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 10:19:26 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my colleague from Parry Sound—Muskoka for his excellent contribution. He did a good job explaining and presenting what we are discussing today. This subject is of interest to a great many Canadians and Quebeckers too. The housing crisis we are facing today was caused by this government, which has mismanaged its files since it came to power in 2015.
My colleague spoke about this government's incompetence, which I believe takes many forms. I hope to have the opportunity to point to some of the factors that led us to this housing crisis, which has sadly affected all of Canada and all of Quebec, including in places where homelessness would have been unthinkable. This has caused terribly unfortunate situations in our cities as well as in our small towns.
As my colleague was saying, people are having to sleep on couches. This is a hidden form of homelessness, and even our small towns are not immune to it. In fact, this is happening in my riding and pretty much across Quebec. Other forms of homelessness are increasingly visible, and that is so unfortunate to see. It is truly sad that people in Canada, a G7 country, a G20 country, are not even able to put a roof over their heads. Plenty of ordinary Canadians are now finding themselves on the streets, homeless.
This week I heard a man on a call-in show describe his situation, which was pretty cut and dried: He was forced out of his home because the landlords were taking over the property. This is allowed in Quebec. He found himself on the street because there is no housing. He bought himself a tent and that is where he lives today. Does anyone think we have palm trees and sunny skies year round in Canada? October is coming. November too. In December the snow comes, along with temperatures in the negative twenties and thirties.
These people will be sleeping outside. As parliamentarians and members of this legislature, we cannot simply look away. It borders on the criminal to do so.
Thomas Mulcair, a well-known former politician who used to lead the NDP, is now a high-profile political commentator in Quebec. He said that the Prime Minister and his government promised affordable housing in 2015. They promised they would build homes so that everyone would have a roof over their head. Where are we today? The situation, as my colleague pointed out, is worse than it was nine years ago, when this Prime Minister came to power.
Many people of all backgrounds and circumstances have entered our country in recent years, and it was the Liberals who did this. However, they built less housing. How can it be that they did such a poor job? Let us crunch the numbers. Fewer homes were built in 2022 than in 1972, despite the population having doubled. How can they have done such a poor job? I repeat, fewer homes were built in 2022 than in 1972, despite a doubling of the population. In my opinion, someone somewhere is not doing their job. Someone, somewhere, on the other side needs to wake up, because this is not working.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, has indicated how many homes must be built by 2030 if we are to try and get a handle on the situation.
We will need 8.5 million housing units. I am not the one saying this. It is the CMHC. They are the experts. Here are some figures. I do little summaries like this on every sector in Canada. I can also talk about the budget and a whole host of other things, but since I only have four minutes left, I am going to focus on the housing question. Rent has doubled since 2015. Mortgage costs have doubled since 2015. Of all the OECD countries, Canada is the slowest to build. Of the G7 countries, based on our land mass, Canada has the fewest homes, and yet, if one looks at a map of Canada, it is not for lack of space.
In Toronto, it takes 25 years to save for a down payment, when that should be the repayment period. That is unbelievable. I repeat: Fewer housing units were built in 2022 under this government than in 1972. Something is not working. Right now, money is being spent left and right. We do not know what is happening with that money. Right now, we are seeing just how overwhelmed Canada's big cities are with what has been happening, especially in Montreal. Does anyone feel like going to Montreal these days? Shots are being fired, there are guns everywhere and people are sleeping outside. That is the current situation.
Our leader introduced a bill to build housing and encourage the use of federally owned surplus buildings and land, but it was voted down. The bill stipulated that municipalities would have to build 15% more housing and meet housing construction goals. How could anyone think that voting against that bill was a good idea? I will tell the House why they voted against it. They voted against it simply because it came from the Conservatives. That is the only reason. It is a matter of partisanship, when what we are trying to do here is to take care of Quebeckers and Canadians, to put a roof over their heads. That is what we are trying to do here—
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Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent comment. I apologize. I can be quite intense, and I get fired up with tough subjects like this. I am now seeing homelessness in Lévis, which was never the case. I had never seen it before, but it is there now. We see homeless people. There are young people sleeping in shelters, under bridges or in their cars. That is not normal. It is unacceptable. Our leader introduced Bill C-356, which was defeated. I do not understand how anyone could have possibly thought it was not a good idea. How could they think it was a bad idea? The bill died at second reading.
