SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 302 - Apr/18/24

Mr. Majid Jowhari (Richmond Hill, Lib.)

Apr/18/24 4:18:09 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, at the outset, I would like to inform the House that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Ottawa Centre. I am proud to rise as the member of Parliament for Richmond Hill to speak to the urgent action in budget 2024 that would help Canada build the homes needed to restore fairness for every generation. Last week, our government released Canada's ambitious plan to build homes by the millions, to support renters and to lower the costs of home ownership so that no hard-working Canadians have to spend more than 30% of their incomes on housing costs. With budget 2024 and with Canada's housing plan, we are going to do whatever is necessary to put money on the table to build more affordable housing, to create the market conditions necessary to get more homes built and to change the way that cities build homes. We will restore the promise of a Canada for everyone once again. Over the next part of my speech, I am going to focus on four major areas: building more homes faster, supporting home ownership and renters, building homes on public lands and building the infrastructure communities need to build more homes. I will first speak about building more homes faster. We know higher interest rate environments have made it difficult to build homes. That is why we are proposing significant action in budget 2024 to boost the housing supply and to remove the areas that often slow down the construction of new homes. For example, we are reviving and modernizing Canada's post-war housing design catalogue, which will provide blueprints that can be used across the country to speed up the construction of new houses. Budget 2024 proposes to allocate more than $11 million in 2024-25 to support the development of this catalogue for up to 50 housing designs, including row housing and fourplexes that provinces, territories and municipalities could use to simplify and to accelerate housing approvals and builds. This first phase of the catalogue will be published in the fall of 2024. Speaking of supporting municipalities, our $4 billion housing accelerator fund is already cutting red tape across the country with 179 agreements with provinces, territories and municipalities, with Richmond Hill being one, enabling the construction of over 750,000 new homes over the next decade. To continue the momentum, budget 2024 would top-up this program with an additional $400 million to build more homes faster from coast to coast to coast. As well, to help developers get the capital they need to build more rental homes, we are also topping up the apartment construction loan program, or ACLP, with $15 billion, starting next year. This proposed investment alone would help build more than 30,000 additional new homes across Canada, bringing the program's total contribution to over 131,000 new homes by 2031. We know there is no single player who can fill Canada's housing shortage on his or her own. That is why we need to take a team Canada approach to getting this work done for Canadians. That means all of us working together and using every tool in our tool kit to get more homes built much faster. To that effect, budget 2024 announces Canada builds, which would help to leverage the ACLP so that we can better partner with provinces and territories to build more rental housing across the country. Truthfully, we could not do any of this without Canada's builders, carpenters, construction workers and similar tradesmen. They are incredible people who love their jobs, who are good at them and to whom we should all be grateful because we cannot build homes without them. To help train and recruit the next generation of skilled workers, budget 2024 proposes to provide $90 million over two years for the apprenticeship service program to help create placements with small and medium-sized enterprises for apprentices. Ten million dollars over two years is also being proposed for the skilled trades awareness and readiness program to encourage Canadians to explore and prepare for careers in the skilled trades. In addition, budget 2024 proposes to provide $50 million over two years for a foreign credential recognition program, at least half of which would be used to streamline foreign credential recognition in the construction sector to help skilled trades workers build more homes. We need to do everything we can to make it easier to build homes more quickly and more cost-effectively, and the measures I have just outlined are exactly those. Now, I will go on to the second area of my speech, which is supporting homeowners and renters. Young Canadians in my own community of Richmond Hill, including my son, and across Canada are struggling to find housing that fits their budgets. That is why the government launched the tax-free first home savings account and why, in budget 2024, we are taking action to unlock additional pathways for young renters to become homeowners and to protect middle-class homeowners from rising mortgage payments. To help first-time homebuyers keep pace with the rising housing costs, budget 2024 announces our intention to amend the Income Tax Act to increase the homebuyers' plan's withdrawal limit from $35,000 to $60,000. This budget also proposes to temporarily extend the grace period, during which homeowners are not required to pay their homebuyers' plan's withdrawals to their RRSP, by an additional three years. This first measure will enable first-time homebuyers to save up to $25,000 more for their own down payment faster. For a couple who withdrew the maximum in 2023, extending the grace period could allow them to defer annual repayments as large as $4,667 by an additional three years. Thanks to the new Canadian mortgage charter, more Canadians know about the fair, reasonable and timely mortgage relief they can seek and receive from their financial institutions. Budget 2024, aims to enhance the charter by enabling first-time homebuyers purchasing newbuilds to get a 30-year mortgage amortization, among other enhancements. The government will bring forward regulatory amendments to implement this proposal. Additionally, budget 2024 proposes to call on banks, fintechs and credit bureaus to prioritize tools that allow renters to opt in to reporting their rent payment history to credit bureaus so that they can strengthen their credit scores when applying for a mortgage. We are all committed to protecting the rights of tenants and to ensuring that renting a home is fair, open and transparent. For that reason, budget 2024 proposes actions to protect the millions of Canadians who rent and who have been exceptionally impacted by recent drastic rent increases. I now move on to the third area, which is building homes on public lands. Our government is redoubling our efforts to build homes wherever and whenever possible in the face of Canada's housing crisis. We are accelerating and streamlining the process of converting surplus federal properties into housing, and we are continuing to work with Canada Lands Company to enable the construction of additional housing units. In conclusion, our focus as a government is on building more homes at a pace and a scale not seen in generations to restore fairness and affordability for every generation. I hope my hon. colleagues will support us in this incredibly crucial work.

