44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 2, 2023 10:00AM
- May/2/23 10:53:48 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking my colleague from Parry Sound—Muskoka for his motion. It gives me the opportunity to talk about something that is extremely important, not only to me, but to our government. It also gives me the opportunity to point out that we are already taking the measures proposed in the opposition’s motion. However, the party across the aisle has often, if not always, voted against all these measures.
Like my colleague who is a former mayor, I am a former city councillor. I was astonished and shocked by the comments made by the House leader of the official opposition earlier today. He said that he thinks municipalities are incompetent. I invite him to repeat that publicly so we can see the reaction of municipalities across the country. I think that we are all here to work together to provide municipalities with the necessary measures and support in the current housing shortage.
We can see how difficult things are for Canadians across the country. Families are feeling the impact of the rising cost of living, and the high interest rates are hitting them hard. Housing costs are taking a heavy toll. As a result, housing affordability is becoming one of Canadians’ major concerns. It is also one of the concerns we have as a government. As you know, we have made major investments in our recent budgets.
Housing is a basic human need. We have to make sure that all Canadians have a roof over their heads that meets their needs and helps preserve their dignity. This is also an economic development issue. The housing shortage can be felt across the country, not just in the major urban centres. In many regions of Canada, the vacancy rate is as low as 0.1%. That is unprecedented.
It is therefore crucial that we build more housing units, create more supply and make housing more affordable for both homeowners and tenants. That is why we have implemented concrete and ambitious measures to double the construction of new housing units and to meet Canadians’ needs over the next decade.
As we often say, our government adopted the very first national housing strategy. This strategy works across the whole housing supply continuum and seeks to help everyone, from the most vulnerable to those who want to purchase a property. Everyone has a role to play, including provincial governments, private businesses, community organizations and municipalities. Everyone needs to co-operate to accelerate housing construction.
This comprehensive 10-year strategy already includes investments of over $82 billion to give as many Canadians as possible a place to call home. Our government is committed to adopting a housing approach based on increased supply and the protection of human rights. Unfortunately, the Conservatives voted against every measure we presented. According to many of my opposition colleagues, we should do less.
There are no small measures or small projects; every unit we build is necessary to make the right to affordable, safe housing a reality each and every time.
I want to remind the chamber of the different measures we have put in place in the national housing strategy. I think the opposition needs a recap. This strategy is a tool kit that addresses the challenges along the spectrum of housing needs. These initiatives will help build new affordable housing, fund non-profit organizations and provide build capacity to communities. Right now, it is simply too hard to get the housing we need to build, particularly affordable housing.
The system is not working, and we need to accelerate change at the local level. That is why we recently launched the housing accelerator fund, a $4-billion initiative that will provide funding for local governments to fast-track the creation of 100,000 additional homes across the country. This fund will help cities, towns and indigenous governments unlock new housing supply by speeding up the development and approval of housing projects and incenting the development of community housing action plans.
This is a significant step in our plan to double housing construction over the next decade and make housing more affordable for Canadians. I think my colleague from Parry Sound—Muskoka will find that it directly addresses his desire to tackle municipal barriers to allow housing to be built faster.
In addition to this new fund, we are also making historic investments in proven programs that are already benefiting those vulnerable populations who need affordable housing. One such program is the rapid housing initiative. This program was created in the early stages of the pandemic to respond to urgent housing needs of our most vulnerable populations. It has exceeded all expectations. It is quickly creating more than 10,200 new permanent units of affordable housing.
Now we are investing another $1.5 billion over two years to extend this initiative. The new funding is expected to create an additional 4,500 new affordable housing units, with at least 25% of funding going towards women-focused housing projects.
Every Canadian has a right to a safe and affordable place to call home, and it is unacceptable that any Canadian experiences homelessness. That is why we are investing over half a billion dollars to continue doubling annual funding for Reaching Home, Canada's homelessness strategy.
Our historic investments in tackling chronic homelessness are already paying off. We have prevented over 62,000 from experiencing homelessness and placed 32,000 people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing. We will continue to work with all levels of government and community partners to put an end to chronic homelessness across the country once and for all.
