44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 11, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, I hope my colleagues in the House are having a good start to their week.
The Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-56, which would refund the GST to builders. What bothers me, however, is that Bill C-56 extends over seven years, so that means the rebate will be spread over seven years. In 2023, it is hard to foresee what is going to happen in a month or six months.
How can we be sure that a bill like this will be effective when it is going to extend over seven years and plenty of questions remain about the criteria for housing affordability and the desired potential reduction in rent?
I would like my colleague to comment on that.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague spoke at length about one of the two aspects of the current debate on Bill C-56, which amends the Competition Act, among other things. We agree; it is not going to solve every problem.
The other aspect this bill addresses is housing, in particular the GST on rental housing. It touches on this other problem that we have heard a lot about and that is a real scourge this year: housing.
What my colleague did not mention is that the only solution his party has proposed so far on the housing issue is a bill introduced by his leader, a bill that is essentially designed to show cities some tough love and tell them that funding will be cut if they do not meet their targets.
That is not what cities, particularly those in my riding, need to successfully address the housing issue. I would like to know what my colleague thinks about this.
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Madam Speaker, as an FYI to the member, this bill is not about what he talked about. What he needs to recognize is that one of the big initiatives in this legislation would exempt purpose-built rentals from GST, a good, sound policy. I suspect that the Conservatives might vote in favour of that. After all, we have now seen provinces get on board. A number of provinces are doing likewise for the PST.
The federal government is leading on the housing issue, and I am wondering if my Conservative friend can explain why we as a national government today lead on housing-related issues, whereas the Conservatives in the past, under their current leader, did absolutely nothing when it came to housing in Canada.
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Madam Speaker, let me remind the government that what little it has fixed when it comes to housing in Canada is only a drop in the ocean.
The government promised $15 billion in loans and to possibly build 1,500 more housing units per year when millions more are needed. With the Liberals, it will take 2,500 years to get to where we want to be. We will need between 4 and 5 million more housing units by 2030. With the Liberal government, that is an unattainable target.
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Madam Speaker, when it comes to housing, the Conservatives made cuts too and did not invest enough in social and community housing, which is what is needed.
That said, how does my colleague from Quebec deal with the fact that his Conservative colleague was shown on Infoman to have taken some liberties with the truth—to keep things parliamentary—on the carbon tax, according to independent journalists?
This morning, we learned that independent economists raised red flags regarding the Conservative leader's so-called documentary. They said that his viral video—again, I am trying to keep things parliamentary—lacked in correctness and used arguments that are much too simplistic for such a serious crisis.
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Madam Speaker, the Liberals in the House have been crowing about removing the GST on housing construction. I find it ironic, and would ask my colleague to comment on this, that they talk about making life more affordable by removing GST on housing yet the government has refused to remove the carbon tax on groceries, on everything we produce in this country and on gasoline.
I would ask my colleague to comment on the apparent contradiction between the Liberal government's intent to make life more affordable by removing the GST on housing and the fact that it will not axe the tax.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent question.
The problem that we have with this provision, which seeks to eliminate the GST on the construction of rental housing, is that the government is making assumptions. The government is trusting the private sector to bring prices down. It is always a bit risky to trust the private sector to lower prices. There is nothing to guarantee that, once the rental units have been built, private builders will pass those savings on to renters in the form of lower rental costs. The government is making assumptions.
That is why we do not think that this is the answer to the problem we are facing. However, as I said in my speech, this measure could result in the construction of more rental units, which would reduce pressure on the market by increasing availability, but there is no guarantee of that. The government is hoping that is what will happen if it implements this measure, but we are not convinced that it will have such a major impact on lowering rent. In fact, we are not convinced that that will happen at all. That being said, we will not vote against Bill C‑56, because it contains good measures and nothing harmful.
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Madam Speaker, for the most part, I agree with my colleague's observations and analysis.
