44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 2, 2023 10:00AM
- May/2/23 10:22:09 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Parry Sound—Muskoka.
What we have today, with the Prime Minister's housing crisis, is double trouble. Since the Prime Minister took office and since he promised to make housing affordable, the average cost of a mortgage payment has doubled, from $1,400 a month to over $3,000 a month. The average cost of rent in Canada's 10 biggest cities has doubled, from about $1,100 to over $2,000 every single month. The average required minimum down payment for a house in Canada has doubled, from $22,000 to $45,000. This is all since the Prime Minister became Prime Minister and promised that he was going to make housing affordable.
This is not just an inconvenience. This is not just a case where politicians stand up and say that Canadians are having trouble making ends meet or putting food on the table, as politicians always like to say. This is becoming possibly the single biggest socio-economic crisis in my lifetime, as an entire generation of young people have come to accept, for the first time in Canadian history, that they will not be able to afford a home.
Let me share with members the mathematics of hopelessness. I was speaking to a young lady who is 28 years old and is a CATSA screener at Toronto Pearson Airport. She calculates that, at her current rate of savings, about $5,000 a year, it will take her somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 years to save for a down payment in Toronto. That means she will be well over 40 and unable to have kids. The hopelessness is not that she cannot afford a home; it is that her calculator tells her she will never be able to afford a home.
It would be nice and comforting for the Prime Minister if he could claim that this problem is out of his hands and that it is the result of some crazy global phenomenon that is not in his grasp, and therefore that he is once again just a passive observer in the misery that the Canadian people are living, as he so often tries to portray himself. The stats prove otherwise. This problem does not exist in the vast majority of countries in our peer group around the world. For example, last year, Fortune magazine concluded that the standard home in Canada now costs twice as much as it does in the U.S. Can the Prime Minister explain this? Prices are determined by supply and demand. The U.S. has 10 times the demand because it has 10 times the population. It has a smaller supply because its land mass is more confined and less than ours. It has 10 times the demand and less supply, yet, according to Fortune magazine, the prices in the U.S. are half what they are here in Canada.
Around the world, we see other examples. Vancouver, in NDP British Columbia, is now the third most overpriced housing market in the world according to Demographia. Toronto is the 10th. Both are more unaffordable than Manhattan, Los Angeles, London and even Singapore, an island where there is literally nowhere left to build. All these are places with more money, more people and less land, yet their real estate is more affordable than ours.
The practical consequences of this are that, for example, almost one-third of homeowners with a mortgage will pay off that debt over more than a 30-year period, due to higher interest rates, a significant increase over the once-standard 25-year amortization. The average rent for a spare bedroom, just the bedroom and not the overall housing unit, in a home, condo or apartment in Vancouver was $1,410. Let us put this into perspective. There are now couples who consider it a bargain to move into a townhouse with two other couples, each couple renting a single room, often sharing a bathroom, always sharing a kitchen, and paying $1,500 a month just for that room. Here in Canada, this is true housing poverty, and it has happened after eight years of the Prime Minister's policies.
Why is housing so unaffordable? First, government deficits are driving up interest, which increases the mortgage rates for people with debt. Second, we have the fewest houses per capita in the G7 even though we have the most land to build on. Why is that? The answer is that government gatekeepers block housing construction. It takes up to 10 years to get a building permit. We rank 64th in the world for building permit delays. We rank second-last for the speed at which we approve building permits within the OECD. Every other country but one in that group is faster to deliver permits and allow houses to be build. This blocks construction and prevents Canadians from owning a house. We know this problem is worse in NDP-controlled British Columbia, where hard-left, woke mayors who stand up for the wealthy mansion owners in leafy, ritzy neighbourhoods block the poor, the immigrants and the working class from ever owning homes. Therefore, we do not have enough homes, and that is why Canadians do not have a place to live.
The government wants to bring in half a million people per year, which is a million people over the next two years, and it has no plan to build the houses to go along with that. In fact, since the current Prime Minister took office, we have fewer houses per capita than we did eight years ago. In other words, this problem is metastasizing and worsening every single day. The only party with a common-sense plan to fix it is the Conservative Party, and this is the plan.
