44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 5, 2023 10:00AM
- Oct/5/23 4:32:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege regarding a response to Order Paper Question No. 1417 and one additional matter with regard to the same. Out of respect for the time of the members present, I will not read the entirety of the question put to the government; instead, I will cut to the heart of the matter. I request that you examine two matters at hand.
On the first matter, this morning, the CBC reported having obtained information clearly demonstrating that the government misled the House of Commons in response to Order Paper Question No. 1417 and, thus, breached members' privileges.
The CBC report stated that the Prime Minister's trip to Montana over Easter cost far more than the government reported to the House of Commons through Question No. 1417. The government reported to the House that the trip cost $23,846. However, the information obtained by the CBC discovered that the trip actually cost $228,839. Part of the cost of this trip is the provision of security for the Prime Minister, which is a necessary function of this role. To be clear, no one here is questioning the need for the Prime Minister to have access to security. However, the issue at hand is that, from the CBC story, the government appears to have hidden the total cost from a member of Parliament in an official request for details of this expenditure.
Canadians have a right to know how their tax dollars are spent and if they are spent wisely. In the instance of the story at hand, this principle translates to the public having a right to know such things as why the cost of the Prime Minister's trip was so high and whether, as it was a personal trip, he personally paid for the full value of his accommodations. It is impossible for members to debate this issue without the information, which is why it was requested from the government via an Order Paper question. As a member, I was not able to make an accurate determination on this matter, as I was misled by the government's response to Question No. 1417. Recourse on this breach of privilege should be explored.
Recently, the government has been castigated by your immediate predecessor for its response to Order Paper questions. On June 20, your predecessor made a ruling on a question of privilege that I raised when I received an ATI showing how the natural resources department sought not to fully respond to an Order Paper question I posed. When I rose in the House on June 15 to explain this question of privilege, I noted:
In the ATI, the minister's regional adviser for Quebec asks in an email, “What is the jurisprudence on those [types] of Points of Order?” The minister's deputy chief of staff, Kyle Harrietha, responds: “Thanks, heard it after QP and did the inbox search of Q-974. Already in touch with GHLO. I'm expecting the Speaker to tut tut and then say it is not for him to judge the quality of a response.
In your predecessor's response to me on June 20, he did not seem to take too kindly to the statement. He chastised the government, saying:
However, the Chair would like to note that it finds the remarks of public servants reported by the member very troubling. I am especially troubled by the comments from the public servants to the effect that the Chair could not intervene in case of a point of order and that this could justify an incomplete response.
Your predecessor went on to say:
It is true that, based on many precedents, the Chair does not judge the quality of responses, and the reasons for that fact are understandable. However, my predecessors and I have repeatedly emphasized the importance of providing members with the information they need to do their work properly.
Your predecessor continued on and concluded by saying:
In the meantime, the Chair encourages ministers to find the right words to inspire their officials to invest their time and energy in preparing high-quality responses rather than looking for reasons to avoid answering written questions.
However, in the case of Question No. 1417, it appears the government not only did not heed the advice from the Speaker but also went one step further and, per the information disclosed in the CBC article, misled the House. In doing so, it both violated members' privileges and demonstrated blatant disregard for the Speaker's words.
There is precedent for this situation. On December 16, 1980, at page 5797 of Hansard, the Speaker said:
While it is correct to say that the government is not required by our rules to answer written or oral questions, it would be bold to suggest that no circumstance could ever exist for a prima facie question of privilege to be made where there was a deliberate attempt to deny answers to an hon. member.
Mr. Speaker, I would argue that this is one of those circumstances. However, there is another problem related to this matter that you must address. There is one more element to this question of privilege that is completely unprecedented, which I checked, in the history of our House of Commons. Typically, the task of examining evidence on this matter would fall to you. However, the problem now facing the House of Commons, and your office, is that the government representative who provided and signed off on the potentially misleading response was yourself, in your former role as the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister.
Question No. 1417, the Order Paper question at the heart of the CBC story about the cost of the Montana trip, concerns the Privy Council Office, which supports the Prime Minister's Office and the cabinet. The PCO was asked to disclose the cost of the trip; however, per the CBC story, it did not. The Privy Council Office would be responsible for planning the logistics around travel and have oversight on budgetary matters. Again, in your role as parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, you signed off on the response to Question No. 1417, which the CBC reported on today.
