44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 5, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to join the debate today virtually to continue the discussion of Bill C-56, which aims to and claims to address the dual affordability crises of the affordability of housing and of food and groceries.
There is no question on any side of this House that we are seeing very difficult conditions for most Canadians, and particularly for anyone who is not in the billionaire class. We are seeing very difficult conditions in affordability, particularly for those who are not in the housing market yet and need to find ways to meet increasingly challenging costs of rent, and, for those who are in the housing market, the increasingly high costs of maintaining their mortgages as interest rates rise.
It is with some irony I remember that during the early days of the COVID crisis, and I would say probably it was in 2020, we had at the Standing Committee on Finance the then Governor of the Bank of Canada, Stephen Poloz, appear. Some of the members said to him that we were spending this money and asked him what would happen afterward. They asked if we would suffer inflation. I remember the former Governor of the Bank of Canada said, on inflation, “That's a problem I'd love to have.” They were so certain at that point inflation was not the threat and deflation was the threat.
What happened? It was not that his analysis was wrong; it is that conditions changed dramatically. Why are we seeing rising food prices? Let us look at food for a minute and then look at housing. Bill C-56, while well intentioned, would not make a big difference for Canadians in the cost of housing or food. That is not because the Liberal government is malevolent, but it is because it has taken the wrong approach, as have the Conservatives. We really need to look at this and ask if we can really fight what we are seeing in rising costs or if we should make sure we top up government revenues, sources, such that we can provide the sources of income and revenue to Canadians so they can survive what is coming at them economically.
Let us step back and look at this. Certainly, the fact we went from a fear of deflation to inflation was an unexpected event. Putin's attack on Ukraine had the effect of driving up oil prices all around the world. The attack on Ukraine also had an impact on food prices, because, as we all know, Ukraine is part of the breadbasket of the world and provides grain in massive exports, which have been significantly challenged by blockading Russian ports.
Occasionally we have grain deals that let grain go through, but there is no question the biggest impacts on driving up prices in Canada in our grocery carts have been Putin's attack on Ukraine, the rising costs of fossil fuels as a result, and the supply chain disruptions in growing food and shipping out grains. This is combined with climate crisis events, which have created droughts, which affect access to food, and which have created extreme weather events. As an example, there are the extreme weather events that affect the island of Mauritius where most of the vanilla is grown. There are massive typhoons that keep hitting because of climate change, which drives up, by the time it goes through the supply chains, the cost of ice cream in Canada because vanilla costs more.
We are looking at a complex web of pressures that have driven up prices. If we look for guidance on what we are now experiencing, there was a 2005 book called The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by James Howard Kunstler. He accurately predicted what we are experiencing: war, climate crisis and instability in fossil fuel production as we hit peak oil. That is what he was looking at in 2005 when the book came out.
We need to look at this and ask if we are able, with Bill C-56, to confidently say to Canadians that this will bring prices in their grocery carts down. I do not think we can, and I do not think anyone wants to say that or hold out this false hope to Canadians. We actually need to look at what we are facing. The climate crisis will drive up the price of certain foods. As long as the war in Ukraine persists, we are looking at cost impacts throughout our economy. In fossil fuel production, where Russia has hit Ukraine, it has also had an impact on fossil fuel production and on excess profits to the fossil fuel sector.
Let us step back and examine it. The approach of this bill is to create more supply for rental housing, which is good as far as it goes. I do not think any of us on any side of the House object to the idea that we should take the GST off the construction costs of building more affordable rental housing. Will that solve our housing crisis? Not when we allow short-term vacation rentals, such as the Airbnb sector, to continue to suck up what we have as available homes, making them inaccessible to people who want to live there. We must provide a very different model for how we use buildings that should be homes because they have become investment properties. The more we can take speculation and investment interests out of housing, the better off we will be, which is why the Greens have been calling for ages to get rid of real estate investment trusts, which operate to make money off housing in a way that was never intended.
I completely agree with the hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni, who mentioned in his speech the importance of co-op housing. We need to return to that.
