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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 212

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 13, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 212 - Jun/13/23
Mr. Scott Aitchison (Parry Sound—Muskoka, CPC)
  • Jun/13/23 10:09:57 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I move that the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, presented to the House on Wednesday, October 19, 2022, be concurred in. I will be splitting my time with the member for Calgary Nose Hill. We have a housing crisis in this country. To restore affordability, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has reported that we need 5.8 million homes by 2030. That works out to 760,000 new homes per year until 2030 for us to restore affordability. The best we have ever done in Canada is to build about 260,000 units of housing a year. We are now faced with this massive undertaking and all the challenges that go with it to get these units built, whether it is the labour shortage, the skilled trades shortage or, of course, dealing with all the different levels of government involved in the housing space. Municipalities are on the front lines of the housing crisis, and the provinces are very much on the front lines as well. As for the federal government, some years ago, the Prime Minister, with great fanfare, launched this national housing strategy, describing it as a transformational housing plan and saying the federal government was back in the housing business. All we can see today is that rents have doubled, home prices have doubled and mortgage rates are skyrocketing. People's variable rate mortgages, and I happen to be one of them, have skyrocketed in a year. There are an awful lot of Canadians who do not have a variable rate mortgage who will be going to the bank maybe this summer or fall, and they are going to find out they cannot afford their house anymore. That is all in the midst of a housing crisis where we need to build 760,000 units a year to restore affordability. We have a government that is long on talking points and long on photo ops but very short on delivery. We do not see a lot of ribbon cutting for new housing. Frankly, we do not need to see any ribbon cutting to know that the situation is only getting worse. Members could ask a student in Toronto if they can find a place to live. Covenant House Toronto reports that a huge number of people living there are students at local universities and colleges. That is completely insane in a country like Canada. We have heard the Leader of the Opposition talk about young people being stuck in their parents' basements because they cannot find a place to live. They have done everything right, they have a good job and they cannot find a place to rent or maybe even buy one day. We need literally all levels of government working together to solve this crisis, and we need to hold those on the front lines accountable for what they are or, in most cases, are not doing to make housing more affordable. We have heard the Leader of the Opposition talk about holding municipalities to account. He talks about firing the gatekeepers. He is absolutely correct. As a former mayor, and before that the chair of the planning committee in Muskoka, I am quite used to dealing with vested interests on expensive waterfront properties, but also vested interests in the urban towns of Muskoka. Pushing for higher density in some of these smaller communities is not always easy. I talk a lot about the challenges we see in larger centres, but they also happen across the smaller communities in this country. As mayor and as chair of planning, I always fought the good fight and made sure that we had more density and more homes built. The Leader of the Opposition, and hopefully the soon-to-be prime minister, will challenge all municipalities and all cities in this country to make decisions to increase density, particularly when the federal government is on board and assisting larger centres with massive investments in transit infrastructure, for example. It is insane to me that the federal government is happy to support municipalities with transit infrastructure, with dollars for new SkyTrain stations and new subway stations, but it does not require the land around those stations, the land around the multi-billion dollars transit infrastructure, to be pre-emptively rezoned for high-density residential housing. This makes sense. It makes sense for the public investment of federal dollars. It makes sense for the public investment of municipal dollars as well. It is a green way to live, as higher density is better for the planet. Frankly, it is better for the municipalities as well. A lot of people do not realize that single-family detached residential homes do not actually pay enough tax to cover the cost of the services the families who live in those homes demand. Municipalities need higher density residential housing. It makes more sense fiscally. It is more sustainable. As the Conservative Party, we are calling on municipalities to get on board and for everybody get on the same page to work together to increase the density of our urban centres for the sake of the planet and for the sake of young people who are desperate to get started in their lives and maybe start a family one day. The housing spectrum is a continuum, and people move through that continuum as their needs change and adjust. Right now, the biggest gap or the biggest blockage in that continuum of housing is purpose-built rentals. We know that purpose-built rentals have not been constructed in a meaningful way since the late seventies. That is because the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau had an ideological problem with the tax treatment for the construction of rental units, as it thought it was making landlords rich. As a result of that change in policy, purpose-built rentals stopped getting built. Members will notice, if they go around any of the larger centres such as Toronto or Vancouver, or even smaller cities such as Winnipeg and Halifax, those purpose-built rentals are starting to get pretty old. We need some major investment in those rentals because they are all over 50 years old now, and they are getting pretty tired. Therefore, along comes the condo construction business because the developer does not have to carry the capital costs of a rental building, so condo owners start buying up condos and they start renting those out. CMHC changed the rules so people can put 5% down, not just on their first home but maybe on their second and third as well. In many ways, we should be really grateful, frankly, that this happened because the vast majority of landlords in this country now are families who maybe bought a second property and tried to fill a gap. However, it is not enough. We need more purpose-built rentals in this country, and we need a federal government that is working with provincial governments and municipalities to make sure that the private sector is incentivized to build specifically what we need. With trillions of dollars of investment required in the housing space in this country, there is no way government can do it all on its own. Every nickel of government spending at this level should be focused on those most vulnerable in our society, and we should get the private sector on board to build everything else. The biggest gap is purpose-built rentals, so a federal government working with provincial governments and municipal governments could work with the private sector stakeholders to direct them to build those purpose-built rentals. Freeing up space in rentals would free up movement within the housing continuum to bring the market back into equilibrium. People could then move through. Adult children would not have to live in their parents' basement anymore. They could go through this transition more naturally into a rental property and then maybe buy their first home. Then folks who are aging and do not really want to stay in their big house anymore, as they need something smaller, would have something they could move to as well. The flow of people moving through housing in this country can happen again. However, it is not going to happen without federal leadership, which we are not seeing from the current federal government. We have a Minister of Housing who does not really believe that the situation is a crisis, and we have a Prime Minister who loves photo ops, announcements and speaking points, but none of them really seem to know how to get the job done. That is why Conservatives are focused very much not only on talking points, but also on real results, and on making sure that municipalities are working in lockstep with the provinces and the federal government to ensure that we close the gap with purpose-built rentals and make housing more affordable again. Once we fix housing in this country, we can literally fix everything. The absolute foundation of our society and our economy is housing, and we are failing right now. I am sorry, but the federal government is failing right now. Therefore, as Conservatives, we have proposed some very common-sense ideas. It is common sense for the common people to hold other levels of government to account to make sure that every nickel of public investment is creating results, not just photo opportunities.
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