Canadians are food insecure.

Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion. With data, you can drive change.

Over the last year, for example, Daily Bread has seen three policies come into force that have two common elements. First, and most important, each will have a positive effect on reducing food insecurity in Canada. The second is that the experiences of food banks—their research and their persistent lobbying within coalitions—helped drive these changes.

Daily Bread wrote the City of Toronto’s declaration of food insecurity as an emergency. This then resulted in a universal student nutrition program, when the city’s Vision and Strategy for a Universal School Food Program was unanimously passed.

Food banks joined disability communities to argue persuasively that someone receiving disability benefits in Canada shouldn’t be legislated to live in deep poverty. One-third of food bank clients have a disability and are expected to live on $1,400 per month; a full $1,000 below the poverty line. On July 1, 2025, the new Canada Disability Benefit began to distribute $200 per month to Canadians living with a disability.

Finally, in June 2024, changes to Canada’s immigration strategy and regulations resulted in lower growth in food bank usage in Toronto.

None of these policy interventions would have been possible without our on-the-ground experience, serving people who are food insecure. We collect data, the media amplifies it, the community is mobilized, and policies begin to change—albeit too slowly.

Canada’s food banks can walk and chew gum at the same time, as we always have. The policy wins this year were possible because of our authentic service in the community, and our amplifying what we see each day.

Food charity has always been done with humanity. I expect food charity will always be with us. But our hope at Daily Bread is that the experiences of individuals going through difficult times become briefer and recur less. The chronic use of food banks across Canada can be reduced through systemic changes. Until that day, food banks will continue to feed the need now while relentlessly advocating for social policy change.

Elaine Power responds to Neil Hetherington

Food banks were first established here in the 1980s. Why Because Canadians, living in one of the wealthiest countries in history, simply couldn’t imagine that their neighbours might be hungry. The early food bank founders expected their organizations to close once the economy recovered. Governments would surely recommit to their obligation to support Canadians’ well-being. But 44 years after the first food bank opened in Edmonton, the idea that food banks should close has become almost unimaginable.

Neil Hetherington’s willingness to speak publicly for his vision of a hunger-free Canada, without food banks, is refreshing. As he is the head of Canada’s largest food bank, his arguments for affordable housing, income supports and decent work should carry moral and persuasive authority with elected officials.

But the reality is governments aren’t paying enough attention to this public-health issue, which has profound short- and long-term effects. While Hetherington points to the new Canada Disability Benefit as a testament to food banks’ advocacy, the impact of this small supplement is uncertain. Moreover, it upholds and reinforces the artificial divide between “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. The CDB’s very existence could inadvertently make it more difficult to implement other supports, such as basic income. Similarly the new National School Food Program may mean that fewer students go hungry. But their food-insecure parents and caregivers will still be unable to afford the food they and their children need at home.

Under the terms of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Canada committed to ensuring that every citizen has an adequate standard of living, enabling Canadians to purchase food along with other necessities of life. If this were the case, then the demand for food banks would fall off. Food banks could scale down and most could close.

This will happen only when Canadians are mobilized to demand government action to significantly reduce poverty and income insecurity. These are the root causes of food insecurity. Our country’s track record offers little evidence that reasoned arguments will move governments to act decisively. Getting governments to act is a matter of political power, and poor people are among the least powerful. While food bank advocacy for meaningful policy change is important, it is insufficient on its own.

What stands in the way of mobilizing more of us to demand government seriously address food insecurity?

For about the same period that food banks have existed—with a short intermission during the pandemic—we’ve been told that government itself is a problem; we shouldn’t expect it to fix things. Instead we’ve been schooled to turn to “the market” as the better problem solver, and to charity when markets fail. Over the past four decades, food banks stepped up to try to fill the gaps as governments neglected our social safety net.

A stereotype is that people in poverty should be grateful to charitable benefactors, not expect rights or justice.