I am not suggesting that removing the GST from rental housing construction is a bad measure. It was one of our proposals as well. However, I agree that this measure alone is not going to solve the housing crisis that has been going on since 1994, when the federal government completely pulled out of building truly affordable social housing.
I would like to hear his thoughts about the fact that the real solution is non-market housing, such as co-ops, community housing, student housing and, most importantly, social housing.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Rosemont—La Petite‑Patrie and I generally agree on that.
Quebec is a unique ecosystem. In fact, we call that a distinct society, a nation. The co-operative system is rather unique in Quebec, at least in terms of the number of co-operatives that exist in Quebec.
Housing falls under the jurisdiction of Quebec. Social and affordable housing requires funding. As usual, Ottawa knows best and it is interfering in a jurisdiction that is not its responsibility. The federal government does not have the expertise, but it has the money because of the fiscal imbalance and because all of the revenues are in Ottawa and all the expenses are in Quebec and the provinces.
We are asking Ottawa to send money to Quebec, the provinces and the territories who have the expertise in affordable and social housing. Then things will go much smoother. That being said, there is an even more radical solution that would be even better and would practically solve everything: if the federal government stayed out of Quebec and we had all the power over such matters. If we were a country, the housing situation would be lot better.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-56 once again and maybe take a stab at addressing some of the issues that have come up in debate. I will start just by saying, first of all, that New Democrats, of course, support this legislation.
What we said at the beginning in respect to housing was that it is good to increase supply but that it is not just any increase in supply that is going to help with the housing crisis. We have to be concerned about the various kinds of housing along the way and ensure that we are increasing supply in all parts of the housing spectrum where there is need. Of course, there is a need for more market-based, purpose-built rental and eliminating the GST off purpose-built rental is a way to incent the development of more market rent apartments. This will be great for Canadians who can afford market rent, which is certainly a smaller percentage of Canadians than it was just a short time ago. Nevertheless, for those who can afford it, are looking for it and cannot find it, more market supply will certainly be helpful.
However, we cannot wash our hands of the issue and think that the work is done simply because we have brought in a measure to incent the development of more market-based housing. A lot of other Canadians out there will not be able to access that market housing; nevertheless, they need to be housed, deserve to be housed and, as far as I am concerned, should have an enforceable right to be housed in Canada. That is why, from the word go, when this bill was introduced, New Democrats said that this on its own would not be enough. We want to see the government accompany this legislation with some measures for development of non-market housing, which does not always mean affordable or social housing. Non-market housing can be provided at market rents. We see that in some co-ops that choose to offer market rent suites to those who can afford them and, at the same time, offer some affordable rents or social rents, where rent is actually geared to folks' income. Therefore, it is only ever a percentage of their income. It does not eat up the entirety of a household's budget.
All this is to say that incenting more market supply is not enough. This bill would do that. It is one component of addressing the housing crisis. There is a lot more to do. New Democrats were certainly disappointed in the fall economic statement for not having been more ambitious on that front. There was a billion dollars announced for a replenishment of the coinvestment fund, but the fact that this replenishment does not come until 2025 is a serious issue. I think it is a sign that the government still does not understand the extent to which we need to confront the housing crisis in Canada with a serious sense of urgency.
Other housing that we need to look at, whether market or non-market, is housing to be able to address the concerns of many indigenous communities across Canada. I just want to take a moment to recognize the good work that my colleagues from Nunavut have done, both the current member for Nunavut and Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, who was the MP for Nunavut in the last Parliament. She spent a considerable amount of time travelling through her riding, the territory of Nunavut, documenting the serious housing need there: the overcrowding, the mould and the dilapidated condition of a lot of housing that has been built. I think it is important to note that taking the GST off purpose-built rental is not going to do a thing for folks in Nunavut and small remote communities, where there is not an abundance of contractors waiting to build housing. They are not looking to go there as a market.
