Absolutely, though the feds do have a significant impact via the tax code. The last period of time when lots of apartments were built in the 1960s-70s was a per

Absolutely, though the feds do have a significant impact via the tax code. The last period of time when lots of apartments were built in the 1960s-70s was a period of time when there was oodles of tax giveaways to apartment builders. Additionally in that period the federal government was deeply involved in funding the development of publicly owned housing and coops. That ended in the late 80s and by the time of the main austerity budget of the Chretien Liberals in '93 the Feds were completely uninvolved in funding social housing. So yeah a long period of nil social housing funding and few incentives to build housing and no real surprise that the country got to a point where it was severely underbuilding.