44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 5, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, a recent study by C.D. Howe Institute determined that in Vancouver, the gap between the construction costs and market price of a new home is almost $1.3 million. The hon. member is from the province and from the Vancouver area. Can she tell us why this is happening and what the solution is for such a thing?
61 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I am in no way opposed to further increases in co-operative housing across Canada. It has played an important role in providing a safe and affordable place for many of my constituents to live.
However, in order to reduce the overall cost of housing in Canada, we not only need to be taking the measure in this bill of reducing GST payments on purpose-built rental construction. We also need to have a whole-of-system approach to make sure we can produce all types of housing so Canadians have a safe and affordable place to live. It is not lost on members of the chamber that we had more houses, in real terms, built in 1972 than we did last year. We have to do more. What we are doing right now is not enough.
139 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
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.
1839 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
