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Federal Assistance with DCCs: How 2025 Policy Could Make Vancouver Real Estate More Affordable

In the aftermath of Canada’s recent federal election, a bold policy shift may be on the horizon that could dramatically impact Metro Vancouver’s real estate affordability crisis. According to Trevor Hargreaves, Senior Vice President at the BC Real Estate Association (BCREA), federal assistance with Development Cost Charges (DCCs) could be the single most transformative housing policy coming in 2025. While many buyers and market analysts focus on interest rates or broad housing supply targets, this specific municipal fee structure might be the key to both unlocking stalled development and directly lowering housing costs across Vancouver, Burnaby, and New Westminster—markets that have seen declining housing starts precisely when affordable supply is most needed.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why Development Cost Charges are currently the “biggest challenge to the housing sector” in British Columbia’s real estate market
• How federal intervention in 2025 could make homes more affordable for Metro Vancouver buyers
• Why new construction prices in Vancouver are being artificially inflated by municipal development charges
• How these municipal fees are passed “directly to the consumer, the eventual buyer” in today’s market
• Why the new Liberal government rates this policy intervention “10 out of 10” for implementation priority
• What declining housing starts mean for Vancouver’s real estate supply and affordability crisis
• How addressing DCCs could create a ripple effect lowering prices across both new and resale markets

The DCC Crisis: How Municipal Fees Drive Up Your Vancouver Home Price in 2025

Development Cost Charges have emerged as what Hargreaves describes as “arguably the biggest challenge to the housing sector in this province.” These municipal fees, designed to offset infrastructure costs associated with new development, have ballooned to levels that are not only stalling projects but directly inflating home prices for buyers.

“You have housing starts that are down over the past year from the year prior at the very time that they should be way up. And I would argue that that is largely based on DCCs,” explains Hargreaves. But the problem isn’t just supply – it’s that these costs get “passed on to the consumer, the eventual buyer,” creating an artificial price inflation on new housing that ripples throughout the market.

“When it comes to DCCs, this needs to get off the back of developers at the end of the day, and we need to find better ways to deal with our amenity costs and our development cost charges.” — Trevor Hargreaves, Senior VP of Government Relations, BCREA

The crisis directly impacts affordability, as Hargreaves explains: “What happens is that either stalls the project out… Or the other side of that is they get saddled with all of these costs, which the developer then has to in turn pass on to the consumer, the eventual buyer.” This creates a lose-lose scenario for Vancouver homebuyers: either fewer homes get built (reducing supply and driving up prices) or the DCC costs are simply added to purchase prices, making housing artificially more expensive.

Federal Intervention: The Liberal Government’s 2025 Housing Affordability Plan

What makes this situation particularly interesting is the new federal government’s apparent readiness to intervene. According to Hargreaves, the Liberal platform included “vague promises about trying to support municipalities, trying to offset some of these costs.” While previous administration approaches focused on demand-side measures or broad supply targets, this direct involvement in municipal development economics represents a significant shift.

When asked to rate the likelihood of implementation on a scale of 1-10, Hargreaves gave it a definitive “10” – his highest confidence rating among all proposed policies. This unusual certainty suggests inside knowledge of federal priorities that could reshape market expectations.

“It’s a quick necessity to getting houses built in this province again at the rate that we need to get them built. I think it’

Broader Real Estate Market Implications for Metro Vancouver in 2025

The implications of this potential policy shift extend far beyond just enabling more development. If implemented, federal assistance with DCCs could:

For Developers:

• Revive previously shelved projects that became financially unfeasible
• Reduce carrying costs and financial risks on new developments
• Accelerate construction timelines by eliminating municipal negotiations
• Create more predictable pro forma calculations for future projects

For Municipalities:

• Provide essential infrastructure funding without delaying housing supply
• Allow implementation of amenities concurrent with new development
• Reduce adversarial relationships with the development community
• Potentially accelerate approval processes with financial constraints removed

For Homebuyers:

• Direct savings as DCCs no longer need to be “passed on to the consumer”
• More affordable housing options in previously cost-prohibitive locations
• Potentially thousands of dollars in savings on new construction purchases
• Downward pressure on resale prices as new supply creates competition
• Elimination of what Hargreaves calls an “artificial price inflation” mechanism

A New Era of Intergovernmental Cooperation for Vancouver’s Housing Market

The DCC intervention represents part of a broader vision Hargreaves articulated for more cohesive collaboration between government levels. “We’re all just taxpayers in this country. We’re amidst a housing crisis. Get your act in order,” he stated, emphasizing that the federal government needs to lead this coordination.

The BCREA policy expert believes that under Mark Carney’s leadership, we may see unprecedented cooperation between federal, provincial, and municipal governments on housing policy, giving this initiative an “80% likelihood” of success. This intergovernmental harmony represents a dramatic shift from the sometimes contradictory approaches of recent years.

“I think that there will be steps in the right direction. I think again, the necessity of Trump or the necessity of reinventing under Trump’s shadow puts additional pressure on government to just be a more effective operation. This entire country needs to be a more effective operation moving forwards.” — Trevor Hargreaves, Senior VP of Government Relations, BCREA

FAQ: Development Cost Charges and Vancouver Real Estate Market 2025

What exactly are Development Cost Charges in Vancouver’s real estate market?

Development Cost Charges (DCCs) are municipal fees imposed on developers to help fund essential infrastructure needed to service new developments, including sewers, water systems, roads, and community amenities. In Metro Vancouver, these charges have become so significant that they’re now described by BCREA as “arguably the biggest challenge to the housing sector” in British Columbia, directly impacting both housing supply and affordability.

How much could federal assistance with DCCs lower housing prices in Vancouver?

While specific dollar amounts weren’t provided, Hargreaves was clear that these charges are significant enough to either stall projects entirely or be “passed on to the consumer, the eventual buyer.” Since DCCs can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars per project, this suggests potential savings of thousands per unit for homebuyers when these costs are federally subsidized rather than added to purchase prices.

Will Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster see more housing starts in 2025 if this policy is implemented?

According to Hargreaves, housing starts across Metro Vancouver have declined precisely when they should be increasing, largely due to DCC issues. “You have housing starts that are down over the past year from the year prior at the very time that they should be way up. And I would argue that that is largely based on DCCs,” he explains. If the federal government implements assistance with these charges, we could see a significant revival of previously stalled projects and new residential developments throughout Vancouver and surrounding municipalities.

How does the Vancouver real estate market’s DCC issue relate to housing affordability?

The DCC issue directly impacts affordability through two mechanisms. First, as Hargreaves explicitly states, these costs get “passed on to the consumer, the eventual buyer,” artificially inflating home prices. Second, when projects become financially unfeasible due to high DCCs, they get canceled, reducing overall supply in an already constrained market. By addressing this structural barrier to development, the policy could enable more market housing at lower price points, improving affordability across all segments of Vancouver’s real estate market.

Is there evidence that lowering DCCs would actually make Vancouver homes more affordable?

Yes. Hargreaves provides a clear cause-and-effect relationship, stating that when municipalities burden developers with these costs, “the developer then has to in turn pass on to the consumer, the eventual buyer.” This creates what he calls “a lose-lose scenario” where either fewer homes get built or buyers pay artificially higher prices. Federal assistance would directly address this mechanism that’s currently driving up Metro Vancouver real estate prices.

When could Vancouver homebuyers start seeing price impacts from the DCC policy changes?

