SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 304 - Apr/29/24

Mr. Chris Bittle (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, Lib.)

Apr/29/24 1:24:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be here today to talk about the budget, called “Fairness for Every Generation”. A fair chance to build a good middle-class life and to do as well as one's parents, or better, has always been the promise of Canada. Unfortunately, today for too many younger Canadians a fair chance to build a good middle-class life feels out of reach. That is something I hear about, not just from young people, but from their parents and grandparents. I would like to focus on one of the issues I hear about most, not only in my role as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing, but as the member of Parliament for St. Catharines. That is housing. When I was speaking to a housing advocate some months ago, he said that the one piece of good news about solving the housing crisis is that, overall, there is one simple solution, unlike many of the crises we face in the country, and that is to build more homes. How we get there is a bit more complicated, but the government has put forward a comprehensive plan. One of the first things that caught the attention of a lot of my constituents, especially those who are members of a previous generation, is the housing catalogue. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. Solutions can exist that existed in the past. This is not the first time, as the minister has stated, that we have faced a housing crisis. We faced one after the Second World War, with soldiers returning and wanting to have houses of their own, and part of the solution was a housing catalogue. Just as I go through St. Catharines, I am sure that many of the members here go through their communities as well and can still see those wartime houses that were in a catalogue, which people could just build based on the catalogue that existed. It used the building code to have series of pre-approved houses to shorten the window that it takes to get a house approved and built. This would not just be the strawberry-box houses that we have seen in the past. This would be higher-density, up to quadruplex, and we would see the opportunity of solving the housing crisis that Canadians had when they returned from war. Because we have done it before, we can do it again. Another item that has been very successful across the country is the housing accelerator fund. We see the Government of Canada working with municipalities that have a bold plan to build more housing. I know the department received a lot of applications on the file, and we entered into agreements with those municipalities that had solid plans. The City of St. Catharines was one of them, and one of the things I am most excited about is its municipal land development corporation. It might be a bit of a wonky notion, but what better place than the House of Commons to talk about something like that? The City of St. Catharines had no mechanism to help build housing. Surplus land would just be sold to the highest bidder. When I drive through St. Catharines, I see many parcels that have been sold off and are vacant, such as the two old hospital sites. Acres and acres of residential land that is primed for use sits there empty, the city passing up an opportunity to bid on it. What this new municipal housing corporation would do, funded through the housing accelerator fund, is allow the City of St. Catharines to use those lands, land being one of the biggest costs in developing new housing, to build affordable housing and help sustain the corporation to go forth, get new land and keep building. Profit is not necessarily the motivating factor; it is about getting as many houses built at below-market price as possible, and this municipal housing corporation would really give the City of St. Catharines an opportunity to do that. We have seen those items across Canada, whether it is permitting issues, these types of corporations or investments by municipalities. There has been significant success in moving the needle and taking that next step forward, and I was happy to see in the budget further funding for the housing accelerator fund. One thing we know we have to do is to make the math work on building new housing. We know the significant costs of land and the increased costs across the supply chain. That is why we have taken steps to reduce or to remove the GST on purpose-built rentals. That is why the budget is committed to low-interest loans. The government cannot do this on its own. We need the private sector. We need to move the cost of building down further to get these buildings built. Looking to my own community, the City of St. Catharines and St. Catharines city council are eager to approve housing, eager to approve higher-density housing, and there are thousands of units of approved housing waiting to be built, but the math does not work. We need to do what we can at all levels of government. We are going to work through the budget again on low-interest financing by removing the GST. Another item is a $6-billion infrastructure fund because housing cannot just be created on its own. We expect that when we turn on a faucet, water will come out, and we expect it to be clean. One thing I hear from municipal officials across the country is that there is a desperate need for more housing-based infrastructure. We cannot build more housing if we do not have the supply of that infrastructure, which is usually water and waste water, and also roads, to get that housing built. In the Niagara region again, there is so much land that cannot be developed at the moment. That region is waiting for the expansion of a water treatment facility. I have heard about this for a long time, as a member of Parliament, since I took this job, about the need to expand that water treatment facility. It is a priority for me, as I know it is a priority for the residents of Niagara. A water treatment plant in the Niagara region may not seem to be the most exciting issue, but I can see the member for Niagara Falls looking over at me with excitement. Perhaps we are the only two individuals in this place who are excited about it, but this is an opportunity to unlock a lot of housing. It is an opportunity to take pressure off the water system in St. Catharines, and it is an opportunity to develop the lands in Fort Erie and in Niagara Falls, where they are ready to build more housing. Part of this infrastructure fund is to enter into agreements with the provinces. The federal government can only do so much. Many of the most significant levers at play for building more housing are at the municipal and the provincial levels. We are ready to step up and work with provinces. We have done it in the past. We have done it with the Province of Quebec. I hope the Province of Ontario, my home province, steps up. I know the premier and the minister of housing for the Province of Ontario understand that there is a housing crisis and that more work needs to be done. However, we need them to come to the table in the way that the Government of Quebec did, which matched federal funding when we entered into a deal, with respect to housing. I hope we see that same level of commitment because I do want to move forward on issues like that water treatment facility, not just in Niagara but also with all the mayors and the council members I have talked to while working on this particular portfolio of housing and infrastructure. This is a crisis that can be solved, but it will take all levels of government working together. We have shown that we are willing to work with municipalities. We have shown that we can work with the provinces. I just hope we can move the needle forward to work with them all, to get more housing built and to solve this housing crisis. We have a plan.

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Context: House Hansard - 304 - Apr/29/24

Mr. Ken Hardie (Fleetwood—Port Kells, Lib.)

Apr/29/24 1:38:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I wanted to give the hon. member a chance to expand on the whole issue of the housing accelerator fund. The average person might be forgiven for playing along with the question that was asked regarding how many houses this would build. The housing minister said that it would build none. People would ask what that is all about. With regard to the housing accelerator fund, what is it all about?

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Context: House Hansard - 304 - Apr/29/24

Mr. Eric Duncan

Apr/29/24 8:21:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, after nine years, the Liberals have doubled housing costs and down payments. They have tripled mortgage payments in our part of the country alone, when we do the math. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Our solution, many Canadians would say, is common sense. The Liberals must stop promising to give money to cities and instead give money when they show results and complete houses. We are going to require cities to increase their permits by 15% to get federal infrastructure dollars. If they do not keep their promises, they do not get paid. A real estate agent gets paid when they sell a house. A home builder gets paid when they build a house. Municipalities and big cities should be paid when they permit housing. At a time when we need to increase the supply to meet the demand, the Liberal record is a decrease. I will ask again: In Cornwall, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry and right across the country—

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