Frequent readers of this page will no doubt be familiar with the regular diatribes against all levels of government incompetence and lies that the good people of Alberta must endure. The latest example is the broken promise of the liberal government. The liberals like to grandstand as protectors of the lower economic classes and other such nonsense. What they really do is just the opposite (i.e the finance minister business dealings).
There is perhaps no better technique to increase the supply of rental housing than to tax it less. Less tax would make more builders build, and rents would be that much lower to benefit the tenants as supply and competition grow. The liberals know this and used some nicely placed lies to help get themselves elected. Now they are breaking yet another major promise to remove the gst on rental housing.
Rental housing is a service provided by landlords to tenants. Yet it is not subject to GST. However, when built, the feds receive a huge windfall of cash on new rental housing. On a small building the feds will earn $50-$100k, that is a lot of money. The landlord will have to recoup that GST over the next few years of rent. It takes a lot of rent to raise $50k to give to the government. Rather than collect GST on new rental housing and then waste it on useless initiatives and pensions, perhaps the liberals will reconsider its broken promise and actually do something to help renters live more affordably (I doubt it) like they promised during the last campaign.
Here is the liberal figurehead, and primary broken promises maker.