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Results: 31 - 45 of 346
View Anthony Rota Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Brad Vis Profile
CPC (BC)
moved:
That, given that,
(i) the cost of housing continues to rise out of reach of Canadians,
(ii) current government policy has failed to provide sufficient housing supply,
the House call on the government to:
(a) examine a temporary freeze on home purchases by non-resident foreign buyers who are squeezing Canadians out of the housing market;
(b) replace the government's failed First-Time Home Buyer Incentive with meaningful action to help first-time homebuyers;
(c) strengthen law enforcement tools to halt money laundering;
(d) implement tax incentives focused on increasing the supply of purpose-built market rental housing units; and
(e) overhaul its housing policy to substantively increase housing supply.
He said: Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the member for Mégantic—L'Érable.
In the Building the Future Together report, Canadians told the government that the most important outcome from the national housing strategy would be “an increase in the supply of housing that they can afford and that meets their needs.”
At a time when many expected the cost of real estate to drop, prices skyrocketed to stratospheric levels, leaving young Canadians, new immigrants and those seeking to enter the housing market with a general feeling of hopelessness as their dream of home ownership slipped away.
I table this motion today because housing is farther out of reach than ever before, and we find ourselves in an affordability crisis across the housing continuum. I will be using my time to speak to each aspect of the motion and to address the integrity measures, demand policies and supply deficit in our housing system. This crisis is multi-faceted and there are no easy solutions, but the status quo is not okay.
My first point addresses Canada's foreign buyer issue. We need to calmly, openly and comprehensively talk about the very real and at times negative role foreign buyers play in Canada's residential real estate markets. We know the actions of foreign speculators and investors are increasing home prices for regular Canadians.
Dr. Josh Gordon's report, “Reconnecting the Housing Market to the Labour Market: Foreign Ownership and Housing Affordability in Urban Canada”, has found that the decoupling of housing prices from local incomes can occur, and arguably is occurring in Vancouver and Toronto especially, when there is substantial foreign ownership in the market. This is defined as “the use of untaxed foreign income and wealth for housing purchases”.
While he makes good use of the data at hand, in my conversations with Dr. Gordon it became clear that the available data is insufficient. CMHC, StatsCan, and provinces and territories need to be collecting better data for this reason. For instance, a CMHC study found that in 2016-17, one in five new Vancouver condos was owned by non-residents, but we need more current and more comprehensive data. Housing in Canada must be for Canadians, first and foremost.
If we do not have the data, we cannot achieve this objective. The government's own parliamentary secretary for housing publicly admits that our system works better for foreign investors than for Canadians trying to find homes. However, the government's solution is a proposed 1% annual tax. It has not even begun consultations on this yet, and the exemptions are already longer than my arm.
Will the government commit to a meaningful disincentive to foreign buying of Canadian real estate? Why not a 10% tax? Better yet, the government should do what this motion calls for and freeze the flow of foreign money into our residential real estate sector until the supply deficit has been met and Canadians can afford homes in their own country.
People are losing faith in the institutions that are supposed to protect their interests. When the pandemic ends, and before foreign investors come back to our markets in force, we need to know who is purchasing homes and the sources of the funds they are using. UBC Professor Paul Kershaw of Generation Squeeze has suggested harnessing foreign investment for the types of housing Canada needs, such as co-operatives and affordable purpose-built rentals.
Point number two addresses first-time home buyers. We must ensure that there is a pathway for hard-working Canadians to achieve home ownership, but this dream is quickly moving out of reach for the middle class. Home ownership should not be based on being born to wealthy parents. It should be based on hard work and a fair system.
Habitat for Humanity recently shared that “home ownership matters for every social determinant of health”. Home ownership lifts families and helps them build bright futures for themselves.
The Liberal government, unfortunately, is absent on this issue. Its first-time homebuyer incentive program is a failure. Its original objective was to help 200,000 Canadians over three years. We are now in year two, and it has helped approximately 10,600 families. How on Earth can the government consider this program successful?
Why does it not look at extending amortization periods and mortgage terms to reduce monthly payments and provide more security for both lenders and borrowers, or help young families save for down payments through tax incentives?
