Dan Knight

Mark Carney’s housing plan is more state control and modular misery.

It’s not every day a Canadian politician offers a clear, structured plan to fix something in this country. But that’s what happened in Scarborough on April 21, when Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre stepped to the mic and laid out his vision for tackling Canada’s worsening housing crisis—and, more broadly, for dismantling the economic scaffolding the Liberals have spent the last decade building.

Now, to be clear: this wasn’t a moment of messianic deliverance. It was a campaign speech. Poilievre is a politician. He’s trying to win. But the contrast he drew—between a country spiraling into economic stagnation under Trudeau-era policy and one potentially emerging from it—is the real story here. And for the first time in a long time, the Liberals should be worried. Because they’re being outflanked not with bluster, but with structure.

A Decade of Decay

Poilievre opened with what he called the “lost Liberal decade”—ten years of growing inflation, collapsing affordability, increased crime, and institutional arrogance. And he’s not wrong. The cost of living in Canada has exploded. Homeownership—once the cornerstone of middle-class life—has become a distant fantasy for an entire generation. Violent crime is up. Street disorder is normalized. The country is, in practical terms, unrecognizable from what it was even five years ago.

And while Justin Trudeau has technically exited stage left, his policies remain. His advisors remain. And his economic worldview remains—in the person of Mark Carney, the unelected banker now fronting the Liberal Party’s future.

Poilievre made a point of naming him directly: Mark Carney, Trudeau’s economic consigliere, now trying to take the wheel after years behind the curtain. And with him comes a Liberal platform that, incredibly, proposes **$130 billion in new spending—more than Trudeau’s own budget—**without any clarity on how to pay for it, beyond $28 billion in undefined “cuts.”

In Poilievre’s framing, this is not a reset. It’s a continuation. Same agenda. Same inflationary pressure. Same bureaucratic paralysis. And for a country already on the edge, that’s not a choice—it’s a warning.

A Hard Policy Pivot

So what did Poilievre propose?

First, he named a number: 2.3 million new homes built over five years. That alone sets him apart from most of the field, who are still dealing in abstractions and talking points. He detailed how to get there: axe the GST on new housing, penalize municipalities that block construction, unlock 15% of federal land for homebuilding, and—here’s where it gets controversial for polite Ottawa society—cap immigration so the number of newcomers doesn’t outpace the number of homes being built.

Let that sink in.

He said it plainly: you cannot invite more people into the country than you have homes to shelter them. It’s not xenophobic. It’s math. It’s called infrastructure planning, and for some reason, it’s been taboo in federal politics for years. But ask any Canadian renter stuck in a bidding war over a 600-square-foot shoebox if supply and demand matter. They’ll tell you the truth politicians won’t.

Now, some of this is ambitious—perhaps even too ambitious. The housing market is not a light switch. But at least it’s a plan built on reality. The math isn’t ideological. If demand grows faster than supply, prices rise. Period. It’s not controversial unless you live in Ottawa.

Now, some of this is ambitious—perhaps even too ambitious. The housing market is not a light switch. But at least it’s a plan built on reality. The math isn’t ideological. If demand grows faster than supply, prices rise. Period. It’s not controversial unless you live in Ottawa.

Beyond housing, Poilievre’s broader agenda was clear: unleash the resource economy.

He pledged to repeal Bill C-69, kill the emissions cap, approve projects like LNG Canada and LNG Quebec in six months, and end the tanker ban off B.C.’s coast. This, he said, would unlock $500 billion in economic growth over five years. That number might be aggressive, but again—it’s grounded in something Canada used to be good at: developing natural resources.

Carney’s plan, in contrast, leans into centralization, green transition subsidies, and modular housing units dropped on federal land—bureaucracy dressed as boldness.

Law and Order, and the Limits of Civility

Poilievre also spoke plainly about crime. He promised to “lock up criminals and secure the border.” Predictably, the media has called this coded language or dog-whistling. But Canadians living in cities like Toronto or Vancouver don’t need code. They need safety. You can debate tone all you want—but no one debates the crime stats.