I believe this situation may present concerns with regard to your ability to impartially rule on this matter. With deep respect to you and the institution of the Chair, I will now argue why this is so and what action I believe you must take in considering a matter in which you may have a conflict of interest.
Prior to making these arguments, I want to be clear that I bear you no ill will, nor am I challenging your office. At the time of your election, there were no rules preventing parliamentary secretaries from occupying the Speaker's chair during the same Parliament. I respect that you occupy the Speaker's chair by virtue of your legal election to it, but here is the rub of the matter: Under normal circumstances, it would be virtually impossible for the Speaker of the House of Commons to ever be in a potential conflict of interest situation when making one of these rulings. That is because the Speaker is a member of Parliament elected to the office by their peers at the start of a Parliament, immediately after an election. Elections wipe the slate of Parliament clean.
However, this week, members had to elect a new Speaker in the middle of a Parliamentary term. The problem in this instance is that you, prior to your election as Speaker, held several official governmental roles. Until September, you served as the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, and you signed off on Question No. 1417. Now you have to rule on whether there is enough evidence for the House to consider if you, in your former role as parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, potentially breached members' privilege by misleading the House when signing off on Question No. 1417.
We both know that the occupant of the Speaker's chair must be viewed as an unimpeachable, neutral arbiter of House proceedings. A Speaker having to rule on a question of privilege on a matter caused by them during their former role in government is an incredible matter without precedent. To re-emphasize, I am honour bound to afford you the respect you deserve in the role of Speaker, out of respect for the office of the Speaker and its essential functions within the institution of Parliament.
However, out of that same responsibility, I believe you are also honour bound to recuse yourself from ruling on this matter. This is a matter that affects the privilege of all members. Speakers' rulings set precedents, and it could breach all members' privilege if you make one ruling for which you cannot conceivably be impartial because of the nature of your previous government roles and your actions within them.
Mr. Speaker, you have the ability to recuse yourself by allowing the House to consider the matter at hand. In this instance, the correct course of action should be to allow a motion to be moved on the matter and allow the House to determine the outcome. Then the outcome would be a decision of the House, not the Speaker, and a perception of loss of neutrality and a further potential breach of privilege could perhaps be avoided. After the last couple of weeks, the Speaker could use a bit of a boost.
There is some relevant precedent on this matter. On December 12, 2021, on a question of privilege concerning allegations pertaining to the former clerk, the Speaker pointed out at the beginning of his ruling that the clerk recused himself from the matter and did not participate in the preparation of the ruling. This would be in keeping with the reference from Bosc and Gagnon, at page 323, which states, “When in the Chair, the Speaker embodies the power and authority of the office, strengthened by rule and precedent. He or she must at all times show, and be seen to show, the impartiality required to sustain the trust and goodwill of the House.”
Representative democracy only functions when ordinary people have confidence that the institutions that uphold their representatives' ability to make decisions on their behalf are working. Any issue that erodes that confidence should be immediately and forcefully addressed. Out of respect for Parliament, I ask that you recuse yourself from this matter and allow the House to debate it. Doing so would not be an admission of anything other than your deep respect for the necessity of perception of neutrality by the Chair. However, failure to do so could present problems in this regard, at a time when all of us here need to do our utmost to respect the dignity of Parliament.
In any event, should a case of privilege be found, I am prepared to move the appropriate motion.
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- Oct/5/23 4:41:45 p.m.
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I thank the member for her presentation. I trust members will respond at a later date, hopefully as quickly as possible, on this particular matter.
The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
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- Oct/5/23 4:42:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to provide an assurance that we will review what the member said and report back at some point with regard to her statement.
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- Oct/5/23 4:42:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we would like to review the blues as well, and we may choose to come back to the House on this matter.
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- Oct/5/23 4:42:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not need to review the blues. I listened carefully to what the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill had to say. She presented a cogent, thoughtful and respectful argument. I hope you will take it into consideration and decide that it is the wisest course for the Speaker to recuse himself from this role for this particular matter of privilege.
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- Oct/5/23 4:42:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, moving on from this topic, I just wanted to bring up a point of order on a technical issue regarding the votes.
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- Oct/5/23 4:43:07 p.m.
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First, the point of privilege is in order. Pending the responses that we are going to be getting from the caucuses, we will get back to the House as soon as possible.
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- Oct/5/23 4:43:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to bring it to your attention, and to the House's, the dispute over the vote by the member for Fredericton today.
