SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 243 - Oct/31/23

Oct/31/23 6:45:07 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-275

The member will have two minutes to finish his speech the next time this matter is before the House. The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.

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Mr. Kyle Seeback (Dufferin—Caledon, CPC)

Oct/31/23 6:45:54 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, the last time I was here, I asked a question about housing, talking about the Liberal government's absolutely abysmal record on housing. When one looks at the problem with housing, what one sees is that there are actually two elements. There is the building of units, and we know that building starts are down. They have announcements where they say they are going to build something, but no one can actually live in an announcement. What they actually do at these announcements is find homes that are already going to be built and say that they will partner with the municipality and that the municipality will get a little extra money if it says they somehow contributed. Their building homes strategy is a big nothing burger. It is an absolute failure. Let us look at cost because cost is the other part that is making housing so unaffordable. We know that housing prices have doubled under the government, but let us look at interest rates. We know that interest rates are sky-high. The Governor of the Bank of Canada has said, many times, that the government's inflationary spending is like putting the foot on the gas pedal, as the Governor of the Bank of Canada tries to ease inflation by raising interest rates. Interest rates are at absolute highs and this has tragic consequences for builders; they cannot build the units because interest rates are so high. It makes the cost of building them even higher. It drives up the cost of building and makes it even less affordable for Canadians to buy them. Let me just give one little example. Right now, we have $186 billion worth of mortgages coming up for renewal in 2024. Let us say that one had a $600,000 mortgage coming up for renewal and an interest rate of 3%, which was not a great interest rate up until recently but is a very good rate compared to now. On a $600,000 mortgage, one's monthly payment until now would have been $2,500. Today, it is almost $4,000. That is a $1,500-a-month increase. These are the kinds of things that are crushing Canadians. This Liberal government has done the impossible on incompetence. If one does not have a home, one cannot afford a home because the cost of a home has doubled. If one is renting or looking to rent, one cannot afford that either, because rent has doubled. If one has a home and one works so hard to save and actually have a home, when one's mortgage comes up for renewal, one cannot afford to keep one's home. This government has somehow had the amazing incompetence to do two things: make it impossible for young buyers to buy a home and make it virtually impossible for people who have a home to keep the home. This is stunning incompetence on housing. What makes it worse is that household debt in Canada is the highest in the G7. Remember that the Prime Minister said that they were taking on borrowing money so that Canadians did not have to? Well, they have had to because their inflationary spending has driven up interest rates so high that Canadians now have to borrow just to survive. The most frightening stat I have seen just came out: 31% of Canadian households are having to find extra income just to make ends meet. Look at what is going on in this country after eight years of this absolutely incompetent Liberal government. One cannot buy a home. One cannot keep one's home. One cannot make ends meet. People are actually having to take on side hustles to pay the bills. This is the catastrophic record of a tired, corrupt Liberal government after eight years. I do not have time to get into the corruption. That would be an entire other late show, but let me say that housing and affordability is a disaster. The government is responsible. Why does it not, instead of puffing up its chest and saying what a great job it has done, just apologize to Canadians for the mess it has made?

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Mr. Peter Fragiskatos (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, Lib.)

Oct/31/23 6:49:52 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague, and with all due respect, it is rather difficult to take him seriously here tonight. First of all, he made the mistake of not reading the most recent CMHC report on housing starts. In fact, housing starts are up. However, let us move to the matter at hand, which is really cost. I do agree with him that, whether it is renting or buying, costs are too high. However, all of that is a function of supply, or the lack thereof. The housing crisis in Canada is a reflection of the supply crisis. There are not enough homes, period. That is the result of successive failures of the past. Both Liberal and Conservative governments at the federal level did not do enough to prepare for the future. That is true of provincial governments writ large. It is true of municipal governments. What are we doing on the federal side to make up for that? First, we have lifted the GST, waived it, on the construction of apartments. That is to incent builders. In fact, as we have heard widely from the private sector, including builders specifically, and from organizations like the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and others, this measure alone will lead to thousands of more units being built across the country. Rental units are particularly important in this context. We need to provide more affordable options, and apartments do that. We are also working with municipal governments through the housing accelerator fund. More important than the name of the program are the details. The $4 billion in that fund allows us to work with municipalities to see impediments to building at the local level dealt with. These impediments include exclusionary zoning, among other things. Exclusionary zoning is tremendously important in this discussion. We have to find ways to build more, as I said. We have to find ways to address the “not in my backyard”, or NIMBY, attitude that has prevented building in the past. This focuses the attention on missing middle housing. We need duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, row houses and mid-rise apartments across Canada. We do not have enough of them. We are seeing various communities step up to the plate and do their part. London was first, my own community, and we are seeing Vaughan, Hamilton, Halifax, now Kelowna and others do that. We will continue to work with those municipalities in a very fruitful and healthy back-and-forth. I think it is a great characteristic of Canadian federalism to see this at work, where we have the federal government incenting municipalities to make changes, and in return there is funding available for housing, infrastructure and other related items. The hon. member has voted against all of those measures and in fact is championing a private member's bill that would put a tax on the construction of middle-class apartments. The construction of those apartments for individuals and families in the middle class would be taxed under the private member's bill presented by the Conservative Party leader. It is not an acceptable approach. It needs to change. We are not hearing enough on the other side about what they are willing to do to address housing.

