It may be part of the role of government to build social housing. But is it the role of the federal government, specifically?

It’s a national housing strategy. It’s a national strategy, for housing. It’s a housing strategy, only it’s national. It’s a strategy for national housing…

That gives you the flavour of much of the coverage of the Trudeau government’s new National Housing Strategy. Had it simply been billed as a plan to spend more money on housing it might not have excited quite such admiring notice. But somehow those two words — “national” and “strategy” — seem to have a peculiarly bewitching effect. It is enough to recommend it that it is, or is called, a national strategy. What’s actually in the strategy? Who cares!

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This is especially true of Liberals, who are famously in favour of “a national strategy” for just about everything. In some cases, to be sure, such enthusiasm is justified. A national strategy for freeing trade within our borders would be nice: enforcing the existing constitutional ban on internal barriers to trade is a quintessentially federal responsibility, even if federal governments of all stripes have generally shirked it.

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But housing? Suppose it were true, as reported, that the federal government was “returning” to the housing file, and not, as with much of the announced spending — er, strategy — merely renewing existing federal programs. Would that necessarily be a good thing? It may be part of the role of government to build social housing. But is it the role of the federal government, specifically? What is it about housing that recommends it as a federal responsibility, as opposed to the provinces or indeed municipalities where the housing will be built?

Do federal politicians know something about the housing needs of Lethbridge or Chicoutimi that the mayors of those cities don’t? If, as the Globe and Mail reports, “the goal is to promote diverse communities with a mix of incomes and uses that are near transit, work, grocery stores and public services,” are these really best assessed from Ottawa?

There’s an exception to this. The best part of the federal plan, from a number of perspectives, is the new Canada Housing Benefit. Rather than being used to build public housing, which may or may not be to its tenants’ liking (the historical experience is distinctly spotty), the money would go to supplementing the rents of its intended beneficiaries, following them around wherever they choose to live. Paying benefits in cash rather than in kind is not only better social policy, on the whole — money, as George Bernard Shaw said, gives us what we want, rather than what other people think we need — but it’s also an appropriately federal intervention, since people may decide to move not just within each province but between them.

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But even here, there are problems. For the federal money appears to be contingent on the provinces matching it out of their own budgets. (Federal background material describes the provincial funds as “expected.”) Not only are the Liberals proposing to go halvesies on the $4-billion Canada Housing Benefit, but also the $8.6-billion Canada Community Housing Initiative and much else besides. We are back to the old 50-50 cost-sharing formula of the 1970s.

There’s a reason why these sorts of programs fell out of favour. Either the provinces dictate how spending is allocated, in which case the feds are forced to watch while the provinces spend 50-cent dollars without having to account for the results. Or the provinces find themselves under pressure to fall in line with federal spending priorities, which may or may not coincide with their own. (You say housing is an urgent priority? So are lots of things: health, education, social assistance. And resources are finite.)

Photo by Bruno Schlumberger/Postmedia/File

Or, as is often the case, you get a bit of both: a mish-mash of blurred accountability and perpetual backbiting, allowing two sets of politicians to claim credit for spending the same money while blaming each other for any shortcomings. Until at length one side or the other, usually the feds, runs out of money or tires of the game and caps its contribution, leaving the other holding the bag for a program on which people have come to rely. Already the provinces are showing some reluctance to ante up, while Quebec issues its usual non-negotiable demand for all of the money and none of the responsibility.

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Of course, it’s good that the Liberals have not overreached: most of the opposition complaints about the plan — that it is focused on improving the lot of the poorest, rather than attempting, probably futilely, to address middle-class complaints about the cost of home ownership, or that the money is to be spent over many years rather than all at once — are in fact its virtues. But it would surely be better for the federal government to concentrate on the funding and delivery of the portable rent supplements, and leave the bricks and mortar stuff to the provinces, the cities, and the private sector.

Or if the issue is fiscal capacity — the feds have the money, and the provinces have the needs — is that not an argument for simply transferring taxing power from the federal to the lower orders of government? Shouldn’t we be trying to make each level of government accountable for raising and spending its own taxes, rather than adding yet another to the existing pile of complex, acrimonious, usually ill-managed shared-cost programs?