44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 21, 2022 11:00AM
- Mar/21/22 12:40:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to start by letting everyone know that the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands and I intend on strongly supporting this motion for many of the reasons we have heard this afternoon already. We recognize that this encourages the government to do what it already said it intended to do. It is very constructive in that way and it goes further to point toward ways that we can not only address wealth inequality but do so in a way that actually strengthens our social safety net at the same time.
The member for Burnaby North—Seymour mentioned the underused housing tax in his speech. I and others in this place have raised that issue also, recognizing that the cost of housing in Kitchener, for example, has gone up almost 34% in the last year alone.
There are some sizable exemptions to what the government has proposed. Could he provide his personal opinion on going further and maybe reducing the exemptions so that Canadians and corporations too would be able to contribute to ensure that we remove this kind of opportunity for folks to speculate on homes in place of living in them?
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- Mar/21/22 12:41:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for this very important question and for his and his party's commitment to fighting wealth inequality.
With regard to going further on measures that make housing more affordable, absolutely our government is committed to that. Not only have we introduced a $72-billion national housing strategy and not only are we introducing the measure we are discussing, and I understand that the member wants us to go further, but we also made dozens of significant commitments in the last election that focused on three broad categories. The first is to increase supply. The second is to focus on housing as a place to live as opposed to an investment vehicle. The third is to find further pathways for new homeowners, first-time homeowners, to find their way into the market so they can find an affordable place to live. We are going to move on all those measures, and I look forward to working with that member to do more when it comes to housing and affordability generally.
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- Mar/21/22 2:32:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege for me to share with the member opposite exactly what we are doing and will continue to do on housing. There has been $72 billion invested in the national housing strategy, $2.5 billion invested in the rapid housing initiative, and investments in every corner of this country and every riding, even the noisy ones, to make sure that housing is a right for everyone. We will continue to focus on Canadians, while the Conservatives focus on raising the temperature.
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- Mar/21/22 2:33:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we remain committed to the important issue of housing affordability in Canada, and we have proposed solutions such as a new housing accelerator fund to speed up both the supply and the speed of housing construction in Canada, a new rent-to-own program to help renters become homebuyers, as well as a temporary ban on foreign buyers of non-recreational residential property.
We have moved to implement a 1% tax on non-resident and non-Canadian-owned real estate, and the Conservatives voted against it.
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- Mar/21/22 2:34:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, all the programs the minister just spoke of fall under the CMHC. The CMHC is a government agency that, according to its website, is driven by one goal, housing affordability for all, yet newly revealed documents show that CMHC employees received $48 million in bonuses in the last year.
The average home price went up 21% in the last year. How can the minister award the CMHC bonuses, when Canadians cannot afford to buy a home?
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- Mar/21/22 2:35:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, so many Canadians are struggling to find an affordable place to rent, let alone purchase a home. Why? It is because home prices have doubled since the Liberals took office, and they are up 43% since 2019 alone. Over the past two years, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which reports to the Minister of Housing, has given out $48 million in bonuses.
Did the minister personally sign off on these bonuses, or is he simply going to try to pass the blame onto someone else?
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- Mar/21/22 2:36:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows very well that no minister in my position has or will ever interfere in an independent Crown corporation's decisions when it comes to employment and salaries.
We are focused on federal investments in housing, making sure that more Canadians than ever before have a safe and affordable place to call home. In British Columbia, where the member's riding is, we have invested over $5.8 billion in affordable housing investments. These investments have helped over 128,000 families. This includes $34.5 million in 120 new units in West Kelowna in the member's riding.
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- Mar/21/22 2:37:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this minister is supposed to be the Minister of Housing not the minister for “show me the money”.
What performance metrics could possibly justify doling out $48 million, an average of more than $12,000 per employee, to over 93% of employees during an affordable housing crisis? Will the minister show some spine and cancel these bonuses, or will he do what he always does and just blame the opposition for what happens on his watch?
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- Mar/21/22 2:37:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows very well that no minister has or will ever interfere in the salaries and compensation of employees of an independent Crown agency.
We are focused on providing affordable housing solutions for Canadians. Every single time that we have brought more federal investments to the table, the member opposite has voted against them. The Conservatives are not serious about affordable housing. How do I know that? Their opposition day motion did not have the words “affordable housing” in it. Their election platform did not have “affordable housing” in it. They are not serious about this issue.
