SoVote

Dec/9/21 5:52:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in answer to my colleague from Winnipeg North, what I would have liked to vote in favour of would be a throne speech that made access to social and affordable housing a priority. The government has a responsibility to take action on that file. The Bloc Québécois's approach is constructive. We put forward proposals, such as allocating 1% of the government's annual revenue to housing construction from now on. Knowing that there is money available to build that housing could send a message to the housing construction industry. That is one potential solution. The national housing strategy could also include an acquisition fund that would enable co-operatives and non-profits to acquire housing unit buildings so as to protect that housing stock from speculation and ensure it remains truly affordable. Those are two solutions that I hope the government will implement, and I would be very happy to support them.

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Ms. Andréanne Larouche (Shefford, BQ)

Dec/9/21 5:53:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue, who, like my colleague from Mirabel, gave an eloquent speech. My Conservative colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable referred to the city of Granby, which is in my riding of Shefford. We do have a social housing problem, with one of the lowest vacancy rates in Quebec. There is a desperate need. Granby knows what to do. Ottawa just needs to transfer the money to Quebec and then to the municipalities. We can take care of social housing. I have been listening to the Liberals and the Conservatives arguing today when they have been cutting funding for years. When I took part in a debate on social housing and homelessness in the Eastern Townships during the election campaign, there was no one there from the Conservative Party or the Liberal Party to offer up any ideas. That is what I find particularly insulting. I was proud to be there to offer ideas for the Eastern Townships. I would have liked to see my Conservative and Liberal colleagues there.

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Mr. Sébastien Lemire

Dec/9/21 5:54:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Shefford for her eloquence. This shows how important it is to take action on this issue. It is truly appalling that the last strategy has sat on a shelf for three years. Of course, no one could have foreseen the COVID-19 crisis or the skyrocketing prices, especially for basic building materials. However, the government bears some responsibility in this. I will not go so far as to say that people have blood on their hands, because I do not want to be overly dramatic, but if we had not ignored the problem for so many years, perhaps more people would have a home and a roof over their heads. It is a matter of dignity.

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Mr. Dan Albas (Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC)

