SoVote

Ms. Melissa Lantsman (Thornhill, CPC)

Dec/9/21 2:16:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are guaranteed freedom of expression in our Constitution except, apparently, according to the Toronto District School Board, when it comes to calling out anti-Semitism. School board trustee Alexandra Lulka was unfairly singled out for her criticism of anti-Semitic resources distributed back in May. They promoted terrorism. Even a review concluded that the pamphlets were anti-Semitic and Lulka was right, but the TDSB's integrity commissioner went ahead and recommended censure of this trustee. The threat of censuring trustee Lulka not only shows that the TDSB does not consider the lived experiences of Jews who have faced dangerous consequences of vile hate to be valid, it shows that it does not care. It is extremely concerning given we have spent the last year facing a reckoning on racism. Last night, TDSB trustees listened to reason and made the only justifiable decision. They voted no; it was 10 to seven. It should have been 17 to zero. This should have never been considered, and it is far from over in the largest taxpayer-funded school board in the country. I will never let it go unnoticed in the House.

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Context: House Hansard - 14 - Dec/9/21

Ms. Melissa Lantsman (Thornhill, CPC)

Dec/9/21 4:56:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House to speak today to an issue that people in the great riding of Thornhill and across the country see as a priority. Also, I will be splitting my time with my hon. colleague, the member for Mégantic—L'Érable. We have a housing crisis. Our country is facing a severe housing shortage, contributing to unprecedented increases in housing prices in almost every part of the country, including one of the hardest-hit regions, the GTA. The government simply cannot ignore this. I heard it on the campaign, in my constituency and from many young people, who continue to inspire me but whose dream of home ownership is falling further and further out of reach. Some even laugh at me when I suggest a future in which they own a home anywhere near my riding. Worse, any prospective home buyers have started tempering their expectations. I never thought I would describe our country as a land of tempering expectations, but here we are. In my community, the biggest fear for parents, their constant refrain, is that their kids cannot afford to live in the same neighbourhood they grew up in. I hear over and over again how their kids “cannot afford to live here”, full stop. There is a bigger issue in all of this. When people cannot afford to live where they grew up, when they are priced out of the market, there are deep impacts on families and the community. It impacts the connection between us, between one another, and has deep impacts on our connections to the institutions that help build our communities, such as our churches, synagogues and seniors centres. The connection points that do the work that government cannot, and never should, are further out of reach. Therefore, we live further from our parents, we see them less and they see us less, not because we want to but because we have been priced out. Many are leaving the communities entirely and are moving to more affordable parts of the country, wherever those places may be, and it does not sound like there are very many. That drives the prices up there, starting the same cycle. A billboard in downtown Toronto reads, “Can't afford a home? Have you tried finding richer parents?” While this might be tongue-in-cheek, it is not untrue. Here is the problem. I do not have rich parents. Most Canadians do not have rich parents, although some do. The real estate forecast in Toronto, and in my riding at its gates, will see huge gains next year. The average price is expected to hit $1.16 million in October. That is up 10% from this year. Over the past year, the average sale price increased 7%. That is 7% higher than the almost $1.2 million that it will take to break into the market. Therefore, people are going to need some very rich parents to break into that housing market. The government will tell us that it is all a product of global inflation, supply chains and whatever the buzzwords of the week happen to be. However, as this side of the House continues to point out over and over again, with the hopes that one day the government will realize it, land prices are not tied to global supply chains. The Prime Minister has failed to take action and address the growing housing and affordability crisis in Canada. In fact, home prices have reached record levels. Prices have risen under the government by more than 20%. It had six years to fix the rising home prices in Canada, but the problem has only become worse. Instead of putting forward policies to build homes, it has doubled down on failed policy and pumped billions of taxpayer dollars into a national housing strategy, which has resulted in higher home prices. Therefore, the government's affordable housing strategy has built housing units that are more expensive than the average rent, not less. We will hear the government brag about spending money on this issue, a record amount of cash, yet $1.2 million for a starter home in my riding is a record that nobody wants to break. It is one we cannot afford to break. Therefore, it is the wrong metric. We can never define the success of a federal strategy with the number of tax dollars the government can spend. The metric should be the number of Canadians who are able to access the home that they need, the home that they want. With all those tax dollars and the promise to build and repair over a million homes, construction is down from the previous election to this recent one, which means things are getting worse. Our motion today touches on something very serious. There is a lot of foreign money flowing into Canada's housing market. Some of this is being funded through money laundering and proceeds of crime. In some cases, foreign investors are sitting on the investments and leaving homes empty. There are 1.3 million empty homes in Canada. Obviously, we know this pushes prices up, putting home ownership further and further out of reach for more and more Canadians. The government's solution is to actually tax them 1%. Billionaires have the government on their Christmas card list because of how absolutely generous it is at the cost of Canadians. Today's motion offers something better for Canadians. It is to ban foreign ownership. Billionaires abroad will not like it, but Canadians will, and our motion today has solutions. In fact, so many of my colleagues have provided thoughtful solutions in the House. We can take, for example, the vast amount of land and number of buildings the federal government owns, more than 37,000 of them, and we have heard that number before, and nearly 41 million hectares of land. This is a substantial amount of property and buildings that could immediately provide the municipalities and provinces with help on supply. This is, after all, a supply side problem. These are tangible solutions, and we are faced with a government that simply spends more to get less. I have more in the way of solutions. What can work well is if we tie the building of houses to infrastructure funding, infrastructure has dollars that the government spends on housing supply; that is if the infrastructure dollars ever get out the door. I know there is some trouble with that, but we suggested building more in high-density areas, working with municipalities that are already getting cash for infrastructure. Stakeholders agreed, communities in which they would be built welcomed it and it seemed the government also agreed to at least announce them over and over again, stopping short of just building them. The motion makes clear that we also never want the government to commit to introducing a capital gains tax on the sale of primary residences. For communities like mine, for people like my parents who came to this country in the seventies and fulfilled their dream of home ownership through hard work, they did not have the benefit of fancy financial advisers or a retirement savings plan. For them, the equity in their homes is their retirement plan. That is it, and that is how it is for many. With that tax, I am sure we would not see very many home sales, regardless. I hope members opposite understand that this is not a phenomenon that exists just in Thornhill. It exists for many others. I have heard all day from those who have tied themselves in knots with reasons to not support this motion, but I will remind members that we have been talking about solutions. We have heard it from the member for Carleton, who apparently lives rent-free in the heads of the members opposite. Our own platform made commitments to increase the rate of home construction, to build a million homes over the next three years, to make homes more affordable by renewing the extensive real estate portfolio of the government, the largest property owner with over 37,000 buildings, and we are talking about buildings, and releasing at least 15% of that so we can build some more homes. We have talked about requiring municipalities receiving federal funding to tie them to high-density public transit and things like that. We brought forward the notion that encouraged Canadians to invest in rental homes by allowing the deferral of capital gains tax when selling a rental property. Imagine that from the current government. There are many solutions. We want to see a government committed also to making it easier to get a mortgage. For those reasons and many others, on this last opposition day of the year, I hope members of the House support the review and consolidation of all federal real estate in order to make 15% of that available for development. I hope members will vote to ban foreign investors from purchasing Canadian real estate and commit to never introducing a capital gains tax on primary residences, ever.