I wanted to clarify, and I have already clarified with the table clerks, that the member did not vote physically in this chamber today, nor did she intend to do that from the beginning. She had voted remotely and was only entering the chamber to retrieve articles. There was some mix-up in thinking that perhaps she had voted in this chamber and then left before the tallying of the vote.
I would hope that her vote stands as a remote vote.
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- Oct/5/23 4:44:03 p.m.
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I am going to make two quick comments on this.
First, when we are having standing votes, I would suggest that all members should try their best to stay in the chamber. If members are planning on voting on the app, they may leave the chamber as quickly as possible and stay out of the chamber until after the vote is complete. This is just a suggestion on process.
Second, I did confirm with the Table and it was done remotely with the app. I will of course allow her vote to stand.
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- Oct/5/23 4:45:08 p.m.
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It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment is as follows: the hon. member for Nunavut, Air Transportation.
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Mr. Speaker, indeed I am proud to be here as part of the blue team. It is always an honour to stand in this House and to debate some of the legislation that is before us. Today we are discussing Bill C-56, the affordable housing and groceries act. First of all, I have to congratulate the leader of the official opposition who tabled his bill, the building homes not bureaucracy act, of which the Liberals lifted part and implemented it here through Bill C-56.
I also have to congratulate the member for Bay of Quinte for his private member's bill, Bill C-339, which was to amend the Competition Act by further defining the efficiencies defence under the Competition Act. Of course, that was also lifted by the Liberals and put into Bill C-56.
I guess it is true, as Oscar Wilde used to say, that imitation is the sincerest, and I would say the greatest, form of flattery. For the Liberals to take Conservative legislation and put into their own government bills is a form of flattery, and it is one that I think we should really recognize. This is Conservative ideology that the Liberals are implementing here.
I think it is also important to point out that the Liberal government is all out of ideas. It has been eight long years. The Liberals are tired, they are weary and they do not have anything else to bring forward, so they are now going to be going through all the private members' bills that the Conservatives have laid before this House and they are going to be lifting parts they can use of the great ideas the Conservatives have. They are going to put those into their own legislation going forward.
I am looking forward to what else is going to be coming forward from the government. When it comes down to the issues of grocery prices and housing, they have no ideas, and for the eight years we have been watching, things have gotten harder for Canadian families. It has gotten tougher for Canadians to live that major Canadian dream, which is to own their own home, but millennials and young Canadians just do not have that opportunity.
After eight long years, we have mortgage rates that have now gone up to the highest levels in 30 years. We have seen mortgage rates increase 10 times. The Bank of Canada preferred rate has gone up 475 basis points. Rent in this country on rent a two-bedroom home is going to cost, on average across this country, $2,339 as of last month. Canada now has the most expensive housing market in the world, with some communities like Vancouver and Toronto by far the most expensive places to live, and incomes have not kept up with the cost of living.
It is said that societies often come to the brink of collapse when things like putting food on the table and a roof over one's head exceed 75% of one's disposable income. That is what is happening under those Liberals and their mismanagement of our economy and our government. They are really making it impossible.
We talk about the Canadian dream. When I was 21 years old I took out my first mortgage, under the Liberal Pierre Elliott Trudeau government, and paid a 21% interest rate on that mortgage. It is like father, like son, and now we have again out-of-control interest rates, out-of-control inflation and a government that is running up these massive deficits, contributing to inflationary spending. We are in a situation where those millennials and young Canadians are now not doing what we did, taking out a mortgage and paying it off over 25 years. They are taking 25 years to save up for the down payment to go out and buy that new home.
We always talk about how this is impacting our young people, those millennials out there and the 30-somethings who are still living in their parents' basements. It is also impacting seniors. Edna in my riding wrote to me, and said, “Now, everything costs so much more. Many seniors are suffering and don't have the means to get help”. She was talking about her mortgage and insurance on her house, the meagre life insurance she pays for, all the utility bills and her groceries, and she cannot make ends meet. This is in Manitoba where, compared to the rest of Canada, rental rates, mortgage rates and housing prices are still relatively affordable compared to Ontario, B.C., Atlantic Canada and Alberta, yet she is struggling to get by.
What the Liberals are planning here is to give a GST holiday to wealthy landlords who are going to go out and build more rental units. There is no classification on whether this is affordable housing, but they are going to make sure that these are homes that people can afford to live in on their income. They could have looked at what we were proposing. I welcome the Liberals to plagiarize more of the Leader of the Opposition's bill, the building homes not bureaucracy act.