I only have 10 seconds left, so I will end on this note: When we are sitting on the other side of the House, we will get this done.
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- Sep/19/24 10:56:33 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I just listened, for 20 minutes, to the member opposite talking about the job the Liberals have done over nine years on the housing file in Canada.
I represent Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte and there are housing encampments all over our riding now. Nine years ago, these did not exist. Just this week, I read in Barrie Today, there was another fire at a homeless encampment at Milligan's Pond.
Please, can the member opposite not admit that over nine years, things have become much worse in Canada, and homelessness is a serious issue now that did not exist nine years ago?
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- Sep/19/24 10:57:22 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, it is not fair to say homelessness did not exist nine years ago. Homelessness has been around ever since I was first elected back in 1988. The severity and the complexities, dealing with homelessness as the country has grown, have become fairly extensive. It is one of the reasons, in the number of years we have been in government, that we have more than doubled the supports to deal with homelessness. We continue to recognize that the best way to deal with it is with a united front, by working with municipalities, provinces and non-profit groups in order to minimize homelessness; that is absolutely critically important. We deal with it on a daily basis when working with others, in order to deal with it appropriately.
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- Sep/19/24 10:58:22 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my always eloquent colleague for her speech on a topic that is of the utmost importance in the riding of Shefford, for two reasons. I am talking about housing.
Granby has one of the lowest vacancy rates of all cities. That is the reality. The city took steps to address that. Now it needs help from the federal government. The problem affects seniors in particular. I was proud to stand beside my colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert last year when he unveiled the Bloc Québécois's 12 proposed solutions for fixing the housing crisis. He went on an amazing tour last summer that included a stop in Granby. We suggested 12 compelling solutions, including one that I think would really help, which is to review the budget for the Reaching Home program. Granby has a homelessness problem too, but it is not considered a designated community. Community groups in my riding believe it is crucial that this be changed. More money needs to be earmarked for cities like Granby that are grappling with homelessness for the first time.
I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about this. Did he take the time to read the report and the 12 proposals drafted by my colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert? What about the Reaching Home program?
Granby deserves its share of the budget.
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- Sep/19/24 10:59:46 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I suspect there are many communities, like Granby, that have all sorts of ideas to deal with these issues. It is not just high-density urban centres that are having issues with homelessness and housing for seniors. Many seniors want to live in the communities where they grew up. The demand for non-profit, low-income and fixed-income housing for seniors is there and it is very real.
There are critical things we can do by working with provinces. They play a critical role in non-profit housing, especially the expansion of housing for seniors. There are also some things we can do, including housing co-ops. There is so much more we can do with housing co-ops. We should be looking at policy initiatives to support and encourage them, and provide a certain level of education because a lot of people do not truly understand the benefits of housing co-ops. I do think that is a strong and viable option, in particular for seniors and low-income people on fixed income.
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- Sep/19/24 11:18:07 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
I would like to check that the member's comments are relevant to the matter at hand, which is homelessness and housing.
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- Sep/19/24 11:37:18 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the admirable and extraordinary member for New Westminster—Burnaby. I think he will have some very interesting things to share with us about the reality in his region and in his province.
I will start this intervention by thanking the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities for this motion. I find it interesting that we are having this debate in the House today. In fact, it is as though the committee told the Liberal government that there was a problem, that something was happening and that it has to wake up because there are people living in the street. There are people sleeping outside, in their car, in their trailer, in their truck. There are people sleeping on their friend's sofa or living in a two-bedroom apartment with five people because they can no longer afford housing. People are getting sick staying in bacteria- and fungus-infested apartments where the owners refuse to make the necessary renovations.
This crisis has been growing worse for years. The situation has really become dire. Every July 1 in Montreal, more and more families are ending up on the streets because they do not have a place to live. The rate of homelessness is rising everywhere. People are being forced to live in parks, in tents. We are seeing it in Ottawa, Montreal and across Quebec and Canada. That makes no sense.