It is a complex question on two key issues. Looking at this, we can approach rising prices by saying that we are going to do what we see in Bill C-56, and I am certainly going to vote for Bill C-56, which is trying to get a Competition Act extension to look at the lack of competition in the grocery food sector. This is good as far as it goes, as the big five control too much, but that does not go to our immediate problem, neither does getting rid of the GST on building rental housing. We need to make some rather large structural changes, like not having our GDP growth depend so much on rising home prices. Breaking our cultural addiction to rising residential home prices would make a big difference.
What do we do in the short term? We need to turn to excess profits taxes on the oil and gas sector and grocery chains. We did this with the Canada Revenue dividend during the COVID crisis. We should return to it and extend it so it applies to excess profits in the oil and gas sector and grocery chains. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that if we extend the Canada dividend to just oil and gas excess profits, we would have $4.4 billion more.
We need to make sure Canadians have the money in their pockets to be able to keep a roof over their head and have nutritious food for families. That really means bringing in a guaranteed livable income. How do we afford a guaranteed livable income? We essentially did it with COVID benefits, which rolled out quite quickly and did not require needs testing. A guaranteed livable income would protect the most vulnerable in our society from increased energy prices, housing prices and grocery prices. How can we afford it? We bring in an excess profits tax on the oil and gas sector and grocery chains, as well as continuing it on banks and insurance companies. The key to this is in Motion No. 92, introduced recently by the hon. member for Kitchener Centre. We need other MPs to support an excess profits tax, so I would ask members to sign on as seconders to the motion.
We have to stand back and say that we cannot guarantee people that the climate crisis is not going to affect food prices, because it is. Until we have an end to Putin's attack on Ukraine, what we are really seeing in the oil and gas sector is war profiteering. We must not allow these multi-billion dollar multinational corporations to rake in billions in profits, which is really impacting people who can barely afford to make it to the end of the month.
With my remaining 40 seconds I will say this. Let us step back and use a different lens. Let us tax where we need to tax excess profits and get that money into the hands of Canadians who need it.
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Madam Speaker, I do share my colleague's concern.
That is why I was wondering if getting rid of the GST on rental housing construction was the only proposed solution. We do not know how many housing units will be built. We are not getting these answers.
As far as affordability is concerned, we understand that the government cannot guarantee that, because the builder is the one who will get the GST exemption. Is the builder going to reduce the cost of the housing because it got a GST exemption out of the gate? I think that—
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Madam Speaker, I would like my colleague to further explain how exempting rental housing developers from paying GST will address the crying need for affordability. How is this going to lower housing prices to help the middle class and the poorest get by?
Given that this was an NDP idea, from what I understand, can my colleague explain how this will address those needs?
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Madam Speaker, it is always an honour and a pleasure to speak in this place and to add my voice to debate. Today we are talking about Bill C-56, which if passed would amend the Excise Tax Act and implement a temporary 100% rebate on the GST portion for new purpose-built rental housing and amend the Competition Act to get rid of the efficiencies defence, which has been a handy loophole that has been used to let almost any corporate merger go ahead, no matter what it would do to consumer choice.
I want to talk mostly about the housing portion of this.
We are in a housing crisis. Too many Canadians cannot afford to live in their own country. For a long time, people thought of this as just a Vancouver and Toronto problem, but over the past eight years the affordability crisis has reached into every community in Canada. Even in my city, where the economy was devastated in 2015 and where real estate prices actually fell due to the government's implementation of an immediate attack on the energy industry, I am receiving emails from my constituents, who are demanding action on housing. I got an email from Kathy, who talked about her rent going very quickly from $1,600 to $1,800 to $2,200 per month, and that is more than half of her income. I know that every MP in this House is getting these kinds of emails. Rent has doubled, under the watch of the current government, across Canada.
I also get emails from people who believe they will never become homeowners. If someone is a young person today who did everything their thoughtful and nurturing parents told them to do, like studied hard and earnestly, worked hard, got a good education and entered the workforce in a profession or a skilled trade, they would now be earning a good income, which is probably higher than an average income for Canadians. This ambitious young person who might be a nurse, a welder, a lawyer, a teacher or an engineer should have the world at their feet. The promise of Canada for decades was that this young person could now go out and rent a place, save their money for a few years and buy a home before maybe settling down and starting a family, but this is no longer the reality.