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Mr. Kyle Seeback

Oct/31/23 6:53:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our leader has made very clear what our plan is on housing. It is going to get units built, unlike these announcements the Liberals are making. The member said he found it hard to take me seriously with my question. What is amazing to me is that he talked about how there are going to be thousands of units built. It is hard to take him and his entire government even remotely seriously, because everyone knows we need 3.5 million homes built by 2030 to address the housing shortage. The Liberal plan comes up with a few thousand. We had the housing minister at committee. He talked about all the levers he is pulling. When he added up the sum total of housing he thought his plans would build, it is a couple of hundred thousand. I am not great at math. That is why I became a lawyer. However, a couple of hundred thousand units is really far from being 3.5 million units. The member is saying the Liberals have a great plan when they do not acknowledge how far behind they are. We need 3.5 million units. Their plan for a couple of hundred thousand does nothing for Canadians. They are out of gas and have no plan and no future. They should just apologize to Canadians.

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Mr. Peter Fragiskatos

Oct/31/23 6:54:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am sure the member is very good at math; he is just not looking at all the numbers. The national housing strategy has resulted in 113,000 new units that are either built or will be built, and 126,000 units that have been repaired or are scheduled for repair. In the member's community, or at least in a portion of his community, because he does represent a portion of the Peel region, in June 2021, over $32 million led to the construction of 77 affordable units. They helped victims of domestic violence and helped those who were on the street, homeless individuals and fellow citizens who are no longer on the street. In August 2020, there was $276 million through the national housing strategy for the construction of 2,200 rental units for people in need, members of that community, fellow Canadians. The national housing strategy is an innovative program. There is more to do through it, but we will continue to get there through co-operation with municipalities, not-for-profits and others. The hon. member needs to step up. He voted against all those measures for his community.

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Mr. Kevin Vuong (Spadina—Fort York, Ind.)

Oct/31/23 6:55:30 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, on October 20, I thought I had asked a simple but serious question of the government. It had to do with refugees and asylum seekers who come to this country to escape persecution and possibly death in their homelands. They come here legally. They are accepted by Canada, a signatory to the 1951 UN treaty on refugees. This is all marvellous; however, as last summer proved, the reception these refugees and asylum seekers received then was anything but compassionate. Hundreds were forced to spend their nights on the street, with no place to go and little hope of beginning safe new lives in what they thought was a welcoming and caring country. Aside from the federal government eventually having to be shamed into providing the City of Toronto with obligated funding to look after the refugees and asylum seekers, Toronto itself, frankly, did not provide much in the way of stellar service when it came to finding adequate shelter for the refugees and looking after them. In fact, Toronto is now the subject of an investigation by the city’s ombudsman for the way the city cast these people adrift on the streets or tried to pawn them off on non-existent federal programs. In my question last week, therefore, I asked if the federal government is still suffering from financial amnesia. Has it forgotten its election promise to Toronto to help the city with its budget shortfall and its obligation to uphold the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees? Indeed, under the IRCC’s resettlement assistance program, the federal government is supposed to help refugees get essential services and help with basic needs. Given last summer's debacle, I asked if the IRCC minister could confirm this time around that the government will provide Toronto with financial support to avoid a repeat of its own non-performance, or if it wanted to see refugees sleeping on snow-covered streets. The Liberal government’s failure has repercussions that reverberate far. For example, the City of Toronto is now undemocratically forcing a community to host a 24-7, low-barrier respite site with no central intake at 629 Adelaide Street West. It is right beside an elementary school, sandwiching it with a drug injection site. This community has already done so much and hosts so many shelters. They are not NIMBYs, or “not in my backyards”, but their yard is full. The response that I received from the government on my original question was not very promising. Furthermore, it was not reassuring in terms of saying that things are not going to get worse or that this past summer’s disaster will not be repeated with even greater consequences this winter. The parliamentary secretary to the IRCC minister did not answer my question. Instead, he waxed poetic with a bunch of stats starting in 2020, before finally making his way to 2023. It was as if he was just trying to burn as much time as possible, still seeming as though he was saying something, but, in reality, saying nothing. Worst of all, these glowing figures are nothing but self-imposed platitudes for a government that must do its job. Its members pat themselves on the back for doing their own job, and they leave out any reference to the continuous outside sleepover that is happening on Toronto streets and the price that our local communities must pay for their failure. I ask the government again tonight: Will it be providing sufficient funding for key shelter and support services as the weather gets colder, or will someone have to freeze to death before it finally acts?

