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, everyone knows that times are really tough right now. Canadians are suffering; housing and grocery prices are higher than ever, and they continue to go up. There is a real need for the government to intervene and adopt public policies to try to circumvent these circumstances that Canadians find themselves in.
Bill C-56 is a good step toward accomplishing some things, and certainly there are some things in this bill that, for years, New Democrats have called for. However, I have to say that this bill is a very small step. There are so many things that people need from the government to help with affordability.
The bill introduced by the leader of the NDP actually even goes further with regard to the Competition Bureau, which is a part of Bill C-56. His bill, Bill C-352, would impose harsher penalties on companies that fix prices and would better rein in and regulate monopolies in the industry. Currently, the onus to prove that mergers or monopolies are harmful to Canadians is placed upon the Competition Bureau, and that needs to change. We think that the burden of proof should fall to the companies; they should have to prove that their activities are in the interests of Canadians. Bill C-352 would do this. It would better protect Canadian consumers.
Not a day goes by that I do not hear from constituents who are struggling to pay for their groceries, rent or mortgage. I meet with community groups, food banks and shelters that are trying to stretch their services and programs so that they can help and cover more and more people. The people in London—Fanshawe are incredibly generous. When a neighbour needs help, there are many who will do what they can and give what they can, but the government needs to learn from them. It seems to be concerned only with these incremental supports. It is really quite disappointing.
We have had federal governments in power, time after time in this country, that have no real interest in actually ending poverty. They only perpetuate it. In fact, it would cost us less to eliminate homelessness and poverty entirely. We have had both Liberals and Conservatives in government that are only truly concerned with ensuring that those who hold the majority of power, keep it.
We need to deal with the core problem here: For years, there has been a growing divide between the richest and the poorest among us. The truth of the matter is that this country was built by everyone, by all citizens, but not all citizens are getting an equal return on that investment.
I am extremely disappointed with the Liberals' approach of calling in the grocery CEOs for a meeting, wagging their fingers at them and asking them to please do better. It is a government made of people, and it needs to govern for all people. All people have to pay their fair share. We have a responsibility to draft laws to ensure that equality.
The Conservatives would have us believe that the carbon tax is the only thing driving up grocery prices, but if that were the case, then the CEOs' profits would not be growing in the way we have seen them grow. If they were just passing along the increased costs from inflation or from the carbon tax, Loblaws, Sobeys and Metro would not have made $3.6 billion in combined profits in 2022. Those profits are growing by far more than the increase in input costs. Any government or any party that wants to form a government with some common sense and with a seriousness about addressing the challenges that Canadians have been facing at the grocery store has to recognize the role of corporate greed in the equation. Nothing will change for people until we do that.
Long before the pandemic, before these incredible increases in inflation, New Democrats were recommending a windfall profit tax. Other governments around the world are doing this. We can use our legislative powers to stop price gouging, price-fixing and greedflation. We need to address the extreme profits these companies enjoy at the expense of people in my riding and in all our ridings.
I also want to talk about the other piece of this bill concerning the removal of the GST from construction costs on rental units. Again, this is a good first step, but it is a small one. It is one that New Democrats have long been calling for. When it comes to housing, we have seen Liberal and Conservative governments ensure that housing is entirely a financial issue.
I believe that housing is a human right. We cannot rely solely on a market-based solution when it is about a human right. If we truly want to resolve the housing crisis that has been growing for over 30 years in Canada, we need a wide range of solutions.
New Democrats have made several proposals. One I would like to talk about right now is the inclusion of an acquisition fund for non-profit organizations. This would give them an opportunity to buy affordable social housing when organizations or companies decide to sell them. This non-profit acquisition fund could help alleviate the housing crisis.
We have seen a lot of real estate investment trusts or big corporate landlords swoop in and buy buildings. They have fast access to capital, and they have a lot of money in reserve that they can use to buy these places.
Again, in my riding, there are residents who live in the Webster Street Apartments, and they are being renovicted. I have raised this issue in the House a number of times, asking for the government to help them. Sadly, my calls have fallen on deaf ears.
Ultimately, a Toronto-based corporation purchased rental units in my riding that were formally reasonably priced. They made small renovations, sometimes painting or removing partial walls, and then they told the existing residents that they would be charged an additional $1,000 a month in rent. These residents are seniors, people living on ODSP, single moms and people on fixed incomes. They cannot afford that significant increase in their rent.
They are now having to leave their homes. Some of them have lived there for decades. They have created a community. They feel truly a part of the building with their neighbours; they know who their neighbours are. However, they are being forced to leave that home.
The creation of a non-profit acquisition fund could have helped stop that kind of renoviction and helped the people in my constituency who live on Webster Street.
The government must also adopt policies that will help address the critical shortage of social and affordable housing. There is no mention of that in Bill C-56. We know that there are opportunities to work with the government and other parties to ensure that Canada can take strategic approaches, including non-market solutions.
There is no doubt in my mind that a public policy intervention is required in order to get a handle on this situation. We have reached this moment of crisis because, for 30 years now, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have largely said that they will leave housing up to the market. However, the market has not produced solutions around affordability.
The market has an important role to play in the building of housing or the delivery of groceries, for that matter. However, the government has to create a balance. There is currently no balance. We cannot leave it solely to the market. A lot of housing needs in Canada will never be met by the market; meeting these needs would not be profitable enough.
That is why we need a strategy that pushes private actors into making affordable suites available as part of their holdings. It is why we need governments to take responsibility, as they did in the 40s all the way up to the 90s.
Unless we get governments back to the table and take responsibility for the creation of social housing, we are not going to see an adequate resolution to this crisis. That is one of the things that has changed significantly in Canada since the 1990s, where the government said that it actually did have a responsibility and an obligation to invest in social housing. Sadly, we had a Liberal government that stopped that. In Ontario, we had a Conservative government that stopped that in the 90s.
We need to get back to that level of investment and commitment. We cannot continue to see current governments, such as Doug Ford's provincial Conservative government in Ontario, being in the back pockets of wealthy developers. Again, this is about balance.
We need a meaningful engagement of not-for-profit and co-operative sectors to build social housing. I need to see that in Bill C-56. I would love to see that in the bill.
There are so many things I want to talk about in terms of affordability and housing, but I will conclude with this: Food and housing are not just commodities. These are not things people can do without. They need them to live. They cannot solely be the subject of profit-driven markets, with no checks or balances or regulations on that greed.
My constituents, and all people in Canada, have the right to live a dignified and healthy existence; we have an obligation here in this place to give that to them. New Democrats will always fight for that equality and fairness.
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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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