44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 19, 2024 10:00AM
- Sep/19/24 10:04:41 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I move that the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, presented on Friday, October 27, 2023, be concurred in.
I will be sharing my time with the member for Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis.
Colleagues may have noticed that it is a very brief motion. I will read it. The report is very simple. It is that “the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities recognizes Canada is in a housing crisis that requires urgent action by the federal government to end homelessness, and that this motion be reported to the House.” That is a fairly brief report, but we think it is a really crucially important report because housing is a crisis in this country right now. In short, that simple, brief, pithy report is to the point and more than appropriate today.
We all recall when the Liberal government launched its national housing strategy in 2017. Everybody remembers that there was great fanfare. The Prime Minister was surrounded by many of his colleagues and his ministers in front of a big building that was being constructed. He announced a $40-billion program. It was going to be “life-changing”.
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
Mr. Scott Aitchison: My colleague should keep clapping, Mr. Speaker; they will love the change we are going to talk about.
The Prime Minister said it was to be a life-changing, transformational national housing strategy. Of course, it has evolved over time to be more like $80 billion. Not all of it is from federal money; a lot has been from matching provincial dollars. However, the Liberals continue to talk about this national housing strategy being a great thing.
If people are living in housing that is unaffordable, that does not have enough bedrooms or that needs major repairs, and they cannot afford to live somewhere else in the community, they are described as living in core housing need. In fact, that is a statistic that the CMHC, the government's own bureaucrats, tracks and reports on regularly. Those in core housing need are obviously some of the most vulnerable in our society.
In 2018, just after the Liberal government started this national housing strategy, 11.3% of households in Canada were in core housing need. In 2022, the Canadian housing service survey, which is the latest data from CMHC on core housing need, said that core housing need is now at 11.6%. It has actually gone up a little bit. This means that the national housing strategy, when it comes to core housing need and homelessness, has done nothing. There is an $80-billion plan, but core housing need in this country is effectively the same. This is not just about the numbers. This is not just the data. We see the results of the Liberals' ineptitude all across the country. There are tent cities in every single community in this country. It used to be just a big city thing. Now they are everywhere.
When I was the mayor of Huntsville, housing was already a crisis there. We had done all kinds of things as a municipality, but it was not enough. Parry Sound—Muskoka has often struggled with people in what we call “hidden homelessness”. It is not always visible. Maybe they are sleeping on couches of friends and family. Living in a van is not entirely uncommon for seasonal workers and resort staff. I will give the example of Lions Lookout in Huntsville. It is a beautiful hill from which we can see the whole town. It is gorgeous. Periodically there would be a van parked up there overnight. People would be staying there. Today this happens all the time, and not just with one van, but with multiple vans. Rental vacancy rates in my community of Huntsville and my neighbouring communities of Bracebridge, Gravenhurst and Parry Sound have been close to 0% for over a decade.
The government talks about affordable housing and homelessness, but after nine years, the situation is worse. More than 235,000 people are estimated to be homeless in Canada. From the core housing need, now we are talking about people who are actually homeless, who do not have a home. In addition to these visibly homeless individuals, 450,000 to 900,000 are among the hidden homeless, so they are staying with family and friends because they have nowhere else to go.
In 2018, the Parliamentary Budget Officer said that the number of homeless people in Canada has increased by 20%. The Auditor General said that the federal government does not really know if its initiatives aimed at reducing chronic homelessness are actually working. What a stunning indictment of the Liberal government's record.
The Liberals are very good at having photo ops and talking points. They are very good at announcing big ideas. However, they are absolutely inept at the follow-through. The price is in the suffering. It is not just in the big cities. As I mentioned, there are encampments everywhere.
Northern Ontario is pretty cold in the winter. There are a lot of hard-working folks in northern Ontario. Sudbury, as an example, sees the situation getting worse and worse as well. According to the report card on homelessness for 2023, the number of homeless encampments in Sudbury jumped from 25 at the end of 2022 to 113 at the end of 2023.