We know that it is getting harder for many Canadians to afford increased rent or to even find housing they can afford. That is why we are making investments to rapidly increase the supply of affordable rental housing. We are also providing direct financial assistance with the cost of rent to tens of thousands of Canadians across the country through the ongoing Canada housing benefit. which is delivered by the provinces and territories, and the federal Canada housing benefit top-up of $500.
The national housing co-investment fund is another program that has helped us build or renovate more than 300,000 rental units for the most vulnerable Canadians. Our government advanced $2.9 billion under this fund for this purpose. We also want to make the fund more flexible and more easily accessible. We could then accelerate the creation and renovation of some 21,000 rental units for Canadians who need them the most.
Our government is also determined to protect and develop high-quality, affordable co-operative housing units. I myself lived for several years in a co-op, and I helped create three co-ops. With my mother and my brother in a wheelchair on the third floor, we could plainly see that the housing supply was almost non-existent, especially for persons with reduced mobility.
That is why our government made a major, historic investment in co-op housing. We have not seen an investment of that magnitude for 30 years. It includes $500 million to launch a new co-op housing development program to increase the number of co-op housing units in Canada, and $1 billion in loans that will be reallocated to the rental construction financing initiative to support co-op housing projects.
These measures are in addition to our $4.3-billion federal community housing initiative, which is already helping protect and build community housing for some 330,000 households in Canada.
So far, the measures I mentioned focus solely on the challenge of increasing the housing supply. Of course, as we have seen, and as we know, it is currently very difficult for Canadians to fulfill their dream of buying a house.
That is why we launched a tax-free first home savings account, where Canadians can save up to $40,000. As with an RRSP, contributions will be tax-deductible and withdrawals to purchase a first home will be non-taxable, as is the case with a TFSA. It will be tax-free in, tax-free out.
We will also continue to improve the first-time home buyer incentive so that even more Canadians can have access to it, since we need to narrow the intergenerational gap.
We have relaunched the successful affordable housing innovation fund, with a new five-year rent-to-own funding stream. This will help housing providers develop and test rent-to-own models and projects to help Canadian families across the country find a new way to transition from renting to owning a home.
We are also moving forward on a homebuyers' bill of rights, which would protect homeowners from unfair practices like blind bidding or asking them to waive their right to a home inspection.
Our new legislation to ensure housing is owned by Canadians recently came into effect. The Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act, better known as the foreign buyers act, prohibits foreign commercial enterprises and people who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents from purchasing homes in Canada for a period of two years.
Lastly, I think that every member in the House can agree that one of our society’s greatest failures is the housing situation of indigenous peoples. They live in overcrowded houses that are ill adapted to the climate and their communities’ culture.
Our government is working in close collaboration with first nations, Inuit and Métis organizations to jointly develop a distinction-based housing strategy. We must do more, and that is exactly what we are doing with our indigenous partners.
In the 2023 budget, our government introduced a series of measures representing $6.3 billion in funding over seven years. This includes a $300-million investment for developing, together with our indigenous partners, an urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy built and drafted by and for indigenous peoples.
In the 2023 budget, we committed to paying $4 billion over seven years to roll out this strategy. Indigenous peoples are conducting and leading a national engagement campaign to inform the strategy, which will complement the three distinctions-based housing strategies already developed jointly with first nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
All the initiatives I have mentioned build on Canada’s first-ever national housing strategy, our 10-year plan to give more Canadians a place to call home. I can say that we are nearly halfway through the strategy's 10-year timeline, and we are on track to meet very ambitious goals.
We have committed nearly 50% of the strategy’s funding. With that funding, we have supported the repair of over 298,000 homes, just shy of the target of 300,000. We have maintained the affordability status of 234,000 community housing units, which represents 60% of the target so far. We have supported the creation of nearly 120,000 new housing units out of the targeted 160,000. Those are big numbers, and there is no small project and no small unit.
I want to give a couple of examples. This morning, my colleague, the Leader of the Opposition, talked about the Squamish Nation. It was the biggest investment of the national housing strategy, with $1.4 billion for 3,000 homes and units. When he criticizes the national housing strategy, would he have said not to invest in this project?
La Résidence des Ateliers provides 200 housing units for seniors. At Chez Doris, 19 women found a place to stay, as well as support to get them off the streets.
Toronto Community Housing repaired 58,000 units for the most vulnerable people. Thunderbird House got 22 tiny houses. Saint John's Rose House got 12 units.
