44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 23, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I appreciate the intervention of my colleague.
We know the rising cost of groceries and the lack of affordable housing are affecting families across the country, and I am pleased to discuss some of the ways we are addressing those important issues through the measures outlined in Bill C-56.
We know that for too many Canadians, including young people and new Canadians, the dream of owning a home is increasingly out of reach, and paying rent is becoming more expensive across the country. The housing crisis is having an impact on our economy. Without more homes in our communities, it is difficult for business owners to attract the workers they need in order to grow their businesses and to succeed. When people spend more of their income on housing, it means they spend less of their money in their communities for necessities like groceries.
Bill C-56 would enhance the goods and services tax rebate on new purpose-built rental housing to encourage the construction of more rental homes, including apartment buildings, student housing and seniors' residences across Canada. The enhanced rebate would apply to projects that begin construction after September 14 and on or before December 31, 2030. For a two-bedroom rental unit valued at $500,000, the enhanced GST rebate would deliver $25,000 in tax relief. This is another tool to help create the necessary conditions to build the types of housing that we need and that families want to live in.
The measure would also remove the restriction on the existing GST rules so that public service bodies, such as universities, public colleges, hospitals, charities and qualifying not-for-profit organizations that build or purchase purpose-built rental housing, would be permitted to claim the GST new residential rental property rebate. The government is also calling on provinces to join it by matching its rebate for new rental housing. It is also requesting that local governments put an end to exclusionary zoning and encourage apartments to be built near public transit.
Launched in March, the housing accelerator fund is a $4-billion initiative designed to help cities, towns and indigenous governments unlock new housing supply, which is about 100,000 units in total, by speeding up development and approvals, like fixing out-of-date permitting systems, introducing zoning reforms to build more density and incentivizing development to choose public transit. It represents one of the ways we are encouraging initiatives aimed at increasing the housing supply. It also would support the development of complete, low-carbon, climate-resilient communities that are affordable, inclusive, equitable and diverse. Every community across Canada needs to build more homes faster, so we need to reduce the cost of housing for everyone.
We also need to stabilize the cost of groceries in Canada. Through the one-time grocery—
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- Nov/23/23 1:13:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, nobody is going to build houses overnight. It takes time. I have spoken to developers in my area in Newfoundland and Labrador. They are anxious for this bill to get passed, so they can take advantage of the incentives to build affordable rental units and affordable housing for seniors, low-income families and the whole gamut.
Will it be completed in a year or six months? No, it will not. This is a long-term initiative that we want to make sure gets rolled out the right way, gets done the right way and delivers the right results.
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- Nov/23/23 3:41:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is good to stand in the House today to talk about a very important bill. It is the idea that we are going to get some purpose-built rental housing built. To the member's point, it is not going to be as fast as we need, and that is why we need other measures outside of this bill. However, on this bill, there are people in my community waiting for purpose-built rentals, so I would like to see this go through, but I would like to see more than what is in this bill.
Can the member share some of the solutions they have? I believe that the Conservatives can support this bill and improve it. Let us see what they have.
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- Nov/23/23 3:41:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, with respect to the GST measure on rental housing, that is something the Liberals promised six years ago and are only now acting on it. It was provided for by the bill put forward by the leader of His Majesty's loyal opposition, the building homes not bureaucracy act. That bill is a common-sense piece of legislation aimed at getting gatekeepers out of the way by tying infrastructure dollars to the number of homes actually built.
The Liberal government has thrown around billions of dollars, yet there were fewer houses built in the past year than were built in 1972 when Canada's population was half of what it is today. The record of the Liberals is to build up bureaucracy and not houses. The plan of the Leader of the Opposition is to get homes built for Canadians.
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- Nov/23/23 4:31:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member got to the point towards the end, under your guidance.
I would like to stay on the topic of the bill and talk about one of the main things this bill would do, which is that it would take the GST off of purpose-built rentals to promote the building of new rental accommodations. In my riding of South Okanagan—West Kootenay, it is almost impossible to find rental accommodation. When I talk to the city planners, they say that every day they are building more housing units than they have ever built before, but every day there are fewer affordable housing units because they are being lost to Airbnbs, people buying holiday homes, etc. The people buying the new housing units are the people who can afford them, and they already have houses.
What is the member's government doing to actually build affordable, non-market housing that would really make a difference for Canadians? Getting out of the way and taking the tax off will build more units, but it will not help people who need affordable housing.
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- Nov/23/23 5:06:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to reiterate some of the things I said. I do not see why a landlord would say that, since he did not pay GST on the purchase of a new building, his rental prices will go down. I do not see how this measure could lead to that. I do not see any automatic or obvious correlation.
Having said that, I believe that if GST were to be imposed, it should be on the buyers if homes were being purchased only to rent them at exorbitant prices. That could be one measure. How can rental housing be improved? It is often a question of supply and demand. To improve the situation, we need a major housing construction strategy. Clearly, we do not have one.
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- Nov/23/23 5:08:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, unfortunately, the member opposite did not listen to what I said. I said that there was no correlation with rental prices. He can listen to that again and we will talk about it again.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam.
I am here today to talk about the affordability act. We know that right now Canadians across the country are facing a huge financial challenge. It has been a hard period of time. We lived through the pandemic and then we moved on to a high inflation reality. Things are just starting to cost more and more.
One of the things this bill does is remove GST for builds of rental housing. In my riding, these are the average rents in just a few of my communities: in Campbell River, it is over $1,500; in Powell River it is close to $1,500; and then in Comox, it is a whopping $1,849. Those are just the average rents. If someone lives on a fixed income or has a low income, it is just a huge challenge to pay for the things they desperately need.
