44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 10, 2024 10:00AM
- May/10/24 11:14:11 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, CMHC is going to end the rent-geared-to-income subsidies to some of the homes under the federal government’s bilateral agreement with the provinces. Non-profits are forced to jack up the rent to market rates after the existing tenants move out. That means thousands of affordable homes will be lost forever. This move is beyond stupid. It shows that the Liberals have learned nothing from the housing crisis they helped create.
Already, between successive Liberal and Conservative governments, Canada has lost more than a million affordable homes. For every home built, 11 are lost. Canada cannot continue down this track. Communities cannot afford to lose more affordable housing stock. This giving with the right and taking with the left sleight of hand will fool no one. The housing crisis will only get worse, and the Liberals will have no one to blame but themselves. The rent-geared-to-income subsidies must continue.
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- May/10/24 11:21:01 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am listening to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who says the exact opposite of what that member just said. Inflationary budgets destroy the working class with high interest rates.
After nine years, mortgages, down payments and rents have all doubled, and 90% of young Canadians are stuck in housing hell with their dreams of home ownership shattered. Those who do own fear they cannot qualify for renewal. Mortgage delinquencies are up 50% overall, 135% in Ontario and 62% in B.C. This—
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- May/10/24 11:22:48 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague talks about responsible management. Are people aware that, during his entire term as minister responsible for housing, the Conservative leader built six affordable housing units across the entire country, while in the riding of my colleague from Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles alone, 222 affordable housing units have been built in recent years? Many more are on the way thanks to the historic agreement that we signed with the Government of Quebec.
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- May/10/24 11:23:18 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the minister has been repeating the same childish line for two weeks now, but does he know that, when the Leader of the Opposition was the minister responsible for housing, rent in Canada cost half as much?
Right now, July 1 is shaping up to be a disaster for those who are looking for housing. The housing director for Vivre en ville, Adam Mongrain, has said that “the current numbers from the municipalities and the Tribunal administratif du logement show that we are currently headed for the worst July 1 of our lives”.
The government, with the support of the Bloc Québécois, has created catastrophic economic conditions for people who are looking for housing.
Will the Prime Minister get his act together and stop his inflationary spending that is just putting pressure on the economy and Canadians?
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- May/10/24 11:24:00 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are talking about childish math. It is easy, even for young children, to count to six. Over his entire term as minister responsible for housing, the Conservative leader created only six affordable housing units across the country. It is true that six seems like a rather childish number, when 222 affordable housing units were built in my colleague's riding alone with the help of the Canadian government and under the leadership of Quebec's municipalities.
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- May/10/24 11:29:01 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would point to the recent federal budget, in which we announced that we would not only be taking measures to prevent corporate landowners from buying up single-family homes but also advancing measures to protect renters and bring down the cost of rent by adding more supply. We are moving forward with programs that introduce low-cost financing for more rental construction. We have new subsidies for affordable housing and co-operative housing, as well as an acquisition for non-profits that can take affordable homes and keep them affordable in perpetuity.
In addition, we are moving forward with the renters' bill of rights and a series of other measures that are designed to protect the interest of renters for whom the cost of living has simply become too high.
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- May/10/24 11:29:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, after nine years of this speNDP-Liberal government, finding an affordable rental is only getting harder. Despite its record spending, a new report says that rents in Canada increased 9.3% annually in April. It has gotten so bad that people's only choice when seeking an affordable rental is to laugh or cry.
Given the dire situation of these renters, could the Minister of Housing please enlighten us as to whether he considers the performance of his government's housing strategy a comedy of errors or a tragedy of oversights?
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- May/10/24 11:30:18 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, if my hon. friend is interested in a tragedy of oversights, I would direct him to the plan put forward by his leader when it comes to housing, which does not advance a single measure designed to help renters with the cost of living. The plan that he is now campaigning on would literally increase taxes on rental construction in this country by putting the GST back on those construction projects.
We have removed the GST. We have introduced low-cost financing to build more rental supply to bring down the cost across the ecosystem, across the country. In addition, we are putting more money on the table to provide affordable housing options, with the Conservatives—
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- May/10/24 11:33:58 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we understand the very serious challenges that families are facing when it comes to the cost of housing, which is why we put a plan on the table that is designed to solve Canada's national housing crisis. What is fascinating is that, in the member's own riding, we have actually invested $31.5 million in that community to build thousands of homes, which she and her party oppose.
Moreover, the Conservative plan lists only 22 communities in the entire country that can benefit from their plan. Kelowna is not on the list. I hope she has a hard time explaining that to her constituents, who thanked us for the investment we made to build housing in her community.
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- May/10/24 11:35:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, our colleague is talking about sound management. Does she know that, over his entire term as minister responsible for housing, the Conservative leader created only six affordable housing units across the country?
When he was the minister responsible for housing, the Conservative leader created six affordable housing units, while 205 affordable housing units were built in my colleague from Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis's riding in recent months. Many more are coming thanks to the agreement that we signed with the Government of Quebec for 8,000 affordable housing units. That will enable the municipality of Lévis and other municipalities in Quebec—
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- May/10/24 11:36:25 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am so happy to have another chance to talk about the 205 affordable housing units we have been able to create with the support of the Quebec government, thanks to the leadership of the Lévis community. That is 205 affordable housing units created in my colleague's riding in just a few months. Many more are on the way.
Unfortunately, that is not such good news for the Conservative leader who, during his entire term, created six affordable housing units across the country.
