44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 19, 2024 10:00AM
- Sep/19/24 11:51:26 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with most of what my colleague said.
There is one thing that he did not really talk about that I would like him to elaborate on. It is a suggestion that the Bloc Québécois has made many times. My colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert has spoken about it at length. I am talking about the creation of an acquisition fund that would enable non-profit organizations, the community sector, to acquire affordable housing on the private market and then make it available.
What does the member think about that suggestion?
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- Sep/19/24 11:51:48 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is another solution the NDP is proposing.
With regard to an acquisition fund, I mentioned Vienna, which has truly set an example internationally. Montreal increased its fund recently, too. I think we need to do our part and use public land for truly affordable public housing. However, we also need to work together to be able to buy private land in order to break free from this market logic.
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- Sep/19/24 11:52:20 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after the disastrous years of the Harper government, it seems ridiculous to me that the Conservatives claim to be mildly concerned about housing. We remember the huge cuts made to social housing during the grim Harper years. It was appalling. Half of the problems we see today result from the unfortunate fact that the Liberals followed too closely in the Harper government's footsteps. Half of the problems we face today were caused by the Conservatives. Not a single Conservative is prepared to stand up and apologize for all the years when no housing measures were taken. The Conservatives slashed social housing budgets and upheld the Liberal practice of having no national housing program.
I find it a bit ridiculous now to hear the Conservatives talking as if they care about housing when half the problem results from their poor governance during the Harper years. This is evident across the country. As my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie said, it is unfortunate that neither governing Liberals or Conservatives showed concern for social housing or co-operative housing or took an interest in solutions already discussed many times in the House by the NDP.
An NDP government will address the housing crisis and will regard housing as a fundamental principle. All Canadians must have a roof over their heads and have access to affordable housing. We feel confident making that promise because in every province where the NDP has formed government, we have managed to get more social housing built than Conservative and Liberal governments. What is more, NDP governments have invested more to ensure that people are housed.
We have already been through a situation when we had problems with building enough affordable housing for Canadians, and it was during the Second World War. We put everything into the war effort to beat Nazism, that extreme right-wing ideology that devastated Europe. When the women and men who served overseas came back to Canada, we put in place, structurally, a budget in which corporations paid their fair share and we devoted money to housing.
Members will recall that the CCF, the NDP's predecessor party, was leading in the polls in the first postwar election, and the Liberals took the CCF's push for affordable housing and, with the agreement of all parties in the House of Commons at that time, embarked on a massive national affordable housing program.
We as a country succeeded in building three million affordable homes over the course of four years, including my home, where my wife and I live, in New Westminster. In fact, in New Westminster—Burnaby, almost every house from Sixth Avenue to Tenth Avenue was built under that program. They were comfortable, well-built, affordable bungalows that were built throughout the Glenbrooke North neighbourhood.
Right across the country, we see the housing stock that was built at that time. In Toronto and Montreal, in every city in the country and in many rural areas, we succeeded in ensuring that for every single person who served in the Canadian Forces overseas, there was affordable housing available to them when they came back.
We had at that time a fair tax structure. What has changed? What changed, of course, was the intent in the 1990s, which we saw with both Conservative and Liberal governments, to try to change the tax system so wealthy corporations and wealthy Canadians paid less, and this became most apparent during the disastrous Harper government years.
As the Parliamentary Budget Officer tells us, we lose $30 billion each and every year to overseas tax savings, thanks in large part to the famous, or infamous, Harper tax-saving treaties, where the wealthy and privileged in this country, and very profitable corporations, can take their money offshore, pay no tax on it and then bring it back to Canada.
That $30-billion fiscal hole was created by Conservatives. No Canadians wanted to thank them for that. In fact, it is one of the principal reasons the Harper government was thrown out in 2015. That fiscal hole meant we have seen little or no investment in social housing and co-operative housing that could make a difference for so many Canadians.
Why? Co-operative housing, social housing, is based on 30% of income, which is affordable for all. When we have a co-operative housing sector with clean, well-built, affordable homes, people can live their lives there. At 30% of their income, they are no longer struggling to put food on the table, to make ends meet or to skimp on their medication to try to pay their rent.