I am the spokesperson for seniors in my party. Just last week, a 77-year-old gentleman walk into my office, almost an octogenarian. He shared with me that he has been living in the same location for 40 years. It recently was purchased and he is going to be renovicted. That is appalling. He needs to have a stable home to age in. I think we all know that we cannot just build houses by yelling out abracadabra and there will be a house. They do not just build themselves. Although I support this movement, we know from what we are seeing done by the government that the Liberals are just continuing to delay the process. That means that housing will be delayed up to seven years or more.
This is a crisis point. The urgency in the communities that I serve is profound. They need to see money on the ground, supports for municipalities and regional districts, to get that money out the door in the most efficient way possible.
I read an article yesterday from Oxfam. It talked about how the richest people in the world are emitting as much as the bottom 66% of income earners on the planet. Now, I love a French rosé, but when I look at what I see happening with the ultrarich, I swear they are bathing in it. They are bathing in it at the expense of everyday Canadians, who desperately need this support. What we have not seen from the government, or from Conservative governments in the past, is a willingness to actually say to the ultrawealthy that they have to pay their fair share. In my riding, people are paying their fair share. They pay their taxes. They work hard every day and they are being punished for doing that when the ultrawealthy are getting away with bigger and bigger profits.
We know the reality is that Canada has the lowest tax rate for corporations, at 15%. Ultrawealthy corporations in this country like oil and gas have seen an increase to their profits in the last year or so that is higher than the 30 years previous. We cannot say that it is just inflation, when we can see how much they are taking home of profit after inflation is accounted for.
We know that grocery stores are making more profit now than they were prior to the pandemic. That again is adjusting for inflation. Even with those extra costs, they are still making a huge amount of money and their profits are popping like popcorn everywhere. They cannot justify that when the very basics are not affordable for most Canadians. I think that it is time that we start to address these issues and take them seriously because, really, we need to build a more fair society.
I talk a lot in this place about having a bar of dignity that no one falls below. What we are seeing in this country is more and more people falling below that. I think of people with fixed incomes, people who are single parents; people who are working; and two people with decent jobs who are living out of an RV because they cannot afford even a simple apartment to live in because of how high the cost of living has become.
The other thing I am hearing from my constituents again and again is that they can hardly afford the cost of food. In my riding, there are a lot of small farms that are doing everything they can to grow food in our area and provide as reasonable a cost as they can, because they really believe in food security. I want to thank them. They do that because of what they believe in. It makes a huge difference. We also know that grocery stores are making a huge amount of profit, and they are getting away with it.
I am really relieved that the Liberals have finally listened to our leader, the member for Burnaby South, about making sure that the Competition Bureau has more teeth to crack down on price gouging. It is as though they were looking through the windshield and, suddenly, the windshield wiper moved all the dirt out of the way, and they can now see clearly that they need to do the right thing. I am grateful that they are finally listening to us, and I cannot wait to see this done.
Many Canadians are trying to buy the basic necessities of food to feed their families. We are seeing so many children whose parents care about them desperately, but they do not have enough to send them to school with a good lunch or make sure they have a good breakfast. That is shameful in this country. If we have a Competition Bureau that can do its job, it is going to make the biggest difference; it is about time.
Without having a strong Competition Bureau, having processes where grocery stores can be held to account, we are censuring consumers. We are telling consumers that we will not put anything in place. We had the Liberal government call grocery CEOs and ask them to stabilize prices because they are upsetting people. That is not putting teeth in and telling them this is serious, because our people in this country matter. They matter more than grocery stores bringing home a huge amount of profit.
I am glad the changes that the NDP has made for Bill C-56 will actually help everyday Canadians. It is not as far as we would go. There are a lot of things we would definitely have in the bill, but we got something in there that is going to make a difference.
I have been watching this place for many years, before I even got here in 2015. Sometimes I feel like I am experiencing déjà vu, because what I see happen again and again is the continued betrayal of small businesses by both Conservative and Liberal governments. I know that, in my riding, small businesses make the difference. They are the ones that stand up every day and look after our community. They care about the people they employ, and they work hard to better our communities.
During the pandemic, it was terrifying. I have to say that my community did an amazing job of supporting local businesses the best it could. Community members talked to one another. We talked to communities. We made sure that people were taken care of the best they could be. When that struggle was still there, we fought like heck to have a good loan that was helping people get through that time. The CEBA loan was created.
Now we are in a situation where the government is refusing to listen to these small business owners and make something work for them so that they do not lose their businesses. It was really sad for me to see nothing to deal with this in the financial update. I would have loved to see this in the bill, because small businesses work hard.
I was talking to a business owner in my riding, who said that rural communities have particular challenges, both with the pandemic and then later on with inflation, as well as waiting for more people to come to our small communities for tourism. They are struggling the most. To see the government not take that important connection seriously and to see it really betray those small businesses has been very concerning to me.
I will wrap up, but I just want to say that, in this House, we all have to work collectively to make sure that life is more affordable for Canadians. They deserve it, and it is really our job to maintain a bar of dignity that no one falls below. In this country right now, too many are falling; we need to do better by them.
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- Nov/23/23 11:25:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I raise my hands to the member for Nunavut, who has stood up so many times in this House to explain to the Liberal government why it is so important that it live up to its human rights commitments, especially in regard to housing. There are absolutely unacceptable conditions in Nunavut, and there is a partner there ready to go.
I will follow up on the question from the member, though. We know food prices are extremely high across the country. We know this is about food price gouging. This is about profits. Because there is not competition in the grocery chains, they are taking home extreme profits. They are not being taxed fairly, and they are taking advantage of Canadians. That is why this bill is so important: We need to get serious about addressing that competition.
The other thing I will talk about is the fact that the rental, co-op and not-for-profit housing in this country needs extreme investment, and this is a tiny move forward. We are hoping for more from the Liberals. We need more from the Liberals. Affordability is just so important across the board.
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