44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 19, 2024 10:00AM
- 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 10:18:05 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are all very aware there is a huge housing crisis happening right now. In my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, people are being particularly hard hit. For example, a two-bedroom in Nanaimo right now costs $2,459 per month. Who can afford that? Not many Canadians can.
Unfortunately, a problem that both the former Conservative government and the Liberal government have been allowing is for large corporations to swoop in and buy up affordable homes, yet the Conservative member is now saying he has the solution. When the leader of the Conservatives was the minister of housing, he built zero affordable homes in British Columbia.
When will the Conservatives actually take the problem seriously and build affordable homes that people can live in, not just allow rich developers to be propped up?
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- Sep/19/24 11:01:14 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I represent South Okanagan—West Kootenay. I have always said that it is the most beautiful riding in this country and, because of that, people want to live there, and so housing prices are very high. However, average incomes are on the low side, because people work more in the service and agricultural sectors, and so we have kind of big urban housing prices and rural wages. I go to the city planners in my hometown of Penticton and ask what we are doing about increasing the housing market. The Conservatives are saying to just build more houses. The city planners say, “We are building more homes every day in Penticton than we have ever built before in history. ” Yet every day we have fewer affordable homes, because the new homes that are being built are being snapped up by investors rather than by people who need them. The people who need them cannot afford them, and the investors are keeping those prices up.
As the member just mentioned, we need more co-ops, more affordable homes that are built specifically for the people who need them, and yet this government is doing precious little to actually fill that need. This is where we have to be concentrating our efforts over the coming years: building affordable homes like we did after the Second World War when we built millions of homes that people could afford. I live in one of them right now. What is this government doing to build affordable homes?
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- Sep/19/24 11:05:23 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will just focus on the leader of the official opposition who was in the previous Conservative government and, in fact, was minister of housing. While he was minister of housing, he was very successful in building six houses in a country of 30-plus million people. To contrast that to what we have done, we are talking six-digit figures of renovating and building homes, and the numbers continue. We have a very ambitious plan. In fact, if the Conservative Harper regime had had a plan half the size of our plan, the issues we are having today would be nowhere near as severe.
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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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- 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 12:49:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it seems to me, from what I understand, that the Conservative idea for housing is to build more houses. As I said in an earlier intervention, it is a simplistic approach that would not work and is not working.
In Penticton, my hometown, we are building more homes every day than we have ever built. There are new big buildings going up with new condos and apartments. Every day in Penticton, according to the housing experts there, we have fewer affordable homes because all those new homes are being built by clearing out affordable homes and creating investment opportunities for investors who can afford them. None of the people needing a home in my hometown can afford these new homes, and the new homes the Conservatives want to build would be unaffordable.
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- Sep/19/24 12:50:11 p.m.
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We heard it here, Madam Speaker. The Conservative slogan is “build the homes”, and the NDP's new slogan is “build fewer homes”. It is hard to believe that they are the folks who were allowed to run the country for the last two years. Thank heavens, after we win the non-confidence vote next week, they will be gone.
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- Sep/19/24 12:51:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the mortgage crisis, despite what the Liberals will tell us, was caused by them. They allowed the bank governor to jack up the money supply by 23%, and the $600 billion in cash printed spiked inflation. It was not the war in Ukraine that caused inflation. It was not supply chains. It was the watering down of the value of our currency that spiked inflation, which directly led to this mortgage crisis. Now, on top of the affordability problems and on top of everything else, we will start to see people lose their homes. It is catastrophic and very sad.
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- Sep/19/24 12:51:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House. It is not my first time rising in the House in this new session, but it is the first time I do so with a lengthy intervention.
This is an important debate. I do not think there is a member of Parliament, whether from the Liberal side, the Conservative side, the Bloc side or the NDP side, who can go out into their communities, into their ridings, and say that things are good. If they are being truly honest, taking a look in the mirror and taking a look around, they are seeing that our communities look like war zones. There are encampments we did not have nine years ago. That is the honest-to-goodness truth.
I ask Canadians paying attention to this debate today and all those in the gallery to really ask themselves if we are better off today, nine years after the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party came to power. The housing crisis in Canada is no longer just a crisis; it is a catastrophe that has robbed a generation of hope, stability and the dream that home ownership is within reach.
Let me start by addressing the stark reality. Canada's housing market is broken, and it is broken because of nine years of inaction, empty promises and failed policies from the NDP-Liberal government. For the last nine years, the Prime Minister has promised time and time again to solve the crisis. For every election he has been a part of, he has stood in front of the cameras, put his hand on his heart and promised to sell off federal lands, to build new homes, to build millions of homes for Canadians and to end homelessness. Every time, he has broken that promise.
The Prime Minister and his government have failed at housing. They can try to cast blame on the leader of the Conservative Party or the former Conservative government. They can try to deflect and deny and give some obscure, convoluted answer as to why this crisis is happening. However, at the end of the day, they have had nine years and they have failed.
Let us talk numbers; numbers do not lie. They paint a disturbing picture of just how badly the Liberals have let Canadians down over the last nine years. In Vancouver, one of our largest cities, it now takes over 100% of a person's average household income to afford a home. We should think about that for a moment. People would need to spend their entire income, and more, just to get out of their parents' basement. That is before taxes, which have risen to a level that is crushing our middle class under the Liberal government.