How much money can a young person be expected to save in this current environment? What do they do when half their income is going to pay rent? What do they do about the food prices that constantly go up or the prices of gasoline and home heating that go up? The cost of everything due to the government's inflationary deficits and wasteful spending leaves a worker without the ability to save. It would take the typical worker most of their working life to save up for a down payment to buy a typical house, but that would be in vain anyway, because they would not qualify for the mortgage that they would then need to actually go ahead and purchase a typical home.
What are young people today coming out of school to do? Under the government, the country is becoming a place with two kinds of families: families that already own a home and families that may never. The only hope that young Canadians have of becoming homeowners now in most of Canada's large cities is, with help from their parents, if their parents happen to already own a home, the hope that their parents will have the ability and enough money that they can contribute to that large down payment and co-sign the loan. For everybody else, there is just an ever-increasing cycle of rents that rise with shrinking space and quality of accommodation.
The reason for this is quite simple. For years, the supply of houses has failed to keep up with demand. For eight years the government has ignored the failure of supply to keep up with demand. The government has piled on costs and taxes at the federal level to push up construction inputs and it has enabled municipal political allies, who never fail to be the voices of Nimbyism.
Eight years after making a promise on page 7 of their election platform in 2015, Liberals have now figured out there is a problem with access to housing in Canada and are rushing a bill in at the beginning of this fall session to bring about this campaign commitment they made on the elimination of GST on purpose-built rentals.
We see this time and time again. The government creates a problem, and in this case eight years of high taxes, deficits, increased bureaucracy and wasteful spending, leading to inflation, which has led to high interest rates, compounding the shortage of housing supply by making it more expensive, or impossible, for builders to build. Now it wants Parliament to rush through a bill that contains something it promised in the 2015 election and which it has just now gotten around to tabling in Parliament.
Something else happened. The opposition leader tabled the proposed building homes, not bureaucracy act, which also promises to cut the GST on purpose-built rental for construction of below-market rent. The Leader of the Opposition's bill also deals directly with the bureaucratic hurdles to home construction and municipalities that do not want to build new homes.
The Conservative plan is elegant in its simplicity. A Conservative government would make federal infrastructure money contingent on housing outcomes, not housing announcements but actual keys in doors. The Conservative plan would do so not by telling municipalities what to do, but simply by insisting they meet this national policy objective of ensuring that Canadians have a home to live in.
A Conservative government would not bully local councils, like the housing minister recently did in his letter to city council threatening to withhold federal money if city council did not take a particular position on a particular vote. That is not how the Conservative plan would work.
The Conservative plan takes no position on what municipalities do. We would leave that to elected officials, who are elected in their communities to decide how they achieve the objective of increased housing supply. Let us make no mistake, the Conservative government would tie and hold back infrastructure funding if municipalities failed to get keys in doors by increasing the amount of housing stock that is built in their communities. We are saying to municipalities to let the builders build, get on with making sure we have approvals and stand up to the powerful, vested interests that can always come up with a reason that a housing project or a neighbourhood development cannot be approved.
The bill we are debating today seems like it was forced on to the floor by the Liberals trying to catch up to the Conservatives, who already had a plan tabled.
The other part of the bill is actually also stolen directly from the member for Bay of Quinte, who had tabled a private member's bill to abolish the efficiencies defence. I do not have time to get into the efficiencies defence, but I certainly support abolishing it. I have supported it before. I supported my colleague, the member for Bay of Quinte. Also, the previous NDP speaker supports this, and he has talked about competition. I agree with him as well. It is long overdue.
The Rogers-Shaw merger debacle should have been enough to immediately table such legislation, but if a Conservative initiative like that private member's bill is enough to spur the government to action, so be it. That is fine. That is actually Parliament doing what it should, which is debating ideas. If the government sees an idea in two Conservative PMBs, and maybe even an NDP PMB, and wants to copy these ideas and table them as government legislation, great. Let us get it done.