Dec/9/21 5:55:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is certainly an honour to rise on behalf of the good people of Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola to debate this very serious topic. I will be splitting my time with the member for Bay of Quinte. I am very proud to say that. I suspect every member of this place knows of the housing affordability crisis many Canadians are facing. We all know it, and we certainly know the Prime Minister knows of this. How do we know this? Let us go back to September 9, 2015. On that day, the Liberal Party of Canada released a statement. The headline said, “[The member for Papineau] promises affordable housing for Canadians”. The article went onto say, “We have a plan to make housing more affordable for those who need it the most”. Where is that plan? That was back in 2015. Today, we know that there is no plan. Those were just the usual “say anything” promises from the Prime Minister, who never once himself has faced an affordable housing crisis. Worse, in 2017, the Prime Minister actually raided the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation to the amount of $4 billion. That money came from CMHC premiums that first-time homebuyers had paid. That money was meant for CMHC to help more first-time homebuyers. Instead, the Prime Minister raided that money for general revenue, which did not help any first-time homebuyers. In 2019, with an election fast approaching, and realizing he had gotten nowhere delivering on the affordable housing that he had promised in the 2015 election, the Prime Minister made another announcement. The first-time home buyer incentive program that the Prime Minister promised would “help 100,000 Canadian families buy their first home”. In 2020, after the election, we learned that only 3,252 applications were made to CMHC and, of those, 2,730 were accepted. This program was not just a failure. It was a total disaster, but wait, there is more. In 2019, the Prime Minister also promised he would take on foreign buyers driving up housing costs, a promise he made right before the election. It is now 2021, and soon to be 2022. I ask members of the House, do we have any measure from the Liberal government to take on foreign buyers that are driving up housing costs? No, we have zero. It is just another broken promise from this “say anything” Prime Minister. Of course, we are not done yet. In the last Parliament, we had another motion come before this place on affordable housing. That motion called on the government to, “examine a temporary freeze on home purchases by non-resident foreign buyers who are squeezing Canadians out of the housing market”. That is not only a completely reasonable motion, but something that the Prime Minister himself promised Canadians he would do in 2019. Guess what happened? Do we even need to guess? Despite all the opposition parties voting for that motion, the Prime Minister voted against it. Of course, he whipped up his whole caucus to vote against it as well. Let us think about this for a moment. This is a Prime Minister who promised to take action on foreign buyers driving up housing costs, and then, when he had the chance to vote for what he had promised Canadians he would do, he turned around and voted against it. It is literally unconscionable. It is this type of thing that creates cynicism and distrust from everyday Canadians about what goes on here. These are concerns, by the way, that this Prime Minister also professed to care about. Of course, it did not just end there. During this most recent election, an election only called by the Prime Minister because he believed he could win a majority government, he had the gall to say, “Houses shouldn’t sit empty when so many Canadians are trying to buy a home. So, we’re going to ban foreign ownership in Canada for the next two years”. Seriously, this is the Prime Minister who, in the 2019 election, promised to take action against foreign buyers. He then, when presented with an affordable housing motion that would allow him to honour the very promise to Canadians that he made, he turned around and voted against his own promise. In yet another election, just three months after voting against taking action on foreign owners, he promised once again that he would ban foreign ownership in Canada for the next two years. To recap, he made a promise, broke that promise, made the promise again, voted against that promise and then, finally made the promise yet another time. Who does that? No one who is serious about taking action on affordable action would do that. This is six years of demonstrated inaction, failure, broken promises, blatant hypocrisy and total failure. This Prime Minister is the Groundhog Day of failure when it comes to broken promises on affordable housing. Here we are again, debating yet another motion on affordable housing because, of course, this Liberal government has made zero progress on affordable housing. This motion is very reasonable, as was the last one, yet the Liberal government voted it down. The motion, among other measures, proposes to ban foreign investors from purchasing Canadian real estate. Not only did the Prime Minister promise to do this in the 2021 election, but he also promised it again during the 2019 election. Will the government vote for this motion, or oppose it like the government did the last time? This motion also proposes that the government commit to never introducing a capital gains tax on the sale of a primary residence. Once again, this is something the Prime Minister has already promised he would never do, but he also promised that he would never prorogue Parliament. We also know that this Prime Minister really does not care a lot about honouring his promises. However, we can hope this time that the Prime Minister will, for once, vote for a motion that would allow him to keep his word to Canadians. We also know the motion proposes to increase the housing supply in Canada, which this Prime Minister has promised repeatedly throughout his time in government. Ultimately this motion is responsible and reasonable. That is to say, I am not quite certain that this Prime Minister is actually serious about any of his promises or commitments to affordable housing after reviewing the case that I have made, mostly because it is hard to believe a Prime Minister who promised Canadians so much but has delivered so little. I am not quite certain how people could think he would actually be serious about his commitment to affordable housing. We know that this Prime Minister was serious about legalizing cannabis. He got that done, and he got it done in his first term. However, on affordable housing there is nothing but broken promises. In conclusion, I will be voting in support of this motion. What is there to disagree with? We have some members are trying to make much of our suggestion to review and utilize existing federal buildings of the 37,000 that currently exist that the federal government has in its inventory, many of them in urban centres, such as Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, and Gatineau. There is so much there, and just 15% of that could be utilized. That is what we are talking about, not the outrageous claims by the member for Winnipeg North or by the member for Kingston and the Islands. Many of the proposed measures are things this Prime Minister promised he would do, some several times in fact. Affordable housing is important and in my riding, communities like Merritt and Princeton, which have lost housing to devastating floods, are going to need affordable housing like never before. Otherwise, there are some people who will have nothing to come back to. Let us keep in mind that Merritt and Princeton, for many, were more affordable than communities like Vancouver or Surrey. We need to help them rebuild. We need to help this whole country be able to build up and give people a place to call home.

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Hon. Judy A. Sgro (Humber River—Black Creek, Lib.)

Dec/9/21 6:05:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is good to see my colleague back in the House. I have to say that I disagree with absolutely everything he said. I do not recall, in the years we have both been here, ever hearing the official opposition talk about establishing a national housing strategy or ever seriously talk about the need for affordable housing. I can tell members there have been millions of dollars spent in the Toronto area specifically for affordable housing. I can practically knock on the doors of many that have been built in the last two or three years. Is it the intention of the official opposition to establish a national housing strategy, if they ever get back in as the governing party?

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Mr. Dan Albas

Dec/9/21 6:06:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciate the member's contribution, for her service and for being part of the debate tonight. I certainly hope she gets to ask that question from this side of the House in the future. When I first became a parliamentarian, in the 41st Parliament, one of the things I remember is speaking to the previous minister responsible, Diane Finley, about this. She had worked out, with the Government of British Columbia, an affordable housing framework. We worked hand-in-glove with provincial governments, such as with the Province of Quebec, so that we would see those dollars go farther. We could always argue whether more or less money should go to something. Naturally, in this place there is going to be politicization, but I think we need to start seeing a focus on results, which is something the current Prime Minister unfortunately has failed repeatedly at.

