44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 24, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, as usual, my colleague's delight over his government's budget is patently obvious.
However, on one topic he was silent, and I know why. Of the budget's 250 pages, only one page addresses the housing crisis. That in itself is completely unacceptable.
In the week after the budget was tabled, the National Housing Council, the body created by the federal government to oversee its grand national housing strategy, brought up a very interesting point. Between 2011 and 2021, Canada lost 550,000 affordable housing units. Not only has the government failed to create new housing, but we lost 550,000 units in the span of 10 years.
The National Housing Council has suggested a highly practical solution, which is to create an acquisition fund to enable non-profit housing organizations to purchase private housing stock, take it off the private market and make it permanently affordable. It is a solution that everyone is talking about. Does my colleague think it is a good solution?
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Madam Speaker, I think we need to put housing in the proper perspective. If we take a look at the early nineties, what we will find is that every political party inside this chamber, whether it was the Bloc, the Conservatives, the NDP or even the Liberals at the time, believed there was no role for Ottawa in national housing.
When we take a look at the nineties and see where we are today, this particular Prime Minister has made a commitment to housing second to no other in the last 60 or 70 years here in Canada, with a national housing strategy and literally hundreds of millions going into billions of dollars supporting a number of new housing start-ups, supporting groups like Habitat for Humanity and supporting and encouraging the development of housing co-ops. The national government has demonstrated very clearly that it does have a role to play in housing. It is exercising that role and is looking for stakeholders to come onside and support where they can to enhance and complement our housing stock and increase the size of it. I believe the federal government will continue to work in those efforts.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to follow up on the question from our hon. colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert. It is no surprise that housing is barely mentioned in Bill C-47. It was barely mentioned in the budget also. In fact, it was the opposite. The federal housing advocate said, “The newly unveiled Federal Budget is a sorry disappointment. It completely misses the mark on addressing the most pressing housing crisis this country has ever seen.”
In this bill, the federal government could have gotten serious about, for example, addressing the loophole for real estate investment trusts. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has now estimated we could direct $285 million over the next five years to build the affordable housing we need if we were simply to eliminate the tax breaks for REITs.
Can the member for Winnipeg North speak about whether he is going to put pressure on the government to bring about this change?
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Madam Speaker, there is a series of actions that the government has taken over the last number of years, from implementing the first-ever national housing strategy, to the issue of expanding housing co-ops, and everything in between. No government in recent history has given as much attention to the issue of housing as this government has.
However, the issue of resolving the housing crisis in Canada today goes far beyond Ottawa demonstrating leadership; it incorporates the importance of municipalities, provinces and the different stakeholders. They, too, have to step up to the plate. It can be done through zoning and the cost of doing paperwork. There are all sorts of issues.
What Canadians need to know and understand is that Ottawa is here. It is ready, it is investing and it understands the importance of housing. We are prepared to work the best way we can with the different partners in order to ensure that we can enhance the numbers and the quality of our housing stock.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member speaks about common sense, but he has not shared any today. In fact, what he has done is list all the economic violence of capitalism and the impacts it has on everyday Canadians.
When the member talks about the housing market, he never talks about the insatiable greed of the real estate investment trusts, of the speculators, of the big corporate gatekeepers who are crushing our housing market. In fact, housing prices will not come down until the government acts to curtail inflationary investor activity in the residential market.
Just like the leader of the Conservative Party, this budget refuses to take on greedy private sector gatekeepers who are driving up the price of housing for their own corporate greed. Why are the Conservatives focusing only on municipal permitting when there are so many greedy, capitalist, private sector gatekeepers responsible for the current housing crisis?
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague and many of his Conservative colleagues have been talking about housing. I think one thing we all agree on in the House is that there is a crisis of unbelievable proportions related to housing in this country.
I live in Vancouver and have been there for close to four decades. The rise in house prices began in the mid-eighties, particularly after Expo, and then continued with the repatriation of Hong Kong back to China in the late 1990s and the Olympics in 2010. With each of these things, it became obvious that there was an inflow of foreign capital, from both corporate and foreign investment, that destabilized house prices in the Lower Mainland. It is at the point now where, for people who live and work there, the price of detached or even non-detached houses is completely divorced from what people actually make.
