44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 28, 2022 11:00AM
- Mar/28/22 12:18:39 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, my colleague talked about similar worries that I have about the continued centralization of government, and he talked about housing, which I am hearing a lot about in my community. The Conservatives have a solution: Motion No. 54. It is asking the federal government to abandon its failed first-time homebuyer initiative, which has only helped 15% of its target.
I wonder what the member thinks about supporting that motion. Also, what is he hearing from young people in his community? I am hearing that young people are starting to give up on the dream of home ownership. Could the member please comment on this important initiative?
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- Mar/28/22 12:19:26 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, needless to say, the housing system is in crisis. My colleague and I agree that there is a problem and that the solution being proposed is not the right way to go.
However, I think our political parties disagree on whether a real estate speculation tax should be imposed. I personally am in favour of this principle, but I simply think it was introduced in the wrong legislature.
I think my colleague also agrees with me on centralization.
However, our party differs from the Conservatives on another point. The Bloc believes that funding for housing needs to be completely overhauled so that it is not just private developers who benefit, but also community organizations, non-profit organizations and housing co-operatives, because they are the ones that know the real needs.
I also want to point out that the funding still needs to be rolled out. Ideally, that money would be sent to Quebec, and Quebec would take care of it. However, the federal government's withdrawal has deprived Quebec of roughly 80,000 housing units since the 1990s. As long as we pay taxes to Ottawa, we have a right to expect a fair return on our investment.
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- Mar/28/22 12:35:07 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from the Bloc Québécois for his question and his intervention.
In this section, there is a 1% tax on vacated homes. I would use as an example, in the province of Quebec, perhaps the city of Montreal, where housing prices are in the millions of dollars. With no disrespect to the 1%, that could be into the tens of thousands of dollars. I would argue that it does not disincentivize some people, if they are those who can afford to spend $3 million or $4 million to buy a home and leave it vacant. We have asked at different committees what that correlation would actually do to cool the market. It remains to be seen.
What I will offer is an alternative, and I will agree with my colleague. Working with provinces and municipalities, we need to look at banning foreign buyers who are in it for profit and investment from getting into the system. I believe that tool, which is not included, could actually cool the market more than what is being proposed in this legislation.
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- Mar/28/22 1:52:46 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I must admit that I had a bit of a hard time following my colleague's speech. He is worried that the government is not taking care of the debt for future generations. I think that is important too. He talked about the housing crisis and said that the tax on unused properties in Canada is inadequate. I completely agree with him.
I often hear the Conservatives criticizing what the government is doing on the housing file, but I do not hear them proposing a whole lot of solutions. In a study a month or two ago, Scotiabank, which is supposedly one of their friends, said that there is a shortage of 1.8 million housing units in Canada to address the crisis.
My colleague pointed out that housing prices have doubled since the Liberals took office, but accessibility also includes the availability of more housing. What solutions does the Conservative Party propose to address this shortfall of 1.8 million housing units in Canada?
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- Mar/28/22 1:53:46 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, there is no question that there is a drastic shortage of affordable housing, and housing of any sort, across this country. That is because people have flocked into the housing market as an investment. They have not seen the investment in rental housing being as productive as it used to be, so we have seen a reduction in rental housing in some areas. In consultations with elected representatives in my riding of North Okanagan—Shuswap a couple of years ago, I learned it had been decades since there was a fourplex built in one community because of zoning issues. These are issues where we are all going to need to work together with all levels of government to identify what it is we can do to create more housing for Canadians. It cannot be simply government alone.
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- Mar/28/22 1:54:54 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, to follow up on that, the hypocrisy is that, in the past, governments, the Liberals and the Conservatives, talked about government getting out of the way of getting action on things, including housing and so forth. The 1% tax is not seen as sufficient, so regarding inventory, what exactly would the Conservatives be involved in? What would they encourage and what specific things would they do with respect to the private sector? I think that is important. Some of the party members are saying we have to get out of the way and others are saying we have to do more than this, so what exactly would they do more of?
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- Mar/28/22 1:55:33 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, obviously housing is top of mind for many members and, I think, for Canadians right across this country. Incentivizing the construction of residences, whether single-family or multi-family apartment buildings, is where the federal government can make a difference regarding that growth in new inventory that is desperately needed across the country.
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- Mar/28/22 1:56:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the government's fall economic and fiscal update.
To better understand the economic pressures that Canadians are facing, we need to look at the data. We have the highest rate of inflation that we have had in a generation. My children are all adults now and do not know what inflation is. It is at 5.7% at the moment, and that means that, on average, everything is going to cost every Canadian citizen almost 6% more today than it did a year ago. If we look at industry-specific statistics, it is much more challenging than that.