Hargreaves rated this policy as having the highest likelihood of quick implementation (10/10), stating “It’s a quick necessity to getting houses built in this province again at the rate that we need to get them built. I think it’s going to happen.” This suggests Metro Vancouver real estate buyers could see effects as early as 2025, making it potentially one of the first significant housing affordability policies implemented by the new Liberal government under Mark Carney’s leadership.

This article features expert insights from Trevor Hargreaves, Senior Vice President of Government Relations, Marketing and Communications at the BC Real Estate Association (BCREA), shared during his interview on the Vancouver Real Estate Podcast with host Matt Scalena. Trevor brings extensive experience in policy development and government relations focused on Metro Vancouver’s housing market. Listen to the full episode above or explore more Vancouver real estate market insights at vancouverrealestatepodcast.com.

Last updated May 9 2025 by Matt Scalena PREC

📄 Full Podcast Transcript – Interview with Trevor Hargreaves: Housing Policy After the Federal Election

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Matt Scalena: We’re here with Trevor Hargreaves, Senior Vice President of Government Relations, Marketing and Communications at the BC Real Estate Association and second time on the show. Past guest, fan favourite, how you doing Trevor?

Trevor Hargreaves: Thank you very much for having me back and it was a joy last time. So hopefully it’s equally as enjoyable this time around.

Matt Scalena: Yeah, we’re trying to get you on whenever anyone mentions the word election, and hopefully even more often than that. I think last time, which wasn’t that long ago, we had you on dissecting the NDP victory at the provincial level. Now, of course, we just had the election federally and you wrote a really interesting opinion piece in Business in Vancouver, “10 Immediate Housing Policy Actions for the New Federal Government.” Adam and I were thinking it would be great to have you back on. Thanks for taking the time.

Trevor Hargreaves: Thanks much. Yeah, it’s been a busy few months in this country. I’ll be happy to take a bit of a gap with another election.

Matt Scalena: No kidding. Well, maybe for listeners who didn’t hear you on the show last time, Trevor, can you start by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Trevor Hargreaves: Certainly, my name is Trevor Hargreaves. I work for the BC Real Estate Association. We of course represent the 26,000 plus realtors across the province. My role, I have oversight of government relations, communications and marketing within BCREA. And that’s also inclusive of our research and policy development. So really my main focus is around government relations, around what we’re researching to talk about, the material that we’re coming with and our overall strategic approach when it comes to working with government and what it is we’re communicating and pushing for on behalf of the sector. And I’ll just add as well that in a realm that’s so full of opinion, I’m very focused on metrics and research so that when we’re coming forwards with ideas, when we’re coming forwards with overall policy, it’s got its own independent data behind it because I’m trying to solve the housing issues before us, need a lot less opinion and a lot more research and metrics behind them, I think.

Matt Scalena: And last time I think we asked you this, but it’s probably worth delving into this a little bit again, but somebody out there’s wondering why does the BC REA get involved in politics? Especially around election time or even like larger questions around like housing policy and things like that. What is the mandate? What’s behind that?

Trevor Hargreaves: That’s a great question. I think that when it comes to housing policy in general, in the fall we had MLAs, this has been a federal election, so we’re talking about MPs, you have a lot of politicians who have constituents bursting in their door, constantly saying, you solve this, like, I can’t buy a house, I can’t buy an apartment. I can barely afford rent. I can barely afford groceries. These are sizable and significant issues and legitimate issues. It’s ever more challenging to live in this country. That’s all fair. But I think what that has done at both provincial and federal levels of government, it has put an undue amount of pressure on those governments. They’re elected in four year cycles.

When it comes to housing policy, what I would argue that has led to is a lot of policy that’s being crafted and kicked out the door without being properly consulted, properly conceived, doesn’t have the proper policy research behind it. It’s a lot of “let’s announce it from a podium and then develop it in the aftermath before it goes live.” And then what you end up getting is sort of like one step forward, two steps back. You solve one issue, you cause a whole series of additional unforeseen consequences.

And so for us, we don’t operate alone. We operate as part of a continuum, working closely with a lot of other like-minded housing organizations – Canadian Home Builders, the Appraisal Institute, Mortgage Brokers Association, etc. We all share a lot of information, work very collaboratively, but when it comes to why do we take very public stance or stances around various policy pre-election, it’s very much because we’re trying to shape the aftermath of where housing policy goes at the end of the day.

What I want to see, what our team is constantly working towards is fact-based decision-making, not populist politics. If you’re an NDP government within this province, I don’t want to see them just crafting policy that speaks to their voter base and makes them temporarily 10% more popular. I want to see policy put in place for this province that is actually going to be achievable and is going to properly assist when it comes to helping affordability, helping market stock, helping change zoning, intensification policy, what have you. And the same on the federal level. Like what we’re trying to do here is work collectively to really be research-based, to really help inform media, help inform the public, and pressure public officeholders at the end of the day to do a better, more detailed, careful, and collaborative job when it comes to housing policy.

Matt Scalena: And I know last time you were on and we were talking about the provincial government and what we hoped for there or what the BCREA was advocating for. But part of it was bringing back certain stakeholders into the room, essentially, right? Like listening to a more diverse range of voices. Did you find maybe before we talk about this election at the federal level, did you find that people were paying attention to what you guys were saying? Were they listening?

Trevor Hargreaves: So this, for the listeners, is a very similar ask. We asked basically the same thing to the provincial government that we just asked to the federal government. And what it is, what we want to see is the establishment of a permanent housing roundtable. And the idea is around this roundtable, it would be at the provincial level, 10 to 15 people, at the federal level a little bit bigger, maybe 25 or 30 people just based on size and scope and scale of policy. But it would be representative of people from the market housing side, the non-market side, Indigenous voices, academic voices. You’d have some provincial and municipal representation there at the federal level.

Really so that when the government has a new idea, they have new policy, they don’t just announce it. What you do is you take the policy to this group, you have them working under a non-disclosure agreement. They say, look, this is what we’re trying to do. They distribute it in written format to them in advance. And they give all these market policy experts the time to unpack what’s being suggested, pre-vet it, pressure test it, talk about unforeseen consequences, really put it through a careful scope of analysis so that government could take careful feedback, make some changes, and by the time anything is announced, it’s really had extremely detailed consultation.

As to your question about how have governments picked this up, I would say that provincially, they continue to be quite resistant to this. Part of it being, I think it takes away some government autonomy. I think secondarily as well, it’s just a complicated process. It’ll take a lot of work to get it to do it on an ongoing basis. Federally, I would say that Carney is much more amenable to the idea. I think the federal government recognized that they need this kind of expertise to really start ongoingly crafting and announcing more workable housing policy.

At the end of the day, making an ask like this, this is not just about realtors, this is about the public. This is about Canadians. This is about British Columbians. This is about crafting housing policy that actually works and gets the job done at the end of the day. And I think the truth is the expertise is beyond government. And that’s the shortcoming here is government constantly relying upon themselves. You’re just talking about policy staff in Ministry of Housing Departments, whereas a lot of the expertise exists in the private sector. It’s the people like the people that work in the policy department in my office, those on the ground policy experts, they’re the ones that can really be sharing and working much more collaboratively with government. That’s where the real insight and answers will come from, I think, at the end of the day to really get us through a lot of these problems moving forward.

Matt Scalena: Do you think, it’s interesting that at the federal level there’s less pushback. Do you think that’s personality based in terms of Carney? Is it ideological? Is it because there’s been 10 years of seemingly banging our head against the wall and not accomplishing as much as was at least advertised? Why do you think they’re more open to this more collaborative approach?

