44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 31, 2022 10:00AM
- Mar/31/22 11:05:00 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I truly appreciate the question from the member opposite. I think the more time we can spend working together on solutions for solving the housing crisis, the better off Canadians will be.
We believe that all Canadians deserve a place to call home. That is why after 30 years of the federal government being essentially absent from the housing file, we created an unprecedented $72-billion national housing strategy. In the last election, we actually promised to do more, and while there were dozens of promises, they fell under three major tiers. The first was to create more supply. The second was to treat housing more like a place to live than as an investment vehicle. The third was to find new pathways for Canadians, especially first-time homebuyers, to find a way to secure affordable housing.
I expect that the budget will reflect some of those promises, and I am sure there will be plenty of opportunities for us to work together on this important issue.
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- Mar/31/22 2:08:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, before we took office in 2015, the federal government had been absent on the housing file for more than 30 years. In the last six years, our government has made safe, affordable and accessible housing a top priority. Our $72-billion housing strategy is working with the provinces and municipalities to tackle the issue of affordable housing and housing affordability.
We have started to see the impact of these investments in Burnaby and North Vancouver helping build, retain or find homes for 3,900 people through programs like the federal community housing initiative, the rapid housing initiative and the co-investment fund. We have also promised to do more. This includes building more supply, treating housing like a place to live instead of an investment vehicle and finding pathways to ownership for first-time homebuyers.
I am very excited to work with all members of the House to find more solutions to our housing crisis. I am also looking forward to the finance minister releasing budget 2022 on April 7, so that we can continue to deliver more affordable housing for Canadians.
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- Mar/31/22 2:33:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first-time homebuyers with good wages want to get out of their parents' basements. It is like a slap in the face to find out that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation now offers government-backed mortgages with a 50-year amortization to landlords, yet denies first-time homebuyers a 25-year mortgage.
Why is the spend-DP-Liberal coalition fighting for more spending and lending to help the profits of big corporate landlords while leaving millennials out in the cold?
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- Mar/31/22 2:33:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, maybe the hon. member needs to have a conversation with his colleague from Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, who stood up in the House last week and said that we should not help first-time homebuyers. He should have a conversation with the member for Calgary Centre, who said we should cut back on the national housing strategy. He should help the hon. member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, who has tried to table their platform in the House and cannot find the term “affordable housing” in the Conservative plan. That is their record.
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- Mar/31/22 2:34:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are moving ahead to make sure we implement the housing accelerator fund to offer more housing supply. We are enhancing and are committed to enhancing the first-time homebuyer incentive and making sure that we move forward on an innovative rent-to-own program that would turn more Canadian renters into homebuyers.
What did the Conservatives do? They voted against a tax on foreign-owned non-recreational residential properties. They are on record saying that we should pull back investments through the national housing strategy. They are on record talking down the first-time homebuyer incentive, a program that will help more Canadians become homeowners.
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- Mar/31/22 4:10:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today to debate the motion. There is a lot in here that is economically needed, and I think members on the other side of the House will appreciate some of the metrics we need to put on the page about what we do going forward.
I am going to start with a story. Eleven days ago, I hosted a town hall meeting in the community of Killarney-Glengarry in the riding of Calgary Centre. I host these to hear directly from constituents about what their concerns are. Let me summarize what I heard: cost of living and paying bills or, in other words, inflation. I also heard about spiralling government debt and no indication that this is a problem for the government.
Here is a real touchpoint. A young woman with her first job was shopping for a home in her neighbourhood to buy with her mother. She recognized that house prices were beyond her reach. She wanted answers as to why and how house prices rose so high, so quickly. New homebuyers cannot afford homes. In case it is not glaringly obvious yet to the government, Houston, we have a problem.
Housing costs have doubled under the government's seven-year economy-destroying tenure. The best investment in Canada is a passive investment in housing, if people can afford it. It says a lot about the growth sectors that do not exist in the Canadian economy, for good reason. The government has penalized economic growth in Canada. Foreign investment has left Canada. Canadian investors have fewer choices. Canadian companies pursue growth opportunities elsewhere, and I will come back to that later. Canadian pension funds invest elsewhere.
I said that housing prices have doubled in Canada in the government's seven-year tenure. What else has doubled? It is the amount of federal government debt, now at $1.3 billion and growing. How about that now-sacred debt-to-GDP ratio? From less than 30% and declining seven years ago, it is more than 50% now, and that supposed fiscal anchor is flexible.