For any young families in my riding of Langley—Aldergrove, part of metro Vancouver, who are prospective first-time buyers, the news is not good at all. Single family houses are up 42%, condos are up 39% and townhouses are up 35%. Frankly, it is becoming unrealistic for young families to even believe they are ever going to own a house.
I was talking to Alison in my riding just the other day. She and her husband are both earning quite a bit of money. They have managed to save up a really good down payment. They pre-qualified for a mortgage. They are doing everything right. About a year or a year a half ago, they got into the market to bid on a townhouse. They lost out to a higher bidder. They tried again on a second townhouse. The same thing happened, and they lost out to a higher bidder. They did that 10 times in a row. The tenth time, they bid way over asking price thinking that they would for sure get it. Again, they were outbid by a higher bidder.
I was talking to Alison and she asked what they were doing wrong. I said that she was not doing anything wrong and that she was doing everything right, but that there were economic forces at play that were beyond the ability of ordinary Canadians to deal with.
This is what the Vancouver Sun said just this weekend about this topic:
Young, educated, urban Canadians have [many reasons] to be angry...with Ottawa for the ways it has worsened the housing crisis.
[The Liberal government] has three times campaigned, with apparent earnest emotion, on promises to provide affordable housing. And each time, [it] has reneged.
Canadian housing is now 100 per cent more expensive than when [the Liberals] first took office in 2015.
That is the legacy of the Liberal government, that housing prices have doubled in the time it has held office.
One of the failed programs of the Liberal government is the first-time homebuyers incentive. That is the program that says the government would own a piece of the equity stake in the home of any first-time homebuyers who use the program. Happily, very few people have actually used the program. I was talking to a mortgage broker who works in my neighbourhood, and he explained to me why the program is a failure. It just does not work, certainly not in my riding where houses are as expensive as they are.
Mortgage Professionals Canada, a very credible organization, has said this about the housing affordability crisis: “If we had historically equally considered the demand-side and supply-side policies, we probably would be in a far better position”.
I would just summarize this part by saying this: Is it not a fresh idea that we are going to look at basic economic principles? That is where the government has failed.
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- Mar/28/22 3:46:18 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, the member spoke a lot about the housing crisis. It is something that impacts my riding of Victoria in an extreme way. Blind bidding has been driving up the cost of housing. Unfortunately there is nothing in the bill that would combat blind bidding.
I am curious if the member agrees that the government should be implementing policies that would really help first-time homebuyers and that would stop the rising cost of houses from escalating even higher.
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- Mar/28/22 5:36:28 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his question. He obviously did listen to my speech, and I appreciate that.
On the housing aspect, I am very much in agreement that there is a need for more supply. I have driven across this country several times to drive here to Ottawa, and there is an immense amount of lakefront property in this country that is undeveloped. I would recommend that perhaps we start selling off some lakefront property and get some more housing built, particularly once we get to Kenora. From Kenora to here, I can tell members that there is an endless amount of beautiful lakefront property that is probably valuable. We might be able to raise some tax money off of it and build some beautiful housing all across this country.
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- Mar/28/22 6:03:59 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, it is certainly the most common question I get as a new member of Parliament from young Canadians who are frustrated that they cannot enter the housing market. When it is $1.1 million to buy a starter home in the Hamilton area and it has gone up $100,000 in the last month, they are further and further away from their dream of home ownership. It is extremely frustrating. At the same time, they are paying more at the pumps to commute to their job, usually in the greater Toronto area, which is also a huge frustration for those young people.
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- Mar/28/22 6:06:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Oshawa knows that the other end of the GTHA is experiencing some of the same market dynamics as we are here in the Hamilton area. Motion No. 54 is the right initiative because it addresses one of the key problems in the housing market, which is supply. I referenced the fact that here in Hamilton, and I have spoken with the Realtors Association of Hamilton-Burlington, we are short 110,000 homes just to catch up. I know that across the country we are short over a million, half of which are in Ontario, so that is a big gap to make up.
Motion No. 54 looks to address the heart of the issue rather than the failed programs. When 15% over that many years is all that has been achieved, we are moving at a snail's pace. Frankly, what new graduate or young person, who is paying rent and cannot save up, is going to have that amount of money in an RRSP to withdraw from to invest in the first-time homebuyers program? It is just does not work.
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- Mar/28/22 6:23:32 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I remember how it felt to buy our first home, to take the keys and walk through our front door. It was a modest and older home, but it had character and all kinds of potential. For young people, owning a home is often seen as a key to the next chapter of their life story, which a lot of times includes starting a family and putting down roots in a community, a community where they contribute to the social and economic fabric while building lifetime friendships and family memories. Quite simply, a home is considered a really important part of realizing the Canadian dream, but that dream is in jeopardy. In fact, it is in crisis. An entire generation of Canadians is being left behind and worse off than their parents’ generation with the government’s constant raising of taxes, printing of money, spending money it does not have, raising inflation and orchestrating a housing crisis.
