If there’s anything that Canadians are grumpy about these days, it’s the cost of housing — and the Liberals are tapping directly into that vein with their first big policy announcement of the campaign.

It’s great politics, but the verdict on the economics is muddier.

Standing in front of a Victoria housing development under construction this week, Justin Trudeau announced that he would enhance a mortgage subsidy for first-time home buyers by allowing more expensive homes to qualify — but only in Victoria, Vancouver and Toronto. He would also implement a national tax on foreign speculators, aiming to drive away house-flippers who push up prices without even living here.

And just like that, the federal Liberals extended a hand to young families in the country’s most expensive real-estate markets.

In Victoria, instead of the 1 per cent of single-family homes that qualify for the first-time homebuyer’s incentive that just came into effect, the new plan would allow a quarter of those homes to qualify, according to Canadian Real Estate Association figures.

In the Toronto region, where just 2 per cent of single-family homes qualify for now, the new plan would allow 26 per cent of those homes into the program.

The big difference for Vancouverites would be in the condo market. Current plan: 23 per cent covered. New plan: 68 per cent.

As for geography, a large part of the country is excluded from the proposed enhancement because their real estate markets aren’t distorted enough. The cities were chosen based on the gap between income and home prices, and Montreal, despite rising prices, didn’t quite make the cut.

The boundaries of the three cities that are included in the new plan, however, are generous. For the Toronto area, it includes Dufferin Region, Durham Region, Peel Region, Milton, Oakville, Simcoe and York Region.

The Liberals estimate that an extra 20,000 home buyers would benefit, on top of the initial 100,000 from the original plan that came into effect this month after being announced in the last budget.

The symbolism reaches well beyond 120,000 however. The Environics Institute has some new research looking at attitudes towards government services and compares Canadians to other countries. Researchers found that in 2018, Canadians were relatively happy with education and health care. But they’re quite unhappy with access to quality housing that is affordable.

The young are more unhappy than the old. And most people are getting grumpier over time.

Statistics Canada had some new data on Friday that could explain why: mortgages are increasingly biting into family finances.

The household debt service ratio — the amount people owe plus the amount they pay in interest, as a proportion of their disposable income — rose to 14.9 per cent in the second quarter of 2019. That’s the highest ever. Disposable income is climbing, up by 1.4 per cent. But debt payments grew faster, up by 1.8 per cent.

Mortgage rates have slid a bit since those measures were taken, but the trend is clear: the cost of carrying a home is stifling many people.

Would the new Liberal proposals help?

Most analysis of the affordability strain points to supply as the source of the problem, and the federal government has emphasized supply as well — at least until recently.

Both the new proposals target the demand side of the market.

Enhancing mortgage subsidies in expensive markets encourages more first-timers to get into the market and to take on more expensive houses than otherwise — at the risk of driving up prices in some markets, which would be counterproductive at best.

But the original government program was barely touching the country’s most expensive markets, risk or no risk. So the enhancement will be of some help to some homebuyers in some markets.

Putting a tax on foreign speculators would pull the other way, dampening demand — but only if foreign speculation is indeed prevalent enough to be influential on prices. There’s limited data about how influential that speculation actually is, and that data suggests there are very few vacant, foreign-owned houses except in a handful of neighbourhoods.

“The stock of vacant houses is not large enough to make a big difference (on home prices) outside some neighbourhoods in Vancouver and maybe Toronto,” said economist Benjamin Tal at CIBC Capital Markets.

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Finding a fix for housing affordability is like a game of Pick-Up-Sticks. You pull ever so gently on one troublesome part of the market, and many other parts of the market risk being rattled and shaken. Since two thirds of households are homeowners in Canada and often rely on their home equity as a de facto retirement plan, rattling and shaking those nest eggs is perilous.

The federal government, under both Trudeau and Stephen Harper, moved stealthily and deliberately over many years to make sure the housing bubbles in Canada did not pop so suddenly as to hurt the equity of so many. Every move they made was met with controversy because every policy decision created winners and losers.

So while the Liberal measures might not solve the affordability problem all at once, recent history shows it’s well worth moving cautiously around this precarious pile of sticks.