44th Parl. 1st Sess.

May 2, 2023 10:00AM

Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

May/2/23 12:08:18 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise to engage in this debate today about housing. In fact, I could talk about housing all day long. The motion before us today is indeed an interesting one. In the Conservatives' approach, per usual, they focus only on issues where they could actually put out buzzwords to rev up the community about a situation. The solutions they provide often have tremendous gaps and, interestingly, they always miss when it comes to targeting the corporate sector. I wonder why the Conservatives always think the corporate sector will take care of things, that somehow things will magically be okay, including the situation with housing. If the market were going to take care of the housing crisis, or, in fact, if the market were not going to escalate the crisis, then we would not be in this situation today. The reality is this: When we look at the housing crisis from coast to coast to coast, we do need government intervention. I am a strong proponent of that, saying that the federal government needs to show leadership. It does not matter who is in government. Whether it is the Liberals or the Conservatives, government needs to be there for people to ensure housing as a basic human right. The reality is that the government has not been there. That is why we have the housing crisis we face today. The Liberals cancelled the national affordable housing program back in 1993. Our country lost more than half a million units of social and co-op housing that would otherwise have been built had the Liberals not cancelled the program. Now, I have to say that the Conservatives also did not do their part. They were in government as well. They did not invest in housing as they needed to do. More to the point, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives invested in housing to meet the needs on the basis of housing being a basic human right. Not only that, but they allowed the market to go rampant in taking advantage of Canadians who need housing. What happened after the federal Liberals cancelled the national affordable housing program? We started to see real estate investment trusts come into the market. They started to buy up housing stock in the community. Not only did they start to buy up the housing stock, but the government of the day also allowed them to walk away with a free pass to boot. They did not have to pay the corporate tax rate, even though, for all intents and purposes, they operate like a corporation. As a result, the seven largest real estate investment trusts did not have to pay taxes at the corporate rate to the general revenues, to the tune of $1.2 billion. This tax should have been collected, and then the government could have reinvested that money into housing by creating an acquisition fund for non-profits, which the Liberals say they support. They should have funded it so that we could hold the housing stock. However, the Liberals did not do that. It was not just the Liberals; the Conservatives did not do that either. They allowed this to go on and on. Now, the Auditor General and the Parliamentary Budget Officer just issued a report indicating that Canada will lose another $300 million over the next four years if we do not change the tax policy. The NDP has said on the public record that we need to stop fuelling the housing crisis. Corporate landlords need to pay their fair share, and real estate investment trusts need to pay the corporate tax rate. The money that we collect should be reinvested back into housing. However, we do not see any of that language in this motion today. The Conservatives are saying that local governments should pre-emptively upzone a parcel of land for the development of housing. Now let us be clear: When they do that, what is happening is that the Conservatives are saying to the local government to just write developers a blank cheque. Every time a parcel of land is upzoned, that land value increases exponentially. I am not saying we should not upzone land for further housing development, but my question is this: Why did the Conservatives not put in language to say that there needs to be a return back to the community? When we give value in land to the developers, there has to be a return back to the community to ensure that the increased value in land that they receive from the upzoning is actually going to the community in the form of community contributions, more social housing, day care spaces and green spaces, as examples. The Conservatives consistently and persistently give a free pass to the private sector; according to the New Democrats, that is wrong. We also want to see “affordability” defined. What has happened over the years is that both the Liberals and the Conservatives have eroded the term “affordability” to the point where it is meaningless. In fact, if we talk to people in the non-profit sector, they think that when the government says “affordable housing”, it is a four-letter word. It does not actually amount to being affordable by any stretch of the imagination. Once upon a time, core-need housing was deemed to be affordable when it was geared to income. That has now disappeared. It no longer exists. It exists only in theory, and that should stop. This motion should have incorporated language on affordability and defined it better. We want to tie federal infrastructure dollars for municipalities to the number of new homes built, impose clawbacks on municipalities that delay new home construction, and ensure that there is federal funding for major transit projects to cities that pre-emptively upzone lands around transit infrastructure for higher-density housing. The NDP is calling for amendments to this motion. We are calling for the Conservatives to accept three amendments. Specifically, we want to ensure that at least one-third of the new homes built meet core affordability needs and that at least one-third of the new homes are set, at a minimum, at 20% below market housing rent. We need to ensure that upzoning provides tangible benefits to local communities, including additional affordable housing, additional green spaces and child care spaces. We also need to ensure that the underutilized federal properties made available for housing to create new social co-ops and community housing guarantee the affordability of those units and that the value of the upzoning goes back to the community and not into the hands of the developers. That is what we need to do. I hope that the Conservatives will support these amendments and that the language of the amendments fits what is required in this House. I move that the motion be amended as follows: “(a) in paragraph (a) by adding after the words ‘new homes built’ the words ‘to ensure at least 1/3 of the new homes built meet core affordability needs of Canadians, that at least 1/3 is set at minimum 20% below market housing rent’; (b) by adding the following paragraph after paragraph (b): ‘ensuring that this “up-zoning” provides tangible benefits to local communities, including in the form of additional affordable housing, additional green spaces, and child care spaces, so that “up-zoning” does not just benefit developers’; and (c) in paragraph (c) by replacing the words ‘housing while guaranteeing’ with the words ‘social, co-operative, or community housing to guarantee.’” That is the motion that I would like to move in order to amend the Conservative motion; it can ensure that we are clear in what we are talking about, that “affordability” is clearly defined and that there is a return back to the community when we upzone land so that the benefit is not just a blank cheque for the developer; rather, it is a community benefit going back to the people.

1360 words

Hear!
Rabble!
add
star_border
share

SoVote

House Hansard - 189