- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Parry Sound—Muskoka
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $125,505.29
- Government Page
- May/27/24 11:31:54 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was relieved, when this debate began, to hear the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing describe that we are in a housing crisis because, of course, a year ago, the Minister of Housing could not even use the word “crisis”; he could not be brought to do it.
Something obviously happened over the course of the summer, and the Prime Minister's Office woke up and recognized that we are in fact in a housing crisis and that the use of the word “crisis” does make sense. We know we are in a crisis because we see the results of what is going on. Rent has doubled in the last nine years. Mortgages have doubled in the last couple of years. Home prices have doubled. Mortgage rates have skyrocketed. Inflation is out of control. There are too few homes for too many people.
It is absolutely a supply crisis, as the parliamentary secretary mentioned. We see this with young people who are forced to stay at home and live in their parents' basements. They are not starting their lives as they normally would. The number of homeless people in this country continues to grow. We see tent cities in communities large and small all across Canada now. The cost of lodging, rent and mortgages is impacting affordability generally.
On top of that, there is the carbon tax. The carbon tax applies to the materials used to build homes, so the materials for homes are getting more expensive. Buying food and heating those homes are also getting more expensive. More people are struggling to maintain the homes they have.
We know that it is a supply issue, but it is also a housing affordability crisis. We have to think about what impacts the cost of a home. We know those materials I mentioned, like the two-by-fours and those kinds of things, cost more money. The carbon tax is applied to the production of those two-by-fours, to the delivery of materials to job sites and to everything.
There is a shortage of skilled trades and labour right now, which is adding to the problem as well. We need to make sure that we are attracting people to this country who can help us build homes. That is not really happening. The approval processes at the local levels are also slowing things down and are adding costs to the process of building homes. There are also taxes, fees and government charges.
Let us talk about that for a second. Who makes more money on housing than anybody else? The question is rhetorical, but Canadians would be horrified to know that it is not the big, greedy developers I hear the NDP talk about; it is government. In fact, between 2013 and 2023, the costs have gone up dramatically. The land value in this country has gone up about 34%, and that is due to the fact that we have a lot of land. We have a lot of land in this country, and there should be no reason that we have trouble building homes. Construction costs in that 10-year period have gone up 122%. That is the cost of materials. However, what have gone up the most are Government charges and taxes. From 2013 to 2023, government charges have gone up almost 250%. Those are charges at local levels. The HST charge on houses has gone up 221%. That means nobody makes more money on housing than governments. About 33% of the cost of the average home in this country is government.
What makes up those fees? HST is a big part of it; there is no question about that. However, municipalities are absolutely on the front lines of this situation, and they are also one of the biggest culprits of the problem. At the local level, we have infrastructure charges and development charges. Those are charged are per lot, and they can be staggeringly expensive. We have planning approval fees, parkland and parking fees. We often have school charges that are charged by the school board. We have density bonusing fees in some cases, building permit fees, and water and sewer connections fees. There are all kinds of fees.
At the provincial level, there are land transfer taxes when a home gets sold. There are sales taxes, like the GST and the PST. There is mortgage insurance, if someone cannot put down more than 20% on a home. These fees add up to over $200,000 on average. They are all government charges that go right to the bottom line of owning a house. Now we know why house prices just keep getting more expensive; it is that the government makes so much money. The beauty of the Leader of the Opposition's private member's bill, which is actually a very simple bill, is that it tells the municipalities on the front lines of this, which charge the biggest fees, that they just need to get the job done.
The Liberals are happy to talk about their housing accelerator fund, which I am happy to take a moment to talk about right now. The parliamentary secretary was hopeful that I would learn something from it. I have learned something from it. It is a joke. That is the truth. It is a $4 billion fund in the context of a government that is borrowing money. This $4 billion is borrowed money that it is giving to municipalities based on the promise that those municipalities will be better.
I asked to see the agreements between the municipalities and the federal government several months ago. I did not get them. The best I could come up with was searching through each of these municipalities' staff reports to council and some of the media reports, which have been very interesting. All of them have language such as “we will do this” or “we will do that”. They say that they will permit higher density, will look at ways to improve the process or will think about things. There is nothing definitive in any of the staff reports to council. They have been adopted, but not much of it has actually been done.