Trevor Hargreaves: I think even when you look at the platform that the Liberals just put forward in the last election, it represents more of a collaborative approach. Like a lot of what they are announcing, a lot of the promises, and we’ll talk about that kind of out of that top 10 list, they got those ideas from sector, right? Like those are not ideas that they’ve just crafted. Those are ideas that the housing sector has ongoingly been asking for. I think they’re just coming around to the reality that a lot of the most insightful policy is coming from the private sector. It’s not coming from us.

I think you’re also seeing a time of renewal. I think you have someone like Carney come in. They are transitioning past the practices of a Trudeau government. They’re looking for new ideas, he is a policy person himself, being an economist. He’s looking for government to operate in a more collaborative manner. I think in general, especially, and I think this is also true, frankly, provincially with Trump and where things are going when it comes to the tariffs, when it comes to kind of the offshoot effect of that, which is that both the provincial government and the federal governments, they need to reinvent. They need to put much more of a focus on our provincial and domestic and national economies. They need to work with the private sector to build the private sector like never before.

And so in many ways, as much as Trump has been a hindrance, he is creating and fostering a little bit of this sense of renewal, I think. It’s not necessarily a good thing. It is a bad thing. It’s very challenging for this country, but it’s also waking us up. It’s when it comes to Canada and what does Canada 2.0 look like moving forwards where we are much less reliant on the US. I think that part is a positive. And if that means government working much closer collaboration with the private sector, all the better for it at the end of the day. And it seems like it’s going in that direction.

Matt Scalena: Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s kind of shook us out of a, especially thinking back kind of a long period of complacency, it feels like, in a lot of ways, which hopefully looking back at this moment, 15, 20 years from now, we’ll all be happy it happened, but time will tell. I should have led with this question, Trevor, but we kind of spun off in a different direction, but can you just give us your thoughts on how the election played out? I mean, you were a keen observer. So did anything surprise you? Just general take on the way things shook out.

Trevor Hargreaves: I mean, the whole thing was a very once-in-a-lifetime election at the end of the day because that was Poilievre’s election to win several months prior, right? Trump really upended that whole scenario. I think that really, if you look back on it, you look at what happened with the conservatives, I don’t think that it’s anything that really was in Poilievre’s hands. He was really on top because government was looking for a new perspective, but then when Trump came on the scene, when it came to where things were going with tariffs and all of these newfound challenges, you had Carney come in as a new face. And I think that new face really brought a new approach to all of the politics. And I think in order for the conservatives to remain as a contender, they would have needed someone new as well, because Poilievre was already kind of the foil to Trudeau. So leading up to that, it made it a real challenge, I think.

Carney has taken a very metered, calm, non-political approach in many different ways. And it’s just been very interesting to see the way it played out. Now at the same time, despite the fact that the Conservatives did not win, I think it’s very interesting to see a lot of the Conservative gains in metro areas. They actually have a very strong showing. They picked up a lot of seats. And then simultaneously, of course, you had the federal NDP essentially collapse and for me as a keen observer, very housing policy oriented. And I live in New Westminster, which is three municipal levels of NDP. It’s extremely NDP here. Peter Julian, our MP with 21 years of NDP background, got voted out in place of a Liberal candidate. When you see New Westminster turning against the NDP, you know things are going real bad for that party.

I think that was a well-earned collapse. I think that their housing policy, you know, you saw the Liberals coming out with really detailed housing policy. The Conservatives had a lot of good ideas. Their tax reform certainly was really strong when it came to their housing policy. The NDP just really under-researched, not particularly practical. I think they’ve gotten way too hung up on niche issues that don’t really speak to the overall electorate. They’ve turned themselves into a niche party by their own hand, frankly.

And I think that’s going to make for some major change when it comes to the landscape moving forwards because they’ve lost official party status and if they’re going to continue as a party into the future, they’re going to have to totally reinvent. So it’ll be very interesting what happens with them. And I’m really curious to see what happens with the federal conservatives now as well in the whole Poilievre debate and does he stay on as leader? And I would assume so now that it looks like he’s managed to hold onto a chair with one of his MPs passing one over.

It’s all very interesting times and I mean personally just watching Carney in action, watching Carney yesterday meet with the president, it’s all just extremely fascinating and it’s great to see a new voice right there on the ground approaching things very differently.

Matt Scalena: Yeah, I agree. What was the role? I mean, this might sound like a silly question, but in the end, how big of a role do you think housing actually played in the election?

Trevor Hargreaves: That’s a good question. And it’s complicated. I think it’s complicated in that way that you look at popular music and you go, that’s the biggest band in the world right now. How much do people actually pay attention to music? How detailed are people when it comes to the lowest common denominator? Probably not as big of a role as people infer.

You know, I once asked my mother years ago, I remember saying to her, why did you vote for Stephen Harper in the aftermath of the election? So you could tell how long ago this was. She said, “he looks nice in a sweater.” You know, there’s popular democracy at work. What checks a lot of boxes for people. It’s not that they’re thoroughly tied to the policy. They have like one little thing and if it seems like that’s working out, that’s where they go.

I think one of the challenges in this country, we’re becoming increasingly polarized. Where Carney didn’t win the election – or sorry, where Carney did win the election, the conservatives didn’t – you still have a lot of voices saying that it’s the apocalypse, Canada’s over, we’re totally doomed. All of these kind of things, that’s identity politics at the end of the day, and that’s what you see in the United States. And so I think that for a lot of people, we’re getting past what were the actual core issues. We’re getting much more into, I’m into a couple core concepts like fiscal conservativism, or I want Canada being a liberal democracy, and you’re not really digging into the details. I would say for most people, that’s probably the reality.

I think that the housing platforms were pretty strong for the two major parties as well. They were better represented than they ever have been. But what are the hinge issues for people? I think it really just depends on the individual. And I doubt it’s quite as detailed as it is for the policy wonks amongst us.

Matt Scalena: Fair enough. So maybe transitioning to this opinion piece that you put out basically right after the election, “10 Immediate Housing Policy Actions for the New Federal Government.” I guess two things before we start, or maybe just a quick question. How does this work? When I was reading this, I was like, okay, this all makes a lot of sense. Are these Trevor’s ideas? Are these kind of the BCREA sit around the table and go “hey let’s come up with 10 ideas”? How did you come up with these prescriptions?

Trevor Hargreaves: Certainly not Trevor’s ideas. I would say I wrote it quickly because I recognized if I got it out right after the election they would publish it very quickly. But this was drawing from our pre-election work and largely from the liberal platform and from the various commentary in the debates because these are all issues where they touched upon it, where they’ve made vague promises in some of those directions, but they haven’t really fleshed out how they’re gonna go about it, which is typical pre-election scenario.

So I was basically trying to look at the promises that the incumbent prime minister had made. Now that they’re the government, they’re going to happen. They’ve talked about these various areas. I wrote that article to say, how do you take these vague promises and turn them into immediate reality? And you know, 10, that’s a lot of steps. I think one of the mistakes people make, they’re always waiting for one announcement from government that’s going to solve all the housing issues. That’s never going to happen. What you need is 10 or 20 really good policies put into place, all working in tandem. That’s where you really start to see the dial move. And that’s really what that list was meant to represent is significant change based on those promises with a lot of detail added to it.

Matt Scalena: Fantastic. So if it works for you, Trevor, I’m going to read off one by one. And what I’m hoping is you can unpack it a bit, explain exactly what you mean, why it’s effective. And then one after the other. And I mean, this will go through one by one. We can rate it one out of 10 in terms of one being a very pessimistic view of it actually happening and 10 being a very, you’re absolutely certain it’s going to take place in terms of your optimism of them taking on your policy positions. How does that sound?