It allows Canadians to live with the quality of life that is important, especially when it comes to people with disabilities. In this country, about 50% of those on our streets who are unable to find affordable housing are people with disabilities. This is catastrophic, yet the government has done very little to address it.
On the housing front, the NDP has forced investments, and we are going to see, I think, in the coming months, more of that affordable housing built. The government was not willing to do it on its own. It was the NDP forcing the government to make those investments that has started to make a difference.
What we really need is something on the size and scale of the undertaking after the Second World War, when we said we would make sure every Canadian was housed and we built millions of units of affordable housing. It stimulated the economy and created many jobs for tradespeople; it made a difference.
The disastrous previous Harper government was the worst government in Canadian history and the most corrupt government. We have never gotten to the bottom of the scandals that occurred during that time, because committees were completely shut down during the Harper majority. We could not get to the bottom of the ETS scandal, with its nearly half a billion dollars in misspending, because Conservatives shut down parliamentary institutions.
A cutback in the Auditor General's department ensured that independent officers of Parliament were starved of funds. The disastrous Harper government was the worst government in Canadian history in terms of fiscal management and, of course, in terms of oversight. Not a single Conservative has ever apologized for that disastrous period of time when the Auditor General and the PBO were starved of funds and we saw record deficits each and every year.
The Conservatives did take care of two groups. Billionaires and big corporations got their $30-billion-a-year tax break; they could take their money to overseas tax havens, thanks to Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. The other group was the banks; $116 billion in liquidity supports was given to them in a heartbeat.
Of the $116 billion in liquidity supports, tens of billions of dollars came from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. There is a sad irony in both Liberal and Conservative housing policies. They are willing to use the CMHC to prop up the banks; both Liberals and Conservatives have done that. The NDP is willing to use the CMHC to build affordable housing and not willing to use the CMHC funding now given to corporate landlords to say they have to cap rents.
There is no doubt we could be doing so much more in housing. The member for Burnaby South and the entire NDP caucus have raised these issues repeatedly, and we are looking forward to a time when an NDP government could ensure that affordable housing is built across this country. Every Canadian deserves to have an affordable roof over their head at night and the NDP will continue to work to that end.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate some of the comments the member has put on the record this afternoon. We are now into day two of the fall session. On the first day we were debating the citizenship bill, which I understand a majority of members of Parliament want to see go to committee. In fact, the member's own party had a member stand up for unanimous consent to get it to committee, but it was frustrated in part because of a concurrence motion.
Today, we are interrupting Bill C-66, which deals with sexual assaults and violence in the Canadian military, and with an option. All political parties support that legislation, and yet instead of having that debate, we are now debating another motion for concurrence. I am wondering if my colleague across the way can provide his thoughts. It is not to take away from the importance of the issues, but, relatively speaking, what about important legislation that does need to proceed at some point?
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- Sep/19/24 12:03:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have said this in the House before: There are two bloc parties in the House of Commons, the Bloc Québécois and the "block everything" party. What the Conservatives have done by blocking everything is block measures that would actually bring support to their constituents.
The NDP dental care plan that the NDP forced through the House of Commons with the support of the Liberals has now served 700,000 Canadians across the country. On average, for every Conservative riding, 2,000 of their constituents have benefited from dental care, and Conservatives blocked that. They have blocked pharmacare. They have blocked every measure the NDP has been pushing through to actually help their constituents. I think their constituents will judge the Conservatives on that in the next election.
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- Sep/19/24 12:04:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have to say that I found the member's speech rather interesting. He criticized the Harper government of nine or 10 years ago, in which his version of history is definitely different from what most Canadians remember. The member then went on to criticize the Liberal government, which he was a part of. Now, because the New Democrats have ripped up the agreement, the member says he is no longer a part of it. He does not take any responsibility for when he supported the Liberals in their actions on housing.
It is time for the member to put up or shut up. Is he going to vote with the Conservatives next week, have no confidence in the government, and go to the polls and take his ideas to Canadian voters so they can decide?
