- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Parry Sound—Muskoka
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $125,505.29
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- Oct/30/23 3:26:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I move that the 11th report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, presented on June 12, be concurred in.
We are talking about the national housing strategy report, which was done by our human resources committee and delivered in June 2023. We should know that the national housing strategy is a program the Prime Minister announced with great fanfare in 2017, as I have said in the House before.
He and a number of his colleagues stood in front of a big building under construction and talked about how this strategy, which was going to be about $40 billion, would be a life-changing, transformational strategy. The federal government was back in the housing business, and it was going to be a really big deal. It was a 10-year plan.
It is still a 10-year plan. The numbers were ballooned to $82 billion, and at the time of the study, it was going to change the world, which was all well and good. We know the Prime Minister is particularly good at these photo ops and announcements with quite a rhetorical flourish.
We received the study in June 2023. Just before that, we had spoken with the former minister of housing. We asked the minister of housing, a couple of different times, if he would describe the housing situation in Canada as a crisis. He could not use that word. What we heard from the minister at the time was that housing was a challenge, and there were some problems and difficulties, but he could not use the word “crisis”.
I would also like to inform the House that I will be splitting my time with the member for Kelowna—Lake Country.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, there is a new Minister of Housing, and there is a renewed sense that we need to do something about the housing situation in Canada. The new minister, when asked if Canada was in a housing crisis, a year after the previous minister, acknowledged that, Canada is in a housing crisis. He used the word himself.
When I asked him at the time if, in 2015, eight years ago, and 2017, when the Prime Minister announced this life-changing, transformational national housing strategy, Canada was in a housing crisis. He would not use the word “crisis” when it came to that. He said we had some challenges. There were some difficulties, but he would not describe it as a crisis at the time the Liberals launched this national housing strategy, this $82-billion, 10-year program.
We heard from the CEO of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which is the agency responsible for delivering the national housing strategy and all the programs therein. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is also responsible for insuring a lot of mortgages in this country, millions of mortgages. It does a lot of research on the housing situation in Canada. We have heard a lot from it about the fact that we are in a crisis and that Canada needs to build, in total, about 5.8 million homes by 2030 to restore some semblance of affordability in the housing market.
It is important to acknowledge at this point that the most homes that Canada has ever built in a single year was in 1976 when building a home was a little easier. Homes were not nearly as complex, but 270,000 units were built that year. The average today is about 240,000. We would need to ramp up the building of homes to about 745,000 units per year to meet that affordability target that the CMHC itself says we need to do.
What was this national housing strategy supposed to do? We know, from the reports and from listening to the CEO of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, that this national housing strategy was to remove 530,000 Canadian families from core housing need, reduce chronic homelessness by 50%, protect 385,000 community housing units already in existence, provide 300,000 households with affordability supports, repair 300,000 existing housing units that needed repair and create 100,000 new housing units.
With the $82 billion, we are just over halfway through the program, which begs the questions of where we are at and what it has accomplished.
Even the CMHC would acknowledge that we have a long way to go, and it would acknowledge that in part because its own research has told us that the situation is worse than ever. At the time that the Prime Minister announced this strategy, we had some housing challenges. Today, it is a crisis.
We now know that, after eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, rents have doubled. We also know that, after eight years of the Prime Minister, house prices have doubled and mortgages have doubled. Frankly, despite the grand proclamations of the Prime Minister and the constant patting of themselves on the back for all the great work they are doing with this national housing strategy of $82 billion, it seems as though the Liberals are starting to catch on that just saying they are going to do good things with photo ops and announcements is not really solving the problem.
As it turns out, now the Liberals are announcing new things and new ideas, including things like removing the GST from purpose-built rentals. They are finally catching on, but I worry it might be too little, too late because, in the midst of all of this, in the midst of a housing crisis getting worse and worse, the government has been spending money like it is going out of style. It borrows excessively. The Liberals stand behind this whole business that they were there for Canadians during COVID, but we know that a couple of hundred billion of that borrowing had nothing to do with COVID supports, and that is having an impact on inflation.