Trevor Hargreaves: I am often blamed for being overly optimistic, but yes, all right, sounds good to me. Why don’t we do it?

Matt Scalena: You’re in the real estate industry. Okay. Number one. So the first housing policy action, according to yourself and the BC REA – major expansion of trades education.

Trevor Hargreaves: So expansion of trades education is a really interesting topic because we have two things at play here. Number one, if you look at the housing starts that the liberals promised, they’re talking about upwards of 500,000 completions a year. That is a hell of a lot of housing to build across this country. You can’t just magically build that. When it comes down to workers actually building it, you’re going to have to dramatically expand your trades. You need more people on the ground to build that many houses. And that is a massive expansion.

Now there’s a couple of challenges with that because what they have also done in recent months, and Carney has made another announcement around this since he’s been elected, they’re restricting immigration, increasingly so. Now you’re not bringing in trained tradespeople into the country, new immigrants that can just go to work, now you’re cutting them back, so you got real problems here. Where is this massive growth in tradespeople coming from?

So what I’m recommending there is provincial governments, using federal funding, they need to put forwards major new dollars to expand trades training. We’re in British Columbia – BCIT is a great example in Metro Vancouver, the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Their trades programs are going to train and certify the kind of workers that we need moving forwards. But we need to not only expand their capabilities when it comes to how many graduates can they get through a program in a given year. The other aspect to this is creating all the kind of feeder incentivization so that when you’re a new graduate, graduating high school, you want to be creating grants. You want to be trying to steer students with co-op programs where it’s like you’re in grade 12 and you can do a first year course or a couple courses in an overall program while you’re still in high school. You can do granting. You get scholarships – let’s make it easy. Let’s start really incentivizing the workers of tomorrow into these programs because if you also look at the projected retirement rates within trades over the next decade, it’s like 50% of the current workers.

We got to move big time into trying to incentivize graduates to work. And you can’t just promise magical, giant housing expansion if you don’t have somebody to build the houses. That’s just a real basic stop gap measure when it comes to what’s been promised versus how are you going to achieve it. And interestingly, after I wrote that article, I received a message from one of the executives at BCIT basically saying, “thanks for the shout out, we’re working on it.”

And that’s not just BCIT, of course, it’s trade schools right across the province. But when you put that money in, that doesn’t just magically happen. You’ve got to be expanding buildings. You’ve got to be expanding curriculum. You’ve got to be hiring teachers. That takes several years to amp up. So if they pump all the money in now, you’re only getting it up to speed in like three, four years. So not the kind of thing you need to wait on. You got to throw money at it right away.

Matt Scalena: So I guess in terms of optimism here, maybe there’s two questions. First off, it strikes me that we’re in a moment where a major expansion of not necessarily trades education, but people interested in going into the trades is kind of upon us. I feel like we’re at a moment where for better or worse it seems younger people are skeptical of spending years in liberal arts programs and even with the threat of AI and everything else. Are you optimistic that young Canadians are interested in these types of jobs maybe?

Trevor Hargreaves: I think also part of this is if you’re incentivizing it, you’re giving them a reason to become increasingly optimistic. But I would say yes. I mean, if you just look at the sheer cost of a Bachelor of Arts degree now, it’s so massive. You know, when I started in the early 90s in post-secondary, I think I was paying 180 bucks a course. You know, now you’re lucky if you’re through a BA in less than $40,000 of tuition.

Matt Scalena: Yeah, not to mention if you’re actually paying rent and everything else.

Trevor Hargreaves: Yeah, it’s brutal at the end of the day. So you need to be making a spend that’s going to have a return at the end of the day. And I think with trades, it’s a no brainer that you get certified. You get a job at the end of the tunnel. And these are, I sound like a politician, but these are good paying jobs and they’re out there. The demand will be there. The promotion opportunity is there. The opportunity in a lot of these trades to start your own business in the future. If I was that age today and I was graduating high school, it’s probably where I would be looking.

I think it’s very different than it was in the 90s and even in the 2000s. It’s a place where you can find yourself some work. You go into a lot of other sectors right now, they’re in decline, they’re not an expansion. And it’s a lot of money, again, education-wise. So it’s best promised return, I would say, for your dollar. But again, government spending time incentivizing it, making it easier, making scholarships available, really giving people the reason to make those decisions. That’s another big part of this, I think.

Matt Scalena: One out of 10, one being that you’re not very optimistic, 10 being super optimistic of the Liberal government taking your advice.

Trevor Hargreaves: I would say I’m pretty optimistic. I’m going to give this like an eight. We were talking just pre-interview a little bit about how in LinkedIn you’re seeing a lot of vitriolic dialogue often going back and forth lately. LinkedIn has been selling – yeah, people are not behaving quite as with the same corporate restraint that they once did. But you know, you want to make those housing starts. You’ve got to make this spend.

One of the major criticisms that I find a lot of Carney critics are making right now is that he’s going to be like the biggest record governmental spender in history. And I know the liberals have a major spending problem, but if you don’t spend this kind of money to get this done, you’re not making those housing starts. So, I think that’s a first and foremost investment that needs to be made when it comes to housing or you literally don’t have the capacity to expand your housing. So it’s a no-brainer, I think, at the end of the day.

Matt Scalena: Number two, invest in prefabricated and modular housing.

Trevor Hargreaves: Yeah. So prefab is really interesting as well. And this is an extension of what we just talked about. You got a major trade shortage in the future. They’re trying to make 500,000 homes in a given year. You’re trying to hire trades people, if you’re moving forwards to using prefabricated materials, number one, that’s a sector that it’s not that it doesn’t exist. It’s out there. It’s in startup mode actively, but it’s struggling because zoning needs to be changed. Inspection models need to be changed. Government need to really embrace this technology and incentivize it. But if you move it at scale, A, it creates a whole lot of new domestic jobs.

Secondarily, it actually enables you to make projects much faster because it’s prefabricated. It’s coming to the site. You’re not shipping a whole house, but you’re shipping it in large pre-built sections so that it can all be put together much quicker. The other major spinoff effect of this is that when you are straining with labor, you can then move forwards and hire some less trained and less skilled tradespeople to work on assembling the prefabricated materials because they’re not starting from scratch. And so it’s not to say that you’re replacing all the skilled trades labor, but it creates kind of a lower tier of trades labor, which again, makes it easy to do that hiring to get it up to scale.

And so a lot of what we’re talking about here is trying to massively expand housing in a very short amount of time using a series of methods. This is basically technological innovation to do it. Other countries do it in much more scale than we do. China is a good example. It’s a smart way to go. We’re trying to put a focus on where you go with the Canadian economy as well. This is a whole burgeoning sector that could be worth billions and billions of dollars. Major hiring, it could also involve a lot of exports once these materials are built out. It has a lot of promise. I think there’s a lot of interest in it with the current government as well. I’d say it’s very likely they’re going in this direction to working hard to incentivize it.

Matt Scalena: One through ten, Trevor.

Trevor Hargreaves: I’m giving it another eight.

Matt Scalena: Okay. Is an 80% is that an A or a B plus? Are we working with grade inflation here?

Trevor Hargreaves: It’s a challenging one because I could say with almost 100% likelihood they’re going to throw money at it. It’s more a question of how successful is it in becoming a burgeoning industry. That’s kind of out of my scope. I’ve sat through some various presentations when it comes to this technology, the materials, the promises moving forwards. It’s a very logical avenue to move in and will be a very interesting change within the housing sector, should it continue to advance. I think it will. I think it’s a given. It’s really just a question of scale and how dramatic will the scale up be.