I am humbled to be able to speak on behalf of Canadians who are being left behind by their federal government while so many others, namely, the rich and well connected, are getting further and further ahead. That is why Conservatives are so concerned about Bill C-8, yet another tax-and-spend bill that adds more inflationary fuel to the fire. Despite elements of the bill that are supposedly meant to address some of the underlying causes of this crisis, they are completely dwarfed and overshadowed by the $70 billion of new inflationary spending this bill proposes, $70 billion on top of $176 billion in new spending brought in over the past two years that has been entirely unrelated to the pandemic. That is also in addition to the $400 billion in new cash that has been printed over the same two years, cash that is chasing fewer goods and driving up inflation.
These choices have only helped to bring our national debt to an astounding $1.2 trillion and counting. For the sake of our country, spending of this kind has to stop, but numbers such as these are unfathomable to average Canadians. What does this inflation crisis really mean to them? Here is what it means. It means that 60% of Canadians are concerned they might not have enough money to feed their families. The government appears to take no concern with the fact that the average person will need to spend $1,000 more in a year to simply feed their families.
While that is insignificant to many who sit in the House of Commons, that is simply outside the margins for most Canadians. That is why many have no choice but to change their buying habits, moving to less healthy choices and discount brands, or cutting back on food significantly. At the same time, one cannot even begin to provide nutritious food for one's family if one cannot get to the grocery store, and that is a real problem, especially in rural Canada.
Sixty-eight per cent of Canadians are worried they cannot afford to fill up their cars any longer. The government likes to shrug off the blame to current world events, denying the layers of carbon tax, compounded with GST, that it has been punishing Canadians with several times over and is disproportionately punitive on families, low-income Canadians and seniors. We are just days away from yet another increase in the carbon tax that will add 12¢ to every litre of gasoline.
As the official opposition, we have devoted entire days of debate on this matter alone and have asked the government to give Canadians a GST holiday on gas, but to no avail. In its first act as a coalition government, the NDP-Liberal government voted our motion down. Even the NDP is not interested in giving Canadians support, a break at the pumps, in these extraordinary times. Therefore, what would make anyone believe that this coalition will follow through with relief for first-time homebuyers? Why should Canadians trust them, especially when the relief is not enough in light of the insane prices in the housing market today?
When the Prime Minister took power, the cost of the typical home was $435,000. That has since ballooned by over 85%, up to what I believe is $810,000 now, with inflation of 25% and more in just the last year alone. As politicians, we can cite these numbers all day long, but real empathy and meaningful action only comes from hearing the effects of this affordability crisis on everyday Canadians, so let us shift the focus back squarely on housing.
The average family must spend two-thirds of their gross income on monthly payments for the average home in Toronto or Vancouver, some of the world’s most unaffordable markets, 66% of their take-home income. Meanwhile, any financial adviser worth their salt will tell young buyers that monthly housing costs should not exceed 25% to 30% of take-home pay. Otherwise, owners run the risk of living house poor. On Vancouver Island, I know that rent prices have soared out of reach for low-income and young Canadians. Even with the savings for a down payment on a home, there are no homes that young families can afford. They are being outbid by hundreds of thousands of dollars above the asking price.
British Columbia's Minister of Housing states that the province has been told to prepare for 100,000 new British Columbians every year for the next three years. That is about one-third of Canada's total immigration target. In the last three months, 24,000 new Canadians have arrived in B.C. Compounded by population growth within the existing population, pressure on housing supply is only going to get worse. The minister was clear that a dramatic increase in new builds is needed in short order. Also, the effect of offshore investment in Canadian land and real estate is making affordable housing an impossibility for young families.
Closer to Ottawa, a friend put a bid on a new home right here in the nation's capital. Another buyer offered $10,000 more than the asking price. This individual took a deep breath and matched it, only to learn that in response the other individual offered $90,000 higher.
Another couple I know locally has been diligent at putting away every dollar they can. In fact, they have now saved an amount for a down payment equal to the full purchase price of the husband's childhood home in 1999 prices, but they are still unable to find a home in Ottawa without living house poor. The most affordable options would place them more than an hour out of the city, away from their places of employment and the opportunities and services that the city provides.
It is not surprising, then, that Ontario has seen an exodus from the province in the last year. In 2021 alone, 108,000 individuals left for other provinces. That is the highest level since 1981, and it could be because the average price of a home in the greater Toronto area climbed 31%, to $1.2 million—
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