Successive Conservative and Liberal governments have allowed this situation to get worse. For years, the leader of the Conservative Party, who used to be the minister responsible for housing, did not build even a single housing unit. In actual fact, he lost 800,000. During their nine years in office, the Conservatives lost 800,000 affordable housing units. The Liberals are no better. They lost nearly 300,000 and they are proposing completely ridiculous definitions of affordable housing.
Three years ago in Montreal, a two-bedroom apartment that cost $2,235 a month was considered affordable housing. Who can afford that? It just does not make sense. This is all because market logic and profit have been allowed to take over the entire real estate sector for years. Successive Conservative and Liberal governments have stopped viewing housing as a fundamental human right. Instead, they see it as a source of profit and returns.
It is fine for real estate to be a source of investment for people, for their retirement, for example, or to bequeath something to their child. I have no problem with that. However, if there is no off-market, social, co-operative, community and student housing, this vicious circle will simply continue. It only serves the interests of big investment companies, the real estate giants that have taken up more and more space in the real estate landscape.
In the 1990s, almost no homes were owned by these real estate giants. Today, these large corporations own more than 20% of the housing stock. They have no human connection to the people on site, to the tenants. They think strictly in terms of profits and returns. That is the crux of the problem. That market logic has taken over the entire housing sector in the past 30 years while the Conservatives and Liberals were on watch.
We can do things differently. We must do things differently, through what we call social housing or non-market housing. It currently represents just 3% of our housing stock here in Canada and a little more in Quebec. That is nothing compared to Finland, where it amounts to 10%, or Denmark, 20%. For years now, every time a piece of land, a house or an apartment comes up for sale in Vienna, Austria, the municipality invests to control the price of the lot, house or apartment. Today, in Vienna, the municipality owns 60% of the housing stock, which is under government control.
There are different ways of doing things. We need to reserve federally-owned land for non-profit organizations that can develop truly affordable housing. Since that is their primary mission, they are in the best position to do it.
Now the federal Liberal government is starting to wake up. I mentioned this earlier. It did nothing about co-op housing for eight years. Now, in the latest budget, it hinted that housing co-ops might be a good solution. Co-ops were a good solution in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. All across Quebec, there are successful housing co-ops where people are happy. People have a new way of thinking about housing. They work together to take care of their housing co-ops. The government needs to build more housing co-ops and take care of existing housing co-ops. Some of them need major work, and the federal government is not stepping up to support them. I think that is an important thing to consider. We need more housing co-ops, but we also need more programs to take care of housing co-ops so they last a long time and so we can control rents and keep them truly affordable.
The Minister of Housing just announced 56 locations that have been selected for affordable housing to be built on federal public lands. This is a good thing. The NDP has been calling for this for quite some time. However, we hope that this will not once again be handed over to private developers who just want to make a profit. The project must be assigned to non-profit organizations, or NPOs, and to organizations that can build housing that people can afford.
Let us not forget one very simple rule. People must not spend more than 30% of their income on rent. Paying more than 30% puts people in a precarious situation, sometimes under the poverty line. We need to stop thinking about housing based on the median price in one's region and start thinking about how we can ensure that people do not spend more than 30% of their income on housing.
Housing is not a luxury. Housing is a fundamental right. I welcome the recent reports from the federal housing advocate. She is doing extraordinary work. I think the Liberal government should take a page out of her book.
Too many measures in the Liberal housing strategy focused on private developers. The NDP wants to put a stop to that. One way to do that is to have an acquisition fund. We can take existing federal land, use it for truly affordable or social housing, give those contracts to non-profits, allow them to acquire the land or have a truly affordable lease so that they can build housing that will really help people.
We could also follow the example of Montreal and have an acquisition fund to buy private land or buildings and convert them into social or truly affordable housing. There is a fine example in Rosemont—La Petite‑Patrie: the Bellechasse site. It is public land with community groups, where the community has come together to create a new neighbourhood with a human face, where there will be mixed-income housing, but also social and truly affordable housing with public services, a school, and a park. It will be a nice place to call home. The federal government needs to work with the municipalities and the provinces to be able to complete such projects.