The government has put $89 billion into housing programs. Government housing is not the solution. It is not working because, if there is a confined space of permitted land to build on, we could pour as much money as we want into it and we are not going to get more housing; we are going to get more expensive housing. Worse still, the Prime Minister has announced $4 billion more, not for housing, but for the gatekeepers. The money is literally going to go to the zoning and permitting departments of the big cities that are blocking the construction in the first place. In other words, it is a big, fat reward for those same bureaucrats who are blocking our youth from having homes, and that will build out the bureaucracy and slow down the construction.
Here is my common-sense plan. We will link the number of dollars big cities get for infrastructure to the number of houses that actually get built. Those who block construction will be fined. I will cut back their infrastructure. Those who speed up and lower the cost of permits to build more will get a building bonus from my government because incentives work. I will require every federally funded transit station to have high-density housing on all the available land around and even on top of the station. We will sell off 6,000 federal buildings to convert them into affordable housing for our young people to live in. We will speed up immigration for building trades. We will shift more of our education dollars over to the trades, rather than just to the white-collar professions.
We have seen the way. We can look at what the Squamish people have done in the city of Vancouver. They have their own land and do not have to follow the rules of the gatekeepers. They are building 6,000 units of housing on 10 acres of land. The Squamish have shown what can happen when we get the gatekeepers out of the way. That is exactly what we are going to do right across the country. We will clear the gatekeepers. We will remove the privileged class inside the castle walls and open the gates of opportunity up to anyone who is prepared to work hard. If people work hard in this country, the rules should allow that they have a decent home where they can start a family and raise kids. It is common sense, the common sense of the common people united for our common home, their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
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- May/2/23 12:53:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the paradigm shift that we need in this place is to have people in government who are fighting for the Canada that we once loved.
I got an email from an individual in my riding who is concerned with the price of the variable interest rates. She wrote that she is listing her home because her variable payment has gone from $2,000 to $4,000 a month. She has to sell because she cannot afford it. This is a couple in my riding who saved and saved. They finally got a home that they love. They renovated it beyond their expectations, and now they have to sell it.
This government is failing Canadians, and it needs to step up.
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- May/2/23 1:35:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member opposite lives in a community that looks a lot like mine, and I am sure she hears from young people who will never afford to live where they actually grew up. Under the government, rents have doubled, mortgages have doubled and the price of a house has doubled, and it has not incentivized municipalities to build the density that is needed for young people to afford a home.
I am not sure how the member can defend that to her constituents, to York Region or, frankly, to the benches of her own government.
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- May/2/23 4:26:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Kenora.
Homebuyers across Canada are confronted by two massive obstacles that they must work through as they try to buy and finance a home. First, families are struggling with the devastating impact of the Liberal government's economic mismanagement and its housing plans. To great fanfare, the government announced Canada's national housing strategy in 2017 to make housing, it said, more affordable and accessible. It has been an obvious and utter failure.
Canada's home prices have doubled since 2015. Today, the average home price in this country is an eye-popping $800,000. Ask any recent buyer or aspiring buyer if they are better off today than they were eight years ago, and the answer is a resounding, emphatic no.
The second obstacle is the cost of financing a home, which has skyrocketed. Thanks to the Liberal government's massive deficit spending, Canada's debt has doubled to $1.2 trillion. On top of that, the interest rates to service that debt have skyrocketed and will soon hit $50 billion every single year.
The indirect costs of that debt are significant. Reckless spending has fuelled inflation to levels Canadians have not seen in 40 years, and this has driven up interest costs. The result is higher mortgage payments. Today the average mortgage payment in this country has doubled to $3,000 a month. These two factors have made home ownership more expensive and pushed it out of reach for countless Canadians, particularly young Canadians.
The lack of housing and higher costs have also been ruinous to home and apartment rentals. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Canada's 10 biggest cities is now $2,213, compared to $1,170 before Canada's Liberals broke the housing market. Vancouver and Toronto are now the third and tenth most unaffordable cities in the world, outstripping places like New York and London.
