who wrote the headline? now, look at the confused comments. yeesh.

he's trying to spur investment. you've no doubt heard that tax cuts for businesses create jobs [although they don't]. by the same logic, tax cuts for property developers making rental units should create more rental units, although it probably won't for the same reason that tax cuts to businesses don't actually create jobs. and, this would in theory reduce rental costs by increasing the supply, if it were to actually work.

another thing that is restricting supply and thereby driving up costs is the large amount of dilapidated housing we have in our urban cores. money to fix these units up would drive prices down by increasing the supply. except that it's ignoring the fact that they were largely left in disrepair because property owners want to reduce the supply of housing to drive up costs in the first place.

what is at the core of the problem is that housing is too concentrated in too few hands. these steps are good, but in order to truly be effective they need to be paired with rules that restrict the amount of housing that a company can own in any specific area.

judging by the comments - and i've seen this elsewhere, most notably at occupy - the liberals have two issues in getting a policy like this across to voters:

1) the people that want lower rental costs don't understand the economics underlying the policy.
2) the efficacy of the economics underlying the policy is questionable at best, anyways.

but, the idea is that less taxes = more rental units = lower rental costs. if you combine that with pro-active action to breakup large landowning companies, you have a decent policy.

remember - the problem with markets is not that they create competition. it's that they prevent competition. if you leave a market to evolve without interference, it will become a monopoly. state intervention is required to break the institutions up and allow the market to function. and, the contemporary tendency of governments to refuse to do this is at the root of a lot of the problems we have in front of us.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/09/liberals-vow-tax-breaks-for-landlords-homeowners-as-part-of-social-housing-plan_n_8109734.html