44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 5, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege to rise today to speak to Bill C-56, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act and the Competition Act.
We know that the bill calls for two important aspects: to remove the GST from construction costs on new rental units and to enable the Competition Bureau to conduct better investigations, while also removing efficiency exemptions during mergers to improve competition.
With respect to the removal of the GST, the New Democrats have been calling for this, but it will not meaningfully reduce rent payments or create social and co-operative housing effectively, and we absolutely need that. However, the bill would be part of a bigger comprehensive approach that we want to move forward to address the affordable housing crisis.
With respect to the Competition Act, the bill is a start at reining in and regulating monopolies, but it would not go far enough to support Canadians on their desire to control these monopolies and the impacts they have on our economy.
We know that in the eight years the Liberal government has been in power, it has been the New Democrats who have been bringing forward solutions to get help for people, like this GST removal on housing, although it would not go far enough or have enough restrictions to deal with competition.
I am going to speak about a couple of things. We know the bill is a little too late with respect to the housing crisis, but I will speak to that first.
Le us look at the impact of housing. I am the critic for the NDP for mental health and substance use. We know that the cost of housing is escalating. There is a lack of affordable housing and the available occupancy rates are at historic lows. This is having a huge impact on people's mental health and stress levels, and this is a long-standing issue
When there was a minority government in 1972, the NDP worked with the Liberals to create the national housing strategy, which developed 18,000 to 25,000 units a year until 1992. In fact, I am one of the many Canadians who grew up in co-op housing, so I am a beneficiary of that housing. I lived first-hand the experience of having safe and secure housing for my family and my parents. I saw what that could do. In fact, I can go back to that co-op today and see many of the people with whom I grew up. Their kids and their grandkids are living there as well.
However, since the Liberals pulled out of the national housing strategy in the early 1990s, both the Conservative and Liberal governments consecutively failed to dive back in. As a result, we have lost between 18,000 and 25,000 units a year for over 30 years. Now our non-market housing availability is at 3.5%, and we do not have to look far to see what 3.5% looks like.
If we go outside the doors of the House of Commons, we will see homeless people. I can go to Port Alberni, a medium-sized city in my riding, or a small city in my riding, and I will see homelessness. We can go to any big city and we will see homeless people everywhere. However, we can go to Europe, where places like the Netherlands is at 35% non-market housing and Vienna it is at 60%, and we will not see the scale of homelessness that we see in our country.
We know it is so much more expensive to not provide people housing. There is the cost to hospitals, a cost to all our systems. It could eventually impact our prison system, as we know.
Ben Perrin, the former public safety adviser for the Stephen Harper Conservatives, hosted an event the other night. He has a new book called Indictment, about the reform of Canada's justice system. He talked about how the lowest cost approach was to put people in proper housing. That would cost a fraction of what it would cost if we did not, in terms of the prison system, hospital system and health care system. We need to get back into affordable housing.
We keep hearing this from the Conservative Party. We heard the leader of the Conservative Party talk about divesting, selling off 6,000 government buildings and the divesting of 15% of public lands. What would that look like? We just saw what happened in Ontario with the Conservatives under Doug Ford. It looks like profiteering, profits for developers. In fact, a handful of developers would have made $8.3 billion almost overnight, donors of the Doug Ford government. This is what it looks like when Conservatives divest public lands. Public lands belong in public hands, not in the pockets of developers.
The B.C. Liberals, who have now rebranded themselves as B.C. United, did the same thing. They sold off $493 million worth of public lands to the private sector, to donors of their party. That was worth $860 million just a couple of years later.
The Conservative ideas of selling off public lands ends up in the pockets of developers. We need to fix this. I am bringing forward a plan to do that. We know we need 3.5 million homes just to meet the demand by 2030. This is going to take a wartime-like effort to do that. We have to work together in the House if we are to achieve that. We have to remove barriers, and we need to provide guidelines and regulations so we do not have another Greenbelt or the scam like we saw in British Columbia, when the Conservative and the right wing get into government.
We need to ensure a regime is put in place. I put forward a motion at the government operations and estimates committee to do just that, to look at selling or leasing. We should not ever sell public lands. That should never, ever happen. We should only lease public lands. Public lands belong in public hands. I cannot say that enough.
