Nova Scotia’s Liberal and NDP leaders highlighted platform pledges related to housing and support for small businesses Friday, as Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Houston campaigned outside of Halifax.
During an announcement at party headquarters in Halifax, Zach Churchill confirmed that the Liberals’ plan to get 80,000 homes built in order to ease a provincial housing shortage by 2032 would not include the construction of more public housing.
Churchill said he isn’t philosophically opposed to public housing, but he thinks it costs more and takes longer to build.
“We have to build more quickly,” he said. “We have to empower the private sector to develop market housing and we have to lean on the models that are working the best in our province, and that is the not-for-profit model … and co-op options.”
As of May this year, the Progressive Conservative government had committed to building 273 new public housing units …