On top of removing the GST over the next five years on new home builds, why do the Liberals not make it easier for all developers so they can build more single-family homes as well make sure we are out there to support the people who want to buy their first home, not rent, whether it is a condo, a multi-family unit or a single home in a new development? Let us make sure that all developers, not just the landlords who are out there, are going to be able to get the GST holiday.
Let us make sure that we are also taking away the bonuses paid to bureaucrats who are part of the problem right now in creating the red tape. I am talking specifically about the bonuses that were paid out to Bank of Canada and CMHC executives. There was $26 million paid out in bonuses to CMHC executives who, in my mind, are part of the housing crisis as they are not addressing it well, and the Bank of Canada executives got $20 million in bonuses. Again, this is the Bank of Canada that keeps increasing the interest rates to try to balance off the inflation that was created. The Liberals printed more money for this bank to borrow and the government continues to use that money to run up these huge inflationary deficits.
The current Prime Minister has now run up more national debt than all prime ministers before him going right back to Confederation. That to me is a crisis. It is about passing on debt to our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. We are talking about intergenerational abuse because of the misappropriation of funds by the government and the lack of investment in the future of this country, which is making it tougher for Canadians.
I have to say if we want to talk more about what the Liberals can take and lift out of the Leader of the Opposition's bill, let us make sure we also talk about getting rid of the gatekeepers by incentivizing municipalities to actually build more homes and doing away with all the red tape that is stopping them.
We want to make sure that we take all the excess land and buildings the Government of Canada owns and convert them into housing.
Let us not stop there. If the Liberals want to take another Conservative policy and plagiarize it, I welcome them to axe the carbon tax. If we want to talk about groceries, which this bill has actually nothing to do with, let us talk about taking away the inflationary carbon tax because it is making food more expensive. I am a farmer. My friend from Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa is a farmer. My friend from Portage—Lisgar is a farmer. We were all a bunch of farm kids growing up and are proud of it. When we tax the farmer who grows the food, tax the trucker who transports it to the processor, tax the processor who makes the food, tax the trucker again to get it over to the grocery stores, and then the Liberals not only charge the carbon tax on the grocery stores, but penalize them, fine them, then pass that on to the consumer as well, it means we all pay more for food.
Let us make sure that the Liberals continue to make use of good, Conservative policy, that they do away with all the destructive and wasteful spending on their side and do more to work with our side, follow our lead and take our examples, because then they will make a difference. If they do not, I promise all Canadians they will have a chance to pass judgment on the government, get rid of the Liberals, and bring in the common-sense Conservatives for a better and brighter future.
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Madam Speaker, I do not really agree with many of my colleague's statements on I think it was the Conservatives' building bureaucracies act and the lack of housing bill.
Calgary City Council voted in favour of the housing task force recommendations. Does the Conservative Party support Calgary's housing task force recommendations?
Do you support the Conservative housing critic's support of those recommendations or do your support your leader's and Conservative Party MPs' opposition of those housing task force recommendations? Could you please tell this House whether you support your housing critic or your Calgary MPs?
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- Oct/5/23 4:56:41 p.m.
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I want to remind the member he is not to address questions and comments directly to the members; it should be through the Chair.
The hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman has the floor.
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Madam Speaker, I will let the member from the Calgary area know I do support our leader on this, because, and I will just repeat it again, it is the building homes not bureaucracy act. It is about getting houses built, not more red tape. It is about making sure we are able to provide more opportunity for young Canadians to actually get into a house of their own, and if they cannot, then let us make sure there is more housing stock out there.
My daughter lives in Calgary, by the way, and luckily they are homeowners, but it is getting more and more expensive for them as well. The question becomes whether the City of Calgary will be willing to work with our federal Conservative Party, when we become government, to make sure we are taking away all of the restrictions and all of the NIMBYs blocking the development of land in Calgary and we are creating more homes and more opportunities for people in Calgary to own their own homes.
If the City of Calgary has some great ideas, we are more than happy to work with it and provide it more infrastructure dollars to ensure that there is that opportunity to build more homes, to build more developments, and at the end of the day everyone is better off.
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Madam Speaker, the Bloc Québécois has been calling for a reform of the Competition Bureau system for 20 years or so. For years, we have been asking that the Competition Bureau have the authority to prevent mergers and acquisitions regardless of any efficiency gains they might generate if, at the end of the day, it means higher prices for consumers. That is what happened in the case of grocery stores. Mergers and acquisitions took place. This made them more efficient, but it also enabled them to drive up prices. This measure is specifically covered in in Bill C-56.