We have talked a lot about the competition space, whether it is telecoms, grocery companies, banks, fossil fuel companies, where we have these oligopolies that have developed in Canada. Members can just name the market. We can talk about better competition policy until we are blue in the face. If we are talking about grocery prices at the one grocery store in a rural community where people have to drive hundreds of kilometres just to get to the next grocery store, the fact is that improving the competition framework is not going to do a lot in respect to pricing in a community like that. Taking the GST off purpose-built rental is not going to do a lot to incent the development of new housing in small and remote communities in Nunavut. That is why we have to go outside just thinking about the market and how to incent market players. What do we hope they will do? It is not profitable in the way that they are used to making profit in a place such as Toronto, Vancouver or even Winnipeg or Halifax.
It is not profitable to build up there, and folks certainly do not have the money to pay to make it profitable for somebody to build up there. However, we need people to do so. That is why we need good public policy that is not dependent on just trying to provide little carrots for profit-seeking companies in the market.
It is not that they are doing anything wrong. They are not bad people for not wanting to move their business from downtown Toronto, where they develop condos, to Nunavut and start building appropriate housing for people in small, remote northern communities.
We should not expect people to do that all on their own; however, one needs public policy in the context of a strategy that includes addressing workforce needs and training up local people to have skills. Such a strategy includes having the funding required, when they are done building homes in one community, to move that infrastructure and the people to the next community to do some of that building and to share those skills. It also includes having what amounts to an economic development plan that is about putting indigenous people back in charge of their own communities while ensuring that they have the resources to do something with their skills as they develop them.
The market is not going to do that. It is not meant to do that, nor is it interested in doing that.
We get up and talk a lot about these things. People say that we do not care about entrepreneurs, business or risk-taking. That is not true, but we understand the limits of it.
There is an intellectual and administrative laziness that permeates the Liberal and Conservative parties, where they would rather just pretend as though somehow, if one gives the market enough of a free hand, it will fix all these problems. It is not true.
The market is not designed to fix certain kinds of problems. Sometimes, the very problems that it is not designed to fix are some of the most important problems. The people who, not wrongly, but we all make choices, decide to live their life seeking profit in the market are not interested in solving these problems, because there is no money to be made in solving them in that way. However, they are life and death problems.
The problem of housing in Nunavut is killing people right now. It is making it impossible for them to get an education. We have heard stories about schools built in indigenous communities that were not even open for six months before they got shut down. A shoddy job was done of building the school, and they ended up having structural problems with the school right away. We were just talking about this last week.
If a child is fortunate enough to have a school, and they go to school, come back and try to do homework, but their home was built for five people and houses 15, we can be damn sure that this child is going to struggle to get their homework done. If they have to sleep in shifts because there are not enough bedrooms for people to go and lie down, the child will struggle to focus on learning.
We know that, even in major centres, kids in school right now are having a hard time concentrating. This happens more and more as Canadians struggle to afford food, because the kids do not have a full belly.
This is why New Democrats have been supporting the idea of a national school food program.
I am proud to say that this is a priority of the new government in Manitoba, and I look forward to it getting done. I do not think it should have to do it on its own. I think the federal government should be at the table doing that. We have heard a lot of words, but we have not seen a lot of action. We certainly have not seen any funding for that.
We need to get on with that. If we want people to succeed, if we want the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” language to make any sense at all, it has to be in a world where people have the resources to be able to do that.
As a starting point, they have to be housed. They have to be fed. Their parents cannot be working three jobs just to make ends meet and never be around to have any time to provide support or direction.
These are some things that the market is not going to do for us. That is not what it is there for. It is all well and good for people who are well resourced, whose children have opportunities and who are well-supported, to say, “We did it. Why can't everybody else?”
The fact of the matter is that there are so many more children who can do it and would do it if they had the right start and just a little bit of those resources that so many of us have the privilege of being able to take for granted.
