The federal Conservative government, in case you hadn’t noticed, is very fond of slapping consumer-friendly slogans on its legislation and announcements.

“More choice, lower prices,” boasted the banner on the podium last spring when the government announced that it was loosening the restrictions on the wireless telecommunications industry.

It seems to be tougher to come up with a banner or slogan, though, to accompany all the measures the government has been taking since 2008 to “cool the housing market,” as they say in the business pages.

That’s because there’s nothing really consumer-friendly about making it more difficult for people to buy a home. And that’s a problem, politically, for any party — not just Conservatives — who are setting themselves up to champion the beleaguered middle class in the next election.

What’s happening in the housing market, in other words, is as much a story for the political pages as it is for the business pages.

Where does the middle class live? A lot of them inhabit the fast-growing suburbs, which are largely responsible for the 30 new ridings that Canada will have in 2015 when they next go to the polls.

And what unites this middle class? Home ownership, or the dream of it.

So it’s probably not a surprise, then, that we haven’t seen the government rushing to the podiums with “Stop Buying Homes” banners as it has cracked down on the mortgage market these past few years.

From 2008 onward, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has steadily cut back on the maximum amortization terms for mortgages, from 40 years to the current 25 years. It has also limited the amount of money that Canadians can lay their hands on when they get second mortgages — from 85 per cent of the value of their home to 80 per cent.

Just this week too, the government also slapped limits on the guarantees it offers to banks and other mortgage lenders — yet another way to rein in rampant borrowing by consumers.

Canada isn’t making these moves in isolation either. South of the border, the U.S. Congress is also headed toward shutting down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage guarantors that have been helping Americans buy homes since the Depression.

It’s all a legacy of the 2008 financial crash, which had its roots in sketchy mortgages offered to people who couldn’t afford them. Since then, the U.S. and Canadian governments have been taking a harder line toward the easy availability of cheap mortgages.

Necessary as these measures may be, they have put politicians in the awkward position of telling people they can’t have what they want.

“Stop Spending,” for instance, isn’t a slogan that fits well with a Conservative government that has portrayed itself as a generous donor to the suburban homeowner, offering tax breaks for everything from renovation supplies to hockey helmets.

Harper himself likes to play up his own suburban sensibilities when he gets the chance — the prime minister who hangs out at Tim Horton’s and the hockey rink; the guy who went back to Leaside earlier this year to share his reminiscences of growing up in “a small town in Toronto” in the 1960s.

In the political context, home ownership equals hope, and rule No. 1 in politics is that hope trumps reality every time. No politician wants to stomp all over the hopes and dreams of the suburbanites, especially given their strategic importance in the 2015 election.

What we really need, it seems, is an expanded, updated concept of the Canadian dream — one that widens people’s aspirations beyond home ownership, even those people in the strategically important suburbs.

Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute in Toronto and founder of the Creative Class Group, has been a major voice in the push to shift our views on home renting. Renters, Florida argues, will give us the mobile and flexible workforces of the future. Renters are the kind of people who will move to where the jobs are.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has also been trying to call political attention to the lack of rental properties in this country. In a major report last year, titled No Vacancy, FCM argued that an effort to address the rental-home shortage would not only provide more affordable-housing options, but also create construction jobs and ease the crushing mortgage debt burden on many Canadians.

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What could be more consumer-friendly than that?

Politicians seem to be stuck in the post-war idea of the Canadian dream — home and car ownership for everyone.

But if the time has come to “cool” the housing market, maybe we need to generate some heat behind new banners and slogans — “more choices” than home ownership for the voters that all the parties are chasing. Home renters buy things too, after all.