I do not think members of the government even understand that metric, let alone how to calculate it. There is one GDP, or gross domestic product, in Canada. There are layers of mounting debt: federal debt, provincial debt, corporate debt and personal debt. Which of these did not increase significantly over the past few years? All of these increased significantly, putting Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio among the highest in the world.
How does the government facilitate this massive infusion of cash into Canada's financial system? It is by monetary measures, which the Prime Minister told Canadians he pays no attention to.
First, it dropped interest rates to a level close to zero, as in 0.25%, encouraging borrowing and spending. However, at 0.25%, inflation was recently at 5.7% according to Statistics Canada, which always understates this measure. We are, by Canadians' experience, at a higher rate than the 7.1% inflation rate calculated in the U.S.
Second, there was quantitative easing. When market forces will not buy the bonds the government issues to print cash, well, we just buy them back and put them on the balance sheet of the Bank of Canada. Canadians own the debt more than once. The mispriced assets on the balance sheet of the Bank of Canada will increase the debt going forward.
It is as if the government does not know that all these economic indicators are connected. Deficits lead to higher debt, and higher debt leads to higher debt service and the need to increase taxes to pay just the interest on the debt. Lower interest rates lead to asset price inflation by definition. The government has therefore intentionally raised housing prices and priced new homebuyers out of the market. There is another possibility, though: The government does not really know what it is doing. It is either intentional inflation and the trickle effect destroying the savings of Canadians or incompetence.
I am going to talk about the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. This year, the deductions for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board went up 10% both for employees and employers, yet the CPPIB reported that it had enough assets on its balance sheet to cover its liabilities for at least the next 75 years. Some would ask why there was an increase.
When members say in the House that the CPPIB is postpaid compensation, they need to ask the government why it includes the Canada pension plan in its debt-to-GDP ratio as a government asset, if it belongs to the people. It also includes the Quebec pension plan as a government asset against the government's debt, yet it is supposedly postpaid compensation. Was this why deductions were raised 10% this year? Was it to make its balance sheets look a little better, even though it is supposed to go to Canadians going forward? By the way, employment taxes are the most regressive form of taxes. They destroy jobs because they are applied both to the employee and to the employer, so they again increase the cost of doing business in Canada.
Perhaps this is what the government is trying to give Canadians as an indication of what to expect with respect to inflation going forward. An illusory 5.7% is marginal compared with the 10% the government has indicated in its CPP deduction increases. Is this what we need to expect from inflation as Canadians? Canadians have their first taste of the effects of the current government's economic mismanagement. The government's dismissive narrative is starting to unravel, with reality hitting really hard.
There are many ways in which the government has marginalized business in Canada so that it can no longer pursue the projects that have to be done in order to increase the capital stock of Canada. We no longer invest in Canada. We no longer provide the environment to invest in Canada.
How many of my colleagues across the way have touted all these investments that have come into Canada? They are predicated upon a government-run subsidy program that continues to drain Canadians of their savings and puts it into all kinds of programs that are somewhat chosen, yet we do not know the actual effects of that, going down the road. We continue to destroy actual tax-producing sectors while we continue to give money to sectors we do not yet know the effect of, going forward. This is economic micromanagement at the government level, and we do not know the outcome yet. The government is choosing winners and losers here. It is not necessarily going to be any good for the Canadian economy, and it is a bad taste we are getting across the entire Canadian economy.
Canadians are finally getting their first taste of the inflation they should have expected when the government started running up over half a trillion dollars in debt over the last few years. Half a trillion dollars in debt means our dollar is going to be worth less at the end of the day, so our houses will be worth more but we will not be making any more money. If we did not have houses beforehand, we are not going to be able to buy one. We are not going to be able to save for our RRSPs, and we are not going to be able to put away enough money so that our kids can go to university. I am sure there will be some kind of program going forward to take care of that. At the end of the day, we are just draining the piggy bank of every future generation of Canadians. It is something we need to keep our eyes on here very closely.
I am asking the government to start pursuing measures that look at these metrics, and to bring some forward-looking perspectives to the future of Canadians because they are dealing with the present. The government is spending and spending. We have to get this under control and make sure we balance our opportunities with our future. It is time to get Canada's economic fiscal house in order.
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