Canadians do not care who tabled what. They just want it done. However, it is a lesson to those who maybe have cozied up and are in this unhealthy coalition with the government. They can be in opposition and still get things done, like tabling good legislation. Let us get good ideas on the table and let us get better policy for Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, I am aware of a few things, including that the government has been in office for eight years and is only now being spurred on, kicking and screaming, by the opposition's plan, which has been tabled in this place, to implement something it promised to do in 2015. I know that in 2008, it did not cost $2,200 a month to rent a portion of a house in my riding. I know that in 2008, the mortgage payment on a typical home in Canada was not $3,600 a month. I spent 22 years in that industry. I know a bit about affordability and what people could qualify for then and now.
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Madam Speaker, we certainly do not have to look very hard or listen very hard to know that Canadians are suffering and that the government's out-of-control inflationary spending is causing tremendous damage to households from coast to coast. I think any member in this place who is taking the time to meet with constituents and hear the concerns they have is hearing exactly this.
Here we are in the House of Commons debating the issue of affordability, and of course the government has come to the table with one thing it believes is the solution. We as the opposition believe that perhaps there are other things that need to be considered, so I will be talking about those here today.
I recently had a phone call with a 65-year-old woman in my riding who is on CPP, OAS and GIS. Combined, she makes just over $1,700 a month. She was calling me because she is incredibly concerned because she cannot afford her rent, her food, her prescription, her car and her cellphone bill.
These, of course, are just essential things; they are part of making life work. There is nothing lavish here. She is not asking to go on a fancy vacation. She is not asking to enrol in any fancy art classes or any extracurricular. She simply wants to live, but the money she makes each month, this set amount, is not enough to do that. This is because the amount she brings in has remained fixed but the cost of everything she has to purchase has, of course, skyrocketed. The reason for that is the government's inflationary spending.
I recently spoke to a couple in my riding who could not afford their rent anymore so they unfortunately had to let their unit go. As a result, they moved into a motor home, where they now reside with their little dog. They move around from one Walmart parking lot to another just trying to get by.
I was speaking to a senior on the phone who was living in a home that was condemned. He was not able to move. He did not want to move, even though he received repeated notices saying that he had to because the home was structurally no longer able to exist and his health and safety were at risk. He refused.
Eventually, authorities had to come and remove him from the home, this elderly man who is in his eighties. He did not have the ability to afford any other available rental in our community. The authorities determined that they did not want to take him to the shelter because that seemed cruel. Instead, he landed in the hospital. He was cared for in the hospital for over a month before he was finally put into an affordable housing unit.
These are the types of situations that are taking place not just in my community but across the entire country. There are people who are struggling to make ends meet. It does not stop with the household and the impact there; it expands beyond that.
I was speaking with people at a local charity. They put together backpacks for kids who would not otherwise have new school supplies. They needed to put together a total of 1,300. They said that in previous years, the number has been closer to 500 or 600. That is shocking enough. That tells us that families are struggling.
Here is the other thing. Our community is incredibly generous, incredibly gracious and incredibly kind and wants to answer the need. Normally they would donate with no problem. These backpacks would be created and it would be fantastic. However, this year, because families are struggling, it was more difficult to find donations.
I was speaking with the director of the local food bank and she was telling me that the clientele has changed. The demographic that is using the food bank increasingly more than any other is single men who are working. They have a job. Those individuals, who are working really hard and wanting to afford life and contribute to society, are having the most difficult time making ends meet.
We know that across this country, a record number of people have unfortunately had to resort to the use of a food bank, not because they wanted to but because they were forced to, because the government decided to spend out of control and tax to the nines. Unfortunately, Canadians have had to pay the incredible cost that comes with that.
The chief responsibility of the federal government is to serve the flourishing of its citizens. Flourishing is something most Canadians probably have a hard time wrapping their heads around. I think right now most of them are just focused on surviving.
When the government is focused on the flourishing of Canadians, it hones in on six things. It hones in on the unity of the country. It hones in on keeping Canadians safe and secure. It hones in on building major infrastructure. It hones in on facilitating economic prosperity, not just for some by pitting one sector against another but for all. A government that is interested in the flourishing of its citizens is also focused on a robust justice system and making sure the rule of law is equally applied, and focused on its place on the world stage and making sure it represents itself well.