Too many people are just a hair's breadth away from losing their homes and ending up on the streets. We are seeing it more and more, in all our towns and municipalities. Vacancy rates are so low that people no longer have options. They are no longer able to find housing.
The Conservatives' approach of leaving everything to the market and the big corporations will just exacerbate the problem because that is exactly where the problem originated. We cannot move in that ultra-capitalist direction, where everything is seen only in terms of profit, while there are people suffering.
In my constituency, 15% of people spend more than 50% of their income on housing. That is obscene. More than half their income goes to housing. When you look at the cost of groceries on top of that, these people are obviously forced to make absolutely heartbreaking choices, and sometimes go and live in their van, truck or car. Alternatively, the might go and live with friends or relatives, where they will share a room, sleep on the sofa or on the floor, all of which is far from ideal. There is the visible homelessness, but there is plenty of invisible homelessness as well.
That is the result of 20 years of Conservative and Liberal inaction and bad policies.
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- Sep/19/24 12:23:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise on behalf of the good people of Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.
Rents are up, unemployment is up, food bank usage is up and time is up. Who tells us this? The Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, which I have sat on in previous Parliaments, does. In its study on the housing crisis in Canada, it says, “That the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities recognizes that 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”, which is why we are here today discussing this. I am going to cover three areas where I think we need to start looking at this.
The word “crisis” actually stems from a Greek word that essentially means to cut away. It means that of all the different choices we have, a crisis is meant to actually cut away from certain choices and stick to other ones. Unfortunately the current government is listless. It talks around the issue of housing. It says that it will create housing, but really the Government of Canada does not create housing. It can help finance it through CMHC insurance. It can use its fiscal power, which the current government knows because it is the only power it seems to want to use.
However, the Liberals have not convened the provinces to have big discussions around development cost charges reform or about zoning reform. They have chosen not to. Instead, they have sprinkled money at the problem, and as the previous member who spoke, the member for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, said, they have simply decided that they would do a review of existing lands and try to see whether they could do more to give lands, but they are not telling whom they would give the lands to.
It is actually developers who largely provide housing, but as the member previous said, we have seen a drop in places like British Columbia, where I am from, of over 30% in the last year in housing starts when we need them the most. The member is right; the David Eby government has largely failed on this issue since he took office. He had 100 days of action, and unfortunately, like the Prime Minister, he has floundered on the issue.
The three areas I am going to talk about are what we need to do a better job on, which is for workers, seniors and youth.
First I will talk about workers. I am from the Okanagan. I am very proud to represent three different valleys, but the Okanagan is known not just for its peaches and beaches, great wine or golf courses, but also largely for its retirement communities. There are a significant number of people who retire there for the weather and for the natural beauty. However, the problem I have noticed is that people who have money, especially when they cash out from Calgary, Vancouver, or some other place, often move to the Okanagan to live out their retirement.
As we get older, the question we have to ask ourselves in the Okanagan, particularly because there is very much a housing crunch, is this: Who is going to look after people as they age? Where are the younger doctors, nurses, firefighters, police officers and the support staff for many of the services seniors require going to live?
People with money always land on their feet, so I have encouraged every council that I know, and every mayor, to work on purpose-built rentals. I have to give the Kelowna multiple councils a big thumbs-up because they have done a lot of purpose-built rentals. However, it is not enough. I hear regularly, from tech employers to others in the industrial area, such as welders, etc., that they cannot keep welders and tech operators because there are very few places to rent. No one wants to stay in a community long-term, even as beautiful as Kelowna can be, or West Kelowna, if they cannot secure a home. Workers are being let down by both the Eby government in British Columbia and the Liberal government here in Ottawa.
The other side for workers is because of the problem of gatekeeping in this economy. We know that many municipalities have made it difficult to build.