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Ms. Bonita Zarrillo (Port Moody—Coquitlam, NDP)

Dec/9/21 6:07:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the things I note, and some of my colleagues have also spoken about, is the need for not-for-profits, social housing and co-ops. I see that seems to have been forgotten or missed in this motion. Why were the social housing, the co-ops and the not-for-profit opportunities not included in the initial motion?

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Mr. Dan Albas

Dec/9/21 6:08:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to first congratulate a fellow British Columbian on her election, but also thank her for participating tonight. The NDP has made its points today with regard to it. It also has the ability to raise its own opposition day motion specifically, because sometimes political parties are going to say where they see the main problems being. It is not to say there are not other areas that could be worked on, particularly in the social housing space. That requires a lot of work, as well. However, right now we know that the system of housing, and the markets, are not working as well as they should, and that is where we need to see more supply. That is where the 15% of federal buildings would help immediately. That is why we think banning foreign buyers from investing and displacing Canadians is important right now. I will continue to advocate for the solutions I believe are important. I believe this member will do the same for her constituents and for her party's beliefs.

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Mr. Colin Carrie (Oshawa, CPC)

Dec/9/21 6:09:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think this is going to be a first in the House: I am going to disagree with my colleague. He called the Liberal national housing plan a total disaster, and I want to let him know that it is not a total disaster. It can always be held up as an example of how not to do things. In Oshawa, in 2015 when the Liberals came in, the average single home was $360,000. Almost seven years later, it is $1.157 million. It is about three times more. Could the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola please tell the House why it is so important that the opposition should get together, and about the urgency that we pass something like this? Young people are losing the dream of home ownership, and it needs to be done immediately.

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Mr. Dan Albas

Dec/9/21 6:09:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I attended, along with the member for Edmonton Riverbend, the FCM meeting in Quebec City. One of the things I attended was a forum on affordable housing, and the B.C. housing minister at the time, Selina Robinson, who now happens to be the finance minister, was asked about the national housing strategy. She responded that the government had come to the table, but it had yet to invest. I would be curious to hear from her. Some of my NDP colleagues might want to phone her and ask to see if that is still the case. We want to see more results. That is why we are pushing the government.

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Mr. Ryan Williams (Bay of Quinte, CPC)