I say yes to eliminating GST from purpose-built rental, but we cannot then pretend that the work is done. I think the fall economic statement betrayed that the government does think that the work is done and that it can take its sweet time getting around to the rest of it. The government thinks it can say to the territorial government in Nunavut that if it wants money for housing, it will have to apply to the indigenous government that it already gave money to, failing to recognize that they serve different populations. There is a lot of overlap, but their mandates are not the same. Indigenous governments should get money to provide housing to people in their communities, but not in lieu of territorial governments getting resources to build housing in those communities. The deficit of affordable housing is large enough that we need both of these organizations, if they are willing, to be working together to try to meet the housing need.
We need to start addressing some of these things, just as we need to address some of the larger infrastructure required in order to build the housing. I think of the Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre Link, for instance, which, if built, would deliver power to a community in Nunavut, as well as a mine. It is an important thing we could do, both to incent economic development in the region and also to make it possible to build housing. There is no point in building a house in the 21st century for somebody who does not have electricity. We need to find a way to get power to communities even as we think about building more housing in those communities.
I talked before a little about what I think is a kind of intellectual laziness and an administrative laziness, by which I mean governments that do not want to do the hard public policy work of developing an effective strategy, funding it and resourcing it. Let us be frank; I think we tend to dismiss the work of public administration. However, it is important to be able to have a plan and line up all the players, which includes market players. For instance, we are not going to have a housing strategy that does not involve talking to the people who build the homes. I am an electrician by trade. There is a lot of good information that can be gleaned from the people who actually do the work, as opposed to talking just to the engineers or the estimators.
To put together a public strategy like that, to bring all of those pieces together, takes a lot of time and a lot of work. It is also a unique set of skills that we do not necessarily see everywhere else. That is why courses in public administration are offered. For too long, there has been a prevailing attitude, in both of the parties that have governed since the mid-1990s, when they cancelled the national housing strategy, that we are here just to make it easy for the guys in the market to take care of it all, and that if cannot be taken care of by the market, it is not for us to worry about.
It is quite the contrary; that is exactly the thing that people in government should be worried about. It is exactly the job of government to take care of some of the very important things that the market will not take care of. However, first of all, we have to accept and admit that the market will not take care of every need if it is left to its own devices. Thankfully there is a lot of overlap between what one can make a lot of money at and providing services to people in good ways. We see that in many facets of our economy; small and medium-sized businesses, particularly, are very good at identifying gaps in the services in their local communities, and developing a product and selling it at a fair price. When we look at some of the larger companies, like telecom companies, oil and gas companies and banks, that is not what is going on. Even though they make a lot of money and benefit greatly from a public policy environment designed to help them make their money and defend their interests and power in the economy, they do not accept any reciprocal responsibility.
There are only three big Canadian grocery chains. Do they accept any responsibility for providing groceries at an affordable price to Canadians? No, it is very clear they do not see that as their job. Just take a look at the work that my colleague, the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford has done, asking difficult questions of grocery CEOs at the agriculture committee. They made it pretty clear that they accept no responsibility. They have a completely privileged position in that market. Food is something Canadians cannot decide to do without. The CEOs accept no reciprocal sense of responsibility to Canadians for that.
We can look at oil and gas companies that have been making money hand over first lately, even while laying off more employees. Do the Canadian oil and gas companies think that they need to do anything to try to reduce the cost at the pump? Absolutely they do not. They see an opportunity. They see that they have a captive market. To the extent that they can push prices up, they certainly have been doing so.
Between 2019 and 2022, oil and gas profits in Canada rose by 1000%. This is not an industry that accepts any responsibility for the privileged position it occupies and the power that comes with it in the Canadian economy. The idea that we are going to leave it all to the market is, I think, a false idea, but unfortunately it has been the predominant idea for at least 30 years in Canada. We can trace it back at least to the original free trade agreement debate in 1988 and the years leading up to that. This is relevant to the point of competition, I would say. My Conservative and Liberal colleagues usually argue about who is the greatest supporter of corporate free trade.