Matt Scalena: Right. Number three, we’ve talked about establish a permanent national housing policy roundtable. And just for anyone listening, that’s that group of 20 to 25 stakeholders from various angles of the housing world come together and steel man any sort of policy before it gets put forward. Have you been invited and what is your rating from one to 10 in terms of if this is going to happen?

Trevor Hargreaves: We’re continuing to push this on the provincial level. There is a lot of work with our federal body as we continue to push this at the federal level. We’re pushing at the provincial level, our federal body CREA are pushing it at the national level. We’re really working in collaboration. This one is – I don’t know, it’s a challenge as to how they move forwards. The way that this would work is it’s not – it’s advising government. It’s not dictating anything to government. We’re not giving these people powers. We’re really just using them to unpack these potential new policies.

My statement that I have long said is I don’t even care if BCREA have a seat at that table. What I care about is that that table is there. We need that mechanism. I’d say I’m 60% on this one, mainly because there’s a lot of what ifs and I think it will happen eventually. I just don’t know if it’ll happen this year or it might take a few more years to get there. We’re continuing to make the push provincially as well. I think it’s something that will come out of necessity sooner or later.

Matt Scalena: You know, and I think we talked about this last time when we were talking about the NDP not adopting this, it’s that team of rivals idea that Obama, I think stole from Abraham Lincoln or something like that, but basically getting the smartest people in the room. And the one thing that makes me think it could – I guess this isn’t an advisory board that would be sitting with Mark Carney, but he does strike me as a guy who is not intimidated by a bunch of smart people sitting around the table and him making the final decision. Not every leader would be keen to get this group together. But I don’t know. It seems like it could be an interesting thing.

Trevor Hargreaves: Before I worked in organized real estate, I have a background in the dairy lobby segment for a long time. I had a lot of NAFTA proximity kind of right at the end of NAFTA negotiations. I was very heavily involved on the dairy side on my way out. So I still have a lot of connections when it comes to the senior levels of Ottawa kind of on bureaucratic side. But I’ve heard some interesting feedback about Carney and what he’s like and what a smart but detailed and hard-nosed businessman he is. And if he allows 30 minutes for a meeting, it’s 30 minutes. It’s not gonna be 31 minutes. You’re in, you focus. If one person makes reference to something, then the next person better not waste time tying back to it and being repetitive. He’s very focused and detailed and policy-driven and experienced.

If that is all true, I think that serves very well. That’s very interesting to see someone that is used to essentially private sector leadership running a country because that’s like hiring a CEO at the end of the day to run a country and it’ll be interesting to see. I think he’s soft spoken but I don’t think behind the scenes that’s the way he operates. I think he’s a firm player and a very smart man.

Matt Scalena: Number four, Trevor, federal assistance with development cost charges or DCCs. This has been a hot button topic for a while. Can you unpack it?

Trevor Hargreaves: It’s an interesting one because that’s one where I did diversify a little bit from the liberal platform. And I threw something in that’s a very Vancouver and British Columbia centric issue. Development cost charges and amenity cost charges when it comes to new builds and primarily around condos, because that’s the bulk of what’s getting built in Metro Vancouver. Whenever you’re building these new buildings, the developer is saddled with these charges, which are essentially infrastructural charges because a municipality, it costs them money. It costs them money to further develop their sewage, their electrical, all the overall infrastructure to be adding and densifying within a community. The other cost is ACCs, which is amenity costs, which is where you’re spending money on pools and parks and overall services as you’re densifying your community.

Now, one of the real challenges that we’ve had over the past couple of years, the provincial government really operated quick and hard in terms of changing zoning policy, giving housing targets to communities and municipalities, and really just changing things quite dramatically and putting a lot of pressure on municipalities. As the municipalities are grappling with this sudden densification, they’re looking at all of these development cost charges and going, we’re going to have a bunch more costs. What do we do?

And what they’ve done is more often than not, they’ve tried to burden the developer with the DCC charges and be like, “we’re going to double the DCC cost and we’re just going to make the developer pay it.” And number one, we have a bad attitude, I think, when it comes to how we look at developers, or at least how the public and the government treat developers, it’s almost like “you’re going to make a profit, so you’re a bad guy.” Like you’re a private business. You’re there for a reason. You’re investing a lot of speculative money or adopting a lot of risk. You’re putting in a lot of effort. These are multi-year projects. These are businesses that should be treated with respect. And we’re not in the USSR. Companies can be expected to make some profit.

But what has happened is a lot of these developers, they’ve been burdened with very unreasonable development cost charge fees to the point where it challenges the overall cost mechanisms of the project. What happens is that either stalls the project out and at a time where we’re trying to get more housing as quickly as possible, we do not want to be taking a whole bunch of potential projects and then suddenly putting them on hold. Or the other side of that is they get saddled with all of these costs, which the developer then has to in turn pass on to the consumer, the eventual buyer. And that’s not a win either because now you just have the government, whatever the layer of government, the municipal layer of government, passing costs onto the developer and the developer is just charging more for the end product condo to make their costs back. None of that is a win.

DCCs are a problem. We wanna be incentivizing developers. We wanna have developers happy to work in British Columbia. We wanna streamline their projects, lessen red tape, look at really vital projects and try to get them built as quickly as possible. So as part of that, when it comes to DCCs, this needs to get off the back of developers at the end of the day and we need to find better ways to deal with our amenity costs and our development cost charges.

And there’s been a long-standing saying, “development pays for development.” I don’t really believe that personally. I think that development needs to be paid for in other ways. And especially because we’re in a market that’s so skewed already, it’s so damn expensive, we need to find other ways to pay for these amenity costs and development costs.

So the federal government made some vague promises about trying to support municipalities, trying to offset some of these costs. I think it’s safe to say they’re going to do so, but I can tell you that’s gonna have a hell of a price tag attached to it. You’re talking billions of dollars at the end of the day.

Matt Scalena: Yeah. So from one to 10, it sounds like you’re actually optimistic that the feds are stepping in.

Trevor Hargreaves: It’s arguably the biggest challenge to the housing sector in this province. I would say you have housing starts that are down over the past year from the year prior at the very time that they should be way up. And I would argue that that is largely based on DCCs. And of course, that’s just DCCs. That’s not even talking about amenity costs, which is a whole separate spin off issue, which I have great concern around because, we work in a sector focused around selling houses. When you’re densifying communities, that’s something that we can be behind. But I think very much what overall the province needs to be very focused on is logical, smart, sustainable densification. And you can’t be adding all these people to municipalities without making sure the amenities are there. And so that also requires a lot of funds.

And we got problems in this country that you can’t vastly densify in very short amounts of time without there being a bunch of unintended consequences. And the development costs and the amenity costs are one of the consequences. How do you amortize that over a short amount of time? And again, when the Liberal government are about to take ongoing criticism around their spending, if we want to move things quicker, they’re going to have to spend a lot to try to help move this forward.

Matt Scalena: So you’re giving it a number.

Trevor Hargreaves: I’m giving it a 10. I think that this is going to be one of their first and foremost. I guess I should give it a 9 since I’m not directly running the government.

Matt Scalena: You know what? I’m taking notes. I’m going to put 10. I’m putting 10 there.