In fact, Tiff Macklem, the governor of the Bank of Canada, has said that inflation in shelter prices is running above six per cent. Part of this, he says, is due to higher mortgage interest costs following increases in interest rates. However, it also reflects higher rents and other housing costs, and these pressures are more related to a structural shortage of housing supply. He also said it is going to be easier to get inflation down and make housing cheaper if monetary and fiscal policy are rowing in the same direction.
Therefore, we know that announcing with great fanfare an $82-billion 10-year comprehensive plan to solve the housing challenge of the time, fast forward to today, has turned into an absolute crisis in the housing market and, frankly, a crisis that is, in part, created by the inflationary pressures that the government, and its excessive spending, is putting on the market.
Now we have this report that says that, yes, it is bad. We have work to do. That is effectively the message. Even Ms. Bowers acknowledged that it is going to be very challenging to meet the targets. We know why. The Governor of the Bank of Canada has told us that the inflationary spending of the government is just making it harder. Every nickel it spends is making it harder.
The members of the government do not seem to understand that we need to get out of the way and not only incentivize the private sector, but also bring down the inflationary deficit spending and axe the carbon tax, which is making everything more expensive. We need to reduce the taxation burden. We need to reduce the taxation of deficit borrowing on the backs of Canadians so that they can afford to eat, heat their homes and maybe even have a home one day.
Nine out of 10 young people in this country have given up on the dream of ever owning home, and the responsibility for that falls squarely at the government, its inflationary spending and its reckless way of borrowing billions of dollars. The government says it is going to borrow money so Canadians do not have to, but its members do not realize that the money being borrowed by the government is being borrowed on behalf of all Canadians. It falls to all of us to pay it back. Therefore, we have a situation today where a government will borrow billions of dollars to give Canadians a few hundred dollars to help them pay for things that, because of the government's borrowing, now cost thousands more dollars.
We have a situation where our government is now so desperate that it is playing politics, so it is axing the carbon tax in some parts of the country where the Liberals' poll numbers are really bad, but not in the rest of the country, as we found out, because people there did not vote Liberal. That is the problem. People have to vote Liberal if they want to get treated better by the government and if they want the government to relieve them of the pressures of its inflationary spending.
The national housing strategy can be described as a failure. The Conservatives have written a dissenting report on this, and we need to recognize that the government is simply not getting the job done. Even though its members have great talking points and photo ops, they are making life more expensive every day for Canadians. Canadians know that, despite their promises, the Prime Minister is just not worth the cost.
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- Dec/3/21 10:26:53 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-3
Madam Speaker, I appreciate that and the generosity of all my colleagues here. I will be splitting my time with the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South.
I always appreciate the opportunity to stand in the House and speak to the important issues of the day. This is quite clearly an important issue. I congratulate the minister on presenting this and fulfilling a campaign promise.
Of course, we are a little concerned. This is something that other members in the House have already raised. This is something that we have been calling on for some time, and it has been promised for a while. Of course, had we not had an election that was not necessary, and if our committees had been up and running, we could have been doing an awful lot more. In fact, the minister in his press conference pointed out that it may not really have that big of an impact: Most federally regulated private-sector companies, which are among the biggest companies in the country, already have incredibly generous programs to support their workers if they need paid sick leave. Collective agreements already cover an awful lot of these programs.
This is a bill that covers two very different areas. I will be focusing specifically on the labour portion of it. The other issue, of course, is that we are not entirely sure how many workers this will cover, but we are looking forward to seeing more details. We recognize as well that this is an opening toward discussing this further with the provinces and with many more businesses. It is important to keep in mind, as those negotiations begin and as the federal government starts speaking with provinces, the caution that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business has expressed. That is:
CFIB urges the federal government and provincial governments to exercise extreme caution when imposing new costs on small businesses at a time when a majority are still not back to normal sales or out from under their COVID-related debt. Small businesses are already facing a significant increase in employer contributions to CPP on January 1, 2022, carbon tax increases in several provinces, as well as other increases in the cost of doing business, including supplies, shipping, and insurance.