I will focus on something very specific. The Minister of Housing is incredibly proud of this housing accelerator fund. He is proud because he is focused very much on allowing four residential units as of right in any zone across the city. That means you could turn your single-family home into a fourplex without having to go to the municipality to get approval to do it. He thinks this is some kind of silver bullet, I guess, because the City of Windsor said it was not going to do that, but it had a proposal to do higher density around transit, where it made sense. It had a proposal to permit fourplexes around the university, for example, and things like that. It would have permitted thousands of units, but that was not good enough because the government wants fourplexes as of right.
The City of Toronto has had this rule in place now for just over a year, having fourplexes as of right. This is the great panacea the Minister of Housing is so proud of, having fourplexes as of right everywhere. Since May last year, when the government adopted this, there have been 74 applications in the City of Toronto, so clearly that is not the silver bullet the Minister of Housing thought it was. However, the Liberals sure have gone all over the country doing photo ops and press releases, being so proud of the $4 billion they are going to spend on the promise of doing better, when they are not getting the job done.
On top of the affordability issues we face, the housing accelerator fund money is going to cities that are increasing their charges. Can members imagine, in an affordability crisis, that the Liberals are sending money to cities that are increasing charges? Case in point, the City of Ottawa is going to get $178 million. It just approved an increase to its development charges by 11%. It will now cost an extra $55,000 on a house in Ottawa. The City of Toronto got $471 million. It increased its development charges this year by 21%. It is making housing more expensive in a housing affordability crisis, and what it got out of the Liberal government is a cheerleading squad.
The Leader of the Opposition is not proposing to tell the cities how to plan what kind of housing they need, nor how to do their municipal zoning and approvals process; rather, Conservatives are saying that government needs to get out of the way. We will deliver that kind of result by tying federal infrastructure money to cities with results. It is the fundamental difference between a government that is long on photo ops, talking points and being proud of its parade, and a government in waiting that would deliver results and would pay for those results. There would be no more promises. Canadians deserve results; they are tired of the photo ops and the vacuous grandstanding. They need results. If the Leader of the Opposition becomes prime minister, they would get them.
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- Jun/12/23 5:33:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the Conservative members of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities to table a dissenting report to the main report of the committee with respect to the national housing strategy.
We all know that when the national housing strategy was presented by the government some years ago, it was described as a transformational plan. Of course, we all know that despite that and the work of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, rents have doubled and mortgages have doubled. This has driven Canada to a high risk of mortgage defaults and has allowed the number of persons experiencing homelessness to grow significantly.
Conservative members also wish to highlight that the person ultimately responsible for these failures of the CMHC is the Minister of Housing, along with the government. He is responsible for the massive increase in the government fees the CMHC has just introduced on multi-unit residential housing. He is responsible for the complex paperwork that stalls so many applications. He is responsible for the crisis that is unfolding today.
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- Feb/15/23 3:08:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the government, housing is broken. Health care workers are living in tents, students are living in homeless shelters, vacancy rates are at an all-time low and rental rates are now $2,000 a month. Home prices have doubled under the government's watch, and nine out of 10 young people who do not own homes in this country think they never will. Everyone agrees that Canada is in a housing crisis, everyone except the housing minister that is.
If the minister refuses to even acknowledge that a crisis exists, how can Canadians trust him to fix it?
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- Nov/22/22 2:12:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, never has a government spent so much to accomplish so little. The current Liberal government promised a life-changing housing plan. Here is the change. Students are living in homeless shelters, health care workers are living in tents and hard-working Canadians are left on the street.
They did everything we asked. They worked hard. They got an education. They got a good job. Now they are left out in the cold. So far, $4.5 billion is the amount the Liberals have spent on six different housing programs. Now the Auditor General reports that they have no idea whether that money is making a difference or not.
The Liberals have failed. The proof is in the sprawling tent cities across this country. The proof is in the young people who are still living in their parents' basement. The proof is in the seniors who are losing their homes that they have worked their entire lives to pay for. All this, while the Liberals force them to pay more, earn less and pay higher taxes to pay off their sprawling debts.
We already know that the Liberals cannot or will not fix this mess, but the good news is that after the next election the Conservatives will.
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