Dec/9/21 6:10:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think it is high time that we started not just using the word “crisis” when it comes to talking about our housing. As Elvis said, we need “A little less conversation, a little more action”. We need to declare housing a crisis. We need to swing hammers and get homes built in this country. In my home riding of Bay of Quinte, housing is in an existential crisis that needs action. The lack of homes has resulted in sky-high costs for both housing and rental units. Only a massive increase of supply will fix the situation. We need to double new builds of homes in Canada right now, utilizing the private sector with government-assisted, affordable housing, utilizing existing housing inventory from the government, at 15%, and utilizing full collaboration among all levels of government. In Canada, it is the top issue right now, with a housing bubble that has absolutely been exacerbated by COVID-19 and the amount of cheap cash that entered this country's economy. What does the housing crisis mean for Canadians? It means more poverty, further out-of-reach affordable housing and a further out-of-reach ability for first-time homebuyers to afford a home in this country. It has also resulted in increased homelessness. My riding has double the homelessness rate in the last two years that it did in the four years prior. Mortgage payments now eat 45% of an average homeowner's income, which is already being eroded by massive inflation. Speaking of the inflationary tax, rental in Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax is up over 16% while paycheques are down over 3% because of inflation. When we talk about a crisis, we talk about citizens who are having trouble deciding whether to pay for rent, groceries, mortgages or medication, or having to take several jobs in order to afford a down payment for a first home. Take the case of Erica from my riding. Erica and her family have lived in the same home for six years over the time of the Liberal government. Now they are being forced to leave. Their landlord sold their home and the new owners want to renovate and flip the property for a profit. She wrote to me that they were paying $1,000 a month plus all utilities and are now being served an N11 and made to move by January 31. Both she and her husband work full-time, but cannot find affordable housing. The cheapest housing they could find was $2,000 a month plus utilities. What is the cause of this housing crisis? It is supply. Building supply is going to be the solution alongside some other key government programs, but supply is the key ingredient. Take the Golden Horseshoe in Ontario as an example. In five years, again with the Liberal government from 2016-2021, the region added 780,000 new residents but only 270,000 new homes. How much supply do we need in Canada? If we compare ourselves with other G7 nations, we are dead last in supply per capita. In fact, to meet the median of our friends in the G7, Italy, France, the U.K., Germany, Japan and the United States, we would need 1.8 million homes today, according to a study from Scotiabank on affordable housing. The government would like to say that it is making a dent in supply. The hon. Minister of Immigration stated in the House that the Liberal government has created, in six years, 100,000 units. I have done the math, and members can believe that I am correct. For the government building supply to meet the median household demand today in Canada, not including the increased immigration we need and that is coming as COVID ends, it would take 108 years. This is why I am using the word “crisis” to describe housing. What has been happening is not working to quell our housing prices and rental prices. It is creating more poverty and it is creating unaffordability. In this country, we have the land. What we do not have is supply. The reason for that is an ample amount of red tape, Nimbyism and lack of coordination of programs to ensure that we take this crisis as seriously as we can. To be clear, the government has never taken concerns seriously enough. According to home builders' associations, including home builders in my own Bay of Quinte, the government is just not engaging stakeholders in the trenches. Home builders who are more than capable of building homes are under-respected and under-represented at all levels of government. Here is the reality: The process of taking a parcel of land from concept to reality has become far too complex, expensive and slow. For a small subdivision, this is approaching 10 years. The financial risks and amounts are so significant that they are becoming available only to large corporations that have little to no interest in small regions of Canada. If they do it is too little, too late for a local response to meet housing needs. The layers of approval agencies and utility corporations without accountability are so great that even if we build the housing we need, it fits into the Liberal plan of decades into the future. We need all levels of government to treat this as an issue to solve with the federal government leading the way. We need to utilize the creative entrepreneurial skills of Canadians to solve the problems. We have some great ideas from the Conservative Party that can be implemented right away. One from our platform during the unneeded election involved freeing up the private sector to work alongside the government to build one million homes in three years. Another is this motion, which frees up 15% of real estate or 37,000 federal real estate buildings for affordable housing. It is absolutely incredible. It stops the time we need to start construction and utilizes supply that is there right now. Implementing an immediate freeze of foreign home builders for two years is absolutely essential. We have heard support for that across the aisle. Yes, we have also heard universal support for not taxing primary residences. The Conservative plan is an appropriate federal government response to this situation. I am suggesting that we also call this a national crisis. We must recognize that in this crisis there are broader solutions that will require collaboration among all parties and across all levels of government. There are solutions that the federal government can help take a leadership position on, including cutting red tape to increase building starts and building housing units through city urban core intensification. One example includes having housing approvals take no more than 120 days. I mentioned earlier in the House that the average time to approve building an apartment building in Toronto is 10 years. We need to make sure we are starting to build and that we build now. We need a staging and development policy in each municipality that ensures there are always shovel-ready lots in a five-year slot. If they are not fillable, they should have the tools to insert more buildable lots. There should be no reason for every municipality to not have builds occurring in every season to meet the needs of supply for this crisis. We need to complete a housing needs assessment by the end of 2022 that works with, and develops newly recommended changes to, existing provincial legislation and municipal official plans. Too often we are seeing development come to councils with the public unaware of where housing is going or what kind of housing is needed to fix this crisis. This results in Nimbyism, or BANANA people: “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone”. It is terrible. We need a 25-year outlook on housing needs with clear communication to all who live there to convert Nimbyism into Yimbyism. There are examples around the planet where governments are working with developers, who are working with residents on creating more housing in their own backyards. They are saying yes. We need to work with the provinces, immigration and our local education institutions to attract and train the skilled tradespeople necessary to work in our housing industry and build new housing starts. We are missing tremendous numbers of skilled trades that pay incredible salaries in this country, and we need to make sure that we again start saying that skilled trades are great. People should get into the trades. We need to increase the necessary infrastructure that supports increased housing units in all sectors. This includes intensification developments, transit systems, water, sewer and treatment plants and green energy developments. It includes building walkable cities and neighbourhoods, and looking at regional urban growth to name a few things. We need to build a mix of housing units that represent our regional and local needs and demands, and we need to build up the downtowns in rural areas. We need intensification. Something that has worked for affordable housing in Toronto and Vancouver is inclusionary zoning, but we need to ensure that there are enough carrots versus sticks to ensure we have the right types of housing incentives that will attract developers to invest in the area. Affordable housing is defined as housing that costs 30% of income or 80% of market rent. Going back to our Conservative motion, when we take the existing inventory we can do that. To my NDP friends, that is possible. That is a reason to vote for this motion. There are measures that fit into all levels of government. The role I see the federal government having in a crisis is a leadership role in looking at emergency measures to build supply. The role I see Parliament taking is a leadership role to vote for good motions that produce housing and take a little bit of a bite out of this crisis. For rental and stand-alone housing for our citizens, and for newcomers to our country, as the second-largest country in the world we should not be in a housing crisis. The measures undertaken to try to beat COVID-19 saw a cash influx into the economy instead of efforts focused on building supply. One hundred thousand units in six years is not enough. It is disgraceful. For the money, the $29 billion touted as a success, alongside more than $400 billion, has been fuel on the fire of this housing crisis. We are in a situation that will not leave many Canadians untouched by this crisis.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Dec/9/21 6:21:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member said “this good motion”. Even the Conservatives' coalition partners in the Bloc agree that this is not a good motion. They will still vote for it, but it is not a good motion. We have a government that has invested historic amounts into social housing. The member across the way would not be able to point to another government that has ever invested as much in national housing. My question for the member is this. Does he recognize the hypocrisy of the Conservatives? They are now calling for the federal government to act on social housing, when Stephen Harper did absolutely zip with respect to that, while this government has invested historic amounts.