If we do lease or use government buildings, it should be done with free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples whose lands we live, work and reside on. Also, they are the most impacted when it comes to homelessness, overcrowded housing and housing needs. They have to be part of the conversation; they cannot be left out.
I urge all of us to work together to provide regulations so that we never see a Greenbelt-style divestment of housing or government lands. That is not going to create affordable housing. That is not going to solve our housing crisis.
We heard from Leilani Farha, former special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, regarding this bill, which lacks a lot. She said, “I thought we were worried about affordability for tenants not developers! Average rents in Canada are now more than 2,000/mos. If the GST waiver is going to make a difference it must be conditional on building affordable units. Public value for public dollars.“ I want to thank her for that comment.
When I talk about how 3.5% of our housing is in non-market housing right now, over 30% this year is in corporate interests in REITs. We have seen corporations buy up a large amount of our residential housing stock. That needs to stop. We need to get to the opposite. It should be 30% non-market housing and 3.5% corporate housing. That is the problem. It has to get flipped on its head.
I will speak quickly, because I only have a couple of minutes left, about the Competition Act. Loblaws, Sobeys and Metro had $3.6 billion in profits, and that went in the pockets of the owners. The co-op in my hometown of Tofino had $12 million in sales in groceries, $16 million at the gas bar, $28 million in overall sales, and they gave back a 5% dividend to their members. They kept 0.5% for capital costs and improved services.
We need to ensure we have an excess profit tax on these excess profits for grocery store owners, and use some of that profit to support models like the co-op model. We know that that 5% went back into the hands of the people in my community. With the private sector, that money went into the pockets of people like Galen Weston. That needs to be discouraged. We need to find a better way forward.
We hear the Conservatives talk about the impact of the carbon tax. It is 0.15% of inflation, according to the Government of Canada. Eight in 10 families get it back. What they do not want to talk about is that they are fighting for the two in 10. It is a diversion tactic. The Conservatives do not want to talk about who they are really fighting for. If we do not do anything and put a price on carbon, then it is shouldered by the eight in 10 of all Canadians. If we do nothing, then there will be a carbon adjustment at the border, but the Conservatives do not want to talk about that. That would cripple industry in our country.
The truth is that grocery store prices have had a 56 times increase than the carbon tax impact on food and services, and 26 times in terms of the corporate greed and profit when it comes to grocery stores. I want to put things in perspective.
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Madam Speaker, I am in no way opposed to further increases in co-operative housing across Canada. It has played an important role in providing a safe and affordable place for many of my constituents to live.
However, in order to reduce the overall cost of housing in Canada, we not only need to be taking the measure in this bill of reducing GST payments on purpose-built rental construction. We also need to have a whole-of-system approach to make sure we can produce all types of housing so Canadians have a safe and affordable place to live. It is not lost on members of the chamber that we had more houses, in real terms, built in 1972 than we did last year. We have to do more. What we are doing right now is not enough.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her great speech.
I agree that eliminating the GST on rental housing construction is a small measure, too small to fix the current crisis. However, it is an NDP proposal, so I do want to defend it. The thing that has us concerned is that the Liberals went only halfway. They are eliminating the GST on housing construction, but with no guarantee that this will have an impact on the price of rent. There is a risk that this 5% rebate will end up in the pockets of the developer building the housing.
Does my colleague share that concern?
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Madam Speaker, I do share my colleague's concern.
That is why I was wondering if getting rid of the GST on rental housing construction was the only proposed solution. We do not know how many housing units will be built. We are not getting these answers.
As far as affordability is concerned, we understand that the government cannot guarantee that, because the builder is the one who will get the GST exemption. Is the builder going to reduce the cost of the housing because it got a GST exemption out of the gate? I think that—
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Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague that tangible and effective action needs to take place now more than ever to get housing built. This bill would not do that. An amendment to the Competition Act would not get houses built. While a 5% reduction on the GST is something that I could get my head around supporting, the reality is that it is not going to solve the housing crisis and get the millions of houses built that we need by 2030.
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Madam Speaker, I would like my colleague to further explain how exempting rental housing developers from paying GST will address the crying need for affordability. How is this going to lower housing prices to help the middle class and the poorest get by?
Given that this was an NDP idea, from what I understand, can my colleague explain how this will address those needs?