It is interesting to watch, after the Conservatives voted against the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement most recently, how the argument goes. We see that the Conservatives voted against the trade agreement for no good reason I can identify except to make everything about the carbon tax. That includes things that are not about it, like a conflict half a world away that has everything to do with the preservation of democracy. Instead of taking that seriously on its own terms, they would rather make it about the carbon tax for their own domestic political needs. That is a sign of a government that does not have our back. It has been interesting to watch Conservatives try to defend their position as the greatest defenders of corporate free trade while voting against that trade agreement.
It has been interesting to watch the Liberals not just zero in on the Ukraine issue but also see this as their opportunity to establish themselves as the biggest champion of corporate free trade in the Canadian political space. That has been fascinating, because the thing about free trade is that it was supposed to bring us lower prices. I just heard a Conservative member talk about how there are only five big grocery companies in Canada, three Canadian ones and two American ones. He talked about how he wants more Canadian companies. That was the argument New Democrats were making in the free trade debate: that if we opened up the economy, what we would end up with is Americans coming over and taking over essential industries. Just watch.
There are Conservatives who believe we should deregulate the air industry and invite American airlines into Canadian spaces as a way to lower prices and improve service. Just wait until it happens; they are going to be singing the same crocodile tears song 20 years after it happens that they are singing now about grocery companies, as if anyone should believe them. Either we are of the point of view that we can take a strategic approach to certain pillars of our economy and believe that we need the tools at our disposal to protect those things and conduct business in a certain way, or we believe that we should open it up completely to competition and free trade agreements and even give foreign companies the right to sue the Canadian government, which is what Conservative and Liberal governments have done when they have tried to have a strategic economic approach.
Conservatives get up and cry foul, not just on groceries but also on the battery plant jobs and on workers coming in. Do they know how they are coming in? They are not coming in through the temporary foreign worker program, for the most part, although we would not know that when listening to the Conservatives. What is interesting on that point too is that the TFW program blew up under the Conservatives' watch and then had to be fixed because it had become such an exploitation of foreign workers. The workers are coming in under international labour mobility provisions negotiated in free trade agreements by the Conservatives. At the time, when we asked them if they knew that would mean that multinational companies were going to import foreign workforces when there is a big investment in Canada, they said that it would not happen, that they would just bring in supervisors who were going to help share some specific expertise and then move along. The jury is out on whether that is what is happening in the battery plants. The government owes Canadians a better answer and more guarantees for what it is doing for their tax dollars. The fact of the matter is that it is just egregious for Conservatives to get up and pretend they do not know how those international labour mobility provisions work or that they did not negotiate them.
I look forward to talking more about these things in the Q and A.
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Madam Speaker, I have a question for my colleague.
Many of us in the House believe that the GST rebate for rental property builders will not really have any impact on the availability and affordability of housing. If the results are questionable, how does my colleague explain the government proposing that this be spread over seven or even 12 years for the final reimbursement, until December 31, 2035, to be exact? I would like his opinion on that.
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Madam Speaker, as I said, I believe it is appropriate to introduce targeted measures for the market, but not in a context where the work is not being done to ensure that housing is being built and that the necessary resources are available for not-for-profit organizations that have a mandate to build other kinds of housing.
I think this government has a habit of focusing on what amount to market mechanisms and ignoring its responsibility to invest in non-market housing. The government's highest duty lies precisely in that type of housing, because the other players in the economy will not be interested in that type of housing, which does not make a lot of money.
Yes, we can build more housing that turns a profit, but the government must also focus on non-market housing.
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- Dec/11/23 2:17:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when the leader of the Conservative Party was the minister responsible for housing, he was a disaster, and nothing at all has changed now he is the leader of the official opposition. It is hard to believe that last Thursday Conservative after Conservative stood in their place and voted against housing. It is absolutely terrible. Can members imagine? There was a vote for tens of thousands of purpose-built apartments, and the Conservative Party said no, unanimously, among those who chose to take the time to come to vote.