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Mr. Ryan Williams

Dec/9/21 6:21:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am listening to a government that has the worst housing crisis this country has ever had. If we want to talk about government support, we are giving it that support tonight. We are talking about fixing that and, as with trade and the other failed promises this week, looking at made-in-Canada solutions. We want all parties to agree to go forward to fix this today. We need to swing hammers. We have to stop talking. We need less conversation and more action.

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Ms. Laurel Collins (Victoria, NDP)

Dec/9/21 6:22:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this year, the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported on how the federal government has spent less than half of the funding earmarked for its two main housing programs. He also talked about the limited impact of the Liberals' national housing strategy. More and more people in my community of Victoria are struggling to pay rent. They are unable to afford a home, and the pandemic has only made things worse. The Liberals are failing Canadians when it comes to housing and at the same time patting themselves on the back. My colleague, the NDP critic for housing, obtained data showing how the Liberals are failing to help provinces like British Columbia and prioritizing provinces like Ontario. I understand the member represents a riding in Ontario, but, especially with B.C. facing a housing crisis and the impacts of the climate emergency, which is making the housing crisis even more dire, can the member speak to the need for the government to prioritize housing across the country and make sure B.C. is getting its fair share?

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Mr. Ryan Williams

Dec/9/21 6:23:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I could not agree more. We have to prioritize housing and start prioritizing action on housing. This motion, and it sounds like the member should be agreeing with it, gets units that are existing or standing in government coffers into the housing supply system. We need 1.8 million homes. We should be making sure we take as much land and as many buildings as we can to convert into all kinds of housing for everyone who needs it. If we do not take action, we are going to be in a heck of a mess in little time. We are already in it.

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Mr. Jamie Schmale (Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, CPC)

Dec/9/21 6:24:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened to the Liberal question, and over and over again, all throughout this debate, all that was said on that side was how much money the government is spending on this project, yet the problem is getting worse. That is what we have been trying to explain all day long, that the problem is growing. However, the government is saying it is going to spend more. Then it said it was going to fix it with yet another government program. Does my friend from Bay of Quinte recognize, I know he has, that the government just continues to fail and cannot figure out how to get out of this?

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Mr. Ryan Williams

Dec/9/21 6:25:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, absolutely. Cash is being handed out, and right now we see that people cannot make their mortgage payments or pay for groceries. They are having trouble with the next month's rent, and that is because of more cash. If the government's solution is more cash, what is going to happen three months from now? I will still be unable to feed my family because groceries will have gone up another $200. We need action. The best part about this plan for housing is this. If we can get tradespeople in to build units, we create jobs. What do jobs create? They create paycheques. That is what would fix this problem once and for all.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Dec/9/21 6:25:42 p.m.
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The hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot is rising on a point of order.

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Mr. Damien Kurek

Dec/9/21 6:25:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to be able to rise to ask for unanimous consent to table some documents. I hope these documents will be of particular interest to every single member in this House, because they have to do with the very foundation of what our democratic system is, and specifically the impacts that has in the province of Alberta. Today I ask for unanimous consent to table, in both of Canada's official languages, the results for the 2021 senatorial election race that took place in the province of Alberta on October 18. This is an opportunity to make sure these results are represented on the record here in this place. I ask for unanimous consent to table these documents.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Dec/9/21 6:26:42 p.m.
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Does the hon. member have unanimous consent to table the documents? Some hon. members: No.

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