Introduction

With the housing crisis affecting the entire country, different levels of government adopted various measures to curb the crisis. Housing is a shared responsibility between the federal, provincial, and municipal levels. Municipalities are responsible for zoning and the application of federal and provincial housing policies, they also set municipal taxes. These taxes are calculated based on property values and affect the cost of housing for all Canadian households, whether they are renters or homeowners.

Given these observations, it seems necessary to know what elected officials think about rising property values. This is all the more interesting since not all provinces have the same rental regulations. For example, the provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island and the Yukon Territory regulate rent increases. Knowing the opinions of elected municipal officials on the increasing property values can nuance our collective discussion on the severity of the housing crisis in local contexts and potential solutions.

Methodology and data

The Canadian Municipal Barometer asked municipal politicians to take a position on the following statement in 2020, and from 2022 to 2024:

"It is good for a neighbourhood when it experiences rising property values, even if it means that some current residents might have to move out."

Respondents could respond with either of the following: strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree, strongly agree, and don't know. The number of men who participated in our surveys is consistently higher than the number of women, which mirrors the lower rates of representation of women on municipal councils across Canada (Table 1, see also Artiles et al., 2024).

Next, although a question about the increase in property values was posed in 2021, namely “Municipalities should invest in affordable housing, even if it negatively influences neighbouring property values”, we exclude it from this discussion since it does not allow us to track the opinions of elected officials in the same manner in 2021. Finally, while we do have some respondents from the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut we exclude them from this analysis since there are so few respondents from that region.

Table 1. Number of respondents by gender and survey wave

Throughout each wave, women represent at least 30% and at most 40% of respondents, while men represent at least 60% and at most almost 70% of respondents in 2020.

Table 2. Geographical origin of respondents 

The two provinces with the largest number of respondents are Ontario and Quebec, accounting for over 50% of respondents on average, followed by the Prairie provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba) representing around 20% of respondents, British Columbia (between 10% and 14%), and the Eastern Canadian provinces (Atlantic: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador) between 7% and 9%.

Most municipal councillors disagree with the idea that rising property values is good for a neighbourhood, even if it means that some current residents might have to move out

Table 3 shows responses for all respondents who took part in the surveys. This table includes all respondents who identified themselves as man or woman. Two trends stand out. Firstly, most elected municipal politicians "somewhat disagree" with the statement. Secondly, others either disagree or "somewhat agree" with the statement.

Table 3. Respondents’ positions by year

Figure 1: Opinions of elected representatives by gender and province

Firstly, in Eastern Canada (Atlantic), the differences between men and women’s position is the smallest. Secondly, the majority of women somewhat disagree and strongly disagree with the statement, particularly in Ontario in 2022 and 2023. Elected men in Ontario are also more likely to disagree with the statement compared to their counterparts in other provinces. However, this is explained by the fact that most respondents are from Quebec and Ontario. Finally, the highest rate of disagreement with the statement is found among elected women in Quebec.

Takeaways?

The BMC-CMB data confirms that the vast majority of Canadian elected municipal officials tend to disagree with the statement on rising property values. However, a distinction exists in the positions taken by men and women. Men’s responses can be divided in two: some tend to agree with the statement on increasing property values, while others tend to disagree. Generally speaking, the majority of women disagree with the effect of increasing property values. Our data do not allow us to explain this difference in positioning between men and women.

However, several hypotheses can be put forward. Firstly, women may be more inclined towards social issues (Blidook Koop and Lucas, 2022), such as the consequences of rising property values. Secondly, elected municipal officials may face fiscal pressures, which could influence their stance. Elected officials' responses may also be influenced by their relationships with provincial and federal governments, which play a role in housing policy. Finally, responses may be linked to the size of the respondent's municipality, as elected officials in large cities face different real estate dynamics to those in smaller municipalities.

The barometer lives up to its name. Based on the responses of elected municipal officials, it can help us better address certain public policy issues. While the data alone cannot answer all the questions about the challenges of multi-level governance associated with housing, it does provide a pan-Canadian picture of how elected officials position themselves on the issue over time.

References

Artiles, Alexandra, Susan Franceschet, Jack Lucas, Sandra Breux, and Meagan Cloutier. "Women's Representation in Canadian Municipalities." Urban Affairs Review (2024): 10780874241228558.
Blidook, Kelly, Royce Koop, and Jack Lucas. "Municipal representation style and focus: Evidence from Canadian mayors and councillors." Representation 58, no. 4 (2022): 603-622.