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Mr. Paul Chiang (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Lib.)

Oct/31/23 6:59:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canada remains committed to upholding a fair and compassionate refugee protection system. With 100 million people displaced globally, the world is undergoing a global migration crisis, and Canada has a moral obligation to step up. Canada is not alone in facing a rising number of asylum claims. The world is facing an unprecedented flow of migrants and refugees, with nearly 4.9 million asylum seekers in 2022. This is a global challenge driven by war, persecution, political and economic instability, and discrimination. Solving this challenge will require a global response. In response to a higher volume of asylum seekers, our officials have been in regular contact with provincial and territorial counterparts, municipal leaders and partner organizations. In fact, the minister has met with the mayors and stakeholders recently to discuss these issues in Toronto and here in Ottawa. Welcoming newcomers to Canada and ensuring their success requires a whole-of-government approach. That means working with municipalities, as well as with provincial and territorial partners, to ensure refugees and asylum seekers have the resources and support they need. The federal government has been providing support to provinces and municipalities to respond to the rising number of asylum claims. In July, the Government of Canada announced an extension of the interim housing assistance program with an additional $212 million in funding, which included $97 million for the City of Toronto. Since 2017, the federal government has provided nearly $700 million in funding to provinces and municipalities on a cost-sharing basis to address extraordinary interim housing pressures resulting from an increased volume of asylum claimants. In addition to the IHAP, and in response to higher volumes of asylum claims, IRCC has been working closely with provinces and municipalities that are the most impacted to provide basic support services to asylum claimants who are temporarily accommodated in IRCC-contracted hotels. As of September 25, 2023, IRCC has almost 3,500 hotel rooms in six provinces to provide temporary housing to asylum claimants. The federal government has been there every step of the way and continues to be. It continues to work closely with the City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario to best support displaced people and asylum seekers, and ensure that they are supported. In addition, we have provided expedited work permits for claimants so that claimants can start to build their new lives in Canada and support their family. In conclusion, we understand that those who are feeling persecution, oppression and conflicts have made great sacrifices to come to Canada. We continue to work with provinces and municipalities, including the City of Toronto, to support housing for asylum claimants, as well as any other supports they need.

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Mr. Kevin Vuong

Oct/31/23 7:02:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is not rocket science, but it is a profoundly significant issue. I assure the parliamentary secretary that most Canadians know that our winters are cold and dark. Therefore, is the government prepared to honour its obligations to refugees, human beings and people, as well as honour its financial responsibilities with the City of Toronto, or are we going to see a much more deadly consequence from its failed resettlement program and the consequences of its decisions? Does someone have to die before the government finally wakes up to the seriousness of this issue and finally acts?

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Mr. Paul Chiang

Oct/31/23 7:03:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canada has committed to support those fleeing persecution, oppression and war. We continue to support provinces, territories and municipalities, including the City of Toronto, with these challenges and do our part. That is why we extended the interim housing assistance program for asylum claimants across Canada for 2023. In particular, we have set aside $97 million just for Toronto alone. We have also provided direct support for providing temporary accommodation in IRCC-contracted hotels. We continue to maintain a constant line of communication with the City of Toronto and, as the world continues to face a global migration crisis, we have an obligation to step up and work alongside our provincial and territorial partners.

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Mr. Mike Morrice (Kitchener Centre, GP)