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Context: House Hansard - 302 - Apr/18/24

Mr. Majid Jowhari

Apr/18/24 4:28:02 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, we are not doing the same thing over and over again. If the member looks at it, starting back in 2016, we made a historical investment, and we continue to do that. We also introduced partnerships with the provinces and territories. When it became clear that we needed other partnerships, such as the municipalities, we started working with them. When it became clear that we needed to remove the red tape, we started working on that. We have been working consistently on that, looking at what we need to focus on and introducing new programs.

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Context: House Hansard - 302 - Apr/18/24

Mr. Majid Jowhari

Apr/18/24 4:29:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of serving with my colleague on the HESA committee. When we talk about affordable housing and affordable rental units, we are talking about affordable housing and rental units for everyone, whether for a senior, a young couple or for an individual. We are not making any distinction among those demographics. By making sure that affordable rental units and affordable housing are available to everyone, by default, we are including seniors as well.

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Context: House Hansard - 302 - Apr/18/24

Mr. Majid Jowhari

Apr/18/24 4:31:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I did not get a chance to cover part of my speech, which was focused on the public land the federal government is making available, but I will highlight that in a very short comment. In fact, budget 2024 proposes $5 million over three years, starting in 2024, to support and to overhaul Canada Lands Company to expand its activities to build more homes on public lands.

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Context: House Hansard - 302 - Apr/18/24

Mr. Majid Jowhari (Richmond Hill, Lib.)