Big city governments that delay permits and have excess red tape and taxes can add as much as $200,000 to the cost of each new home built in this country. No wonder people cannot afford to buy a home, with prices like this being driven up by the gatekeepers.
Owning a home and raising a family are the foundation of the Canadian dream, yet for many this dream appears to be slipping further and further away. It is out of reach because the Liberals are out of touch. Home ownership has become an impossibility for too many Canadians since the Liberals first took office. In Canada, it is considered affordable to buy a home if the cost is less than 30% of a household's before-tax income. It now takes 60% of Canadians' income to cover the cost of owning a home. Those who have scrimped and saved for years to afford their first home now find themselves questioning if they can ever achieve the Canadian dream.
This crisis did not happen overnight. It has steadily worsened every year the Liberals have been in office. The Bank of Canada's governor, as well as the finance minister, led people to believe that interest rates would remain low. Today, thousands of Canadians are grappling with the stark reality that those entrusted with governing and overseeing the nation's finances failed.
The Canadian dream was once a straightforward proposition: work hard; play by the rules; finish school; get a decent job; get married; save each month for a down payment; have a family; and one day retire, owning one's home. However, for many of my constituents in New Brunswick, those who have done everything right, this dream is unattainable today. That is, no matter how hard families work or how much they save, the dream of home ownership is a mirage.
The Liberals have failed to deliver affordable housing, and that was made abundantly clear in the Auditor General's report last November, which revealed that, despite spending tens of billions of dollars, and the Liberals are great at rattling off program after program and the mounds of money they have spent, when it comes to homelessness, the numbers keep rising.
The Auditor General says that the departments responsible, Infrastructure Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada, failed to even adequately track results, instead relying on outdated national shelter data to assess the effectiveness of their programs. In fact, the government's numbers, even using numbers the Auditor General said were less than reliable, indicate homelessness has increased nationally by 6.6% since 2018. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people who no longer have homes.
The Auditor General also underscored that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, which oversees the majority of the housing strategies under the government, has no idea who benefits from its initiatives. Low-income families are being priced out of the market by funding rental housing that is supposedly affordable, but proves to be unaffordable for working families. It is an absolute mess.
Housing is one pillar of the Canadian dream, and the other is raising a family, yet the high cost of living, driven by inflated housing prices, has further discouraged Canadians from that other joy of life, which is starting a family. The average household debt in Canada reached 183% of disposable income in 2022, limiting the financial freedom and security of many Canadians.
The risk of homelessness is also going up because demand for homes has surpassed supply. New Brunswick's many affordable units were purchased in the last couple of years in my riding. This has forced people out, as buyers either moved in or increased rents. Families have been forced to move elsewhere to work and live. This has had a twin impact on the labour market, as small communities now cannot keep young families, which tend to be part of the economic foundation of these economies because they provide work for businesses and start small businesses, and it is not always by choice. This is happening because they are being priced right out of their neighbourhoods.
For those who cannot move or find an affordable place to live, the result is sadly and frequently homelessness, and this has a devastating impact on one's mental health, as well as personal safety. For the most vulnerable, those who are on the edge of poverty or trying to break the cycle, there are nowhere near enough shelter spaces, supported housing for persons with addictions or disabilities, rental units, or even starter homes. It is imperative that we address the housing crisis at its core by scaling up and building more. No government program is going to solve this problem. We need to build homes for future families. The Liberals cannot, but Conservatives will get it done.
The CMHC has noted that, as of April 27, the housing shortage throughout Canada is going to worsen. The agency has predicted that there will be a 32% decline in home building this year, as the cost of borrowing remains high and building costs have risen by 20% in the past year alone.
How is the carbon tax working now? We said it was a tax on everything, and it is. It is driving up the cost of living in this country, especially on new homes. It is Canadians, despite the government insisting it is doing everything right, who are paying the price. A Conservative government would incentivize home construction across Canada.
Step one would be to fix Canada's affordability crisis is restoring credibility to Ottawa's budgets. We would restore the federal government's finances, which have contributed to inflation and higher interest rates on home buyers. We would impose penalties on big city gatekeepers for excessive obstruction of housing projects. We would require cities seeking federal funds to pre-approve zoning for high-density housing and employment on land surrounding transit stations and hubs.
