44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 13, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/13/23 10:25:53 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, for those who are watching this morning, we are seized with in Parliament the recommendations of a report that relate to building housing.
My colleague for Parry Sound—Muskoka just outlined some of how we could potentially build more housing in Canada. What I would like to do this morning is hopefully, for everybody who is here, outline why, with stories from my community and a personal story
If members look at CBC News this week, there is a story, which was posted on June 8, entitled “'Kind of dehumanizing': What it's like trying to find a decent place to rent in Calgary these days”. In January of this year, Calgary saw rents increase by 22%, which was the largest increase in the country. Now, if we look at my riding, there is virtually nothing to rent that is under $2,000, unless one is looking to rent a room.
We can think about somebody, such as a single person, who is trying to find a room, but they cannot find it and then their rent is increased by 22%. It is pretty crazy. It is dehumanizing. When people talk about crime and that we need to address it, or that we need to address addiction, if we are not affording people the dignity of a safe place to live that they can afford, we are never going to address those problems.
I want to speak today to my colleagues in the government to implore them that they have to use their jurisdictional power to lean on municipalities to make right and just decisions for building housing. I also want to implore to my colleagues in my own city that they also have a responsibility to look beyond pandering for NIMBY votes to do the right thing to change policies so we can build housing.
I will start with a personal story. When I went through a divorce about a decade ago, so this was when rent was still reasonable in Canada, I had a hard time finding a place to live. I was going through an extremely emotional time. It was really hard, and I had to figure out how I was going to pay the bills. Right now, in every part of our country, there are women like me who are making choices of whether or not to stay in a relationships based on whether or not they can find a place to live. That is the reality of this situation. There are also people with families who are trying to figure out how they can come together in a very small living space because they cannot afford to live separately, and in those situations, nobody wants to rent to them.
When we are talking about homelessness today, I think all of us have this sort of Hollywood notion of what homelessness means. However, we are now living in a country where homelessness is pervasive. It is across every demographic and every gender, and it is in every one of our backyards. When I hear colleagues or supporters say things like “Well, we just need to look at brownfield development”, I wonder of they are kidding. These are our neighbours. These are our fellow humans. There is also who say, “I think those townhomes would change the character of my community”. I live in a multi-family unit in Calgary, and I rent. I live surrounded by people from new Canadian communities, families from all different walks of life, and I live safely and happily. Do members know why? It is because we all have a place to live and a roof over our heads.
Will housing change the character of a neighbourhood? Members can bet it will. It would make it more just, more equitable and give people a sustainable future. When I hear from municipalities, as my colleague for Parry Sound—Muskoka talked about, “Well, we need to consult for another three years on whether or not we could have an extra parking space here and there”, I think it is fundamentally the wrong approach. It is an inhumane approach that does not recognize the national crisis we are in and the hopelessness that our shared constituents feel. Again, it is reaching out to people. It is pandering for votes from people who only had the privilege of getting into the housing market at a time when housing was affordable, and that is rapidly changing.
In Alberta, we do not have rent control. What that means is that people may be renting from people who have bought an investment property on spec, on a variable rate mortgage, and cannot afford to pay that mortgage with the rent they were charging. That is why we are seeing 23%, 24%, or 30% increases. Do members know what it means to have a 30% increase in someone's rent in a year? It means they are homeless; that is what it means.
I am sorry, but at this point, when we cannot house our families, an esoteric debate about parking is ridiculous. I am saying this as a Conservative. Everybody needs to wake up. The federal government has its onus of responsibility to ensure that it is not funding the bad behaviour of municipalities that cannot figure this out, because when the federal government does that, it is actually incenting and empowering NIMBYs. I know that, for people in communities who have lived there for a long time, change is something that we have to bring them along with. I get that, but that is what we should be doing. We should be making the case that, if people are concerned about a stabbing that happened on the LRT yesterday or an increase in addiction, we have to find people places to live. How we change the character of our communities for the better and stop them from descending into crime, poverty and hopelessness is by building more houses, period.
I know, and I believe firmly in my heart, the compassion and caring of the people in my community who, even though they may have concerns about building townhomes, will come along when leaders stand up and ask them to please come along with us because there is so much at stake for us not to do that. However, leaders have to stand up and do that first. I am standing up here and I am proudly saying we need to build more houses. We need to look at every idea.