This is not only unsustainable but also absurd. How can we expect our children or our grandchildren to ever afford a home in these conditions?
Toronto is not far behind Vancouver. These two cities are now among the most overvalued housing markets in the world. This is not just a Canadian problem; rather, it is an international embarrassment.
Housing bubbles in Vancouver and Toronto have made headlines globally, but the real stories, the ones that matter, are the stories of the people who live in these cities and every other city and town across Canada. They are the stories of the young professionals who work hard and save diligently; still, they look at the housing market and feel nothing but despair.
They are the stories of paramedics who live in their vehicle. They work a nine-to-five or a 12-hour shift serving our communities but cannot afford a home and have to shower at the local pool or recreation centre. This is a real story.
They are the stories of young families forced to live hours away from their jobs because they cannot afford a home in the city where they work. They are the stories of seniors who, after a lifetime of contributing to society, now find it impossible to downsize because the cost of housing is skyrocketing everywhere.
They are the stories of dozens and hundreds of homeless encampments that have sprung up in our communities, where such encampments were unimaginable just nine years ago.
Rest areas along our public highways have turned into mobile home camps, with trailers and RVs, where people are forced to live because they cannot afford a home. A staggering 63% of Canadians aged 18 to 34 now believe that they will never be able to afford a home. Can we imagine? There is a generation of Canadians who no longer see home ownership as part of their future.
It is more than just a statistic. It is a reflection of broken dreams and lost opportunities. When young people lose faith in their future, we lose the backbone of our community, of our society. We lose innovation, creativity and growth. We lose what makes Canada, Canada. How did we get here? The answer is clear; it is failed leadership.
Since taking office in 2015, the Prime Minister has promised time and again to address housing affordability. He claimed that housing was a priority and his government was taking action, but the facts tell a different story. Housing prices have doubled since the Prime Minister took office. Rent prices have doubled, and in some cases, tripled. Mortgage payments have doubled. Meanwhile, the measures that the government has introduced have been nothing more than band-aids on a wound that requires surgery.
Under the Liberal government's watch, foreign speculators have been allowed to buy up homes, driving prices skyward, which has pushed middle-class Canadians out of the market. Now, the Prime Minister is grandstanding, saying we are going to build four million new homes by 2031. That equates to a new home every 57 seconds, every day of the year, for the next seven years. That means the Liberals should have built over 236,000 homes since the 2024 budget was tabled on April 16. I wonder how they are doing on that. I can say it has not happened. In fact, housing starts are now down by 13% across this nation. I know math is not the Prime Minister's strong suit, but how can he possibly expect Canadians to believe him when he uses such blatant fantasies to try to cling to power?
It is not just about the numbers related to new home builds. It is about the experience of Canadians. People are seeing their rent increase by 20%, 30%, 50% or 100% in some cities. A single-bedroom apartment in Vancouver that was $1,300 in 2015 now rents for over $3,000 a month. A two-bedroom apartment in Toronto is unaffordable for most middle-income families. For many Canadians, home ownership is no longer the dream; it is just about surviving. In my riding, in Prince George, the average home price jumped by 140% from 2016 to 2020, and it is even worse now.
Alia Landry, a single mother of two from Prince George, “used to be able to rent a [whole] house with a backyard for $800 a month.” Sadly, under the NDP-Liberal government, rent has skyrocketed, forcing her and her children out of their home into a smaller unit, where she was forced to share a bedroom with her daughter. She said this: “There were nights I went to bed crying because I just didn't know what I was going to do”.
I heard the same story from Prince George resident Dara Campbell, whose mental health suffered after being forced to move. At that time, she and her partner strained to find an affordable home on a limited budget. She said this: “I was really, really anxious.... I would cry in my car. It was really hard, just not knowing [where I was going to live].”
Over 5,000 new homes are needed in Prince George by 2031 just to meet the projected population growth. If we do not get them built, people will end up homeless. Prince George already has the highest homelessness rate in British Columbia. My constituents are calling out for help from the federal government, only to be met with empty promises and soaring costs. However, hope is on the horizon. When Canadians get the carbon tax election they deserve, they will be able to vote for a prime minister who will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget, finally stop the crime and bring home a Canada that they can be proud of.
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- Sep/19/24 1:02:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to hear the member talking about the importance of affordable housing. I also think it is important that we focus on this. I want to point this out, though: When the Conservatives were in power, they lost 800,000 affordable homes. I also want to point out that, when the current leader of the Conservative Party was the housing minister, he built zero affordable homes in British Columbia.
Exactly how would the member suggest we do it? Why does he never talk about the fact that both the former Conservative government and the current Liberal government have allowed rich CEOs to swoop in and buy up affordable homes, leaving people without the basic human right and dignity of a home, a roof to put over their head?
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- Sep/19/24 3:17:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Canada greener homes program is very important for improving building efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Many people have already received money from the federal government. However, if there are problems in my colleague's riding, I will be happy to discuss it with him to try to find a solution.
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