I would like to know whether my colleague thinks that this Competition Bureau reform is a good thing for consumers.
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Madam Speaker, every time we can give more power to the Competition Bureau to actually do its job and create more competition in the marketplace, consumers win. The rules around the efficiencies defence have to be addressed. Efficiencies usually mean fewer jobs, and we know efficiencies that have been applied in the past have meant we have had more concentration of the market and fewer and fewer players, and that has not helped the consumer.
Although there is all this talk about the affordable housing and groceries act, the change that is suggested here, as it was by the member for Bay of Quinte, addresses the entire Competition Act. It goes beyond food production as well as grocers and it talks about every part of the industry so we can have this opportunity to apply a new lens when we are looking at acquisitions and mergers.
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Madam Speaker, in the member's intervention today, he spoke a lot about how seniors are impacted. I 100% agree with him. I spoke to one of my constituents, Laura, who is really struggling to make ends meet.
Would the member not agree that increasing OAS for seniors across the country, making sure that seniors 65 to 75 get the same amount as seniors over 75 and making sure that, particularly in Alberta, the CPP is protected for seniors are very important things? Would he support our calls for an increase to OAS so that 65-year-old seniors get the same treatment as those who are older, and for CPP to remain in seniors' hands?
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Madam Speaker, I too hear from my constituents all the time, from seniors, that a disparity has been created by the Liberals between those who are 65 to 75 and those 75 and over in the amount of money they receive through their pensions. That does need to be rectified.
I forgot to mention that one of the seniors from my riding, Bill from Beausejour, wrote to me that the big bonuses given out by the Liberals to Bank of Canada executives and CMHC executives appear to be very plainly a slap in the face to Canadians struggling to house their families.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in this House to debate Bill C-56. Perhaps I will start with my conclusion: I intend to support the bill, and I encourage all members in this House to do the same.
Bill C-56 is about making life more affordable. It is the affordable housing and groceries act, and of course, given the nature of my position as the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, I will focus more on the aspect that will lead to more home construction across Canada to help address the supply gap that is contributing to the relative lack of affordability that we are dealing with.
I think it is important to acknowledge that Canada is experiencing a housing crisis. In order to restore affordability, we need to build homes and we need to build them by the millions. This is going to require us to pull every lever at our disposal to get Canada building at a rate that it has never built before. However, if we are going to succeed, we have to understand the nature of the obstacles that stand in our way and introduce specific policies that are designed to overcome those challenges.
Over the course of my remarks, I hope to identify the scale of the challenge we are facing, highlight the problems that we need to overcome and demonstrate some of the solutions that are starting to have a positive impact today. I do not mean to suggest that the job is done; we have a long way to go. However, I am very optimistic in light of the response from the home building sector to some of the policies we have put forward indicating that they are having the desired impact.
There are currently about 16.5 million homes in this country. We are on pace to building a few million more over the next number of years, but we have to increase the pace of building significantly if we are going to restore the level of affordability that existed in Canada just 20 years ago.
The reality is that the impact can be felt not only in the statistics outlined in CMHC's reporting, but in the lives of ordinary people who are struggling with the cost of living. The experiences that I hear about include too many young people who are trying to get ahead in life and trying to get their first job in a community they want to live in, but nevertheless find themselves in a position where they simply cannot afford a place to live. Too many people do not have that option. Even young professionals in a two-income household are sometimes unable to find a place to live in the community where they found meaningful work, one they can afford given their rate of pay.
When I talk to students from across the country, they tell me that it is very difficult to find a place to live in a college town that is safe, affordable and near the place they go to school. I have had too many conversations with young people studying on college and university campuses across this country who have told me that they are now sometimes living an hour commute away from their studies. At a time in their lives when they should be focusing on learning and developing skills that will contribute to their well-being, knowledge base and employability, they are focused on figuring out how they can get to class.
There is an opportunity for us, if we continue to engage with the people who are feeling the brunt of the housing crisis, to learn from them the solutions that will allow them to find the kind of place they want to live in.
When I talk to seniors who live in our communities, they want nothing more, as they downsize from the family home where they raised their kids, to find a place that is more manageable for them in the same community where their grandkids are being raised. I do not think that is too much to ask, and we need to realize that the importance to a person's life cannot be overstated when we are dealing with the place they call home.