Apr/18/24 5:50:52 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-380

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-380, an act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, regarding plastic manufactured items, introduced by the member for Saskatoon—University, whom we just heard from. If passed, Bill C-380 would remove “plastic manufactured items” from the list of toxic substances in schedule 1 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, or CEPA, as it is more commonly known. We unequivocally oppose this bill. It would eliminate the legislative basis underpinning the regulatory actions the government has taken and is taking under CEPA to prevent plastic pollution. The vast majority of Canadians are concerned about plastic pollution and they expect our government to act. In 2021, a survey found that over 90% of Canadians expressed concern about the impact that plastic pollution has on oceans and wildlife. In late 2023, a survey from the Angus Reid Institute revealed that most Canadians felt that a single-use plastic ban is an effective means to reduce plastic waste. We know that plastic pollution is everywhere in the environment, posing the threat of harm to wildlife and damaging their habitats. Scientific findings support this conclusion. The government's 2020 science assessment provides a summary of peer-reviewed studies related to the effects of plastic pollution on organisms and their habitats. It confirms that plastic pollution is everywhere in the environment, including shorelines, surface waters, sediment, soil, groundwater, indoor and outdoor air, drinking water and food. Statistics Canada's physical flow account for plastic material estimates that of the 4.9 million tonnes of discarded plastics in Canada in 2020, only a little over 7% of that was recycled into pellets and flakes for use in the production of new products, while over 40,000 tonnes ended up in the environment as pollution. That is why the government is taking regulatory action, as part of Canada's comprehensive zero plastic waste agenda, to eliminate certain harmful and problematic plastic products before they enter the marketplace. The Government of Canada's zero plastic waste agenda also includes a wide range of measures aimed at reducing plastic pollution, enhancing value retention processes including reuse and recycling systems, minimizing single-use plastics, and fostering a circular economy approach to plastic management. With a focus on collaboration between government, industry and stakeholders, we are making meaningful and substantive progress. Implementing measures to prevent plastic pollution from single-use plastics is a common-sense approach. This preventative approach is reflected in the government's single-use plastics prohibition regulations. These regulations, published in June 2022, phase out certain single-use plastics that are commonly found in the environment as pollution, pose a threat to wildlife and their habitats, are difficult to recycle and have readily available alternatives. Over the next decade, it is estimated that these regulations will eliminate over 1.3 million tonnes of hard-to-recycle plastic waste and more than 22,000 tonnes of plastic pollution, which is equivalent to over a million garbage bags full of litter. These regulations have spurred businesses across Canada to elevate their efforts and successfully transition to sustainable alternatives, including the adoption of reusable items. Provinces and territories are also providing important leadership in improving the management of plastic waste and diverting plastic waste from landfills. Across Canada, many municipalities, including major cities such as Montreal, St. John's, Edmonton and Victoria, have either banned single-use plastic checkout bags outright or are charging a fee to discourage their use. Bill C-380 arrives in the House for debate at an interesting moment. Next week, Canada will welcome the world to the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, or INC4. This is a pivotal moment for Canada and the world as countries meet to negotiate a new global agreement on plastics. Canada, from the start of the negotiations, has called for an ambitious and effective treaty that addresses the life cycle of plastics. We want to see negotiations conclude this year so that countries can move forward on implementation. To ensure that we take an evidence-based approach and measure progress over time, we are advancing a federal plastics registry. The registry, the first of its kind in the world, would require plastics producers to report annually on the quantity and types of plastic they place on the Canadian market. This would facilitate the design, implementation and monitoring of measures aimed at addressing plastic pollution that are part of the zero plastic waste agenda, and it would help to identify areas where further action is required. We also recognize the importance of innovation in addressing plastic waste and preventing plastic pollution. Through the innovative solutions Canada program, we are supporting Canadian businesses to spur innovation and the development of technologies that address issues such as reuse and difficult-to-recycle film and flexible plastic. Most recently, the government has contributed over $25 million to support small and medium-sized businesses in Canada to find innovative solutions to specific plastics issues. The government will continue engaging provinces, territories, civil society, indigenous partners, industry and other concrete initiatives to keep plastics out of the economy and out of the environment. A plastics circular economy would help strengthen sustainable economies and create jobs; it would help fight climate change by avoiding the production of virgin plastic in favour of approaches like recycling and reuse, and it would protect biodiversity and the environment. In conclusion, federal leadership, via concrete regulatory action, is essential to effectively prevent plastic pollution. It is in the interests of Canadians and the environment that the listing of plastic manufactured items on schedule 1 of CEPA is critical to the important work we are doing, and it should be kept intact. It is essential that we oppose this bill.

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