What about adjusting mortgage qualification criteria in favour of first-time home buyers rather than investors, or expanding some of the initiatives from the private sector, including new shared equity programs?
The third point is money laundering in Canada. Yet another failure of Canada is our inability to address money laundering. The reason terms like the “Vancouver model” and “snow-washing” exist is because our nation is a global case study in how not to stop money laundering. Not only are our laws and regulations ineffective, but we poorly enforce the ones we have. Report after report shows that Canada largely fails to successfully convict money launderers. Almost three-quarters of people accused go free, a 2019 Global News investigation found. The Toronto Star found that 86% of charges laid for laundering the proceeds of crime were withdrawn or stayed. B.C.'s Attorney General shockingly found years ago that Ottawa had assigned precisely zero RCMP officers to fight money laundering in B.C. That only changed after January of this year.
At the finance committee, Transparency International highlighted that the 2016 release of the Panama papers showcased Canada's global reputation as a desirable place for dirty cash. Five years later it found that nothing had changed.
The government needs to implement recommendations from the numerous experts who have explored this issue. These include Peter German's “Dirty Money” reports parts 1 and 2, the Expert Panel on Combatting Money Laundering in B.C. Real Estate and the ongoing Cullen commission of inquiry into money laundering in B.C.
The fourth point is purpose-built rentals. Purpose-built rental construction has not kept pace with demand. Quite simply, there are no incentives for developers to build rental units in Canada and this needs to change. Much of Canada's current rental housing stock was built in the 1970s and 1980s through the multiple unit residential building program, or MURB. It was not a grant or a loan program, but a tax incentive program that unlocked the private capital of Canadians and directed it to rental housing. According to the Library of Parliament, MURB is estimated to have led to the construction of 195,000 units of rental housing at the lowest estimate. Studies have indicated that number could be as high as 344,000 units. It did all of this for the comparably low cost of $1.8 billion in forgone revenue, and that is in today's dollars.
The government is spending $70 billion on the national housing strategy, including provincial money, for 125,000 units. At some level, the federal Liberals know this is the way to go, hence the rental construction financing initiative, but this still ties developers to the federal bureaucratic process, which is slow. The Rental Construction Financing Initiative, RCFI, has quietly become the largest single funding envelope of the national housing strategy. Now at $25.75 billion, it promises to deliver 71,000 units of housing in approximately 10 years. This is not a great comparison with MURB's 195,000 units for $2 billion.
CMHC's new CEO, Romy Bowers, shared with the HUMA committee that the private sector is the only way we will meet Canada's housing needs. I agree. There are additional tools that could unshackle contractors as well. For instance, why not waive the GST for the construction of purpose-built market rental housing, or allow those with aging rental stock to defer the capital gain when selling provided the money is reinvested in rental housing? Increasing the nationwide stock of purpose-built market rental units serves to better everyone along the housing continuum. Canadians have never had more disposable income. Why not direct that to a social policy that could do some good?
The fifth point is increasing supply. We know Canada has a housing supply shortage. According to a recent Scotiabank report, Canada has the lowest number of housing units per 1,000 residents of any G7 country. Experts have been saying this for years, and COVID illustrated it better than anything else. Now many but not all of the policy levers to increase housing supply rest with provincial and municipal governments. Yes, red tape at these levels is a problem, but the federal government should incent the removal of restrictive zoning and NIMBYist bylaws by making any infrastructure investment conditional on their removal. Of course, any infrastructure funds must be accounted for transparently, unlike the current government's haphazard approach condemned by the Auditor General in report 9—
View Louise Chabot Profile
BQ (QC)
View Louise Chabot Profile
2021-06-08 11:15 [p.8074]
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his presentation on what is a major problem in Canada, the housing crisis.
We had the opportunity to discuss these issues at several meetings of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, because it is a matter of concern.
What the Bloc Québécois is really concerned about on the issue of housing and affordable housing is that we know that this is Quebec's and the provinces' jurisdiction.
Does my colleague not believe that the solution is to have the Government of Canada transfer the amounts to the provinces and to Quebec based on their socio-demographic profile? That is the solution being proposed by the Bloc Québécois.