I have talked to people who have a job that helps them get by in this country, and they tell me that, despite having a respectable income, they cannot find a place to live anywhere close to the place where they work. We need to make sure that we address the needs of workers in this country by working to ensure not only that their wages go a little further and they have a home they can afford, but that they have the kind of home they can raise their family in, with access to the services their family relies on and employment opportunities in their community.
Of course, I would be remiss if I did not also draw attention to the serious challenges facing Canadians who do not have a place to live at all, people who do not have housing security and people who are sleeping rough. We need to continue to do more to support some of Canada's most vulnerable people.
There are a number of challenges that we need to overcome. Primarily, I want to focus today on the need to change the financial equation that home builders are dealing with as they make an assessment as to whether they should green-light a project or let it sit on the shelf. As a result of the recent increases in the cost of supplies and materials, the cost of labour and the cost of land, and of course as a result of rising interest rates from global inflation, too many builders have projects sitting on the shelf that have been approved and could go ahead if the economics of the projects worked.
This is where the GST measure we have advanced through Bill C-56 comes in, and we are seeking support for it from members of Parliament. If we remove the tax on constructing new apartments in this country, we are going to see more apartments go up.
When we made the announcement that we would reduce the GST on new home construction among rentals across Canada, we saw certain provincial governments step up and say they would do the same. I want to thank in particular British Columbia, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador and my home province of Nova Scotia. We are starting to see movement to different degrees in other provinces as well. In some instances, this has reduced costs by 15% overnight when looking at the combined impact of the federal and provincial measures.
What we have seen as a result is that developers are publicly stating they are moving forward with projects that will provide homes for thousands of Canadians that otherwise would not have gone ahead. In particular, I point to Dream Unlimited Corporation's plans to advance several different projects in Ottawa, Saskatoon and Toronto that are going to lead to 5,000 homes being built. I look at Fitzrovia, which announced that it would be moving forward with developments totalling 3,000 homes. I look at Tricon's announcement after the GST measures were revealed. It announced it would move forward with 1,000 new homes.
The reality is that there are many examples of projects, as I have heard from different colleagues and from the home building sector, in every part of this country that are now going ahead that otherwise would have just stayed on the shelf. This policy is having the desired impact, and I am looking forward to seeing many, many thousands of homes be constructed as a result. That is why I am supporting Bill C-56. It would allow the private sector to justify going ahead with the construction of thousands of homes.
However, we know there are many other areas where we need to continue to advance policies if we are going to overcome the challenges facing home builders, communities and people who have housing needs. We need to fundamentally change the way that cities allow homes to be built or sometimes do not allow homes to be built in this country. We need to encourage cities to legalize housing. In too many communities across this country, it is literally illegal, as a result of municipal bylaws, to build the kinds of homes that people need if they are going to live and thrive in our communities.
Members may have seen that over the course of the last few months, I have been engaging directly with municipal councils and mayors, encouraging them to change their laws so they can permit more housing to be built, can speed up the process of permitting those homes and can make the kinds of investments that will lead to more density in downtown cores, more homes near transit stations so people can access the services or employment opportunities they need and more homes near college and university campuses so students have a place to live as they undertake their studies.
I cannot say how excited I am about the early signs of success with the housing accelerator fund. We have seen a positive announcement by the City of London, which is going to be increasing its ambition as a result of its access to the fund. We saw today the City of Vaughan announce that as a result of a $59-million investment, it will be able to add, over the next 10 years, 44,000 homes to that city.
We are going to continue to do more to get low-cost financing on the table by increasing the valuation of the Canada mortgage bond program, which is going to add 30,000 homes a year. There are a number of other measures we need to address, but if we change the equation for builders, change the way that cities build homes and continue to make the kinds of investments we have been making since 2017 under the national housing strategy, we have an opportunity to make massive progress in the attempt to address Canada's national housing crisis.
I would be happy to address any further issues, if members in this House wish.
Let me conclude with a final thought. It is not enough for different parties in this House to throw ideas at the wall, as some have done. We need to address the very specific problems that have given rise to Canada's national housing crisis. By having a thoughtful policy approach and by advancing measures like the removal of GST on new rental construction across Canada, we can change the way that homes are built in this country, increase the pace at which they are built and put an end to Canada's national housing crisis. We can do this by having the private sector and governments co-operate to build homes that Canadians can actually afford.
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Madam Speaker, the minister gave a great speech.
You touched on a lot of important subjects, after being been in power for the last eight years. I just want to go over these different subjects. You talked about—
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