Every project counts, because there are people behind it. These are a lot of numbers, but they mean nothing if we are not helping people like Neela, a young Métis woman living in Kamloops.
When she aged out of the child welfare system, culturally specific co-housing with elders helped her gain a support network. Her new home, made possible with federal funding, gave her more than just a roof and four walls. It helped her to connect with her culture and develop her spirituality, sense of purpose and self-confidence.
There are people like Ken, from Sudbury. He is now on the road to recovery after suffering a catastrophic brain injury. His mother credits his incredible turnaround to the support he received at Wade Hampton House, an affordable assisted living community for people with an acquired brain injury. Again, this was made possible through the national housing strategy.
Here is the last of many examples: I could talk about Molly from Toronto. Over several years, Molly saw her community of Milliken Co-op start to deteriorate. New renovations and upgrades have made the co-op more accessible and climate-friendly. Just as important, they have restored community pride.
Unfortunately, this motion makes it very clear that the Conservatives are simply not serious when it comes to housing. If they were, they would know that we are already taking unprecedented action to speed up municipal housing approvals, tie infrastructure investments to housing, and convert federal lands to affordable housing. All of the measures in my colleague's motion, we are already doing those things. There is not a serious plan from the Conservatives. There are buzzwords and gimmicks.
I am going to be honest with members. When the Leader of the Opposition was minister of housing, I was actually working on a whole project. If the Leader of the Opposition, the minister of housing at that time, had just done a little bit more, maybe we would not be in this situation right now. It is easy for him to criticize, but he was minister of housing. Maybe 5% of our budget right now is what he actually managed as the minister of housing. He has no lesson to give to anybody.
The only reason we made a co-op possible when I was, at that time, a city councillor, is that provinces stepped up. We, as a federal government, came back to housing with a national housing strategy. We have no lessons to take from opposition Conservatives. They have a leader who, when he was in government, had every means to do more for every single vulnerable Canadian of this country and for indigenous communities, and he did nothing.
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- May/2/23 11:13:14 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is the difference between the opposition and this government. The member talks about spending. We talk about investments in people and in their homes, and making sure that we are supporting the increase of supply of units of housing in the country, for the most vulnerable people and for the ones who want to buy a home. Contrary to my colleague here, we actually invest in people. We do not just spend money. It is easy for them to talk about spending.
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- May/2/23 11:14:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to remind my colleague that the federal government, which introduced the first national housing strategy, is putting municipalities at the heart of the solution. The housing accelerator that we want to implement will enable us to support the structures of municipalities so that they can build more housing.
Municipalities receive far more money from us than they currently give. That is what we want to do. They need to be true partners, and we need to give them the means to do that.
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- May/2/23 11:16:29 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, one thing my colleague and I agree on is that there is much more to do. Although the investments we are making right now are huge and historic, it is quite obvious that we have a lot more to do to address this shortage of affordable housing and to ensure that all Canadians across the country have a roof over their heads.
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- May/2/23 11:17:37 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is important to remember two things. The first is that we have lifted over 2.7 million people out of poverty. Unlike my colleagues in the opposition, this government does not view spending as a burden when it helps the most vulnerable and the families who need it most.
This government is investing in people and those who need it most. That is exactly what we are doing.
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- May/2/23 11:18:46 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague did ask me about this yesterday evening.
What I can tell him is that we all have a responsibility to ensure that more housing and more affordable housing is built. His question also relates to the whole issue of housing rights. There is also the question of the registry of owners, which is needed to curb speculation in the market in order to protect tenants' right to have reasonable rent and a decent, safe and, above all, affordable place to live.
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- May/2/23 11:20:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague on the issue of homelessness. We need to ensure that we are tracking the information and that the programs we put in place are exactly what is needed.
My colleague asked a question about Yukon. I would be pleased to sit down with him and look at that. It is important to remember that the federal government is not a project proponent. We are there to support communities with their project needs. If the territory in question did not submit a project, then I would be happy to go and do a round table to tell people that they have access to programs and that they have to apply to get the funding they need.
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- May/2/23 11:21:47 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, what I would say to my colleague is that a strategy for indigenous housing has to be developed with indigenous peoples. What is important is not how quickly we create it but how they want to create it. What is important is how they themselves want to implement this strategy, and that is exactly what we are doing with them.
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