SoVote

May/2/23 10:49:20 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am a former mayor, and I was a chair of planning for many years before that. I guarantee the vast majority of these complaints come from people who just do not want change. Many, many times in planning committees we would have people come to say they did not like something, it would negatively affect the value of their property or there would be too many people. The fact of the matter is that municipalities have official plans, governing documents that say how the municipality show grow. There is professional planning staff who recommend in favour of things because it makes sense and is good planning. Then there are the cowardly local politicians, and trust me because I dealt with lots of them, and I chastised many of them many times, would say that the people of the community do not like it. They are worried about getting re-elected. We need to do what is right, and we need to challenge municipalities that are not doing what is right to get the job done because they are holding things up. They are making it more expensive, and it is harder and harder for young people to get into a home of their own because of their delays and tactics to stall these projects.

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Context: House Hansard - 189 - May/2/23

Ms. Monique Pauzé (Repentigny, BQ)

May/2/23 10:50:22 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague, who said in his speech that he was once the mayor of a municipality. I will build on that. In today’s motion, it is surprising to see the Conservative Party claiming that the federal government knows more about the housing needs and priorities of Quebec and the provinces than the Quebec government and the municipalities do themselves. As a former mayor, he is aware of the importance of the municipal level and municipal politicians and how close they are to the people. Would it not be better, rather than cutting ribbons left and right, to trust those who know their citizens’ needs?

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Context: House Hansard - 189 - May/2/23

Ms. Soraya Martinez Ferrada (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion (Housing), Lib.)

May/2/23 10:53:48 a.m.
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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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Context: House Hansard - 189 - May/2/23

Mr. Chad Collins (Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, Lib.)

May/2/23 1:23:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as a former Hamilton councillor, I know that my former colleagues and municipal staff are doing everything they can to increase housing supply, as well as provide support for affordable housing. What I do not understand is the motion that has been put today by members on the opposite side of the House, which seeks to blame their former municipalities or the municipalities where they are from and the municipalities that they represented. The member opposite was from Centre Hastings, a former municipal councillor who is blaming her municipal staff for standing in the way, the gatekeepers, in terms of preventing supply and affordable investment. We have heard from the former mayor of Collingwood, whose motion here today speaks to that same issue, in terms of blaming municipalities. I wonder if my colleague sees fit, in terms of supporting municipalities, and sees how our national housing strategy is providing support to municipalities instead of laying blame at their feet.

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Context: House Hansard - 189 - May/2/23

Mr. Eric Melillo

May/2/23 4:57:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I said to my Liberal colleague when he asked his question, I do think this is an opportunity to work with our municipalities. Members of parties opposite like to flash their municipal credentials. Of course, the member for Parry Sound—Muskoka, who brought forward the motion today, is a former mayor himself and understands these issues quite well, as do the nine mayors in my riding with whom I had a chance to connect last week. None of the mayors I have been talking to in my riding are concerned about our policy moving forward because they know we need to get things built. They want to move forward and are looking for the federal government to get out of the way and let that happen.

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Context: House Hansard - 189 - May/2/23

Mr. Martin Shields (Bow River, CPC)