Lots of people want to live in places like Victoria. Where do they end up? They go to places like Langford, where a lot of housing has been built to accommodate the demand. It is the gatekeepers in communities that make it harder. What are they gatekeeping? They are not just gatekeeping the homes that people will eventually live in; they are also gatekeeping the investment of billions of dollars that would be put into our economy and would allow workers to then be able to build homes. It would support the people who work in mills like Aspen Planers or the Weyerhaeuser mill in Princeton and Merritt, respectively.
There would be benefits to our economy, such as realtors and lawyers as they do some of the conveyancing. There would be so many knock-off effects in a place like British Columbia. The problem is that the government does not see the economic opportunity, nor does the provincial government see that the skilled trades have a huge opportunity to grow in this area. We are letting existing workers down because they cannot stay in places like Kelowna or West Kelowna, or if they can, they find short-term rentals, with no chance of ownership.
We are also letting down seniors. I will give an example because the particularly concurrence report before us speaks to homelessness. There have been renovictions in places like British Columbia. Why is that? It is because property values have gone up and because mortgage rates have gone up. People have bought homes, investing all of their sweat and equity, and rented them, and due to the government's policies, they have seen inflation and interest rates rise. Those go up and down, but we cannot negate the fact that people make economic decisions.
Many people have said they cannot afford a variable mortgage or to remortgage, so they sell. One senior did that and was living in her car at Tim Hortons. Someone asked me whether I could help that person. I went to that particular Tim Hortons three times at different times of the day, but I did not see the individual. Eventually, though, I gave information to the senior to help connect her with social services in British Columbia. However, she would have to drive to a place like Penticton because places like Summerland and other areas in the Similkameen Valley and the Nicola Valley do not have the same kinds of supports that are in bigger urban centres like Kelowna or West Kelowna.
By governments' not allowing more building, seniors do not have affordable places to rent right now. The NDP likes to say we should get not-for-profits to build more housing, or get government to build more housing, or co-ops or whatnot. However, those take a long time to form, and guess what, they are in the same queue, waiting behind the same people, because everyone is begging under the same bridge, so to speak, to get their approvals to be able to proceed under the gatekeeping economy.
The last thing I would like to talk about is youth. Partisanship aside, if we do not show young people in this country that they have the same opportunities that their parents and grandparents had to find a place that they can call home, that they can invest in and raise a family in, they will feel shut out by our economic system. There is a danger in that, because if we do not show that our current system works for young people, that they are not locked out from pride of ownership, then what will they do? They will go to radical voices that will promise them the moon and the stars, and then that will create all sorts of chaos, I believe.
This country, yes, feels broken to many, especially young people. The leader of my party, the member for Carleton, has been speaking to them directly, saying that we must do better. Not everyone in the room may like what the member of Parliament for Carleton has to say all the time, but I hope members get the message, because we need to do better, particularly for the next generation of Canadians, so they can have the same opportunities that we had.
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- Sep/19/24 12:37:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will start off by saying a few things that I know have never been said before in the House: axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Has anyone heard that before? These are not just slogans. These are four lines that capture the real-life struggles of real Canadians, and one of the struggles we are talking about today is about homelessness and housing.
I have an announcement to make. After nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, we have a housing crisis in Canada, in case anyone did not know, particularly in the Liberal benches across the way. It is a crisis caused by the worst housing policy ever in Canadian history. I thought I would lay out, for all those watching, some of what I call the Liberals' greatest hits of housing.
Let us start way back in 2017, when the Liberals announced to much fanfare that they would reduce chronic homelessness by 50%. That was only seven years ago. Then in 2020, they said they had upped their commitment and declared their focus to be on entirely eliminating homelessness in Canada. Back in 2018, they brought in their national housing strategy and spent $82 billion on housing. What is the result? The result is the worst housing crisis in Canadian history.
The cost of housing has doubled. Rent has become so expensive that a woman living in Kingston is spending 100% of her income on rent. It is reported that a man in Abbotsford had to continue living with his separated partner because he could not afford to move out. Mortgage payments have doubled. Canadians are living through a housing hell. The Building Industry and Land Development Association is reporting that 73% of GTA residents are dissatisfied with the availability and affordability of homes.