Trevor Hargreaves: Yeah, it’s a quick necessity to getting houses built in this province again at the rate that we need to get them built. So I think it’s going to happen. They’ve made the promise on the platform. I think it’s got to be green. They just have to figure out the details moving forward.

Matt Scalena: Number five, reintroduce MERB.

Matt Scalena: It’s been brought up a few times on the show, for the uninitiated, can you also tell us what MERB is?

Trevor Hargreaves: So MERB goes back to the 1970s where Canada was in a process of extreme industrial expansion. There was a lot of business infrastructure being built. Our population was quickly expanding. Urban areas were very quickly densifying. The MERB program was put into place. It stands for the Multi-Unit Rental Building Program. And it was basically a tax incentive for builders.

When it was in place, it inspired the creation of over 200,000 units. The program ran, I think, from 1974 to 1981. So it was in place for quite a while. The basic way that this operated is it was incentivizing building new rental projects so that the owners of these projects, where they would be making less income for introducing new rental building either at market or particularly below market, they could draw the income losses for introducing below market housing. They could draw that as tax deductions at the end of the day.

So it was something that was extremely expensive to government in terms of lost taxation revenue when they were incentivizing this program, which is essentially why they ended up canceling the program. But it really did incentivize market or below market housing being built at scale in a very short amount of time.

Now, what’s happened is in recent years, we’re looking at a bit of a repeat situation where you’re saying like, this is a really needed aspect where we’re not talking about products or housing that’s condos for sale, but rather rental buildings or below market, specialized buildings as well. We need a lot of this. It’s an increased demand for a variety of segments of demographics that live in Metro Vancouver and right across the country.

We don’t just need one or two buildings. We need it at scale. We need a whole lot. This is a program that would incentivize getting that done. And it would give very deep, again, tax incentives to developers to actually move forwards and make that option as a route to go. Because otherwise they don’t. They’ve been moving forwards to build buildings so that they can sell them as new sales and condos.

So I would say with this one, it’s something that the sector has been suggesting and asking for many years. I think this is a really good example of government listening to the private sector, listening to the construction sector, listening to the policy people within the housing environment, and implementing some new innovative ideas. I think this one, it can be a real game changer, but again, it’ll be real expensive to implement.

Matt Scalena: So with the federal assistance with the DCCs being a 10, you’ve mentioned more than once the expensive nature of MERB. What are you giving this, one through 10?

Trevor Hargreaves: I think it would be super effective, but it would also be super expensive, but it would really get the job done. I mean they’ve sounded it out within the platform. Let’s say 60 to 70% likelihood over the next four years. My concern is that with each of these you go through them and it’s not that they’re bad ideas. They’re great ideas and they can move the dial.

Matt Scalena: I’m giving it a 6.5.

Trevor Hargreaves: Slow down a little, like these are insightful ideas. This is bold, smart stuff, and they’re not just sort of throwing it out on a platform. This indicates careful research, putting that on there and listening to other voices. But again, you’re talking billions and billions of dollars in lost tax revenue when you’re going in that angle. It just becomes a case of how much can they spend to implement all of these big, bold ideas.

Matt Scalena: Number six, tax reform.

Trevor Hargreaves: Tax reform is a bit of a more vague scenario, but as we look at a Trumpian atmosphere, we look at the review of our country, we look at trying to drop inter-provincial borders, try to become more effective as Canadian business operates. Canadian taxes are just very onerous. We have a lot of repetitive taxes or duplicate taxes, federally to provincially. What we would just like to see is a step right back and a full-sum review of all housing taxation at the federal level juxtaposed against the taxation at the provincial level so that we can be looking at where can streamlining be operated, what kind of efficiencies can be put into place, what kind of policies and taxes can be repealed, and how can we really be incentivizing and making it more effective when it comes to Canadian taxation because this is a rough country when it comes to taxes and particularly within the housing sector.

Matt Scalena: Well, and GST on new construction was a big part of the platform. Was that something, what are your thoughts there?

Trevor Hargreaves: Yeah, so there was two differences. The liberals spoke to first time home buyers building or buying a new property up to a million dollars being exempted from GST. The conservatives, I thought, actually had the better proposal, which was up to $1.3 million, which I thought was a little bit more representative of the metro Vancouver and Toronto areas where it counts – that’s much more representative of a new build.

And I think that’s a very logical one. You’ve got both parties that pushed it forwards. I think it’s pretty likely they’re going to go that avenue. It’s a fairly low hanging fruit. It means a savings both to builders because the actual GST exemptions are on a lot of the upfront materials. But it ends up being that that translates into a saving for the buyer. And so at the liberal amount of a million dollars, that’s about $53-54,000 that the buyer would potentially save. At 1.3 million, you’re talking $68-69,000 right around there. It’s a sizable chunk of change.

And I think there’s an offshoot value to that as well, because if you’re containing costs using this tax measure, that’s going to lower the end price of new builds, which in turn is gonna help contain the price of older properties being put up for sale because they need to be competitive against these new builds.

So it seems like a win that has multiple levels of positive outcome if it’s to be implemented. So I think when it comes to immediate tax reform, that’s a really good one that they could put into place.

Matt Scalena: It was in both platforms, the conservative and the liberals, I guess, with the differing amounts from one to 10 on this one, Trevor. What do you think?

Trevor Hargreaves: I think this one is an easier one for them to implement because yes, it’s a bit of a tax hit, but at least it’s not logistically super complicated. If you want to put MERB into place, that’s going to be real complicated. For this one, it’s not so difficult. So I think this one’s a 10. I think they’re going to put it in and they’ll put it in soon because it’s actually they can show some pragmatic steps forwards right away. And by implementing this, it’s a quick one. I figure this is in place by 2026.

Matt Scalena: Number seven, policy review.

Trevor Hargreaves: Again, it’s a bit of a more vague statement, but when it comes to housing policy, we talked about this a little bit earlier. The fact that governments have been pressured to make a lot of announcements. They sound good from podium, but they aren’t necessarily really well thought out. Then you have ideas where they weren’t that well thought out and they’ve been sitting there operating for multiple years. And are they even achieving the originally stated goals? Is anyone taking the time to do this analysis?

Are they repealing things if they don’t work? You know, pushing government to really stop, look at everything that you’ve put into place, do a fresh review of all of it, look at the efficacy and repeal some of these things when they don’t work. One of the ones that really kind of I see as a problematic policy that they put into place is the federal foreign homebuyer ban. If you look at the total number of statistics of home sales going to foreign buyers across the country, they made an announcement that was affecting less than 1.3% of the market. So what were you expecting to achieve by making that announcement to begin with? The most cursory research would have told you you’re not making what at best you’ve just affected 1.3%. Like it’s not a major move.

When they’ve implemented that policy, they’ve made a series of sizable gaps and it’s caused some problems within British Columbia. For example, there’s several ski municipalities that were covered under this blanket ban because they’re incorporated as a municipality. So Sun Peaks, for example, is incorporated as a municipality. So the foreign home buyer ban encapsulates Sun Peaks. So you’ve got several ski hills across the province who are already reeling, trying to recover from the COVID years. Now you’re just banning foreign investment on condos on a ski hill that are not for permanent occupancy anyway.

So they’ve made those mistakes while providing exemptions to places like Whistler. None of it’s helpful. None of it was really meaningful policy to begin with. These are the kind of things. Stop, do your homework, actually work out the metrics. Is this stuff working? And if it isn’t, get rid of it because we don’t need a less is more all kind of policies all over the place scenario. We just need policies that are working and we’d like to see them just stop and review everything that’s been put into place over the last five years.

