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House Hansard - 43

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 22, 2022 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 43 - Mar/22/22
Ms. Soraya Martinez Ferrada (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion (Housing), Lib.)
  • Mar/22/22 6:47:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am happy to talk about our government tackling housing affordability. My colleague asked for a plan, and we have one. We launched the national housing strategy in 2017, the first of its kind in Canada's history. It is an ambitious 10-year plan backed by more than $72 billion in investments. I was deeply disappointed to hear the Conservative member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry yesterday say in the House that we should pull back on the national housing strategy. I could not disagree more. Unlike the Conservatives, we believe we need to make historic investments in affordable housing, and that is exactly what we are doing. Through the national housing strategy, we have invested over $20 billion. That is thanks to a range of programs that address the different housing needs of Canadians, from shelters to community housing, to market rentals and ownership. One of those programs, the rapid housing initiative, exceeded all expectations through two rounds of applications. It has been very popular with our partners and will ultimately result in the quick construction of more than 10,000 new affordable housing units, including more than 200 units in my colleague's city of Hamilton, but we recognize that we still need to do more. Since the last election, this government has set out an ambitious new agenda with further activities to make housing more affordable for all Canadians. We have planned for new initiatives such as the housing accelerator fund to help cities speed up development processes, and we have 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 there is more protection and transparency for homebuyers and renters. We will also be collaborating with indigenous partners to codevelop a new urban, rural and northern indigenous strategy and Canada's first-ever national indigenous housing centre. For young people working hard to get a foot on the property ladder, we introduced the first-time homebuyer incentive, which helps reduce their monthly mortgage payments without adding to their financial burden. I was also disappointed to hear my Conservative colleague, the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, say in the House yesterday that we should not be helping first-time homebuyers. On this side of the House, we believe that first-time homebuyers need more support. That is why we continue to make the first-time homebuyer incentive more accessible, with more adjustments to come. To help make it easier for renters to get on the path to home ownership, we are also working on creating a fund to test, develop and scale up rent-to-own projects across the country. We are proud of our success in improving housing affordability, even as we look forward to doing more with the support of this House and, I hope, the support of the member, and with our plan for making housing more affordable and creating more home ownership in this country.
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