On spending, Poilievre said he’d eliminate $10 billion in consultant costs, kill the gun buyback scheme, cut Trudeau’s failed drug programs, and cap government expansion. He promised no cuts to transfers for health or seniors, and pointedly noted that Carney’s vague savings plan relies on the same recycled Trudeau logic: say one thing, do another.

And then there was unity—an issue every federal leader pays lip service to, but few address seriously.

Poilievre’s angle was different. He said national unity isn’t built with slogans—it’s built with shared prosperity. Let Alberta build. Let Quebec profit. Let provinces manage their resources without Ottawa’s suffocating oversight. In a country this large, that’s not radical—it’s overdue.

The Liberal Modular 500k Housing Vision

And then there’s Mark Carney’s housing plan—because of course, the guy who spent the last decade cashing checks in London and New York now thinks he’s going to fix Canada’s housing crisis… with modular homes.

That’s right. Not by fixing the zoning nightmare, or the red tape, or the endless delays that make it impossible to build anything in this country. No—his solution is to give you a government-issued, prefabricated box.

He’s calling it “Build Canada Homes.” A brand new federal agency. Another one. This one will mass-order homes like they’re flat-packed sofas from IKEA, ship them out across the country, and drop them on public land.

This is what happens when you let central bankers do social planning.

Carney’s pitch? Modular homes are faster, cheaper, more climate-friendly. Sure, maybe they are. But that’s not the problem. The reason homes aren’t being built in Canada isn’t because we forgot how to hold a hammer. It’s because the federal government—and Carney’s Liberal friends—buried the housing industry in so much red tape it might as well be a fossil.

We’ve been building houses for a century. We know how to do it. We don’t need new materials. We need to get the bureaucrats out of the way.

But Carney doesn’t see it that way. He wants a centralized agency to handle housing. He wants to finance prefab boxes with public money, dress it all up in climate buzzwords, and call it innovation. You won’t get a home. You’ll get a “low-carbon living module” made from ethically sourced pine.

That’s not a housing plan. That’s a spreadsheet fantasy cooked up by a guy who’s never swung a hammer in his life.

And let’s be honest: he’s not doing this for you.
He’s doing it for himself. To parachute into power. To play savior after spending years abroad. After GFANZ collapsed under his leadership. After every major bank walked away from his climate alliance. And now he’s here, failing upward into the Liberal Party.

So yes, his plan is modular.
Modular, managed, and completely disconnected from reality.

Final Thoughts – This Election Is About the Country We Want Back

Let’s stop pretending this is a normal election. It’s not. This isn’t about policy tweaks or campaign slogans. It’s a war for the soul of the country.

Because what we’re watching is a choice between two paths:

One, where we keep doing what we’ve done for the last ten years—spend, spend, spend, funnel more of your money into the Ottawa swamp, prop up the same broken institutions, and pretend things will magically get better.
Or two—we take it back. We vote Canada First, and we start building a country that works for the people who live here—not for bureaucrats, bankers, or international conference junkies.

And then there’s Mark Carney. The man Liberals are trying to sell as a leader. But he hasn’t spent the last ten years living the consequences of these policies. He wasn’t here while housing collapsed. He wasn’t here while crime went up, groceries doubled, and our energy sector got strangled. He was in New York. London. Davos.

He made his money outside this country, in boardrooms, hedge funds, and private equity—and now he parachutes in, thinking he can land a cheap political win?

No.

That’s not how this is supposed to work.

We don’t want leaders who failed upwards through global institutions. We want leaders who earned their place—by showing up, standing up, and actually fighting for the people who built this country.

Carney’s GFANZ alliance failed. His global climate finance cartel fell apart. And now he’s bringing the same failed philosophy here—central planning, top-down control, and another $130 billion in borrowed promises.

This election isn’t about left versus right.
It’s about Canada versus the machine.
And the machine is bloated, unaccountable, and completely out of touch.

So let me say it as clearly as I can:

If you want prosperity, you don’t fund the swamp.
You drain it.
You fire it.
You replace it with something real.

And you vote for a country that puts its people first—not last.

That’s the choice.

Vote Canada First.