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House Hansard - 233

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 17, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 233 - Oct/17/23
Mr. Denis Trudel (Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, BQ)
  • Oct/17/23 10:54:29 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, has the government already thrown in the towel when it comes to the housing crisis? We know that Quebec needs 1.2 million new housing units by 2030. The government has announced GST breaks on new housing construction, which may enable a few thousand units to be built. After 18 months, the government finally signed an agreement with Quebec to release $900 million in the housing accelerator fund. Again, that represents a few thousand housing units. Unfortunately, to really address this crisis, we should be building 200,000 housing units a year from now until 2030. What is the plan? Where are the meaningful measures to address this crisis? Has the government already abandoned people to their fate in this housing crisis?
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Context: House Hansard - 233 - Oct/17/23
Mr. Denis Trudel (Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, BQ)
  • Oct/17/23 12:04:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what he just said is very interesting. He talked about the affordable housing we are losing in Canada. This brings me to a topic that does not come up very much when we talk about the housing crisis: the financialization of housing. We are talking about affordable housing because large investment trusts, often international, investment companies, are buying up affordable housing. Often, they demolish the housing, or they renovate it and then double the price. That is important. When the federal government withdrew from housing in 1993, this phenomenon did not really exist in Canada. Now, we see that between 20% and 30% of the housing stock is owned by these corporations. We do not see the government legislating against that. We will not be able to build the 3.5 million housing units. They will not appear out of thin air. We will have to protect affordability any way we can. I would like my colleague to elaborate. Are there any measures that could be taken right now to counter this financialization that is hurting Canada's housing market so badly here?
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Context: House Hansard - 233 - Oct/17/23
Mr. Denis Trudel (Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, BQ)
  • Oct/17/23 1:19:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, to listen to the Conservatives, one would think that every bit of spending is inflationary spending. Last week, the Government of Canada and the Government of Quebec finally came to an agreement on a program to speed up the construction of housing, something that we voted on a year and a half ago and from which we are now finally starting to see some results. The federal government will provide $900 million. I would like to remind the House that, at last count, there were 10,000 homeless people in Quebec alone. Does my colleague think that the $900 million that will be used to build housing to help those 10,000 homeless people constitutes inflationary spending?
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