Mayors from Canada are in Regina for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) annual conference.

One of the major focuses of FCM is to push for solutions to the housing affordability challenges that cities in Canada are urgently facing.

Mike Savage, the Mayor of Halifax and Chair of the Big Mayors Caucus, said that Mayors and residents’ housing crisis is top of mind.

“We all agree that more needs to be done to fix this crisis,” he said. “Cities across the country are doing their part to expand the right kind of housing supply.”

Savage said that it takes all levels of government working together to improve housing.

“Ensuring people have access to many kinds of affordable holmes is crucial to economic growth and to our countries recovery.”

He noted one of those ways is through the federal government’s $4 billion housing accelerating fund has the potential to deliver real housing solutions.

“It can help get housing built faster through direct and flexible investments,” he said. “We believe this fund can empower municipalities to tackle the most serious local barriers. Like access to financing, the availability and cost of land, regulations to review and improve development applications.”

“This federal fund is a major step. It’s something Cities want to immediately develop with the federal government, but we know more is needed than just this fund to fix the housing crisis.”

Savage stated action needs to be taken now.

“People don’t want to hear about jurisdiction; they frankly don’t want to hear about political parties. What they want to hear about our solutions.”