I say shame on the leader of the Conservative Party because that is not what a leader is all about. A leader should be inspirational in ensuring that we provide the type of supports that are necessary. That means that the leader of the official opposition is not only reckless, but also does not have a policy that is worth a cent, quite frankly.
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- Dec/11/23 2:23:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to see the opposition leader run from the uncomfortable questions that are being put to him on the floor of the House of Commons.
Let us look at some of the voting record that the Conservatives demonstrated last week when it comes to saving people money on reducing the cost of housing. The member has made clear that his personal position is that the government has no business investing in housing, but individual members of Parliament had the opportunity to stand up and be counted when there was a vote on the floor of the House of Commons. They said no to investments in affordable housing. They said no to thousands of apartments. They said no to housing for indigenous communities and to emergency shelters for women and girls. They also said no to funding for homeless veterans. They should be ashamed.
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- Dec/11/23 2:24:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we said no to doubling housing costs. The Liberals doubled housing costs. That is the reality. All the slogans the member wants to spit out are not worth a hill of beans when all they have done is double housing costs.
It is just like when they said the carbon tax would help the environment. Now we know Canada has fallen four places, to 62nd out of 67 countries in the world, after they tried to impose this carbon tax.
Instead of quadrupling a tax that has failed, why will they not axe the tax and invest in technology?
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- Dec/11/23 2:45:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, right here in Ottawa, the average rent for a one-bedroom has hit a record high of $2,100 a month. It is close to $3,000 in Vancouver and Toronto. It is unacceptable that the out-of-touch Liberals are delaying housing funding for another two years; people cannot afford rent now.
Then there are the Conservatives, who do not even believe in community housing and would rather give handouts to luxury condo developers. Will the Liberals stop delaying and get the money out the door now to build much-needed affordable housing?
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- Dec/11/23 2:45:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her advocacy for additional investments in affordable housing and housing more broadly. I would remind my hon. colleague that, in fact, there are programs that exist today that are rolling dollars out the door to get more homes built. In fact, just a few weeks ago, we announced more than $4 billion worth of loans; this is going to result in more than 12,000 new apartments being constructed. In addition, we recapitalized our affordable housing fund to the tune of $1 billion in the fall economic statement, on top of the more than $300 million going to co-operative housing, which will be rolling out early in the new year. I am willing to work with all members of the House, including that member, to build more homes faster.
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- Dec/11/23 3:00:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, housing is too expensive everywhere. To solve the housing crisis, we need to get more homes built faster. One simply cannot get more homes built by cutting housing funding.
My question is for the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities.
How will the housing measures included in the supplementary estimates, which the Conservative leader just voted to cut, help solve the housing crisis?
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- Dec/11/23 3:01:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know from the course of our history that we have to make investments if we are going to solve the national housing crisis, but with the Conservative position to cut everything, Canadians are right to ask what it is they are going to cut. Thankfully, they put on a full display of a series of measures that they want to get rid of. This includes investments that were going to build thousands of affordable homes for Canadians. This includes investments that are going to build apartments at reasonable prices. This includes investments in indigenous housing initiatives, investments in transitional housing for women and children, and investments in homelessness supports for veterans.
If Conservatives cannot stand along with the vulnerable, they will stand with no one but themselves.
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- Dec/11/23 8:10:25 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, the Liberal government will be treading on thin ice when it comes to how it is compared to the Conservatives if these cuts are allowed to happen. The member for Vancouver East and I have been working very hard all year to make sure that even one small aspect of housing is delivered. I am speaking about the urban, rural and northern housing initiative, which should have flowed by now, but because of the Liberal government and its delay tactics, we will not see housing built until 2025. This is the impact of the Liberal government, and that is what we need to make sure is clear. It is why we are fighting against the $7.6 billion in cuts that are being proposed by the Liberal government.
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