The rise in house prices is a necessary evil, believes François Legault, who doesn’t want Quebec to “stay poor” just for house values to stay lower than Ontario and British Columbia.
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“At some point you have to realize that as average wages rise, so do house prices. It’s a matter of supply and demand. I don’t want Quebec to stay poor so we keep house prices lower than Toronto or Vancouver,” the prime minister said Monday morning on the sidelines of an announcement in Sainte-Sophie.
He was responding to a journalist who asked him if he thought the fact that Quebec was catching up with Ontario in real estate values was good news.
“It’s one of the negative consequences of economic well-being, but people have more money on average to buy a home,” Mr Legault replied.
“In terms of affordable housing, we need to make sure we help those who haven’t benefited from those pay increases,” he added.
The Prime Minister also reiterated that his government’s housing objective is “to develop as much affordable housing as possible”.
He argued that “the housing crisis is first and foremost a housing shortage” and that the bill presented by Housing Minister France-Élaine Duranceau at the end of the parliamentary session includes measures not to discourage owners from building housing.
Mr Legault also defended Ms Duranceau, who has been in hot water for several days. In particular, it has been reported that the housing minister, who worked in real estate before her election, has already carried out a real estate flip, an operation that consists of buying a house, renovating it and then building it up again at a later date to bring the market much higher price.
According to the Prime Minister, this does not pose an ethical problem.
“People who work in real estate buy and sell. It’s part of what’s being done in real estate,” he said.
Regarding the controversial meeting between Ms Duranceau and one of her former business partners, the president of the LSA real estate group Annie Lemieux, Mr Legault recalled that the two women’s business was no longer in business and that the meeting took place because Ms Lemieux was looking into the possibility of dormitories develop for older people.
“It has nothing to do with what they have done in the past,” whispered the Prime Minister.
When asked if Ms Duranceau really was the right person to solve the housing crisis, he replied that his past in real estate was “a plus” before recalling that his job was “to develop affordable housing.” .
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