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- Sep/19/24 12:05:04 p.m.
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It is very rich, Madam Speaker. The Conservatives say, “Oh yeah, we are really concerned about housing”, but they have not asked a single question about housing through this debate, which shows the hypocrisy of the Conservative Party. They say they want to have a debate on housing but they do not really want to have a debate on housing because their record was absolutely abysmal.
The member pointed out that the NDP has forced the Liberals to actually invest in affordable housing again and he is right on that point. Yes, the NDP has succeeded in the first investments in 20 years. However, my point back to the member is this: Why did the Conservatives do such an abysmal job on housing and why will they not take responsibility for the fact that many people who are homeless today are homeless because of the cuts in social housing that the Harper government forced on Canadians when it was in power?
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- Sep/19/24 12:06:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we in the Bloc Québécois completely agree with the expression used by my colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby. In fact, it was my colleague, the member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, who talked about a sort of Marshall plan, a wartime-style effort to invest in housing.
My colleague spoke at length about investments in housing. I think it is important to recognize that, when it comes to housing, what the federal government can do is invest. It must not withhold funding based on any conditions. His party supported the federal government while it was withholding the $900 million owed to Quebec. Then again, it is no better if cities' jurisdictions are not respected and if Quebec's municipalities are punished, like the Conservatives want to do, despite the fact that many, like Granby, have great plans.
What we need to do now is support the cities that have plans, not punish them and withhold federal money. That money needs to flow to Quebec and the provinces. I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.
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- Sep/19/24 12:06:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I could not agree more. The federal government should support municipalities and cities like Granby, New Westminster, Montreal and every other city in Canada. That money should be flowing.
The NDP managed to get billions of dollars out the door to build new housing. I hope we can reach a consensus in the House to keep increasing funding for affordable housing so that everyone in this country can have a roof over their head.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to take part in the debate today. I will be splitting my time with the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.
I find this to be a fascinating debate. We are debating concurrence in a committee report that says 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. We are talking about it being a crisis that requires urgent action.
It was interesting to hear the exchange between the Liberal member and the NDP earlier. The Liberal member for Winnipeg North in particular was complaining about the fact that we were discussing this today. He consistently complains about these things. He referred to Bill C-66 and made an urgent call for us to get back to that. I know all parties support the bill. It has been before the House for over 180 days. We sat until midnight virtually every night in the spring and the government did not bring the bill forward. We did not have the conversation, so it was not urgent at that point in time. Our shadow minister has signalled that we support this. We recognize that there are some things all parties in the House support, and that bill is one of them. Hopefully it will be a priority for the government and will pass very soon.
I believe this report also passed unanimously, recognizing the crisis situation and the urgent need to have conversations.
The wording and type of language is very familiar. In the Liberal 2015 platform, close to a decade ago, the Liberals said:
We will conduct an inventory of all available federal lands and buildings that could be repurposed, and make some of these lands available at low cost for affordable housing in communities where there is a pressing need.
About a decade ago, and recognizing the similarity in wording, the Liberals promised to make this a priority and recognized that there was a “pressing need”.
Nine years later, in the 2024 budget, the Liberals almost used identical wording. They talked about the federal government conducting a “rapid review” of its entire federal land portfolio to identify more land for housing. That was an active sentence, that the federal government is conducting a rapid review. I guess “rapid”, by the Liberal definition, is nine years for something urgent, and the situation has only become worse.
I found it really interesting to listen to the NDP interventions on this, particularly that of the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, who talked about the current government and how terrible it was, forgetting the fact that up until two weeks ago he was, for all intents and purposes, a part of the Liberal government through the Liberal-NDP coalition. I will note that, as terrible a fiscal situation as we were in in 2021, when the NDP joined the Liberal Party, things only got dramatically worse for Canadians after it joined the then completely incompetent Liberal government. We are sitting in a situation right now where rents, down payments and mortgage payments have doubled. Canadians who have mortgages coming due right now, after five years, are going to, without a corresponding increase in their income and their ability to pay, be paying hundreds of dollars, in some cases over $1,000 more, in their monthly mortgage payments without any increase in their income. The NDP members have supported the situation that has gotten us to this place, this predicament right now, every single step of the way for the last three years.
