In Québec, lease transfers are “one of the only tools that tenants have for ensuring affordable rents” amidst a worsening housing crisis. However, the governing centre-right CAQ has tabled, Bill 31, which would eliminate lease transfers from the tenant playbook. Housing expert Gavin Armitage-Ackerman calls this legislation “class warfare.”

Improved rent controls alone will not solve the housing crisis, but they can play a major role. With the evidence on our side, and a rigged market on the other, it’s long overdue for cities and provinces across Canada to pursue improved, expansive rent controls, and help bring the outrageous and unchallenged influence of speculators to an end.

What Québecers need more than anything is a chance to finally break with a stale orthodoxy, one which says that housing is not only out of our control, but that its priority is to be an investment opportunity above all else. As Gavin Armitage-Ackerman writes, Québec Solidaire’s platform offers a chance to finally reject that status quo.

Recent polling shows that more than ever, Canadians cite housing affordability as one of their top election issues. This should come as no surprise: years of political inaction has led us to a desperate housing emergency in which speculators and developers reap massive profits, while working class Canadians pay record amounts of their income just to have a roof over their heads.