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Context: House Hansard - 14 - Dec/9/21

Ms. Melissa Lantsman

Dec/9/21 5:06:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if that is not true, then I look forward to him supporting the motion.

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Context: House Hansard - 14 - Dec/9/21

Ms. Melissa Lantsman

Dec/9/21 5:07:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is part of a solution that needs to encompass all types of housing, including rental housing, including those who do not have housing and including those in social housing. I know that the hon. members on this side from my party had spoken about it. I look forward to engaging in a constructive conversation with the hon. member on solutions for the increased supply of rental housing.

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Context: House Hansard - 14 - Dec/9/21

Ms. Melissa Lantsman

Dec/9/21 5:08:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our platform during the last election talked about reimplementing the housing first plan to deal with this. I think there are a lot of different measures we want to see from the government, such as more investment in mental health, a strategy on addiction and wraparound services on recovery. There are some core issues that I think affect some of that population. There could be a lot more done on the periphery of this, including engagement in the housing first plan.

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Context: House Hansard - 14 - Dec/9/21

Ms. Melissa Lantsman

Dec/9/21 5:10:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will start by asking the member opposite to read the motion. I know my colleague just read it into the record again. He knows very well that he was talking about buildings. There was a period of 62 days after the last election before we recalled everybody to this place and he might have forgotten that promise was actually in the Liberal Party platform. It is on page 13 if the member opposite wants to revisit it. If he believes he is against this today, as he was not during the last election, then I look forward to him supporting the motion today.

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