There has been a lot of talk about the Harper years. I was a part of that government from 2006 to 2015. I had the privilege of serving on the cabinet subcommittee that looked at ways to get the budget back to balance, which we did by 2015.
However, I would go back to the situation in 2014. There was a pretty interesting conversation going on, driven by the New York Times and some international research institutes. They found that in 2014-15, Canada had the richest middle class in the world. I am sure there were challenges for some Canadians, but, by and large, we were in a better fiscal situation than any country in the world. Even people like Hillary Clinton were lamenting this in conversations in some of the articles that were written at the time. Experts from around the world were pointing to Canada as an example of how to deal with a difficult financial situation coming out of the global meltdown. That was in 2014.
Let us fast forward 10 years to 2024. We are no longer the richest middle class in the world. Our middle class is, as a percentage of our population, by all measures, contracting. Regular people, people who never, ever even contemplated the fact that they would need to use a food bank, are now lining up at food banks with their kids in cities across Canada.
Let us look at the situation we are in again, and listen to the NDP talk about the housing crisis and where we are right now relative to the past. This crisis did not exist in the same way in 2015. Let us look at cities across the country. Housing starts in August were down 13%. At this time, when we need to be building houses, housing starts are down 13% across the country.
I would note that in the Liberal member's city of Winnipeg, housing starts are down 16% from August 2023. In B.C., under the provincial NDP government, housing starts are down an astonishing 31%. In Vancouver, which is very close to New Westminster, where the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby is from and represents, housing starts are down 34%. In Toronto, under the leadership of a former NDP member of Parliament, Olivia Chow, housing starts are down 48% over the last year. Those are just astonishing drops in housing starts across the country.
We have a real crisis. I think all parties have recognized that this is a crisis and that we need to deal with it urgently now.
One member of Parliament in the House has been dealing with this issue right from the start. That member of Parliament is our Conservative leader. In 2021, at the start of the pandemic and the explosive additional spending by the Liberal government, which was eventually propped up by the NDP, he brought up the effect of the increase in interest rates over and over again. He was mocked for bringing it up by the finance minister and by the Prime Minister on a regular basis.
A year ago tomorrow, we were talking about a private member's bill that our leader had put forward, a bill that would deal with the housing crisis in an urgent way, in a common-sense way. I will not have time to read all the highlights of that bill, entitled the “Building Homes, Not Bureaucracy Act”. Canadians can look that up on ourcommons.ca. However, I will point out that when we put out this common-sense, good-faith bill to get more houses built in Canada, every non-Conservative member of the House, Liberal members, along with members from the Bloc and NDP, voted against that private member's bill that would have created significant action toward housing over the last year.
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- Sep/19/24 12:17:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is truly amazing. The member even admitted that he was a part of the Harper government when the leader of the Conservative-Reform party today was then the minister of housing.
The minister of housing at that time, today's current leader of the Conservative Party, was an absolute and total disaster. He did absolutely nothing about housing. In fact, because of his incompetence back then, he has added to the problem we have today with respect to housing. To try to champion him as some sort of a leader on this file is absolutely ridiculous.
My question for the member, who was there supporting the minister of housing at the time, is this. Why does he believe his current leader has any credibility at all when it comes to housing?
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- Sep/19/24 12:18:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that hon. member lives in a fantasy world that I can only imagine visiting one day.
If we look at the facts around that time, our Conservative government took on a global economic disaster and we set out a plan to get back to a balanced budget by 2015. In 2014, Canada had the richest middle class in the world.
Fast forward 10 years and we are running unthinkable record deficits. The cost of housing, mortgage payments, down payments and rent is double what it was when our current leader was the housing minister.
Prices have doubled in that time, yet that member has the audacity to celebrate in the House the imagined success of his Liberal government. That is ridiculous.
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- Sep/19/24 12:19:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, but after hearing what he had to say, I have some questions.