Of course, we Canadians did our part, bringing non-perishable items to food drives at school, church, work. Instead of being uncomfortable with food banks—and the public policy failures they represent—we celebrate them as proof of our collective and individual kindness. Corporate food bank donors earn “good citizen” badges. Meanwhile, some of the same donors contribute to food insecurity with poorly paid jobs while actively lobbying for lower taxes, which decrease government’s ability to strengthen the social safety net.

Meanwhile, cruel Victorian myths and stereotypes persist about the causes of poverty. Instead of seeing structural and epigenetic causes, some people continue to hold the poor individually responsible for their plight—and for escaping it. The CDB suggests we might give some leeway to those with state-certified disabilities, so they have a tiny bit more income. But the stereotypes imply that those living in poverty should be grateful to charitable benefactors, and not expect rights or justice.

Some say we just “can’t afford” to reduce poverty. This ignores the fact that poverty already costs us—in the healthcare, education and justice systems. A 2019 Feed Ontario report conservatively estimated the annual cost of poverty in Ontario at up to $33-billion. It presents poverty reduction as an “investment” that lowers costs and boosts revenues for businesses and governments.

I’m old enough to remember when we didn’t have food banks. We expected that government programs would keep us afloat when tough times hit. But food banks have become part of the social wallpaper. For my students they’re normal. They can scarcely imagine an alternative. I want to live in a Canada where kindness and compassion is structural, not charitable. I want our policies to be just. We can afford this dream. We don’t need food banks to realize it—we need the political will.

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Every five years Canada’s census measures “core housing need”—the number of households whose homes are unaffordable, overcrowded or in need of major repairs. Housing is considered unaffordable when it costs more than 30 per cent of that household’s pre-tax income. In 2016 almost 1.7 million Canadian households, or one in eight, were in core housing need. But in 2021 only 1.45 million households, or about one in 10, were.

How is that possible, given everything we’ve heard about rents and home prices skyrocketing during that period Statistics Canada is clear as to why: “The COVID-19-related government transfers lifted many households above the housing affordability thresholds, helping pay for shelter costs like rent, mortgages and utilities.” The most recent census (2021) relied on 2020 incomes. But now that the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and other temporary income supplements have been rolled back, the number of Canadian households in core need has undoubtedly risen.

The “CERB bump”—250,000 households temporarily lifted out of housing need—gives us an immediate hint as to who we’re talking about: overwhelmingly, households whose incomes were a lot less than the $500/week that CERB provided. In fact, almost four in five households in core housing need in Canada have low or very low incomes: 1.1 million of the 1.45 million of these households have incomes under $42,000 a year, which is less than half of Canada’s median household income. Of that number, 200,000 have incomes of $18,000 or less and can afford no more than $420/month for rent.

Core housing need measures only a fraction of the people who live in unaffordable, overcrowded or uninhabitable homes. The most egregious knowledge gap is an accurate homelessness count. According to the most recent data from Statistics Canada, 235,000 people are without safe and secure accommodation at least once a year. But that figure is from 2014. More recently, biennial “point in time” counts have been interrupted by COVID. Even these exercises only count people who are found unsheltered, in emergency shelters or in “transitional housing” on one night in a little more than 60 of Canada’s more than 700 municipalities with over 5,000 people.

At least 70 per cent of 2.2 million college and university students in Canada live independently of families, the majority of them on very low incomes. Almost three quarters of these students live in unaffordable rentals—so that’s over a million more very low-income people searching for an inexpensive place to live.

A further 700,000 people live in congregate housing, including long-term care and other forms of shared housing (e.g., for people with disabilities). A high proportion of these people are occasionally homeless or live in institutions such as hospitals because of inadequate supply of supportive housing. In Ontario alone, nearly 43,000 seniors are on waiting lists for long-term care. There is no up-to-date information for Alberta—a problem in itself—but the province’s shortage of senior-care options is leaving increasing numbers stranded in hospital beds.

Tens of thousands of rooming houses have been lost in inner cities. You can’t find a room in any city in Canada for less than $500/month—more than half what most people on welfare receive. People are being turned away from overcrowded emergency shelters and ending up in growing encampments. Low-income seniors on fixed incomes are competing with service-sector workers and students who can’t find any affordable one-bedroom apartments. Increasingly these people are competing with desperate nurses, teachers and other young professionals locked out of starter homeownership.