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- Mar/21/22 2:47:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are faced with a housing crisis, yet under the Liberals' rental construction program, affordable housing often ends up being 30% to 120% above the average market rent. It is scandalous. Nearly half of the housing the Liberals promised is expected to come from this program, and 90% of the funding has gone to for-profit developers. Canadians deserve better.
Will the government change the requirements to ensure housing built under this program is substantially below market rent?
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- Mar/21/22 2:48:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the national housing strategy has a number of important programs, including the rental construction financing initiative. It is important to assess each program based on the needs of Canadians in different parts of the housing spectrum. The particular program the hon. member mentioned actually has conditions with respect to accessibility and energy efficiency, and it has minimum affordability requirements. It has led to the construction of tens of thousands of new affordable rental housing units across the country.
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- Mar/21/22 3:05:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we absolutely understand that inflation and affordability are pressing challenges for Canadians. We also know that this is a global phenomenon and not a made-in-Canada problem.
I want to assure Canadians that we are working hard to make life more affordable and remind the opposition benches that eight dollars out of $10 that sustained Canadians during the global pandemic came from the federal government. We are committed to addressing housing affordability. We will continue to pursue child care. We will continue to increase the CCB. On this side of the House, we are focused on affordability.
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- Mar/21/22 3:12:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, earlier in question period the Minister of Housing said there was no mention of affordable housing in the Conservative platform. I would like to seek unanimous consent to table that platform and outline that we have a plan for indigenous housing—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Mar/21/22 3:50:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister and the government have been up on this particular file from day one when we introduced a tax, a special tax on Canada's 1% wealthiest, shortly after taking the government back in 2015 to just a couple of months ago.
I would ask the member to reflect on what we voted on just a couple of months ago, which was to have an annual percentage tax on individuals who purchased properties in Canada yet are not using them as their residences. Could she provide her thoughts? She talked about the importance of housing and taxation.
What the government needs to do is to look at the ways in which we can ensure that people are paying their fair share of tax. In this situation it is a real tax. It is going to be a real income coming in, making homes hopefully even that much more affordable going forward.
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- Mar/21/22 4:09:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, to what degree do we need to count on action by the provinces in order to get meaningful measures to deal with the high cost of things and particularly housing?
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- Mar/21/22 5:10:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, near the end of my hon. colleague's speech, he touched on a point that I think is extremely important. He mentioned the development capacity in Vaughan—Woodbridge and working to actually expedite and move forward with development agreements at the municipal level.
I think we would all agree in the House that housing is a complex challenge. It is actually going to involve all three levels of government, the private sector and the non-profit sector.
What would the member say about the role of municipalities working closely with developers, not necessarily to completely steamroll the process, but to make sure there are efficiencies so that those additional costs and that red tape is not then passed on to homeowners? That could be resulting in some of the prices we are seeing today.
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- Mar/21/22 6:46:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise tonight to follow up on my question period topic from a few weeks ago on the issue of housing and the crisis our country finds itself in.
Having only 35 seconds to ask a question in question period is not the easiest to summarize a major national issue. I hope this 10-minute back and forth tonight will be a bit more helpful.
I hear repeatedly across my riding, whether in the city of Cornwall, the united counties of SDG or in Akwesasne, from a number of people who are struggling when it comes to housing and, equally as important, the rental market in our region. I know our region is not unique. Frankly, it is a national crisis we find ourselves in today.
As opposition MPs, we are not on the government side. I wish we were, and I aspire to get there some day. One of the things I want to address is that part of our job as the opposition is to propose ideas, and I have a few that I will suggest later. It is also to scrutinize and ask tough questions about what the government has proposed. In this case it is to address housing, to present some facts and figures of the reality of what has happened in the past few years, and to bring a local context here to the floor of the House of Commons. Sadly, I can do that, again between Cornwall, SDG and Akwesasne, because the stats and figures paint a very bleak picture when it comes to housing affordability for Canadians.
The Cornwall and District Real Estate Board and its president, Troy Vaillancourt, recently gave the February statistics of where the housing situation was in our region. The average price of homes sold in February 2022 was a record $434,000. That was up 28.5% from last February. If we go back five years, housing prices in Cornwall and area have doubled since that time. Active listing supply is a major challenge on this problem. Active listings were down 65% below the five-year average, and 81% below the 10-year average for the month of February.