I would ask Canadians if the government is interested in their flourishing. I think the answer that would come back to me is no, because Canadians are not better off under the government. They are not feeling cared for by the government. They do not have the ability to flourish under the government.
There are many issues that I could get into, but today we are focused on the economic issues. We are focused specifically on affordability. It is with this issue that I will spend the majority of my time.
After eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, we are watching as the cost of housing, the cost of food, the cost of fuel and the cost of home heating skyrocket. We are watching as Canadians are struggling to make ends meet. We are listening to young people who are feeling desperate. They want hope that perhaps one day in the future they can afford a home.
I recently sat down with a group of young people in my riding and asked how many of them dream of owning a home. The stats say that nine out of 10 have given up on that dream. In my community, all of them raised their hands. They still have that dream. They still have it because they believe that they can work hard and earn it. At the same time, they look at the policies of the government and look at the reality being created for them, and they are struggling to believe that their hope can be fulfilled. However, they still hope.
Why do they hope? They hope because they are confident in themselves. They are confident in their ability to better themselves through education, to land a great job, to work really hard and prosper. However, they need a government that is willing to partner with them, a government that also believes in their potential. They need a government that would also unleash them as young Canadians who are able to bring about great prosperity. That is not the Liberal government.
Unfortunately, the Prime Minister's incompetence has led us to a place of darkness where Canadians are finding it difficult to dream from one day to the next. A common-sense Conservative government would free hard-working people to earn powerful paycheques to pay for affordable homes and affordable food and to put fuel in their vehicles. A Conservative government would take away the bridles of red tape and allow people to step into their gifts, talents and abilities and thrive. Canadians are the problem-solvers, the solution-makers and the wealth-generators this nation needs in order to propel forward. Conservatives believe in them.
The hon. member across the way rolls his eyes because he does not believe in the Canadian people, but Conservatives do. Conservatives believe in each and every one of them and their ability to succeed.
Canadians only need a government that is willing to partner with them, a government that is willing to rein in its spending, a government that is willing to axe silly taxes like the carbon tax and a government that is willing to take away the extra red tape and regulation that is put in place to hinder Canadians rather than facilitate their prosperity. After eight years of struggling under the current government and its strict regime, Canadians deserve a government that will free them, that will allow them to step into their abilities, talents and gifts and prosper. That is a Conservative government.
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Madam Speaker, where the NDP is at is this: Unlike the Conservatives, New Democrats are here to fight for the people and to get more for the people. We are not just here to talk about how great we are and then deliver nothing, having been part of a previous administration that cut housing programs for the people in need. We are creating affordability through different means, and that is why we fought tooth and nail to get the dental care plan.
Yes, the leader of the Conservatives has had access to dental care services all his life through the public service, but most Canadians do not. We will fight tooth and nail on affordability on all fronts.
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Mr. Speaker, what the member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame will not say is that next week, climate action incentive payments will be arriving in the bank accounts of his constituents. He should make sure they know those are coming.
If the member really believes in affordability, then he ought to vote for Bill C-56 and the Atlantic accord, which he is standing against.
This is not the Conservative Party of our parents. The Progressive Conservatives stood up against things like acid rain, and they created solutions. The present Conservative leader, the member for Carleton, does not believe in climate change. He has spun his heels. The Conservatives have ditched progressive values and do not care about fighting climate change or fighting for lower grocery prices.
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- Oct/5/23 3:16:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, every week Canadians are having to spend more and more on groceries just to feed their families. They are having to put off savings and even other essentials in order to keep putting food on the table. We recognize the global supply chain challenges and global inflation, but we need to acknowledge Canadian families are having a hard time right now.
Could the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry tell us about his meeting with the grocery executives and what we are doing to address affordability at the grocery stores?
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in this House to debate Bill C-56. Perhaps I will start with my conclusion: I intend to support the bill, and I encourage all members in this House to do the same.
Bill C-56 is about making life more affordable. It is the affordable housing and groceries act, and of course, given the nature of my position as the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, I will focus more on the aspect that will lead to more home construction across Canada to help address the supply gap that is contributing to the relative lack of affordability that we are dealing with.
