Community members, experts, demand government keep speculative investors out of housing market

TORONTO — As the federal government opens the Canada Investment Summit today, a coalition of seasoned housing advocates, frontline health and food security workers, and people living through the housing crisis is telling government exactly what kind of country they expect it to build.

The statement was drafted at People Over Portfolios, a public town hall held Sept. 10 at Parkdale Activity-Recreation Centre (PARC), where people with direct experience of homelessness sat alongside experts in housing, health, and care to set out what they are demanding from government before any deal is signed. 

The Summit, hosted by the federal government with CPP Investments and PSP Investments, aims to catalyze $1 trillion in investment over five years for “nation-building projects,” with roughly 100 of the world’s largest institutional investors in attendance. The PMO will invest C$280 billion of public money into the private sector to enable that trillion dollars of investment. 

“Housing must protect human life and dignity. In Canada, ours does not. Instead, it is built to protect profit. Until that changes, until dignity comes before investor returns, the system will stay broken regardless of how many homes get financed or built.” Experts and community members stressed that we can no longer keep dishing out public funds without expecting any real public value in return. Without conditions on public loans, and human rights safeguards, these investments stand to worsen the crises the country faces.

South Parkdale is a preview of what unconditional investment produces: financial firms and corporate landlords owned 71 per cent of the neighbourhood’s rental units by 2020, and one-bedroom rents rose 57 per cent between 2015 and 2022 (Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust, Sept. 2022). Toronto’s subsidized housing waitlist stood at 104,851 households in Q1 2026; only 750 were housed that quarter (City of Toronto, Social Housing Waiting List Reports, Q1 2026).

“The Investment Summit begins September 14. Housing is not for sale, and neither is the wellbeing of the people who depend on it.,” the statement reads.

Members of the community will be at the Many vs. the Money protest representing their housing demands.

About The Shift

The Call to Action was convened with The Shift, a global organization working at the intersection of housing, finance, and climate through a human rights lens. Led by global director Leilani Farha, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing from 2014 to 2020 and the 2026 CBC Massey Lecturer. The Shift brings decades of legal, human rights and on-the-ground expertise to bear on exactly the question this Summit raises: who investment is supposed to serve.

About PARC

Parkdale Activity-Recreation Centre, Parkdale’s living room since 1980, runs a seven-day drop-in, operates 109 units of supportive housing, and delivers employment, harm reduction and food programs.

Media contact

Kirsten McRae, Director of Communications, The Shift kirsten@maketheshift.org