VICTORIA – The Liberals have kicked off their re-election campaign with a promise to help Canada’s first-time home buyers by convincing existing home owners that their houses are haunted.

“After an exhaustive study of the prohibitively expensive housing markets in Vancouver, Toronto, and other municipalities, our economists came to the conclusion that the only way first-time buyers could afford to enter the housing market in most Canadian cities and towns was to scare current home owners into selling for massive discounts,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said while explaining the program during a campaign stop.

Under the program, once a prospective buyer qualifies for a mortgage for a home (which assumes there will be at least a 33% drop in the price of that home due to apparently paranormal activity) the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation then pays for all of the costs of faking a frightening spectral infestation on the property.

“There’s literally no other way to get baby boomers out of these houses, believe me, we’ve looked into all of the alternatives,” Trudeau said. “Appeals to their sense of community and empathy for a younger generation that has far less disposable income have not had any impact on housing availability or cost, but pilot haunting programs have had a massively high success rate, not just in motivating homeowners to sell, but in inspiring them to lower prices to what millennials can actually afford.”

The program relies primarily on creating a typical poltergeist, or angry spirit, type haunting. Homeowners will experience minor but puzzling events including but not limited to massive temperature swings and mysterious banging noises in the middle of the night, leading up to a climactic discovery of terrifying messages written on the walls and sightings of diaphanous white figures who disappear when pursued.

The program is expected to knock hundreds of thousands of dollars off the list price of many houses and prompt quick, panicked sales, also saving first-time buyers the costs of having to furnish the homes as they will usually be sold in the middle of the night, as-is.

The Conservatives have blasted the plan as another Liberal attempt to buy voters and promised that if they are elected, first-time home buyers will only receive financial help from the federal government if they can prove they deserve it by not needing it.