Hon. Éric Forest: Colleagues, the housing crisis is very real. Affordable housing is in terribly short supply everywhere. The real estate market situation is just as bad. It’s incredibly difficult for our young people to become homeowners when the average cost of a mortgage was 34% of disposable household income in the Montreal area in 2022, compared to 20% in 2016.

According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, we need 3.5 million units by 2030 to restore balance in the market. Quebec alone needs 1.13 million units, 620,000 more than anticipated.

To address this huge challenge, all three levels of government absolutely have to work together. It’s important to remember that the federal and provincial governments have been, for the most part, disengaged from social housing construction since the 1990s.

We know homelessness and inadequate housing are problems in big cities. That’s a tragedy in and of itself. The housing crisis is also having an economic impact on our regions. For example, in Rimouski, hundreds of students won’t be able to go to university in 2023 for lack of available housing. How can anyone attract skilled workers or health care workers when the vacancy rate is 0.4% and the housing market is overheated?

There can be no doubt that the municipal officials facing this reality on a daily basis are struggling to find solutions. The right to housing is a fundamental right. It is important that all sectors involved work together. It is also important to recognize that municipalities have a central and critical role to play because they are responsible for land use.

Beyond funding, I think it is essential, for example, that municipal taxation be amended so as to encourage urban intensification and to make it easier for municipalities to purchase land. They could then promote real estate projects for non-speculative purposes. Instead of threatening municipalities and cracking down on them, we should be supporting them.

In that sense, the new Housing Accelerator Fund announced in Budget 2022 was deployed this summer and is proving to be a first step in the right direction, particularly to induce change towards the urban intensification that is needed. With an envelope of $4 billion, this fund will finance municipal action plans to rapidly increase the housing supply. A municipality that relaxes its bylaws to promote secondary suites, for example, could receive funding, provided that this relaxation actually translates into concrete results.

Madam Speaker, we’re currently experiencing an unprecedented housing crisis. It requires an unprecedented response. Without additional funding, regulatory flexibility and the cooperation of all public and private players, this problem will never be solved.

Thank you.

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