What specifically does my hon. colleague say a Conservative government would do to help provide real affordable housing for people in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia? I would like to hear specifically what policy his government would advance.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I am a former municipal councillor and I think that our leader, the member for Carleton, makes an important point when he talks about cutting red tape to ensure that municipalities can issue building permits faster. I live in Beauce, and our reality may not be identical, but housing is still a major concern.
I think that there should be less red tape. I have been here for four years, and I have been saying the same thing for four years. I hope that we will see some signals in that regard over the coming months.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.
She spoke a lot about climate change. It is true that the government is making a lot of direct and indirect investments in the budget to help oil companies greenwash their record. The government is giving them money for carbon capture, a technology that is very controversial in the field. As we have said, there is almost nothing for housing, but the government is giving oil companies money.
Let us talk about oil companies' profits in 2022. Exxon Mobil made $56 billion in profit, Shell made $40 billion, TotalEnergies made $36 billion, Chevron made $36 billion and BP made $27 billion. How can the government give money to these oil companies, which made a combined total of $200 billion in 2022, while completely forgetting about the housing crisis?
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Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned housing. Last year's budget earmarked a huge amount of money for housing. That funding is currently being allocated to various programs. Many citizens, committed individuals and leaders in housing are looking at how those amounts can be allocated effectively to create more housing units across Canada.
Amounts were earmarked in last year's budget, and they are being allocated to various programs. It is really a matter of ensuring that those amounts benefit all Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague talked a little bit about housing, and I thank him for that, because it is a pretty important topic.
Unfortunately, when we listen to the Conservatives, it is not really clear what their solutions are and what they are going to do about it.
The Liberals are terrible, and they are getting nowhere. My colleague bragged earlier about $70 billion in investments over the last five years. In the last five years, 35,000 new social housing units have been built in Canada through this strategy. I have no idea where the billions of dollars went. According to studies by CIBC and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, Canada needs to build 3.5 million units in the next 10 years if we are going to address the twin issues of affordability and accessibility.
If we want to help those most in need in this country, the government needs to intervene and be more effective. What are the Conservative Party's solutions?
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Madam Speaker, the question gives me a chance to reiterate what I just said to the member for Kingston and the Islands around housing. What Conservatives are calling for, and what we will do when we form government, is to implement a plan to speed up building permits. We need to make sure it is possible to build things in this country again. We need to create those incentives so developers will be able to and will want to build the housing units we so desperately need. We also want to lean on the resources the federal government has, the land and the buildings that are being underutilized, so we can turn that into affordable housing units.
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Madam Speaker, I have been touring Quebec recently, travelling all over the place to talk about the housing crisis, because I think it is a very serious issue. I have heard from a lot of people.
In Joliette, for example, an adult living with an intellectual disability found himself on the street, homeless, in other words, and he ended up committing suicide. There was nothing in the budget to help someone like him. I heard about a woman in Trois-Rivières who is a victim of domestic violence and is now living in her car with her two children. There was nothing in the budget to help her. I heard about a family of 17 people in Longueuil living in a three-bedroom apartment. There was nothing in the budget to help those folks.
Does my colleague have any solutions for the issues I just raised and the people I just talked about?
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Madam Speaker, of course, the housing crisis is a devastating situation, and it is heartbreaking to see a lot of Canadians who cannot find houses. Furthermore, our young generations do not even dream of owning or buying a house in the future. The proposed budget would not address any of that. The government is dominated by the idea of spending so much and achieving so little, and that is the problem we are facing right now.
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Madam Speaker, the budget contains much inflationary pressure. There is $15 billion for an infrastructure bank that never built a project and another $15 billion for a slush fund in the Canada growth fund with no details on what that is about. Although there is such an crisis in affordable housing, as there is in my riding, the budget has $5.5 billion dollars to build only 4,500 spaces and remove barriers to building maybe another 100,000. That is a huge gap, and it is another inflationary pressure.
Could the member comment on that?
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Madam Speaker, despite the size and intent of Bill C‑47, there is nothing in it for seniors or housing. There is no long-term solution to fix the underfunding of health care and no sign of EI reform.