I will just pause for a moment to mention that I will be splitting my time with the great member for Cariboo—Prince George.
To get back to the facts, 90% of those living in the GTA believe there is a housing shortage, 83% think affordability is a significant issue and 59% say the cost of living is the most pressing issue. Let us talk about homelessness. In my hometown of Winnipeg, over 1,200 people are homeless. Last week, I had the great privilege of meeting with Jim Steep. Jim Steep is the executive director of Agape Table. Every day, it serves meals to the homeless. It has done this since 1980. I volunteered there several times giving out meals. Agape has been doing this for over 40 years. The day I was there last week, they served 1,010 meals in just the morning, the highest number in its 44-year history.
At the finance committee, we have been studying the housing crisis for about a year. Last October, I had the chance to question Cam Guthrie, mayor of Guelph. He was elected in 2014. On the record, I asked him how many homeless encampments were in Guelph in 2015. He said zero. I asked him how many there were today. He said 20.
Two million Canadians are now lining up at food banks. One alarming statistic is the increase in the working poor who are visiting food banks. These are people working three jobs, working single mothers having to choose between paying rent and feeding their children. The Liberals have spent $82 billion on their much-vaunted national housing program since 2018, but the PBO reports that since that same year, the number of homeless people has increased by 20% and the number of chronically homeless people has increased by 38%. Something is clearly not working.
According to the Homeless Hub, the number of homeless in Canada ranges from 150,000 to 300,000. Then there are the hidden homeless, the couch surfers, estimated to be up to about 900,000 people. The Auditor General says the federal government does not even know if its initiatives aimed at reducing chronic homelessness are working.
In Vancouver, homeless services found 4,820 people were homeless this year, compared to 3,634 in 2020, a whopping 32% increase in three years. In 2018, the number was 2,181. In Halifax, the number of homeless jumped from 119 in 2019 to 879 in 2024, an increase of 637%. Let us talk about Toronto encampments. In that city, on March 15, 2023, there were 82 encampments at 24 sites. One year later to the day, March 15, 2024, there were 202 at 72 locations. These are just facts.
The Government of Ontario estimates that nearly 250,000 people, roughly three out of every 200 residents, are homeless. In Mississauga, as of May 5 of this year, there were 256 encampments. It has been reported that so many people are homeless that they are being turned away from homeless shelters. It is so bad, that people have resorted to sheltering in ERs in cold weather. ER visits by homeless have skyrocketed by 68%.
In Saint John, New Brunswick, the number of homeless has reached 600, according to Fresh Start. In Quebec City, the number of visible homeless increased by 36% between 2018 and 2022. In Sudbury, it is up, from 164 to 237. In Waterloo, it is up 129% since 2020. In Montreal, it is up 33% since 2018. I could go on and on, but the reality is that there is a tsunami of homelessness across this land.
I find this debate ironic. Every day, we are privileged to come here to work in the House of Commons, the people's house, but the stark reality is that after nine years of the Liberals, while we work in the people's house, the people do not have a house. It is a catastrophic failure of the Prime Minister.
Last year, CMHC came to the finance committee and told us that to get back to housing price equilibrium, Canada would need to build three million additional homes by 2030. In 2023, Canada built 240,267 homes. Three million additional homes by 2030 would mean that, on top of that number, we would need to build an additional 500,000 homes each year. That is not going to happen. We have never built more than 270,000 homes in a single year, yet just last April, the Prime Minister announced to much fanfare that he would build 3.87 million new homes by 2031. It is just not going to happen, like so many of his promises.
I remember that they were going to plant two billion trees, reduce cellular costs and balance the budget by 2019. Instead, the Prime Minister doubled the national debt in just nine years. The reality is that Canada's housing inflation is now the worst in the G7 relative to income.
I could go on and on, but my time is almost up, so I will just point out that the Conservatives brought forward a common-sense bill, the building homes not bureaucracy act, which would have incentivized municipalities to build more homes. The Liberal-NDP coalition voted it down. The reality is that only common-sense Conservatives would build the homes that Canadians can afford by firing the gatekeepers and tying infrastructure funding to housing starts. Let us build the homes.
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