View Brad Vis Profile
CPC (BC)
Madam Speaker, yes, a lot of the responsibilities to address supply rest at the municipal and provincial levels. That said, the federal government can use tax incentives to increase supply and work with its provincial and municipal partners to address this big crisis impacting Canada. Scotiabank recently wrote an article in The Globe and Mail calling for the federal government to get moving and work with private sector partners, provinces and municipalities to do just this.
Secondly, the finance minister and the Prime Minister, after budget 2021, said that housing supply was a real problem and now we need to act on it. Why did they not do anything in budget 2021 when they had the opportunity?
View Adam Vaughan Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Adam Vaughan Profile
2021-06-08 11:17 [p.8075]
Madam Speaker, the member opposite has an interesting list of ideas. Not a single one of them appeared in the party platform when the Conservatives ran in 2019. It is good that the Conservatives have finally decided to talk about housing, but I will remind them that the housing market we are trying to fix, the housing market that the national housing strategy is addressing and the crisis and the emergency in this country around homelessness, most importantly, are never mentioned in any Conservative speech and never mentioned in any Conservative policy platform. While the Conservatives talk about tax cuts, the change to the MURB and to the rental housing tax code was done by a Conservative government. The previous minister of housing, the member for Carleton, used to brag about how unregulated the housing market was and how much the Conservatives did not want to regulate the housing market.
Why have the Conservatives suddenly discovered this issue, and why are they so late to this game?
View Brad Vis Profile
CPC (BC)
Madam Speaker, let me just point out that indigenous groups such as the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association Indigenous Caucus have long been calling for a “for indigenous, by indigenous” housing strategy, which the current Liberal government talked about doing but did not deliver. Instead of pointing the finger at the opposite side of the House, the parliamentary secretary should acknowledge, as the Prime Minister and the finance minister did, that Canada has a supply crisis. This member was in committee with me the other day when the CEO of CMHC, Romy Bowers, indicated that if the federal government is not working with the private sector, we are not going to address the affordability challenges we have in Canada.
We have to get to the bottom of supply.
View Don Davies Profile
NDP (BC)
View Don Davies Profile
2021-06-08 11:19 [p.8075]
Madam Speaker, when there is a complete decoupling of house prices from domestic incomes, I think the conclusion is clear that foreign capital is definitely skewing the market. I agree with my hon. colleague that it is time to put effective curbs on foreign speculation, which is destabilizing our local housing markets and putting affordable housing out of the hands of millions of Canadians. However, I must say I disagree with him when he says that the solution is the private markets. If there is one thing that is clear, it is that the private sector has not provided and cannot provide affordable housing for all.
The member mentioned co-ops. Does he agree with the New Democrats that it is time to reimagine and deliver the very successful federal co-op program of the 1970s and 1980s to provide that form of home ownership and hundreds of thousands of units to Canadians?
View Brad Vis Profile
CPC (BC)
Madam Speaker, I do not know the 1970s co-op strategy at length, so I cannot comment on that, but our leader, the hon. member for Durham, has signalled that co-operatives need to be a part of addressing the supply challenges we are facing in Canada. He made those comments to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade.
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-06-08 11:20 [p.8075]
Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to speak to the motion moved today by my colleague from Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon.
Housing is of fundamental importance to Canadians across the country. Most Canadians dream of having a house, a residence, a home, a place of their very own. Housing is also an essential need for many others who unfortunately do not have access to housing or the ability to buy a home. In other words, as the motion says, the cost of housing has increased so much that buying a house is quite simply not an option for many Canadian families right now, and especially young families. The cost of housing continues to rise as we speak. To sum up the situation we are currently facing, Canada's housing market is out of control.
Over the past two years, total housing sales in Canada increased by 75%, compared to the United States, where home prices increased by just 13%. In the past year, the average house price increased by 32%. That increase is nearly twice as high as the increase in the United States.
Available data from Canadian Real Estate Association statistics indicate that, in Quebec, housing prices have increased significantly since the start of the pandemic. In April 2020, the average cost of a house in Quebec was just under $340,000. By April 2021, the average cost of a house had climbed to nearly $450,000. That is a 32.6% increase.
