Canada election: Health care, home building on the agenda as campaign enters home stretch [Video]

Putting home-building promises into perspective

This morning, Poilievre said a Conservative government would build 2.3 million new homes in the next five years. While he has previously detailed the underlying components of his housing plan, that top-line figure is new.

That would require 460,000 new homes to be built across Canada in each of those five years.

According to Statistics Canada, over the last nine years the average number of housing starts was about 224,000 annually — so Poilievre’s promise amounts to roughly doubling the current pace of home construction.

That may sound familiar. Carney has similarly pledged that the Liberals would double annual housing starts, although the Conservative and Liberal visions for getting there are very different.

For the NDP, Singh has promised three million new homes by 2030. That would mean about 600,000 housing starts annually, or roughly two and a half times …