I think it is important to acknowledge that Canada is experiencing a housing crisis. In order to restore affordability, we need to build homes and we need to build them by the millions. This is going to require us to pull every lever at our disposal to get Canada building at a rate that it has never built before. However, if we are going to succeed, we have to understand the nature of the obstacles that stand in our way and introduce specific policies that are designed to overcome those challenges.
Over the course of my remarks, I hope to identify the scale of the challenge we are facing, highlight the problems that we need to overcome and demonstrate some of the solutions that are starting to have a positive impact today. I do not mean to suggest that the job is done; we have a long way to go. However, I am very optimistic in light of the response from the home building sector to some of the policies we have put forward indicating that they are having the desired impact.
There are currently about 16.5 million homes in this country. We are on pace to building a few million more over the next number of years, but we have to increase the pace of building significantly if we are going to restore the level of affordability that existed in Canada just 20 years ago.
The reality is that the impact can be felt not only in the statistics outlined in CMHC's reporting, but in the lives of ordinary people who are struggling with the cost of living. The experiences that I hear about include too many young people who are trying to get ahead in life and trying to get their first job in a community they want to live in, but nevertheless find themselves in a position where they simply cannot afford a place to live. Too many people do not have that option. Even young professionals in a two-income household are sometimes unable to find a place to live in the community where they found meaningful work, one they can afford given their rate of pay.
When I talk to students from across the country, they tell me that it is very difficult to find a place to live in a college town that is safe, affordable and near the place they go to school. I have had too many conversations with young people studying on college and university campuses across this country who have told me that they are now sometimes living an hour commute away from their studies. At a time in their lives when they should be focusing on learning and developing skills that will contribute to their well-being, knowledge base and employability, they are focused on figuring out how they can get to class.
There is an opportunity for us, if we continue to engage with the people who are feeling the brunt of the housing crisis, to learn from them the solutions that will allow them to find the kind of place they want to live in.
When I talk to seniors who live in our communities, they want nothing more, as they downsize from the family home where they raised their kids, to find a place that is more manageable for them in the same community where their grandkids are being raised. I do not think that is too much to ask, and we need to realize that the importance to a person's life cannot be overstated when we are dealing with the place they call home.
I have talked to people who have a job that helps them get by in this country, and they tell me that, despite having a respectable income, they cannot find a place to live anywhere close to the place where they work. We need to make sure that we address the needs of workers in this country by working to ensure not only that their wages go a little further and they have a home they can afford, but that they have the kind of home they can raise their family in, with access to the services their family relies on and employment opportunities in their community.
Of course, I would be remiss if I did not also draw attention to the serious challenges facing Canadians who do not have a place to live at all, people who do not have housing security and people who are sleeping rough. We need to continue to do more to support some of Canada's most vulnerable people.
There are a number of challenges that we need to overcome. Primarily, I want to focus today on the need to change the financial equation that home builders are dealing with as they make an assessment as to whether they should green-light a project or let it sit on the shelf. As a result of the recent increases in the cost of supplies and materials, the cost of labour and the cost of land, and of course as a result of rising interest rates from global inflation, too many builders have projects sitting on the shelf that have been approved and could go ahead if the economics of the projects worked.
This is where the GST measure we have advanced through Bill C-56 comes in, and we are seeking support for it from members of Parliament. If we remove the tax on constructing new apartments in this country, we are going to see more apartments go up.
When we made the announcement that we would reduce the GST on new home construction among rentals across Canada, we saw certain provincial governments step up and say they would do the same. I want to thank in particular British Columbia, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador and my home province of Nova Scotia. We are starting to see movement to different degrees in other provinces as well. In some instances, this has reduced costs by 15% overnight when looking at the combined impact of the federal and provincial measures.
What we have seen as a result is that developers are publicly stating they are moving forward with projects that will provide homes for thousands of Canadians that otherwise would not have gone ahead. In particular, I point to Dream Unlimited Corporation's plans to advance several different projects in Ottawa, Saskatoon and Toronto that are going to lead to 5,000 homes being built. I look at Fitzrovia, which announced that it would be moving forward with developments totalling 3,000 homes. I look at Tricon's announcement after the GST measures were revealed. It announced it would move forward with 1,000 new homes.
