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# Canada’s housing crisis | The real villain
- URL: https://www.craftpolitics.fm/episodes/canadas-housing-crisis-the-real-villain/
- Published: 2025-06-04T18:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-07T15:46:10.000Z
- Author: Joseph Lavoie
- Tags: Chris Spoke, Housing Advocate and Partner, Toronto Standard, #episode, #interview, #ai-5

Canada's housing crisis has become political theatre. Every party says they want to fix it. Nobody wants to tell you why it's still broken.

This week on Craft Politics: Chris Spoke, developer, host of the Hogtown podcast, and one of the loudest voices arguing that zoning, not greed, not foreign buyers, is the real villain behind Canada's housing crisis, joins Joseph Lavoie and Andrew Percy to answer the question almost no politician will: why can't we build?

We discuss:

**The one thing Canadians still don't get.** It's not immigration. It's not speculators. It's supply and prices, and Chris walks through why even people who agree with that in theory still block housing in practice.

**Local democracy or more housing. Pick one.** You can have councillors elected by long-term homeowners who don't want shadows on their lawns, or you can have housing for young people who can't vote in that ward yet. Chris isn't sure you can have both.

**Trudeau got one thing right that Poilievre got wrong.** The Housing Accelerator Fund paid cities to remove specific regulatory obstacles. Poilievre's plan was targeting completions, which Chris calls borderline socialist central planning. The problem was execution, not design.

**What happened in 1971?** Productivity flatlined. Fertility dropped. Energy stalled. And housing approvals got harder. Andrew asks the question nobody can answer: when did the Anglosphere go from building power stations in villages to blocking everything?

**Why Mark Carney's nostalgia doesn't work.** Post-war governments built on greenfields with no neighbours and no NIMBYs. Carney wants to replicate that in 2025 Toronto with infill projects, existing residents, and a Green Belt. Chris explains why the analogy breaks.

**Worst NIMBY moment.** A public meeting where someone stood up, asked where people would live if the building didn't get approved, and the room yelled back: Brampton. Everyone applauded.

Also discussed: why reducing parking minimums is good policy but terrible politics, the rise of the Bananas Brigade (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything), Japan's nationalized land use planning, and whether we need another war to reset the regulatory state.

Find Chris Spoke's Hogtown podcast wherever you listen, and follow him for sharp takes on housing, zoning, and why your city council is the problem.

00:00 Welcome and introducing Chris Spoke on Canada's housing villain  
01:25 What Canadians still don't understand about housing supply and prices  
02:53 The NIMBY problem and the political incentives blocking housing  
05:59 Local democracy versus housing supply—can you have both?  
09:33 Street-by-street upzoning and financial incentives for residents  
13:14 Federal housing policy—Trudeau versus Poilievre approaches  
15:26 The parking paradox and managing development externalities  
19:07 Why YIMBY movements struggle against concentrated NIMBY opposition  
20:28 The Bananas Brigade and when opposition became reflexive  
22:40 What happened in 1971? When the Anglosphere turned anti-development  
25:29 Mark Carney's nostalgic government homebuilding plan—will it work?  
27:38 Everything Bagel Liberalism and coalition-pleasing housing policy  
28:05 How Chris became a developer through advocacy  
31:51 Rapid fire round—no height limits and landlord greed myths  
34:40 Beer tasting and reflections on the bad landlord narrative  
37:34 Mark Carney courts Big Oil and the pipeline pivot  
41:43 UK Strategic Defence Review and Labour's war footing  
44:00 OECD downgrades growth forecasts as tariffs bite globally  
47:29 Tasting notes and wrap