Here is a brief overview of what has been happening in Quebec's regions. According to the Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers, in the first quarter of 2020, single-family home prices rose by 32% in Gatineau and 29% in Montreal. In Quebec City, prices went up by 15%; in Saguenay, 24%; in Sherbrooke, 32%; and in Trois-Rivières, 21%. The market is absolutely crazy. That is not my opinion. That is what Michel Girard said in his analysis of the real estate market, an article entitled “Un marché immobilier fou raide”, published on April 3.
Over the last year, residential construction has increased by 22%, despite the rising cost of materials, and has brought the share of housing in Canada's GDP to 9.3%. That is a record.
What are the Liberals doing about this unacceptable situation? Do they even realize the extent of the crisis?
The ministers, of course, have their canned answers and their talking points that they can repeat ad nauseam today, but they are once again unable to present a credible plan to fix the problem.
In May, the Bank of Canada reported that household debt and market instability had increased over the last year, as we have just seen. On the subject, the Bank of Canada said, “The vulnerability associated with elevated household indebtedness is significant and has increased over the past year.” It also said, “If house prices and household incomes were to fall in the future because of a shock to the economy, some households could need to cut back on spending. This would slow the economy and possibly put stress on the financial system.”
The Governor of the Bank of Canada pointed out six vulnerabilities that could lead to the collapse of Canada's financial networks if they were affected by a severe external shock, such as a recession. Two of the six vulnerabilities identified were related to housing. The first is the high level of debt that Canadians have been forced to take on in order to buy a house and the second is the ever-increasing cost of housing and accommodations.
Bank of Canada researchers believe that households whose mortgages represent over 450% of their income are particularly vulnerable to bankruptcy. There are already very telling figures with regard to bankruptcy and financial hardship. According to Government of Quebec real estate statistics, the number of acts of financial difficulty increased by 49% from April 2020 to April 2021, going from 357 to 533 acts, even though interest rates are still very low right now.
Generally speaking, when Canadians are continually forced to increase their already high levels of debt because of an imbalance between supply and demand, Canada's future growth is at risk.
Unfortunately, the government is not really doing anything when it comes to giving Canadians access to affordable, or even adequate, housing. The current policy has failed to create a sufficient supply of housing to meet the demand in Canada. As a result of this failure, young Canadian families are having more and more difficulty obtaining affordable housing. That is a reality that far too many young couples and families are facing as first-time homebuyers. Housing options are limited and out of reach. The pandemic boom, as we could call it, has resulted in a 30% increase in housing prices in many cities and towns in Canada.
One of the Liberal government's solutions in budget 2021 was to impose a 1% tax on foreign owners of vacant housing. Unfortunately, this policy is nothing but a farce. What is 1% to ultra-rich foreign business people who see their investment grow by between 20% and 40% in a single year? This is merely a minor inconvenience for wealthy foreigners. Meanwhile, the situation is a disaster for many Canadians who continue to put their dreams of owning a home on hold. The fact is that speculative foreign buyers in the Canadian real estate market distort the market and ultimately put home ownership out of reach for Canadian families and workers.
Rather than simply inconveniencing foreign buyers, the government should seriously consider a temporary freeze on home purchases by non-resident foreigners. If the government really was concerned about foreign speculation, it would have taken concrete action by now.
Why does the government refuse to do something about the fact that the Canadian housing market is secure for foreign investment but unaffordable for Canadians? Why is the government turning its back on young families while continually allowing foreigners to buy up properties on the market in order to make a quick buck and, in many cases perhaps, pursue illicit activities?
Steps should also be taken to get rid of the Liberal government's failed first-time home buyer incentive. This program, designed to provide eligible buyers with an interest-free government loan, is a huge failure. A year and a half into this three-year program and only 9,100 homebuyers have used it. That is a far cry from the 100,000 buyers the Liberals anticipated would use the program when they introduced it. Not only did Canadians reject the idea of the government having a financial stake in their home, but this program does nothing to resolve the accessibility problem currently plaguing Canada's housing market.
Housing experts note that the program's eligibility rules simply do not reflect the reality of the skyrocketing prices of homes in Canada's largest cities and, as we are now seeing, in the majority of the towns and municipalities in every province across Canada. The $1.25-billion amount that was given to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to operate this program could certainly be better used to legitimately help first-time homebuyers in Canada.