We have to work across different levels of government, but it has to start with the federal government's acknowledging that what it is doing is not good enough. When I see the Minister of Housing stand up in the House of Commons and I hear him use rote talking points, I see his colleagues cringe behind him. It is an acknowledgement that the course the government is on is not fast enough. It is not good enough and it is not leveraging that pressure and that incentive on municipalities. NIMBY cannot be how we build houses. NIMBY cannot be our housing policy anymore. That is what our party has been saying. This is at crisis-level proportions. Everybody in every place in the House has a story like the one I just read. This is not just one part of our country; it is every part of our country.
I just want to emphasize the anxiety that people are feeling right now because they do not know whether their landlord is going to sell their townhome. That is the other thing; in a rent control situation where mortgage rates are super high but the housing prices are staying high and there is no more stock coming in, people are going to sell. The level of affordable housing stock is going to continue to decrease. Come on; we have to get our act together. This report has some recommendations, but it does not get to the heart of the matter, which is that, as leaders, we all need to wake up to the anxiety, the panic that people are feeling about where they are going to put their families. How can somebody go to work, go to school or do anything productive without a place to live? That is what we are dealing with here.
From the bottom of my heart, I implore my colleagues in the federal government to talk to the Minister of Housing, to say, “Hey, bud, the talking point binder? Scrap it. My community, we have got to do better.” When we stand up in the House of Commons and say we are investing, if investing means that the housing stock is not getting to where it needs to be, then things have got to change. That is what we are arguing for here this morning.
This is too important for us to screw up. We have to understand and be compassionate toward people who are making life decisions not out of want or desire but because they have to, because they do not have a place to live. That has got to change. I hope we can all work together in this place and do something that actually reduces this anxiety because the rent is too high.
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- Jun/13/23 10:37:14 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague is right; it is not all the municipalities' fault. It is her government's fault. It has had eight years and has spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and all it has to show for it are anxiety and panic among people who cannot afford rent. It is not just because of the lack of affordable housing, and that is a big part of it, but it is also because deficit inflationary spending has increased interest rates so much that people are selling off affordable housing stock because they cannot afford to pay the interest rates on their mortgages. This never used to be a problem under a lack of rent control.
My colleague opposite stands there and is not being introspective. Yes, there is a fault of municipalities. I am going to be the first one to say it, and I dare her to have the courage to say the same thing. There are people on my city council who share my political persuasion and who need to hear this message, and I am going to stand up and say it. I have not heard a single Liberal do the same thing, and that is the problem here. The federal government is rewarding municipalities that are not building houses fast enough and are not changing regulations fast enough
Problem one and problem two are that Liberals have created this economic condition by spending out of control. People's lives are worse and interest rates have gone through the roof. Any backbencher in the Liberal Party who does not look at themselves and look at their cabinet has a big problem and is part of the problem too.
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- Jun/13/23 10:39:35 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague just described a situation that is endemic across the country. The housing crisis is affecting everyone. There have also been many stories in the news of universities and colleges across the country where students cannot go anymore because they cannot find a place to rent. There were stories in the news about the deplorable living conditions students were facing. This week, there were stories as well about how new Canadians, people who have moved to Canada from other jurisdictions around the world, have said they cannot stay here because it costs too much live. We are literally turning people away who should be part of our workforce, and they are suffering indignities because they cannot afford to live.
My colleague from Parry Sound—Muskoka outlined recommendations. This is a systemic problem. It comes from the fact, within our scope here in the House of Commons, of a housing strategy led by a federal government that is not delivering. If it were delivering, we would not be having this debate. The proof is in the pudding here.
The government has to, for solution one, acknowledge that there is a problem and that what it is doing is not working. Number two is that we need to make sure government programs are not rewarding municipalities that are putting in place regulatory processes that preclude housing from being built at the rate it needs to be built. Number three is that we need to have compassion in this place and understand we all have a responsibility to push the federal government and hold the federal government to account on its lack of success, and ask it to do better. That includes the backbench in the Liberal Party.
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