Last, we will sell off at least 15% of underutilized federal buildings in its property to ensure these buildings become affordable housing for families.
We must make the dream of home ownership a reality for families again. This is the only way we can secure a brighter future for our nation, for our children and for the next generation.
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- May/2/23 5:14:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am glad to see that, like us, our colleagues across the floor are concerned about housing affordability, but concern is not enough. Since 2015, our government has been turning our concerns into actions, producing real results for real people in this country.
When we entered office, our government saw the crisis in housing affordability looming and we knew that bold action was needed. We made history in 2017 when we launched the national housing strategy, the first of its kind in this country. The strategy is a 10-year, $82-billion plan that offers grants, loans, innovation support, research funding and more.
The strategy addresses the needs of people across the housing spectrum, from homelessness, to rental housing, to home ownership. It takes a human rights-based approach to housing, focusing particularly on the people who are most vulnerable to housing needs.
We are halfway through the national housing strategy timeline, and we are on track.
Better yet, in delivering on most of the measures, we have disbursed more than one-third of the strategy's funding. With this funding, we have achieved at least 50% of most of our targets. These results include supporting the repair of more than 298,00 units, just short of the 300,000-unit target; maintaining the affordability of 234,000 community housing units, which is 60% of the target to date; and supporting the creation of nearly 120,000 units out of a target of 160,000 units.
It can be hard to comprehend such large, abstract numbers, so I am going to talk about one of those 120,000 units that were built. That unit is occupied by Bill Beaton.
Bill is a Canadian Armed Forces veteran who was living on the street before being welcomed into Veterans' House, a supportive housing facility for homeless veterans in Ottawa. The 40-unit project was created through the national housing co-investment fund, one of the strategy's flagship affordable housing programs.
For Bill, Veterans' House is not just a statistic. It is much more. It is a safe place to live. It is stability. It is a home that he would not be able to afford otherwise.
His story is similar to those of many thousands of people across Canada who have a place to live thanks to the national housing strategy. It is the story of people who were given a helping hand to access housing that they can afford and that meets their needs.
The situation has changed drastically since the Government of Canada launched the national housing strategy in 2017. Since then, we have been dealing with the pandemic, global inflation, supply chain disruptions and a war in Europe, among other things.
During that time, our government, through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, updated, improved and expanded the strategy's programs. We did so in response to the changing situation and the input of our partners. We recognize that housing is a shared responsibility and that the federal government will not meet its ambitious housing objectives alone.
For example, we have simplified processes that were found to be too cumbersome and bureaucratic, cutting processing times in half.
We have made changes to better meet the needs of the not-for-profit housing sector. This includes a special stream of the national housing co-investment fund that turns approvals and agreements around in as little as four weeks. That feedback on turnaround times led to a new program, the rapid housing initiative, a program that is very important to the riding of Châteauguay—Lacolle. It was designed to build homes more quickly for people who need them most and has consistently exceeded its targets. We have since extended it twice, helping even more people.
One of the things we have heard from our partners is that the cost and availability of land is a persistent barrier to building new homes, and so in 2019, we launched a direct solution: the federal lands initiative, a streamlined process to make surplus federal property available for use in building affordable housing. This 10-year, $200-million program is supporting the transfer of federal property to eligible proponents at discounted rates or no cost. So far, we have committed $118 million of that budget and nearly reached the target of 4,000 new affordable housing units.
Still, we must do more.
The magnitude of Canada's housing challenges is bigger than any one program can address. The national housing strategy and its programs are supporting action, inspiring innovation and providing a platform for the public, private and non-profit sectors to come together. It is through collaboration that we would build a better and fairer housing system.
I am not standing here today just to talk about these programs and their success; I am here to make a request. I ask each and every member in this House to work with their constituents to help connect them to the programs and funding available.
The national housing strategy approaches housing affordability from every angle that would have an impact. We believe there is something in there to meet every type of housing need. Every community can benefit from the provisions of the strategy, and together we can ensure that everyone in Canada has a place to call home.
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