Canadians are feeling it. It is reported that 28% of Canadians said they are considering moving to another country for greater affordability. One-quarter of Canadians say they are reconsidering whether they can start a family. The number of young people in this country who have given up on the dream of ever owning a home is shocking.
What are we doing on housing starts? If the Liberals have not really done a very good job on homelessness, what about market housing and obtainable housing? Housing starts are down. Across Canada, we had a total of 16,857 housing starts in August. In August 2023, it was 19,459. That is a 13% drop in one year. In Ontario, the drop was 25%; in British Columbia, housing starts are down 31%. These drops are in the same time period. In Quebec, housing starts have dropped 9%.
If we narrow in on places such as Toronto, the housing starts have had a 48% drop in the same time period. In Vancouver, there has been a 34% drop. In Victoria, it is a 33% drop. In Montreal, it is a 4% drop. What is the government's plan when it comes to housing? The Liberals know that, apparently, we need to speed things up in cities. Therefore, they came up with something really well-named called the “housing accelerator fund”. It is borrowed money. They use that fund to give money to cities. What do cities do in return when they get their money? They increase their fees and charges, making it more expensive to build.
The City of Toronto, where housing starts have dropped 40%, got $471 million from the housing accelerator fund. Then it turned around and increased its development charges by 42%. It has increased its development charges by over 1,000% in a decade, yet the government gave it $471 million to accelerate housing. The City of Vaughan, just north of Toronto, got $59 million, and its development charges are up 400% since 2010. Ottawa just introduced an 11% increase in its development charges. It got $176 million from the government.
If talking points and photo ops could solve problems, there would not be a problem in this country. The government has shown that it is long on performance and dismal on results. We need to hold cities accountable, and we need to start making sure that they not only move the process along faster and get development approvals done quicker but also make it cheaper. This concept that growth can pay for growth means that young people will be paying the bill forever.
Now the Liberals have made this great move to extend the length of amortization. They have missed the point. We do not want to saddle young people with more debt for longer and longer in their lives. We need to make it cheaper. Nobody makes more money on housing than governments. Governments make the most. We need to get government out of the way and reduce the fees and charges, and the government does not understand that. It just keeps doubling down, giving more borrowed money to cities that make it more expensive and slow it down. The housing accelerator fund is little more than a pay-for-promises fund and a photo op fund.
We need results in this country. We need a federal government that will hold cities accountable and get the job done. On this side, Conservatives are ready to do that. We are ready to deliver for Canadians because they cannot wait any longer.
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- Sep/19/24 10:15:59 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I always find it entertaining when the member for Kingston and the Islands starts talking in here, because it is clear he does not understand the math. If announcing billions of dollars could solve the problem, we would not have a problem in this country. However, I have just given the Liberals' own data, which shows the situation is worse today than when they started.
I do not care how much money they spend; they make the situation worse. Cities make it more expensive every single year. The charges cities charge to get homes built have gone up exponentially every single year, and the government just rewards them instead of making them reduce those charges and make it cheaper for people to buy homes.
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- Sep/19/24 10:17:27 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a question of whether we hold other levels of government to account or not, and cities have made it more expensive to build homes in this country. On average, 33% of the cost of every single dwelling unit built in this country is government. Nobody makes more money on housing than governments, so it is sanctimonious to stand in this place and say we need to give more money.
We need to reduce the charges. We need to reduce the fees. We need to make it easier to get homes built so young people are not saddled with debt forever and they can actually get into the market. That is the solution.
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- Sep/19/24 10:18:55 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will just simply say that it gets a little tiring listening to the NDP demonize private sector developers, because we need literally trillions of dollars of investment in housing in this country. We are not getting that done without the private sector. I think it is time that the NDP and its friends stop demonizing private sector investment. Let us start finding ways to attract that investment to this country.
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- Sep/19/24 1:05:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I request a recorded division.
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