44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 31, 2023 10:00AM
- Oct/31/23 12:00:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to contribute to today's debate. I want to thank the member for Mirabel for his leadership on this motion today. I also thank my colleague from Vancouver East for all the work she does in the House on housing and immigration issues.
As New Democrats, we understand that immigration is an integral part of our economic system and, even more importantly, that immigrants play an important role in our communities. We recognize that the cultural influences and diverse skills that immigrants bring to Canada are part of our strength and our success.
If we are to welcome more immigrants to Canada, we must offer them the best chance of success. Because successive governments, both Liberal and Conservative, have failed again and again, we are no longer able to provide provinces with the necessary resources and ensure that immigrants can succeed. When we hear about newcomers who cannot find housing, we have to take responsibility for that.
Today's motion, which seeks greater co-operation between the various levels of government, is the right way to go. If provincial governments are not consulted and do not know in advance what the federal government's immigration targets will be, they cannot possibly prepare all the services they must provide to ensure successful immigration.
Of course, we could talk about the health care system, but I think that, right now, the bigger, more serious problem is housing. In 1992, the Conservative government at the time cancelled a co-op housing program. In 1993, the Liberal government, which promised throughout the election campaign to bring back the program, decided to cancel the whole national housing strategy.
As a result, Canada lost housing for many years in a row. Had the government kept that strategy in place, we could have built 500,000 more affordable housing units. Instead, all that potential was lost. In 2010 or thereabouts, when mortgages were reaching their renewal date, the government created a fund to provide more affordable housing. However, the Harper government then decided not to renew those resources, so we started losing not just affordable housing potential, but also existing affordable housing. The non-profit organizations no longer had the resources to continue to provide affordable housing.
During the 2015 election campaign, the Liberals once again promised to repair the damage done by the Conservatives. However, like in the 1990s, once they took office, the Liberals decided to keep that policy in place and we lost even more affordable housing.
We talk about the need for more immigration to meet the needs of our economy, but we do not have any more room for these immigrants. Of course, provincial governments have a very big role to play in building affordable housing, but they need significant funding from Ottawa to be able to build it. However, we can see that there is a lack of co-operation to ensure that this housing gets built. There certainly needs to be closer co-operation between the provincial and territorial governments and the federal government to resolve the crisis, which was caused by Liberal and Conservative governments agreeing on one important point about housing—that it should be primarily, if not solely, up to the market.
That is why I think that hearing from New Democrats on this issue is really important. We are the ones talking about renewing the commitment to build social and affordable housing, and we recognize that the solution to this crisis will not come from the private market alone.
We are not here to demonize the private sector, but when big companies evict people, shrink the affordable housing stock, and jack up rents, we have to be able to say that as well. We have to be able to talk about that because, even if that is not the only problem, it is one of several. We have to tackle this problem if we want to resolve the housing crisis. We do acknowledge, however, that the private sector has an important role to play here. If all we talk about are market-based solutions, then we are never going to address all aspects of the housing crisis, and we are not going to resolve it.
That is why it is really important to focus on social, affordable and co-op housing, because the two major parties in the House never really talk about these things. Even if the Liberals talk about them a bit, they do not take any action. That is why we are here, to focus on that.
I am now ready to take questions from my colleagues.
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- Oct/31/23 12:09:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this seems to be a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. I think this motion is very important because it encourages the federal government to consult the provinces. However, to have a consultation that will really make a difference, it is important that the government act early enough so that the provinces have enough time to prepare. Announcing immigration targets for 2026 now, in 2023, when there is a housing crisis and we should be setting these targets taking into account the limited number of housing units available, seems to me to be a bit like the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.
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- Oct/31/23 12:11:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am also a great fan of the provincial nominee program. It has been serving Manitoba very well in a number of ways for a long time.
To the point of today's motion about collaboration between the federal and provincial governments, I remember a time when the Harper government unilaterally capped the number of people Manitoba could bring in under that program. That was not a helpful action, and it was certainly not something the Government of Manitoba of the day was on board with. Had it been consulted, it would have been an opportunity for it to make the case for how well the provincial nominee program, and the immigration that occurred under it, served Manitoba. I think that all goes to reinforce the importance of today's motion.
I also think it is important, when we talk about international students, to be clear that the blame is not on them for coming in good faith to study in Canada. Canada needs to do a better job of ensuring that when they get here to study, there is an acceptable place for them to live that they can reasonably afford. I think that international students, as many provincial governments defunded post-secondary education, were seen too often as cash cows, and if governments were treating them with the respect they deserved, they would not have seen them way. The government would have been asking what resources it had to invest in order to support those students when they came to Canada, both for their education and, as the member said, beyond that, so they could become citizens and productive members of Canadian society.
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- Oct/31/23 12:13:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think that is an excellent idea. We need to stop defunding all kinds of important things, like post-secondary education, housing and health care, in the name of lowering the corporate tax rate, which has really been the story of the 21st century in Canada. We have a corporate tax rate that went from 28% to 15%, in the last 20 years alone, and a lot of those cuts in funding have been paying for those corporate tax rates. Corporate Canada should be paying its fair share—
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- Oct/31/23 3:19:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is no secret that Canada is in a housing crisis. We have heard from builders, bankers, economists and policy experts that significant public investment in housing is required in order to get out of the crisis. What does the finance minister say? She asks what the Bank of Canada and the rating agencies will do. There is good news. At the finance committee yesterday, the Governor of the Bank of Canada said that investments to increase housing supply in Canada would not be regarded as inflationary spending and might actually help bring down inflation. Therefore, the path is clear to replenish the co-investment fund and the rapid housing initiative, and to start a non-profit acquisition fund.
Is the government going to do it in the fall economic statement or will it be missing in action?
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