As we talk about this, we are likely going to hear, in the response from my colleague across the way, the Liberals trying to tout their national housing plan. It is a 10-year plan that was introduced in 2017. Simple math would tell us that it is halfway through. We are going to hear a sunny ways picture of the billions here and the billions there that they are spending to help the housing market.
Five years in, I would encourage the Liberals to pull back on that plan because it is clearly not working. If the plan is to make housing more affordable and to get younger people to realize their dream of home ownership, it is absolutely not working. In my region, housing prices have doubled in five years. Rent is skyrocketing. If we talk to local real estate agents or the Canadian Real Estate Association, it is scheduled to get no better.
We need a change of course. I asked the government about this printing money and adding to debt. Even its shared equity program is absolutely flawed, and we need to make sure that it never comes back again. All that giving new homeowners interest-free money to buy new houses is doing is raising prices further. More and more people are realizing they can borrow more interest-free loans, and it is making the market even worse.
I will ask the government a question again in my comments, and in my rebuttal I will give some ideas. Will the government acknowledge that its housing plan has been a failure five years in? What could it do differently to finally make home ownership more affordable and make renting more affordable in this country?
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- Mar/21/22 6:50:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this government is proud of its record of putting roofs over Canadians' heads, and I would like to thank my colleague for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry for the opportunity to speak about what we are doing for Canadians and how we are tackling the housing affordability crisis in this country.
We know that the main way to address housing affordability is to address supply. That is why this government launched the national housing strategy in 2017, the first of its kind in Canada. It is an ambitious 10-year plan backed by more than $72 billion in investments. It is supply-oriented and includes a range of initiatives that address housing affordability from every angle that would have an impact.
Since 2015, we have invested over $30 billion, creating and repairing nearly 480,000 units in Canada. That is 10,000 homes for tens of thousands of Canadians. It includes homes in my colleague's region of eastern Ontario. In Brockville, the Marguerita Residence Corporation is building an 88-unit, affordable housing complex for seniors thanks to the federal funding delivered through the Canada-Ontario community housing initiative.
A major partnership with Habitat Humanity is also giving low-income families across the country a chance to access the dream of home ownership, including in my colleague's city of Cornwall. These are just a few examples from one region. The successes are repeated across the country.
Yes, we recognize that we need to and can do more, and that we must do that. Since the last election, this government has set out an ambitious new agenda for further activities to make housing more affordable for all Canadians. We have planned new initiatives, such as the housing accelerated fund to help cities speed up the development process, a rent-to-own program to help renters get on the path to ownership and an expanded access to funding to support green home retrofits.
We will be working with the provinces, territories and municipalities to develop a fairness in real estate action plan to ensure that there is more protection and transparency for homebuyers and renters. We will also be collaborating with indigenous partners to co-develop an urban, rural and northern indigenous strategy and Canada's first-ever national indigenous housing centre.
Even as we are proud of our successes in improving housing affordability, we look forward to doing more, and I look forward to the exchange with my colleague on this issue.
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- Mar/21/22 6:53:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the reply, and I will summarize again what I said in my intervention.
We are five years in and halfway through the $72 billion that was promised. The Auditor General said that the Liberals actually did not spend what they said they were going to. Actually, I am kind of glad about that, because if they had spent more than they already have, we would be further in debt, and I think housing prices might be even higher. We need to stop printing money and debt and giving it to people, which is inflating the market.
The national housing plan is not working. Here are some ideas that the Conservatives are proposing: ban foreign buyers, which the government had an opportunity to do through a committee but refused to do; tackle money laundering; make changes to encourage building more apartments and rental housing; and look at mortgage and lending rules and incentives.
We need to invest urgently, in my view, in infrastructure for water and sewer, which presents an issue in my riding. We can talk to the mayors of my riding in Glen Walter, Winchester and Ingleside for examples of where that challenge is.
Habitat for Humanity is a wonderful organization and social housing is helpful in our community, but we need more action and we need more resolve. Again, clearly, the direction with five years in of a 10-year plan has failed to date, and my riding of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry is a good example of that, unfortunately.
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- Mar/21/22 6:54:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this government recognizes the urgency and importance of this issue, which is why our government has made it a priority. We implemented Canada's first national housing strategy, and it is why we continue to deliver on these programs and work towards the goal of housing affordability for all. I urge my colleague and members of all sides of this House to work with their constituencies to make sure that they use the programs that are available to them. They are there for Canadians just as this government is there for Canadians.
I hope that this time around the party opposite will support the measures that we will be addressing in the future on this problem.
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