The reality is that there are many examples of projects, as I have heard from different colleagues and from the home building sector, in every part of this country that are now going ahead that otherwise would have just stayed on the shelf. This policy is having the desired impact, and I am looking forward to seeing many, many thousands of homes be constructed as a result. That is why I am supporting Bill C-56. It would allow the private sector to justify going ahead with the construction of thousands of homes.
However, we know there are many other areas where we need to continue to advance policies if we are going to overcome the challenges facing home builders, communities and people who have housing needs. We need to fundamentally change the way that cities allow homes to be built or sometimes do not allow homes to be built in this country. We need to encourage cities to legalize housing. In too many communities across this country, it is literally illegal, as a result of municipal bylaws, to build the kinds of homes that people need if they are going to live and thrive in our communities.
Members may have seen that over the course of the last few months, I have been engaging directly with municipal councils and mayors, encouraging them to change their laws so they can permit more housing to be built, can speed up the process of permitting those homes and can make the kinds of investments that will lead to more density in downtown cores, more homes near transit stations so people can access the services or employment opportunities they need and more homes near college and university campuses so students have a place to live as they undertake their studies.
I cannot say how excited I am about the early signs of success with the housing accelerator fund. We have seen a positive announcement by the City of London, which is going to be increasing its ambition as a result of its access to the fund. We saw today the City of Vaughan announce that as a result of a $59-million investment, it will be able to add, over the next 10 years, 44,000 homes to that city.
We are going to continue to do more to get low-cost financing on the table by increasing the valuation of the Canada mortgage bond program, which is going to add 30,000 homes a year. There are a number of other measures we need to address, but if we change the equation for builders, change the way that cities build homes and continue to make the kinds of investments we have been making since 2017 under the national housing strategy, we have an opportunity to make massive progress in the attempt to address Canada's national housing crisis.
I would be happy to address any further issues, if members in this House wish.
Let me conclude with a final thought. It is not enough for different parties in this House to throw ideas at the wall, as some have done. We need to address the very specific problems that have given rise to Canada's national housing crisis. By having a thoughtful policy approach and by advancing measures like the removal of GST on new rental construction across Canada, we can change the way that homes are built in this country, increase the pace at which they are built and put an end to Canada's national housing crisis. We can do this by having the private sector and governments co-operate to build homes that Canadians can actually afford.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak on behalf of the folks from Kitchener Centre with respect to Bill C-56, the signature measure of which would involve removing the GST from rental home construction.
I will start by saying very clearly that I certainly support this bill, as does my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands. It is an important and good measure. However, it is not nearly the kind of ambition we need to meet the moment we are in, and that is a very deep and protracted housing crisis.
Specifically, in my community, in the last three years alone, the number of people living unsheltered has more than tripled to over 1,000 people. Let us compare home prices. In our community, back in 2005, the average house price was around three times the average person's income. Today, it is over eight times. House prices have gone up 275% and wages have gone up 42%. It is pretty clear that wages are not keeping up.
We are also losing 15 units of affordable housing to rent evictions and the financialization of our housing for every one new affordable unit getting built. What that looks like, day to day, is that the shelter system in my community is overflowing. The week before we returned here, I showed up to a community meeting at an apartment building in downtown Kitchener. More than 40 people showed up on that night, invited by their councillor. I was there, as was bylaw enforcement.
We heard from folks there about the living conditions in their building, everything from cockroaches to bedbugs. The residents of that building were clear in telling us that they knew they did not have any other options. There was no recourse. There are insufficient recourses. We could talk about the Landlord and Tenant Board and the backlog there. However, the fact is that, because we have not building the kind of social housing we need in this country, people are left with no other options.
As I have heard from other colleagues here, I could talk about what I heard when I was knocking on doors this past summer. I spoke with a young man who is engaged. He is working in the trades, living at his parents' house. His fiancé is a teacher, and she is doing the same. They do not know when they will ever be able to afford a place of their own.