I would like to know what the Conservatives plan to do about housing, other than the Conservative leader 's bill, which would basically impose conditions on cities and punish them. It completely ignores cities' existing development and environmental protection plans. That is not productive.
Cities already have their plans. They already have ideas for housing. We put forward a 12-point plan. What cities need now is cash transfers so they can put their plans into action. They do not need additional conditions that will just slow them down.
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- Sep/19/24 12:20:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a lot of respect for the hon. member. When we look at the current situation, and we have heard this from members from all parties, we have to acknowledge that the status quo is not working.
Certainly the answer cannot be to throw more money at the problem. The amount of record spending that the government has done over the last decade has led us to the fiscal crisis we are in, as well as the inflation crisis, the housing crisis and all of these different things.
Again, I would urge Canadians to look at our leader's building homes, not bureaucracy bill. I could read through some of the bullet points, but beyond the measures that talk about transfers through municipalities, one of the areas is to withhold transit and infrastructure funding from cities until sufficient high-density housing around transit stations is built and occupied. Cities will not receive money for transit until there are keys in doors. That is just common sense.
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- Sep/19/24 12:21:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there is so much to say, but I will try to keep it short and simple.
I kept thinking about one thing while the member was talking about his time in government under the Harper government. While the Harper government was in power, while the current Leader of the Conservative Party was the housing minister, 800,000 affordable homes were lost.
We know that we have lost affordable homes under the Liberal government as well. I do not know if we want to ask who is doing worse here, but we did not get here overnight. It has been consecutive Conservative and Liberal governments that have led us to the position we are in now.
My question for the member is as follows. In that plan, does he talk about large corporate greed swooping in and buying up affordable homes?
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- Sep/19/24 12:22:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, again, the situation we are in right now is infinitely worse than the situation a decade ago.
We are sitting in a situation where, in the member's province, run by an NDP government, housing starts in the middle of a housing crisis are down 31% over the last year. We can go back a decade in history, but what is probably more relevant to this conversation is the last three or four years in which the NDP and Liberals have worked together to create the absolute crisis that demands urgent action right now.
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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 12:32:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, development cost charges, of course, are necessary to pay for water and sewer hookups, and I would not mind the member's reflection on the general policy of municipalities that new pays for new, and whether or not there are some alternatives to that over and above a reasonable ask that development cost charges be lower.
One other thing I would not mind the member's reflecting on is speculators. The number of homes in Canada owned by a speculator, an investor, has gone way up. More than that, though, property, land, in municipalities is being brought by speculators. They get upzoning on it and then sit on it, waiting to flip it. That is another area where we should look to the municipalities to put sunset clauses on zoning and do a bunch of other things.
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- Sep/19/24 12:33:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as a former municipal councillor for the great community of Penticton, I learned that under the Local Government Act, yes, municipalities are authorized to create development cost charges to capture some of the costs for building new. However, let us be remindful of two things.
First of all, when a development cost charge is added, without explaining what can be charged and what should be considered a development cost charge, there will always be bureaucratic overreach over a period of time. Things like community art, which should be paid by all taxpayers in a community, are now being jammed into DCCs.
I will just be mindful that places like my old community of Penticton, just before the new council took office in the current term, said that Kelowna raised its DCCs and that Penticton should increase them by 50% to play catch-up. This is the problem. People are not asking whether development cost charges are correct or whether they are the right items and at the right costs. They are playing follow-the-leader, and the leader is more expensive. What does that mean? It means young people have less opportunity to own a home, because that is who pays for it.
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- Sep/19/24 12:34:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member started off by talking about the Greek word for “crisis” and the words about cutting away choices. I know that people in my community are worried about Conservative cuts. They are worried about seeing the same thing they saw in the Harper government, where there were cuts to health care and investments in housing. We need to invest in building more housing and getting non-profit housing providers the funding and support they need to buy up buildings and protect them from real estate investment trusts and corporate landlords.
I am curious whether the member supports the idea of investing in a rental protection fund, investing in building housing and ensuring that we are increasing our housing supply. What I would like to see cut—
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