The housing supply is insufficient, so the government needs to focus on building more housing. As a result of policies introduced by Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the 1970s, Canada has not managed to build enough housing to meet the needs of our growing population, which led to the crisis we are now seeing. While low interest rates and other economic factors did contribute to this situation, the policies unfortunately did nothing to address the housing shortage plaguing our market.
In conclusion, Canadians cannot ignore this issue any longer. We need to ensure that Canadians no longer have to shoulder the cost of the Liberals' mismanagement. We need real measures to even out the housing market and provide housing for the young families and Canadians who really need it.
View Adam Vaughan Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Adam Vaughan Profile
2021-06-08 11:30 [p.8077]
Madam Speaker, it is fascinating listening to the Conservatives talk about housing, because they talk about one very narrow part of the housing spectrum continuously at the expense of all others.
The last story I covered as a journalist was the first budget of Stephen Harper in a majority government. There was not a single dime for housing in that budget. When I asked the prime minister at the time why that was, he told me to read the Constitution, and being the good Conservative and fundamentalist that he was, he said that housing was not a federal responsibility.
In fact, the Conservatives tried to sell off CMHC. The Conservatives, when they double-crossed their voters, and double-crossed their own caucus, eliminated every single income trust except for real estate income trusts, and we can go right back to that decision and see housing prices just take off like a rocket.
The Conservatives destroyed Canada's housing market, and we have put in place a national housing strategy to fix it. All the Conservatives can do now is come back and talk about tax cuts and supply. They have not talked about the homeless. They do not talk about co-op housing. They do not talk about the need to create purposeful rental housing. They do not talk about anything other than first-time buyers, and when it comes to that, where is the policy—
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-06-08 11:32 [p.8077]
Madam Speaker, I can see my colleague is quite nostalgic about his time as a journalist, but I must remind him that the Liberals have been in power for nearly six years. Also, I did mention that low-income Canadians unfortunately do not have access to housing and that we need a more robust housing strategy to build homes for people who do not have them.
Unfortunately, the national strategy my colleague is referring to does not actually work. I think he should be looking at the Liberals' record over the last six years instead of trying to look at what happened before that. His government is unable to keep its promises, and Canadians are the ones who end up paying more for everything and becoming homeless.
View Luc Desilets Profile
BQ (QC)
View Luc Desilets Profile
2021-06-08 11:33 [p.8077]
Madam Speaker, the triennial progress report on the national housing strategy clearly demonstrates that the three targets set in 2017 have not been achieved. In concrete terms, only 39% of the planned new housing has been built, only 42% of renovations have been completed and just 12% of subsidies have been disbursed.
That said, I just want to remind my colleague that housing is an exclusive provincial jurisdiction. We cannot say this enough.
What is his reaction to that? Does he also remember that although the strategy was put in place in 2017, it took three years for Quebec and Canada to come to an agreement on it?
I just want to hear his comments on that.
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-06-08 11:33 [p.8077]
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
It is completely unacceptable that it took three years to figure out what logo would be on the cheque. My colleague is absolutely right.
It shows once again how little respect the Liberal government has for the provincial jurisdiction of housing. It should have quickly reached an agreement with Quebec. If it had, perhaps the issue of access to affordable housing for most Quebeckers who presently have none and are struggling would already have been solved.
Instead, the federal government wasted three years trying to score partisan points negotiating an agreement that should have benefited Canadians first and foremost, instead of being used for political gain. I completely agree with my colleague that it is wrong.
View Alexandre Boulerice Profile
NDP (QC)
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech.
I was pleased to see that the Conservatives are interested in the housing issue, because it is a veritable crisis across the country, including in my riding in Montreal. However, there is something missing in their motion. There are two words that do not appear anywhere: “affordable” and “social”. Affordable housing and, in particular, social housing are the best solutions for providing decent housing for people based on their income.
Why are the Conservatives not interested in social housing?
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-06-08 11:35 [p.8077]
Madam Speaker, the more housing there is, the more we can ensure that affordable housing will be built and the easier it will be to find a solution to this problem. As my colleague mentioned, we are very open to the idea of co-op housing. We need to find a solution, and the Liberal government must present—
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