“People are getting hit from all sides,” said NDP candidate for Vancouver East Jenny Kwan. “Trump’s tariffs will drive up costs, and in Vancouver, mega-corporate landlords, like Brookfield, are buying up apartment buildings, renovicting people and then they give it the old ‘landlord special’. Slapping white paint on the walls and doubling the rent. People need someone who’s going to end this immediately.”
The NDP said under Mark Carney’s leadership in August 2023, Brookfield outlined a deliberate strategy to profit from high interest rates that were pricing working people out of the housing market. A plan his CEO described as an “opportunistic real estate [strategy] in order to take advantage of the stress in the market, which is our sweet spot.”
And it’s working: in Vancouver Brookfield owns properties including Hendry Place, where a one-bedroom starts at $2,895, almost $600 higher than the Vancouver average one-bedroom rent.
“Speculators and corporate landlords are winning, the system is built to help them, not you,” said Kwan. “We want to see that change, so that the system benefits you, not those at the top.
“Brookfield properties has rigged things to make piles of cash – and Mark Carney helped get them there. Last year they made $3.4 billion off of working people trying to pay their rent,” said Kwan. “We can’t count on those benefiting from this system to stand up for people against corporate speculations– Mark Carney ran this company until just a few weeks ago. But you can count on New Democrats who are fighting to make things better for tenants across the country.”
The NDP said they have been clear: the federal government is helping fuel this crisis by giving bad corporate landlords access to cheap loans, mortgage insurance, and tax breaks—and that ends under an NDP government.
The NDP will:
- Ban corporations from buying existing affordable rental buildings
- Cut off handouts – including low-interest federal loans, preferential tax treatment and mortgage loan insurance – for big corporate landlords who gouge their tenants
- Boost the Rental Protection Fund – to help non-profits purchase affordable apartments when they come onto the market.