Matt Scalena: So if the conservatives won a majority, would you think, okay, that’s definitely the first step, right? You go back and you start repealing. One through 10 here on the situation that we’re in, do you think they’re going back and changing a lot of the stuff the liberals put in place over the last decade?

Trevor Hargreaves: I think it remains to be seen what Carney’s perspective is and who the new housing minister ends up being. Is that Sean Fraser coming back? I don’t really know at this point, but 50-50 I’d say. I think it really depends on they’ve got a lot of new ideas and their focus is probably moving forwards. But this would be a sound way that they could look at what they’re already doing and take a fresh start.

Matt Scalena: Getting to the end here, Trevor. Number eight, homelessness.

Trevor Hargreaves: Homelessness I threw in there because I thought it was interesting within the liberal platform. You’re talking about all these different things, all kinds of detailed ideas. I thought MERB was really progressive and yet there was very little discussion around homelessness. I was in Ottawa last October and I thought it was really interesting that we’re taking meetings in Parliament, I’m a block away and there’s people sleeping on steam grates a block away from parliament. I found that to be a just jarring moment where you’re here at the base of operations of your country with an outward homelessness problem all surrounding where government is operating out of and I just I was stricken with the fact that this isn’t good enough.

And as I wrote in that article, we’re a G7 country. This has been a spiraling issue for years. We need to find solutions to this and not a bandaid fix, but outward fixes. And I think if Carney wants to come at things as a fresh, strong leader, you have municipalities that are very dedicated to trying to find solutions. You have provincial leadership very dedicated, but this is outside of their scope. At the end of the day, this needs strong federal policy, leadership, and money.

And doing what we do, I think we can be all too focused on market realities and the business aspect of the housing spectrum. I think if we’re going to pick apart housing, like let’s get people who need houses, houses, and nobody should be sleeping in alleys and on grates within this country. And if that’s okay for people, I think they need to shake their head and think better. And I think with a new leader coming in and a new approach, that’s something that it’s, if we’re to make this a better country moving forwards, and we’re going to try to make Canada a more livable environment, we need to get people off the streets.

Matt Scalena: The chance that it happens one through 10.

Trevor Hargreaves: I have no idea. It wasn’t in their policy platform, but it’s articles like that, that when you write them quickly, you know, you have a really good odd of getting out there and that’s going to land on the planning office within Carney’s department and within the housing ministry. And so I write things like that because I truly believe it. I’m just trying to use my role and my experience in policy to try to push for better when I can.

I’m not super optimistic, I would like to be, but I think that’s one of those issues we have just seen be getting worse and worse and I think it needs some really radical focus.

Matt Scalena: So five.

Trevor Hargreaves: Let’s say five.

Matt Scalena: Kind of in the same vein, although not entirely. Number nine, affordable housing. So, some people would say, well, wait a second. The DCC charges will hopefully lead to costs coming down. MERB is hopefully going to lead to more affordable housing, but you did have one of the 10 precious spots for affordable housing. How was it different? What’d you mean?

Trevor Hargreaves: I was trying to be holistic in this as well. Again, so I’m not just giving feedback. That’s why I added that homelessness section so that what we’re talking about is the whole spectrum of housing, the concept of housing, because that’s one of things that kept the NDP down. They were focused in their one little aspect of policy. The conservatives are very focused on the business side of things. The Liberals as a relatively centrist government at this point in time, and they are the government in power, they need to be coming up with solutions basically for all Canadians.

So what I was talking about when I added affordable housing, was talking about expansion of grants and loans for specific high-need housing demographics. So aside obviously from the homeless, we’re talking about demographics that are just economically really struggling, supportive housing, emergency shelters, expanded student housing, which is something that’s in very short supply and ever more challenged amidst low rental rates within metro areas.

And targeted expansion of senior housing as well, because that’s another segment where the retirement population and the boomers aging, there’s going to be an explosion of need for senior housing in coming years that it’s questionable as to whether or not any of that is being addressed at size and scale as it needs to be. It’s the kind of thing where you can’t just suddenly get caught out and go, “oh, how do we deal with it?” Because you deal with it over 10 years of careful policy planning and building and the time to be doing that is now.

So I wanted to add that in. That’s credit to other people’s work very often where I’m educated on these subjects from reading their work and from reading nonprofit organizations in their research. So I try to be holistic in that article which is why I threw that in because, again, how else do you best represent Canadians than focusing in areas like that?

Matt Scalena: Yeah, no, fair enough. Optimism score?

Trevor Hargreaves: Again, it remains to be seen. I’m sure they’ll do better in some categories rather than others, but why don’t we give it a six out of 10?

Matt Scalena: Okay, and the last, last but not least, and I mean this genuinely because this is one that I think everybody can agree on, work more collectively as three layers of government in cohesive partnership. What do you mean? What do you think?

Trevor Hargreaves: Yeah, I think that the last few years you’ve had the provincial government under David Eby really ramrodding through a lot of, as I mentioned earlier, like a lot of change, rezoning, housing targets, all of these things, throwing municipalities into a bit of a state of disarray at times as they try to figure out like, how are we supposed to move quickly enough? You know, municipal government are not known for moving quickly, and smaller municipal governments are often staffed with people that have been there for 30 years. You know, they’re not quick, immediate, best practice kind of people. Which is not to – don’t take that as a blanket offense, municipal listeners, but it can be the case.

So to come at them with these like progressive goals with kind of no warning and no collaboration has been very challenging for certain areas. So you’ve got the province going in that avenue. You’ve got provinces acting differently and not particularly collaborating on each other. I have seen bad policy put into place that hasn’t been properly researched provincially, put into place in British Columbia and then Ontario look at that policy six months later and go, “hey, what’s that progressive thing they’re doing in BC? Let’s adopt that.” You know, like that’s not good.

The municipalities need to work much or be much more closely consulted and worked with when it comes to the province. The provinces need to really work and have a collective say, working with each other and sharing ideas and approaches and similar policy where they can and then the federal government needs to show leadership and this needs to operate much more as one big cohesive pie so that it’s three tiers but everybody’s part of the same team and essentially working for the same corporation.

And I think we have seen at times the federal government looking to make a regional housing announcement, they’re gonna hold a press release in Vancouver and then they call it off because Vancouver is making a municipal announcement that’s the antithesis of what they’re about to announce and it’s all chaos. They’ve actively been working against each other and we’re all just taxpayers in this country. We’re amidst a housing crisis – get your act in order. And I think that starts with the federal government. They’re the boss, they’re the top desk and it’s a top-down scenario. They’re the ones that should be making sure that structures are in place to have the kind of oversight and collaboration that you need to properly run this country, to properly organize the tiers of government, and to get the job done at the end of the day.

Matt Scalena: Well, you know, and this kind of – it’s different, but it makes me think of all the kind of strengthening trade relationships across the country and making sure that if you’re in one profession in BC, you can move to Alberta or wherever else you want. I mean, this is kind of in the same vein. Like you said, it’s time to get your act together. Let’s get all on the same page and start pulling in the same direction.

As an optimism score, and this is your last score, so think carefully.

Matt Scalena: And this is a big ask. This is a big ask as well.

Trevor Hargreaves: I think that there will be steps in the right direction. Will they fulsomely achieve this? I doubt it, but I think it’ll be better than it’s been. I think again, the necessity of Trump or the necessity of reinventing under Trump’s shadow puts additional pressure on government to just be a more effective operation. This entire country needs to be more effective operation moving forwards.

