The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made housing announcements on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, in Halifax, Toronto and Winnipeg. The Globe's Tony Keller writes that sending half the cabinet on a barnstorming tour, all performing the same song and dance numbers, is old-hat politics, but give the government this much: The actual housing announcements were real -- and substantial. The most important are the Apartment Construction Loan Program, an existing $40-billion pot of loan guarantees for rental housing developers, which is getting another $15-billion; and the new $6-billion Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund. According to a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. analysis from last year, getting shelter prices down to reasonable levels calls for building 5.8 million homes over a decade. CIBC economist Benjamin Tal updated that estimate this year, and concluded the shortfall is a million homes higher. We need to build around seven million homes over a decade. According to CMHC, Canada had 271,000 housing starts in 2021 and 262,000 in 2022. That is higher than at any time since the 1970s -- and still nowhere near enough. We need to build at around three times that pace.