If the housing crisis is an affordability issue, with the divide between rents and incomes widening rather than narrowing, why don’t we simply provide rent supplements—or increase welfare and minimum wage, or bring in a universal basic income—to bridge the difference First, because the difference between an affordable rent for a single person on social assistance in Alberta—$258/month—and the going rent for an average one-bedroom apartment in Calgary—$1,696—is dauntingly large. Even if welfare rates were tripled, there’s no neighbourhood in Calgary or Edmonton where that person could afford the average rent for a studio- or one-bedroom apartment. More importantly, it’s because there isn’t a sufficient supply of housing to meet the need.

In market transactions, the intersection of supply and demand determines price. However, if housing is a human need, it should not be subject to market forces. If apartments that are currently going for market rents were acquired by non-market providers (government, housing co-ops, non-profits etc.), and if short-term apartment rentals (e.g., Airbnb) were banned, that would help stem the loss of low-income rentals. But it wouldn’t necessarily create new affordable supply. And while demand-side interventions, such as providing livable incomes and renter protections, are necessary, these too would be insufficient.

In “A human-rights-based calculation of Canada’s housing supply shortages,” a 2023 report commissioned by the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate, I calculated the overall housing deficit in Canada. When one includes the existing housing deficit, the net loss of affordable housing stock, population growth and demographic change, Canada will need to build three million new homes for low- and very-low-income households by 2030, and two million more for median-income households.

Fewer homes were built in Canada in 2021 than were built in Canada in 1973.

How did we get into this mess? Put simply, a set of decisions made by governments in the early 1970s and then in the early 1990s had a huge negative impact.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, tax incentives had encouraged purpose-built rental apartments. The Canadian government eliminated these in 1972. At the same time, it introduced a capital gains tax but exempted a household’s principal residence. These changes were intended to encourage people to invest in their home and then sell it as they retired—an alternative to relying solely on pension earnings. A third element in this toxic mix of policies was municipal governments enacting stringent new zoning regulations to “protect the character” of neighbourhoods, ranging from expanding the areas zoned for single-family houses to increasing parking minimums.

Apartment construction plummeted. Condominiums, which were much more immediately lucrative for developers to sell instead of rent, became the norm in the narrow bands of land where multi-unit housing was allowed.

Mixed-income non-market housing had made up 20 per cent of new stock from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s (between 10,000 and 30,000 new non-market homes a year). By the late 1980s the federal government had begun to move towards private-sector provision of below-market “affordable housing.” Rather than financing large-scale public housing projects erected by provincial authorities, the federal government shifted to funding smaller co-operative, municipal and community-led housing. In 1971 over half of renters between the ages of 25 and 44 could afford to buy an average-priced house. By 1981 only 7 per cent were able to do so.

The federal government had completely off-loaded responsibility for affordable housing to the provinces by 1993. Many provinces further off-loaded the costs of low-income housing to municipalities.

The consequences Investing based on maximizing profits from existing housing—a practice sometimes called “financialization”—became much more lucrative than building new housing. Fewer homes were built in Canada in 2021 than were built in Canada in 1973. Over the past 30 years fewer than 10,000 new homes intended for low-income residents have been built in Canada.

Where are poor people supposed to go?

The federal government needs to return to policies it abandoned 30 to 50 years ago. It got back into housing policy with the 2017 National Housing Strategy (NHS) and committed, in 2019, to realizing the right to adequate housing. But its reluctance to engage in an honest needs assessment, one based on evidence of who needs what kind of housing where and at what cost, has led to it subsidizing unaffordable market rentals. Only 3 per cent of homes created under the biggest NHS scheme, the $26-billion Rental Construction Financing Initiative, were affordable to households in housing need, and all of those apartments were studios. Meanwhile, almost every economic report recommends that the federal government directly subsidize a doubling of non-market housing supply over the next decade: almost one million new or acquired public, community and co-operative homes.

