Canada’s National Housing Strategy: A suitable case for Australian emulation?

Abstract

This paper concerns the task of national housing strategy-making in two similarly developed federal states, Canada and Australia. Strategies help to define priorities and to provide a rationale for ongoing decision-making. Strategic thinking is the antithesis of an incremental or reactive approach. For the UN study #Housing2030 (UN 2021), strategic action on housing follows a logic which begins with causal analysis, informing the selection of relevant policies and their design, which are in turn resourced via capable implementation, and adapted following evaluation. The challenge of national housing strategy-making is substantially compounded in countries like Canada and Australia where housing powers and responsibilities are primarily accorded to state or provincial administrations rather than to federal authorities. In this paper we investigate Canada’s first-ever venture of this kind, its 2017 National Housing Strategy (NHS). A key focus is the relevance of the NHS for Australia, likewise a country with little recent history of national housing policy leadership, but with a recently elected federal government pledged to develop a formal 10-year plan. Our underlying research involved documentary analysis and interviews with Canadian housing policy stakeholders, with the current paper complementing and extending the coverage of our earlier research report (Martin et al. 2023). Constituting a form of knowledge exchange, that report informed the development of a bill to legislate Australia’s National Housing and Homelessness Plan tabled in Australia’s federal parliament in 2024. Cet article porte sur l’élaboration d’une stratégie nationale en matière de logement dans deux États fédéraux développés de manière similaire, le Canada et l’Australie. Les stratégies aident à définir les priorités et à fournir une justification pour la prise de décision. La pensée stratégique est l’antithèse d’une approche incrémentale ou réactive.