To help restore affordability, CMHC is telling us that we need to build 3.5 million more units than planned by 2030. If we are going to do that, we need to be looking at two sides of this. The first is significant transformational investments in housing. This has been done in this country before. Back in the 1970s, 40% of all building starts across the country had federal assistance. That went down to 8% by the 1980s, and today, no surprise, if we look at the total stock of social housing across the country, we are way at the back of the G7 at 3.5%.
Even a call as bold as saying, “Let us double the social housing stock” would only get us to 7%, which is only the middle of the peer average amongst G7 countries. To do that, though, we need to get serious about having CMHC get back into building housing the way that it used to. Many colleagues have been talking about an acquisition fund, which non-profits across the country have been calling for, a fund that would allow non-profits across the country to preserve what are currently affordable units to avoid losing them to the financialization of housing, and in so doing ensure that those might remain affordable over the long term.
In my community, for example, I spoke with a leader from a local non-profit organization. She was able to share with me, and sent me afterwards, 12 different properties that they have already identified. Should an acquisition fund, such as the one being called for by ACORN Canada and many others, be made available, they would be so keen to jump in and preserve those units. This is an organization that has operated in my community for decades, focused on ensuring that we preserve affordable housing, and it is ready to go. However, they are going to need the federal government to step in and ensure that the funds are there to help them preserve those units.
We could also talk about, for example, investments in the rapid housing initiative. It is a fantastic program. It is not that the government is not doing anything. The issue is that it was in budget 2022, and we have not heard anything since about the next round of rapid housing. We need to see sustained, permanent, ongoing funds that organizations across the country can count on.
It is the same when it comes to co-op housing. I was one of the first to cheer when we saw $1.5 billion of new money invested in co-op housing in budget 2022. Unfortunately, none of those dollars have actually rolled out yet to build co-op housing. We need to see that money get spent, but we also need to see ongoing, year-over-year investments so that we can get back to where we used to be before the early 1990s, when we saw federal and provincial governments pull out of the really critical role they have to play in building affordable housing.
This crisis did not happen overnight. It is decades in the making. I appreciate how clearly the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities has articulated that. He said very clearly multiple times that multiple parties at the federal level have led to this housing crisis. If that is his admission, we are going to need to see investments today reflect the reality of the crisis we are in.
The second thing we need is to be honest that homes should be places for people to live. They should not be commodities for investors to trade. That is what is different between folks who are looking to rent and buy homes today versus my parents in the 1980s. When they were looking to buy a home, they were competing with other people. Today, people in my community are competing with massive corporations, and that has been incentivized.
As members may know, I have spoken many times in this place about one example that I see as a bit of a litmus test. If we were honest about addressing the financialization of housing, we would not have tax exemptions for the largest corporate landlords in the country, but that is exactly what we have. Real estate investment trusts have almost exclusively been buying existing units, the reason being that it is more profitable for them to do so. One of the CEOs of these real estate investment trusts was in the news this past summer for saying exactly that, that it primarily buys existing units to get the best return possible. Why are they are tax exempt? What is the social value of that exemption?
If the government were serious about addressing the financialization of housing, why not take what the PBO has now told us and spend $300 million over the next five years? It is not going to solve the housing crisis, but it is pretty clear that, if we are going to address financialization, we would start by removing the incentives that corporate landlords are currently benefiting from, which only accelerate the financialization of housing. We would obviously move into things like ending the blind bidding process and increasing vacancy taxes. Right now, it is a 1% vacancy tax, which likely is not going to really influence the behaviour of a large corporate investor in the housing market. If we were to increase that, it might change. We also need to move towards more meaningful protections for tenants. If we are going to build this volume of housing, we need to also be doing it with the climate in mind.
We will continue to advocate for the federal government, when it is looking at the new building code in 2025, as I know it is, to accelerate that building code to ensure that provinces and territories can follow the federal government's lead in bringing more resiliency into the code and ensure we are building the kind of housing that is resilient to the climate crisis we are already in the midst of.
As I shared earlier, I am happy to support Bill C-56. I am glad to see this measure moving ahead, and I am looking forward to seeing the federal government step up far more quickly when it comes to addressing the housing crisis we are in.
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