Oct/31/23 7:04:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be back again tonight, pressing on the need for a windfall profit tax on the oil and gas industry, the context for which begins with recognizing the extent of the climate crisis we are in. These are the words of the UN secretary general: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” He also says, “We are in the fight of our lives. And we are losing...our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.” He goes on to say, “The global climate fight will be won or lost in this crucial decade—on our watch.” In Canada, we need to look no further than this past summer, when climate-fuelled wildfires burned over 184,000 square kilometres of forest, more than double the previous record from 1995. It was 5% of our total forest cover across the country. We can also look to 20 medical journals that, just last week, urged the World Health Organization to deem both the climate crisis and biodiversity loss to be global health emergencies. In the midst of this crisis, the industry most responsible for accelerating the climate crisis is making off like bandits. The industry's profits in 2022 alone from the five biggest oil and gas companies were $38 billion. That is after it paid shareholders $29 billion in increased dividends and share repurchases. How is this possible? Some, particularly in this place, will talk a lot about increases to the carbon tax, but let us return to the facts. In 2022, the carbon tax went up 2¢ per litre of gasoline. The profits of oil and gas companies went up 18¢ per litre. This is not only about the worsening climate crisis and the gouging by the oil and gas industry; it is also about how life is becoming less affordable for people in my community as those very same companies are worsening inflation. It is imperative that parliamentarians step up and take reasonable measures, at the very least. The government already introduced a windfall profit tax, which it calls the Canada recovery dividend, on banks and life insurance companies in the pandemic. With Motion No. 92, all we are putting forward is to say to now do the same with the oil and gas companies. It is supported by groups like Environmental Defence, the David Suzuki Foundation and Canadians for Tax Fairness. As of last week, it has now been studied by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. A one-time 15% tax on profits above $1 billion would raise $4.2 billion, all of which could go directly to funding the proven climate solutions we need that would make life more affordable for Canadians, like public transit and retrofitting homes. The fall economic statement is due in the coming weeks. Will the parliamentary secretary advocate a windfall profit tax on the oil and gas industry to be included in the statement?

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Mr. Paul Chiang (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Lib.)

Oct/31/23 7:08:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, between the unprecedented floods, wildfires and storms we witnessed across the country this summer, there is no doubt that the impacts of climate change on Canada are quite real and serious. Just as we know that climate change is real, the path forward is clear. To protect our planet and to build a stronger economy, we must endeavour to do even more when it comes to climate action. It is quite simple: Canada cannot afford to miss the boat. We must act and move forward with a green economy. That is why in budget 2023 we announced historic investments in clean technologies to ensure that Canada's economy can generate prosperous, middle-class jobs and more vibrant communities across the country. For example, we are implementing a set of clear and predictable investment tax credits, low-cost strategic financing, targeted investments and programming, where necessary, to respond to the unique needs of sectors or projects of national economic significance. When it comes to the windfall tax, our government has been and remains committed to making sure everyone pays their fair share of taxes. We know that the programs and services that Canadians rely on are dependent on a robust national tax base and our actions speak for themselves. Since 2015, we have pushed forward several measures to ensure that everyone pays their fair share. For example, we took actions to close loopholes, to crack down on tax avoidance and to ensure that the wealthiest pay their fair share. We moved forward with a permanent increase of the corporate income tax by 1.5 percentage points on the largest, most profitable banks and insurance companies in Canada and went ahead with the Canada recovery dividend of 15% on banks and insurance companies to help support Canada's broader recovery. We are also raising the alternative minimum tax rate from 15% to 20.5% and further limiting the excessive use of tax preferences. This measure will generate an estimated $3 billion in revenue over five years, starting with the 2024 tax year. Tens of thousands of middle-class Canadians will benefit from a tax reduction, while the very wealthy will be targeted. In addition, we also remain committed to phasing out or rationalizing inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that give fossil fuels an unfair advantage over cleaner solutions. Our government has committed to this phase-out by 2023. We know that eliminating inefficient fossil fuel subsidies and redoubling our focus on clean energy is a key step in building Canada's net-zero economy by 2050 and a strong future for workers in the industry. Finally, we are no longer allowing expenditures related to oil, gas and coal exploration and development to be renounced to flow-through share investors for flow-through share agreements entered into after March 2023.

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Mr. Mike Morrice

Oct/31/23 7:11:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in the limited time I have, I am going to put to the side the mention by the parliamentary secretary about so-called inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, which is one way of saying that the government is going to continue to subsidize the very industry that is making these record-breaking profits. Instead, I will focus on our point of alignment, that is, his mention of the Canada recovery dividend. As we heard from the parliamentary secretary, this is a measure that the government has already taken. It has done so with banks and life insurance companies already, recognizing that there was over-the-top profiteering happening there. As I mentioned earlier, we know the same thing is happening with oil and gas, amounting to $38 billion a year among the five largest companies alone. At this time, in the midst of a climate crisis when these companies are gouging Canadians at the pumps, why would we not apply that same Canada recovery dividend to them?

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Mr. Paul Chiang

Oct/31/23 7:12:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our government remains committed to both fighting climate change and addressing tax fairness. We have already taken actions to build our green economy and to ensure that all pay their fair share of taxes. We have taken steps to close loopholes, combat tax evasion and ensure that the wealthiest pay their fair share.

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The Deputy Speaker

Oct/31/23 7:13:16 p.m.
Watch

Before I close here today, I just want to thank everyone for wishing me a happy birthday. I also want to wish a happy birthday to the hon. member for Etobicoke North. I know we share a birthday and I am looking forward to seeing her very soon. The motion that the House do now adjourn is deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1). (The House adjourned at 7:13 p.m.)

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