Premier Scott Moe and Finance Minister Donna Harpauer spoke about the budget at a Chamber luncheon today. (Susan McNeil/paNOW)

By Susan McNeil

Budget

Fed’s housing plan will take some intricate work, says Moe

Apr 8, 2022 | 5:26 PM

Premier Scott Moe said today that recent housing plans listed in the federal budget look like they will take some work to co-ordinate.

Rather than sending the money to the provinces for dispersing, Ottawa seems to plant to work directly with municipalities.

Each province has had its own method of dealing with housing for a while and programs are varied across the country.

“So this is going to take some pretty intricate work province by province, between the federal government and the provinces and ultimately our municipal governments,” he said.

Provincial governments have not been pre-informed of federal plans for one or two years, said Moe, which means they don’t have a head start when it comes to knowing what they mean and being able to spread the message.

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In Saskatchewan, much of the affordable housing programs have been run through the province.

“We’re going to have to work with the federal government exactly on what the intent of their announcement is,” he said.

In 2020/21, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) was used to launch the Rapid Housing Initiative, which allocated $1 billion for urgent housing needs by building affordable housing.

The federal government says the first rollout resulted in 4,700 new affordable housing units being built while the second rollout in 2021/2022, worth $1.5 billion will add another 5,400 across Canada.

Of those, 312 were built in Saskatchewan.

The federal budget plans to give $200 million to help non-profits, co-ops and other groups build new rent-to-own units.

At the start of the housing continuum is homelessness, a growing problem in Prince Albert with an estimated 100 or more homeless people.

Here Ottawa has budgeted $562 million, starting in 2024-25 to double the amount of funding for its homelessness program, dubbed Reaching Home.

Prince Albert is a designated community under the program, which is represented by the River Bank Development Corporation and a community advisory board.

Ottawa has spread the money to be spent over several years and the plan is short on specifics, said Moe.

“Not a lot of details really in the budget document that was announced,” he said. “It’s a number of dollars over a number of years so really the hard work starts now,” said Moe.

Finance Canada and the CMHC estimates the country need to build at least 3.5 million homes by 2031 and in order to meet the needs, the current rate of construction needs to double over the next 10 years.

Part of the plan is to add 1,600 new shelter spaces and repair 700 existing spaces.

Over 91,000 new units are hoped to be built, over 209,000 units repaired and housing affordability supports will be given to more than 172,000 households.

The money committed so far is over $24 billion.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @princealbertnow