So I think out of necessity, strong steps are going to be taken to that degree. So I’m optimistic there will be positive steps over the Carney administration. I’ll give that an 80%.

Matt Scalena: Wow, okay.

Trevor Hargreaves: Well, I’m not saying that at the end of the administration is going to be a harmonious perfect three layers of government, but I think they’ll get to the point where they’re not tripping over each other’s feet and mayors are super mad at the premier and are calling out things that the provincial government are announcing and the provinces aren’t supportive of housing measures that are federal, et cetera. I think we’re going to have a more cohesive approach and there’s room for the dust to settle and for everybody to get a bit better organized.

Matt Scalena: The total score, Trevor, was 72.5. Reminds me of my high school grades. And that’s not saying much, but I do feel like my general take here from our conversation is, and I should say, especially in relation to a lot of people we’ve had on the show lately, you seem quite optimistic about the future of the country right now.

Trevor Hargreaves: I’ll say as well, you know, I had a hard time deciding how to vote. I actually got to meet Carney the week before the election very briefly. I went to one of his rallies just to see the guy. I’ve seen Poilievre speak, I’d never seen Carney. I didn’t think that there was a magic bullet party here. It was a challenging scenario, but I think that he brings a lot and he brings a much needed new voice, a new approach.

I don’t love the fact that it’s still the same party in place that was responsible for a lot of the problems before. But again, a new leader can be very transformative and we’re talking specifically about housing policy today and they brought a lot of good policy ideas to the table that I’ve just expanded upon in this article. So I’m optimistic that when it comes to housing policy, you enact a bunch of the things we’re talking about today, you’re going to get a lot more done than has been done over the last four years.

Matt Scalena: That’s a good place to leave it. We do have this segment called the five wire Trevor, five light hearted questions. I did make some changes from the last time you were on cause you were on fairly recently. Do you have time to stick around for that?

Trevor Hargreaves: Brand timing.

Matt Scalena: All right, one of them is the same, just because you strike me as a prolific reader. One book you have read recently that you’d recommend to all our listeners.

Trevor Hargreaves: I’m just trying to remember the name of the darn book. It is a book by the tambourinist of the band The Brian Jonestown Massacre about his sort of shambolic experience of that band becoming a band. Well, you’re used to hearing it’s the bassist or the incredibly talented lead singer or solo guitar, so it’s just the guy that does the tambourine. So it’s kind of a hilarious read. So I’ve been reading, I’m sorry the name escapes me as to what the name of the book is but I’m always big on mixing my politics with music autobiographies.

Matt Scalena: But it’s a good story. It’s a well-written book.

Trevor Hargreaves: It’s gripping, in fact. It’s kind of in that way that it’s hard to look away from a train wreck, but I’ve been quite into it. It was recommended to me and yeah, I’ve been quite into it.

Matt Scalena: I’m in. It’s a 10 out of 10. Right on. What’s a restaurant in Metro Vancouver that you think more people should know about?

Trevor Hargreaves: Fable. I went in there last Friday and it was like right after work. The place should have been overwhelmed with business, but it has a great patio. The food was great. The service was great and it was quiet in there and it’s like right downtown. So check it out.

Matt Scalena: Alright, that’s a good one. I think we asked you this last time because I’ve been going down a justified watch for a while here, and I think that was your pick. What have you been binge watching lately or a favorite movie or movie recommendation?

Trevor Hargreaves: My 15 but about to turn 16 year old son sold me on this show. And I didn’t believe him but he was like I was watching this, you got to see it, let’s start it back in episode 1 – Tulsa King which stars Sylvester Stallone about a 25 year ex-con. So he’s been in prison for 25 years, he gets out of jail, he goes back to like the mob that he was working for in New York and he gets relocated to Tulsa and starts about this whole sort of crime empire, starting with a marijuana, legalized marijuana store. And it’s funny, it’s entertaining, and it’s just a great watch. There’s two seasons, and it’s a great watch from beginning to end.

Matt Scalena: Wow, I don’t think I’ve even heard of that one.

Trevor Hargreaves: And I would have never watched it – like, Sylvester Stallone is not gonna draw me to a new show. I wouldn’t have believed it. I was very skeptical, but he’s great. He’s completely hilarious. It’s well cast. It’s totally entertaining. It’s kind of in the avenue of the Sopranos as well. It has its hard-hitting crime moments, but it’s a great watch.

Matt Scalena: Fantastic. What’s a strong opinion you held five years ago that has completely changed today?

Trevor Hargreaves: That’s the one you’re supposed to email me a week in advance so I can sit up every night trying to figure out.

You know, I was reflecting when we were just talking about the election where it was like, wow, it’s crazy times. It’s crazy times. You know, you look at COVID and we were like, wow, it’s crazy times. It’s crazy. You look at now, it’s like it’s crazy times. It’s crazy times. I think my opinion would be like, you know, life is fairly predictable and no, it ain’t. That is probably where my opinion currently sits. We have a talk show, an unqualified talk show host for a president, essentially running a country next door, reinventing democracy next door to us. We have, you know, we’re coming out of multiple years of living indoors from a plague. Who the hell knows what’s next, alien invasion? It’s creative days the last few years.

Matt Scalena: Yeah, you know what? It’s true. I feel like everyone I’ve heard this a million times, but if this was a movie the last five years, you wouldn’t pull it. You wouldn’t have believed it if it came out in like 98 or something like that. It would just be too ridiculous.

Trevor Hargreaves: You would also send the script back for better character revision to make the characters more detailed and believable. It’s – I don’t know. This is not how I pictured being an adult. I didn’t think I was coming into like the plague years followed by the war with your neighbors years. It’s a little odd.

Matt Scalena: It was pretty stable there for a while. Last one on these Trevor, and we appreciate your time. If you had to start your career over in a completely different industry, what would you choose?

Trevor Hargreaves: I think I would go into the trades sector and get into prefabricated housing. I hear it’s a growth industry.

Matt Scalena: Commercial plumbing it is, okay.

Trevor Hargreaves: Yeah, commercial plumbing or electrical, I think, is probably the truth. That’s where the money is.

Matt Scalena: I, you know what, and the ability to start your own business is a really exciting kind of component of there. There’s kind of a, not that it would be easy, but there’s a clear path. It’s a fairly established line to something you could scale. So, no, that’s great. Well, thank you again for your time, Trevor. The article was in Business in Vancouver. How can people find out more about what you’re up to? I would say follow along on LinkedIn, cause you’re fighting the good fight over there. But how else can people find out what you and the BCREA are up to?

Trevor Hargreaves: Yeah, I’m struggling when it comes to LinkedIn lately because as we said it’s ever more kind of vitriolic and overly opinionated. You’re trying to behave yourself in a corporate manner, not get into these stupid ideological debates with people, but it’s a strangely evolving atmosphere there. When it comes to my writing, I write frequently for the BIV as well as the Orca which is sort of the BIV’s political offshoot.

You can always go to the advocacy page or just the main website at BCREA.ca or check out the ever entertaining narrative and back and forth on my LinkedIn page, which, I think there’s a lot to talk about on an ongoing basis and I try to chime in on topical issues and inspire feedback from people and I find it a very interesting forum these days. It’s a little bit less toxic.

Matt Scalena: Fantastic. Well, thanks again for your time and I’m not sure there’s an election coming up too soon, but we’ll have to have you back on as soon as you have the time.

Trevor Hargreaves: I’ll see you when the municipal elections get called, I guess.

Matt Scalena: Thanks Trevor.

Trevor Hargreaves: All right, see you next time.