May/2/23 5:26:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are talking about a very important topic today. We need homes for families. We need homes for dignity and homes for a purpose. The Conservatives want to bring homes for those reasons. Under the Constitution, and we know the federal government and the provincial government know the roles, but it is the provincial governments that create municipalities. They are a creature of the provincial government. The Liberal government, in its programs on housing, has not worked well with all the levels of government partners, which has been mentioned by the Liberals. For example, there is the big city mayors' group out there. I do not remember the city mayors' group being here in Ottawa to work on this crisis, so there are partner problems. In eight years of the Liberal government, housing costs across Canada have doubled, and Canada has the fewest homes in the G7 but the most land to build it on. We have a lot of land. However, the regulatory burdens, the impact assessments and the red tape have increased delays and costs over the last eight years. Municipal people tell me about the number of forms they need to fill out. When I was mayor, we hired a grant writer, a grant finder. Even being a small community of 15,000, we hired a person to try to find the grants and then fill out the forms. The red tape has increased for housing, so there are greater barriers. There is more staff in Ottawa, but dealing with applying for grants in the programs the government has set-up has not become more efficient. There are a couple of problems. There is not a clear definition. We see the words “affordable” and “attainable”. Affordable housing refers to it costing less than 30% of a household's income before tax. Attainable housing has a few more points to it and applies to a broader population in our country. Attainable housing refers to being adequate in condition, which means it is not on that renovation show where they are fixing up a house that is falling apart. It is a house that is liveable. It also means it is appropriate in size, with the number of bedrooms, the kitchen or whatever living space is needed. Also, it is accessible to services, meaning it is located in areas where people can get the services they need. Attainable housing is available in a range of housing types. If some of the pieces for attainable housing are missing, then we have a problem. We are not just building for affordable, we are building attainable housing. Under the government, and because of its policies on a range of files, the principles of attainable housing have been out of reach for so many Canadians. I can remember when I was mayor we developed certain kinds of lots. I was speaking at a conference with developers, and I told them we were going to have 60-foot lots in the community. The planners were going nuts and saying that we needed 30-foot lots. I told them how things worked. If one builds a bigger lot, people would build a bigger home on that lot instead of going out and building on an acreage. If one builds that more expensive house in one's town, the domino effect is going happen, where that person moves out of a more affordable house, leaving it for someone else, into a bigger house. Attainable includes a whole range of items. The whole range is needed, and municipalities can do that if one works with them. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, within CMHC's national housing strategy programs: ...there is no standard definition of affordability. Rather, each program uses its own unique definition, which can lead to the construction of units presented as “affordable” but which in reality may require households to devote more than 30 per cent of their income to housing. That is problematic. There are organizations that really need more partnerships. Many people in the House know what Habitat for Humanity is, and it is one of those great non-profits out there that does a great job of providing housing through working with families and communities. For example, I was just at an opening of a project, where the town donated the land, paid the fees and put in the servicing. The company these people work with supplied a lot of help, such as manpower, to work with the family. Habitat for Humanity is a great example of a non-profit. That is the kind of partnership that needs to be developed. Those work because the people are very much involved with them. Another one that I have run across in my riding is called Life at Key. It is an innovative program. Instead of increasing the down payment, which we often see as a huge barrier, this model works with a payment that requires only 2.5% to 5% initial payment. It involves co-ownership, equity in the property and making additional payments at one's own schedule. That is an innovative process. That is now happening in three or four communities in Alberta, and it is moving east with this proposal. That makes housing attainable, and we need those kinds of programs. I have a community in Taber, with a housing initiative, that went out with a piece of land. They have great land in their community. They built a lake, pathways and then modular homes that they purchased, or homeowners could purchase modular homes. There are large lots. They have worked at this. It is another step for attainable homes. They have done a good job of that. I have communities such as Standard and Arrowwood. They have gone out and built serviced subdivisions within an hour of Calgary. The demand is now there. Those communities have gone out and built those service lots and roads, and all of the things. That is what municipalities could do if the federal government worked with them. Somebody mentioned the concern about a clause that says there is a penalty. Well, if they have worked in municipal government, they have gotten grants that may have been for one year, maybe two years. Sometimes those projects are complicated, and in two years it has not gotten done. There is a mechanism to go back to the grant funding and say, “We are this far through it, but we need an extension for a year.” Absolutely, but that is working with partnerships, and that is what we are talking about doing. Municipalities are the partnerships that need to be worked with, but the government has to be a partner in the room to get it done. When we talk about some of the challenges that municipalities have, it is getting harder to do all the things they need to do for approvals. For example, to change a culvert under a road, it used to be that there could be a plan to go ahead and do it. It would take so much money, and if they had the equipment, they could go do it. Now, there has to be an environmental study one year, and the culvert cannot be replaced until the next year. It is those kinds of costs that keep increasing on the municipalities. There is a challenge that the bureaucracies keep building above them. It makes it problematic for municipalities to do what they need to get done with the money they get in grants, and that is why the federal government needs to work with them. What we need to do is spend money in the right direction. This is a crisis. Earlier, the crisis in Nunavut was mentioned. In 1942, somebody built the Alaska Highway in a very short period of time because there was a crisis. They got that highway built from Dawson Creek all the way to where they needed to have it in Alaska, over territory where they said nobody could build a road. How can we not get housing materials to Nunavut now? This is problematic. I listened to our MP for Nunavut talk about the housing crisis they have, and we cannot figure out how to get materials there at the appropriate time to build the appropriate housing they need. This is a crisis. We have the capability to do those things. We are not getting them done because we do not view it as a crisis. This is problematic. Let us look at the flooding on the Lower Mainland that occurred recently. It wiped out bridges. It wiped out roads and railways. How was that fixed? They got all the construction people together from municipalities in a month. It was a crisis because we needed the rail, the roads and the bridges going. In a month, they had those things repaired to have things moving. When it is a crisis, we need to get all the people in the room. The federal people need to get the big city mayors in the room. The municipalities and provinces need to be in the room. They need to be in the room, and they can resolve it. It is not just building programs and shipping it out. We want homes for people. This is a crisis. We need it now.

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Context: House Hansard - 189 - May/2/23

Mr. Chad Collins (Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, Lib.)

May/2/23 5:36:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not know if the member opposite knows this, but his leader, today and for the last number of months, has been blaming municipalities, small town mayors and big city mayors. He has been critical of mayors and councillors across the country for not doing their part as it relates to assisting with the affordable housing supply, and the housing supply in general. Our government, as members know, has taken a more collaborative approach, working with municipalities to provide support in building supply. I wonder, as a small town mayor, whether he feels that a more collaborative approach is better than the one that his leader is taking, which is to demonize municipalities that are, in large part, trying to help all levels of government with the challenges we face.

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