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Madam Speaker, something I have some concern about, too, is whether the GST removed from new rental builds will help lower the cost of building the units at that time, but the key component to this would be the follow-up to make sure the savings are passed on to the people buying or renting those units in the future, not only in the short term but in the long term. Sadly, on some that were built, the savings did not get passed on.
For example, in the oil and gas industry, there has been a fight to remove or reduce the GST on some of the costs, but they are never passed onto the consumer, so it is an extra cash grab for corporate conglomerates.
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Madam Speaker, it is great to rise today and join the debate on this very important topic. I just want to start by saying that, in Bill C-56, I am pleased to see that the Liberals finally seem to be admitting that Canadians are struggling. Over the last number of years, they have been telling us everything is fine and that the government has a great credit rating with all the agencies. However, we have been raising concerns about the housing costs, the cost of groceries and the cost of living for quite some time now, and I think that the bill being brought forward shows that the government is finally admitting that there is a housing crisis and that its inflationary policies are driving up the cost of groceries for Canadians.
It is also clear to me that it is a tired government that is out of ideas. Within the bill, of course, it is looking to remove the GST from purpose-built rentals, but that is something that has been brought forward by our current common-sense Conservative leader, the leader of the official opposition.
As well, the bill aims to help address grocery costs by removing the efficiencies defence, which currently allows anti-competitive mergers to survive challenges if corporate efficiencies offset the harm to competition, even when Canadian consumers would pay higher prices and have fewer choices. This is another Conservative idea. It was brought forward by my friend, colleague and seatmate, the member for Bay of Quinte. I want to thank him for bringing that forward. He is a very smart guy and a decent hockey player, but he brought forward this idea, and it is another one that the Liberals have now adopted.
I want to be clear that I am happy that the government is trying to take some of our Conservative ideas. I will highlight a few other ideas that I would like to offer the government to bring forward, if it is serious about addressing the housing crisis and the cost of groceries.
As we know, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, housing prices have doubled. Nine in 10 youth say they will never afford a home, and many families cannot even pay the interest on their mortgages. Now the government's solution is to bring forward more photo ops and, as I mentioned, plagiarize Conservative messaging. The bill takes the Leader of the Opposition's idea from his building homes not bureaucracy act: to remove the GST on purpose-built rentals. It is a good idea, of course, but it is missing a key piece.
Our leader's bill would incentivize more affordable homes, because in order to qualify for the removal of GST, the rental price must be below market value, meaning that more homes would get built and prices would come down. As new homes were built, they would continually bring those prices down in order to qualify. The Liberals' version would not do that. It would allow prices to continue to skyrocket.
I look forward to sharing some more ideas on this after question period.
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- Oct/5/23 2:42:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, perhaps the Conservatives can explain in debate what it is about cutting GST on the construction of new homes that they disagree with. What is it about strengthening competition laws to stabilize grocery prices here in Canada that they disagree with?
I ask because I have not heard a single argument in debate that has convinced any Canadian in this country that we should not proceed with those measures, and if the Conservatives want to help Canadians, they should be sincere in their actions. They should vote in the interests of Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, regarding the concern around students who have inadequate or no housing options, I think we have to recognize that everyone should be advocating for more support for people who have inadequate housing options, students or otherwise. I am very proud that the government has doubled the investments in the Reaching Home program to address homelessness, and that we are going to continue to do more, as I outlined in my remarks, to build more stock that will help address the student housing challenges more broadly.
When it comes to seniors, I think we are aligned in our identification of the problem. Where we differ is that the policies we have advanced would actually yield a higher number of homes than the plan the Conservatives have put forward.
With respect to the GST, the most important point in my remarks is that we have to address very specific problems. The GST measure we put in place is designed not only to pass on savings to renters but also to build more supply, which, over time, will bring the rate down as more stock becomes available. I am happy to elaborate in future answers, given that I have run out of time.
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Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his first speech in the House. I have a very specific question for him. I hope he will be the type of colleague who answers questions in specific detail. That would be helpful.
The government is announcing a housing measure that consists of removing the GST on construction without any guarantee that it will be used for social or affordable housing. We are currently fighting to get the federal government to release the $900 million owed to Quebec, but the federal government stubbornly insists on imposing conditions on that money, even though housing is not within its jurisdiction.
Does my colleague agree with the Bloc Québécois position that the federal government should transfer this money as quickly as possible so that we can finally have social housing back home?
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