Additionally, many businesses may be cut off from accessing any COVID relief due to higher thresholds to access the new wage and rent subsidy programs.
As these negotiations begin, it is important that we keep that in mind. It is important to support workers, but it is also important to remember that small businesses are struggling.
I will say at the outset that Conservatives are generally supportive of this. We believe it is important to support workers, but we also point out that if we had not had an unnecessary election and we had our committees up and running, we could be doing an awful lot more to support workers in Canada.
In fact, during that unnecessary election, Conservatives talked an awful lot about supporting workers in Canada. We talked about a construction mobility tax credit that would allow workers to subtract up to $4,000 per year in temporary relocation expenses from taxable income. It would make it easier for Canadian workers to go where the work is.
Workers often have to leave their homes and families to take on temporary contracts in other parts of the country. Those costs can be significant, averaging around $3,500 for relocation. In some parts of Canada, often in rural and northern regions, they are struggling to find skilled workers and tradespeople, so we want to accelerate the investment and infrastructure that will create jobs and build a more productive and more connected Canada. To do that, we need to help workers get to where they are needed most. We could have been talking about that, of course, in committee.
We also felt that it was important to talk about making sure that infrastructure spending benefits Canadian workers by requiring that equipment and materials for federally funded infrastructure projects be purchased from Canadian companies, or from those countries with which we have agreed to mutually allow our workers to supply each other's infrastructure projects. We could have been talking about that if we had our committees up and running, and making sure that we were protecting Canadian workers that way.
We also could have been talking about another idea that Conservatives had in the election campaign, which was to support union training programs and apprenticeships, and to expand access to them. There is a desperate need in this country for skilled tradespeople, and it is a bright future for young people. We have talked about ensuring workers have the training they need for the jobs of today and, of course, tomorrow by supporting union and similar training programs and encouraging employers to invest in their workers.
We would have proposed, and we will propose if we get into committee, to double the apprenticeship job creation tax credit for up to three years to help create more places for apprentices. We talked about investing $250 million over two years to create the Canadian job training fund, which is another really great idea. If committees were up and running, we could be talking about it.
We talked as well about apprenticeship programs and training delivery agents, such as unions, post-secondary institutions and community organizations, that would give laid-off workers immediate access to training. These programs could reach out to traditionally under-represented groups. This could help tourism and hospitality workers who have been hit hard by the recession. It could support the talent needs of small businesses and help workers get the training they need, focusing on areas where there are shortages of skilled workers.
We also talked about creating the working Canadian training loan to provide low-interest loans of up to $10,000 to people who want to upgrade their skills, which would empower workers to determine what training they need, rather than having a government body tell them, which is another fantastic idea from the Conservative Party that we could be talking about right now if committees were up and running.
In addition, we talked about making sure that workers have a voice at the table. We proposed giving workers a seat at the table by requiring federally regulated employers with over 1,000 employees, or over $100 million in annual revenue, to include worker representation on their boards of directors, an innovative idea that we could be talking about right now in committee.
Conservatives have lots of great ideas, and we are eager to get to work. We are supportive of what the minister has proposed here today, and we are eager to see it happen, but perhaps one of the most important things we could do right now is to add some minor amendments to the bill to capture a private member's bill from the previous Parliament brought to us by the MP for Calgary Shepard.
It was an act to amend the Canada Labour Code on bereavement leave. Specifically, it would have provided three days of paid bereavement leave and two days of unpaid bereavement leave for parents who have lost a child under the age of 18 or a dependent child with disabilities over the age of 18, and for women who experienced a stillbirth from five days to eight weeks. It is not natural for a parent to bury a child, and Conservatives feel it is appropriate for the government to adopt this motion, perhaps including it in this bill to make sure parents have the support and time they need to heal from a tragic situation like this.
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- Dec/3/21 10:26:30 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-3
Madam Speaker, may I request unanimous consent to split my time this morning?
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