Governments should provide free of low-cost land for non-market development. 

This new supply would reduce the number of “suppressed households” in Canada—people who wish to live independently but are forced to share by cost pressures: for example, involuntarily doubling up with roommates; adults living with their parents. And it would take some pressure off the young middle-income households currently forced to save up to 10 years in Calgary or nine in Edmonton for a 20 per cent down payment, while being locked in to the increasingly expensive and scarce rental market.

Five million homes for low- and moderate-income households might not seem to be achievable in a decade. However, Sweden built the equivalent—one million homes for low- and moderate-income households for a country that had fewer than eight million people—from 1965 to 1974. Canada constructed a million homes via CMHC, the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation, for moderate-income households to buy and own between 1946 and 1960, when its population was less than a third of what it is today.

Based on what’s worked in Canada and internationally, here are some ways to get costs down and increase the supply of housing.

For starters, governments should provide free or low-cost land. According to many international reports, good land policy is the basis of any successful affordable housing strategy. Large-scale government acquisition and disposition was the basis of both the post-war Victory Homes in Canada and the successful non-market housing programs of the 1960s and 1980s. Depending on the location and size of the project, land constitutes between 8 and 23 per cent of total cost.

This land should go to non-market development. According to a 2021 Canadian study based in Vancouver, non-market developers operating from a social mission instead of for profit can produce units that rent for 40–50 per cent less. Market developers—and their finance providers—expect returns ranging from 19 per cent to 28 per cent, depending on risk tolerance. And non-market developers maintain affordability over time, compared to government subsidies to private developers. Under the NHS, private developers have affordability requirements of only 10–20 years.

Another aspect of land policy is scale, which is determined by the zoning of a site. This includes the number of storeys and units allowed, as well as design requirements such as open space, parking, setbacks etc. and mandatory financial and construction capacity of the developer. Even though constructing a multi-storey apartment building is much more complicated than a single-family home (for example, because of the need for an elevator), larger-scale development can be cheaper per square metre. Eliminating parking requirements can save up to $56,000 per unit, or up to 17 per cent of costs. Density bonuses of up to 50 per cent (e.g., a six-storey building instead of a four-storey one) could be provided to non-market or permanently affordable homes secured through a community land trust. This entity holds land and property for the purpose of long-term affordability. Small-scale affordable, accessible and energy-efficient apartments can be made possible on single or double lots through changes to building codes. While factory-built modular construction isn’t less expensive now, if its use were scaled up, it could increase speed and lower cost.

Long-term (35- to 50-year) and low-rate (e.g., 2 per cent) mortgages were the secret sauce behind the scaling-up of non-market housing in Canada. Upfront grants can help secure market financing and also help with long approval times.

To scale up low-cost housing will require massive changes to municipal processes and charges. Approval times for multi-unit housing range from three months in Charlottetown to a ridiculous 32 months in Toronto. Development charges range from $22 per square metre in St. John’s to $1,640 in Vancouver, where such charges represent 15 per cent of the cost of the home. Up to 60 studies can be required for one building…! Edmonton has been judged the best city for housing development in Canada, and it is no coincidence that Edmonton has been working hardest on simplifying zoning approvals since 2019. Development charges can be seen as an additional tax on newcomers for the “privilege” of renting or buying a home, and a further wealth transfer from renters to established homeowners. Renters already are likely paying higher property taxes. Land value taxes, and progressive property taxes, that is, levying higher rates on homes worth more than $2-million, for example, would be a far fairer way to tax infrastructure and amenity improvements—and to enable more-affordable housing.

The project I work with—the UBC-based Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART)—aims to show the potential impact of land, finance and approval mechanisms, so that Canada can once again produce genuinely affordable and adequate homes for low- and moderate-income households. Otherwise, under the status quo, we’re condemning increasing numbers of citizens to unbearable housing stress and homelessness.

Carolyn Whitzman is the expert adviser to the Housing Assessment Resource Tools project and the author of the forthcoming Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis (UBC Press, 2024).

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