I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.
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- Apr/24/23 6:55:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to talk about seniors.
Across my riding of North Island—Powell River, I am hearing from more and more seniors who are struggling to make ends meet. They are having a hard time affording food, affording their medication and being able to pay for the key things that make their life reasonable.
I am also hearing from more and more seniors in rental units who are being evicted and have nowhere else to go. It is very concerning to listen to the organizations that work so hard to keep people fed and housed in our region and understand how many seniors are falling through the cracks.
I was able to ask a question several weeks ago about the fact that OAS for seniors is being increased only for seniors 75 and older, which means that seniors aged 65 to 74 are really struggling. It was very interesting to me when a constituent got a hold of my office and talked about the fact that her neighbour, who is over 75, received a letter informing her that her old age security would be increased by about $200 a month, which was a huge relief to that senior. However, the senior who wrote to me is not near 75 yet; she has a few years until she gets there. She talked about how hard it was. She looked it up online, trying to figure out why she did not get the increase, and then she realized it was because of age. This did not reflect her needs.
My question to the government was simply this: Given the reality of inflation, why is the government telling seniors 65 to 74 that they do not require this, especially some of our most vulnerable seniors, who are struggling with poverty?
When I look at the budget, I am very happy to finally see dental care for seniors. I have heard from seniors across my riding, some of whom have waited outside the door with their information because they heard I was fighting for seniors to get dental care. It was absolutely sad to hear the stories of the extreme pain and then often having to wait years, saving money and trying to find a way to pay for root canals and the different procedures they needed. One senior said to me that they could afford a couple of hundred dollars it cost every year to get their teeth cleaned, but they could not afford anything else. Therefore, whenever they had a problem, such as a cavity, it could take them a few years to pay for it. Thus, I am really pleased that dental care is in the budget, but I am unhappy that we do not see anything else.
We know that we forced the government to do this. Two years ago, the Liberals voted against dental care for seniors in this country. We made them do it, and I am glad that it is here. Nevertheless, too many seniors are falling through the cracks, and we could do something about their suffering in this country if the government had the political will to do so.
I want to point out that single seniors are perhaps the most impacted group of seniors. Their cost of living is two-thirds the cost of a couple, and they have to make up that resource for themselves. We know that a lot of single seniors are renting; the cost of housing is significantly higher than it was, and it is only increasing.
Single Seniors for Tax Fairness has come up with some really important ideas that I was hoping to see in the budget. However, we did not see those things reflected in the budget, which I think is very unfortunate.
We need to make sure that the seniors of this country are getting the supports they need so that they can live according to a bar of dignity. Having the OAS increased for those seniors between 65 and 74 would bring up that bar of dignity. It is not the only solution, but it is a solution that this government could put in place fairly quickly if it had the political will.
I am back here again fighting hard for seniors because they deserve to have the financial support to live with dignity. Single seniors with a very fixed income deserve to feel that they can live with dignity, and too many across this country are making decisions between appropriate housing, clothing, bills, heat and medication. I think Canada should do so much more for seniors, and I wonder why the Liberal government does not agree.
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- Apr/24/23 7:02:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is interesting that the largest impact I see for seniors are things that the NDP asked for. We said to the government, “If you do not play with us nicely, we are not going to support you unless you do these things.” It is great that the government is announcing the things that are in the budget that the NDP proposed, such as the dental benefit and the doubling of the GST. What I am not hearing is anything about how there is going to be real action taken, especially for single seniors. I am worried about all seniors, but I know that single seniors in particular, largely women, are really struggling. They are talking about the financial challenges they have. There are some really common-sense responses that could be done. When is that going to happen?
The other thing I heard the member talk about was the supports for low-income renters. In my riding, there is so little housing. It is not about getting the extra money to pay rent; it is about actually having somewhere to live. Is there going to be an investment in housing that is going to sustain seniors in a meaningful and respectful way?
Those are a couple of my questions. I certainly hope that the member will take it back to his government, that single seniors deserve better and that we need more rental units, especially in rural and remote communities, because there simply are not any there.
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