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- May/10/24 11:55:08 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, after nine years of this Bloc-Liberal government, the housing crisis is reaching unparalleled proportions. This July 1 will go down in history, but for all the wrong reasons. The crisis is not limited to large urban centres. It affects the regions as well.
An article published in this morning's La Presse says that Quebec's association of police chiefs has noticed a significant rise in homelessness. This sad state of affairs results from insufficient housing and a rising cost of living.
When will this government, backed by the Bloc Québécois, stop announcing programs that simply add to the bureaucracy instead of ensuring that housing gets built in the regions too?
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- May/10/24 11:55:45 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the question.
It is a very interesting question, coming from a member who supports a plan that is devoid of any measures to assist renters or build affordable housing, but that does include measures that increase tax rates on new apartments.
That is no good. We have a plan for making investments to build affordable housing. For example, we signed an agreement with Quebec to build 8,000 housing units. In contrast, when the leader of the Conservative Party was the minister responsible for housing, he built only six units across the entire country.
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- May/10/24 12:01:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, the Canadian Armed Forces has 16,000 personnel vacancies and a crisis of morale, recruitment and retention.
That is why the defence committee unanimously voted to cancel the April 1 rent increase for base housing. Like other Canadians, our troops cannot afford rent and groceries, and they know that the Prime Minister is not worth the cost.
Will the Prime Minister show that he actually supports our troops and reverse the April 1 rent increase, yes or no?
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- May/10/24 12:32:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I understand the Liberal government is very sensitive when people draw attention to its numerous failings.
The Prime Minister's housing minister, across the street, said that his national housing strategy has exceeded its objectives. Maybe the Liberal member opposite is confused as to how he could have said such a thing, but he did. It was on video. He said it to put a positive spin on policies that are obviously failing the people of Canada.
While the housing minister is sitting in Ottawa saying that his national housing strategy has exceeded its objectives, in my home community of Durham, the Clarington Municipal Council voted unanimously, calling for urgent action from the federal government and homelessness. In my home community of Durham, just like in many others across this country, there is a growing crisis of people without homes. Consequently, we have a growing crisis of homeless encampments being established so people have somewhere to sleep at night.
We are concerned in Clarington about this problem, but we are also concerned because we have seen in our neighbouring community of Oshawa a similar challenge. While the Prime Minister's housing minister is sitting in Ottawa trying to put a positive spin on the government's failed national housing strategy, there was a homeless encampment in Oshawa on fire. Smoke could be seen all across Durham region. In fact, one could see that smoke from Whitby. Maybe some of the Liberal members should be talking to each other about what is going on.
Why do we have a growing homelessness problem in Durham? Why are there a growing number of our brothers, sisters, friends and neighbours having a hard time finding an affordable place to live? It is obviously a complicated problem, but one of the contributing factors is that the cost of housing in Toronto, just to the west of us, is skyrocketing to an outrageous degree.
I know my friends in Toronto have had a hard time the last couple of weeks. We had to see the Leafs lose. We had to see Drake get trounced by Kendrick Lamar. Now we can go on to see ad listings for housing in Toronto. At the end April, I saw a bunk bed in Toronto for $600 a month. It is not even a full bed. One has somebody sleeping above them, for $600 a month. The listing said that eight or 10 people maximum could fit in that studio apartment in Toronto, and for $600 a month, one does not get hot water, heating, air conditioning, a smoke alarm or a carbon monoxide detector.
These ads show the desperate situation in Toronto that many young people are in. This is the disconnect. It is why I say that, in this economy, there are Liberal elites and everybody else. What the Liberals have produced is an obscene situation, where they can come here to Ottawa, put their high-deficit and high-tax budgets forward and claim to be doing good things for people, and meanwhile, every time we go home, we see the consequences of what they are doing here.
The last and probably most egregious example is one my buddy Rex Murphy, may he rest in peace, used to write about quite a bit. He used to write extensively about the carbon tax and how it is an exemplary policy of Liberal elitism and bizarre ideology in action.
I sit in this chair every day, and I hear Liberals telling us that the carbon tax is helping people, that people are getting more money back and that it is good for our economy, yet I go home to Durham and I hear and see the complete opposite. I knocked on many doors in the by-election campaign before I came here, and one of the recurring themes was the carbon tax.
I would go to a family farm and they would produce a tax bill, just like the one that I have in my hand right now, and I would see that family farms are paying thousands and thousands of dollars in carbon taxes and then being charged a tax on top of what they are paying for the carbon tax. That would then increase the cost of food for us in Oshawa, Curtis and Bowmanville. We could see within our own local community how the carbon tax is making it harder and harder for people to pay their bills.
When the Liberal government comes here to say that this carbon tax is good for us and good for our economy, that we should continue to pay more taxes and the cost of everything goes up to fill their coffers, it is just the latest example of Liberal elites and everybody else.
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- May/10/24 12:40:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the commissioner of the environment appeared before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development yesterday. He has a different perspective with respect to homes and mortgages. Here is an excerpt from his presentation:
...a major lender recently announced that it would no longer accept new mortgages for homes in high-risk flood zones. The consequences of such decisions on the value of residential housing, which for many households is the main asset, could prove quite dire.
Although the Conservative Party is always focused on the carbon tax or on what is happening with the environment, it never comes up with any solutions for people who are dealing with floods, droughts and deteriorating health.
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