Bill C-356

Building Homes Not Bureaucracy Act

An Act respecting payments by Canada and requirements in respect of housing and to amend certain other Acts

This enactment enacts the Building Homes Not Bureaucracy Act in order to
(a) establish a target for the completion of new homes in high-cost cities that increases 15% every year and ties federal infrastructure funding allocated to high-cost cities to that target;
(b) provide for the reallocation of $100 million from the Housing Accelerator Fund to municipalities that greatly exceed housing targets;
(c) require that federal transit funding provided to certain cities be held in trust until high-density residential housing is substantially occupied on available land around federally funded transit projects’ stations; and
(d) make it a condition for certain cities to receive federal infrastructure and transit funding that they not unduly restrict or delay the approval of building permits for housing.
It also amends the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act , the National Housing Act and the Excise Tax Act in order to
(a) eliminate executive bonuses unless housing targets are met and to reduce executive compensation if applications for funding for new housing construction are not treated within an average of 60 days; and
(b) provide a 100% GST rebate on new residential rental property for which the average rent payable is below market rate.
In addition, this enactment requires the Minister of Public Works to table a report on the inventory of federal buildings and land, to identify land suitable for housing construction and to propose a plan to sell at least 15% of any federal buildings and all land that would be appropriate for housing construction, subject to certain exceptions. Finally, it requires the Minister of Public Works to place these properties on the market within 12 months of tabling the report.

The House resumed from May 27 consideration of the motion that Bill C-356, An Act respecting payments by Canada and requirements in respect of housing and to amend certain other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Housing

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, when I was the minister responsible, the cost of housing was half of what it is today.

The Prime Minister has not only doubled the cost of housing, he is spending money on growing the very bureaucracy that is blocking construction. I have a common-sense plan in Bill C‑356, which we will be voting on this afternoon. We are going to cut construction taxes, sell federal land and buildings to build housing, and offer big bonuses to municipalities that allow more and faster housing construction.

Will he vote for more housing?

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

This morning I was in the House, and there was a debate around Bill C-356. It's the Leader of the Opposition's bill, which would actually essentially put a tax, the GST, back on apartment building homes. Would that have a negative impact on the sector if it does pass?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, our government tabled a plan to free up 250,000 new housing units by 2031 on federal, provincial, territorial and municipal public lands.

The Conservative leader has debated his housing plan, Bill C‑356, which will sell federal buildings to the highest bidder with no guarantee of affordable housing.

Can the public works minister explain to Canadians how our federal land conservation plan will create affordable housing across the country?

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, today, the House is debating Bill C-356, the Conservative leader's housing proposal. In the Conservative leader's bill, there is no mention of students, seniors, workers or the most vulnerable in the country.

Could the Deputy Prime Minister please tell Canadians what our plan focuses on, how we are working to create more affordable homes faster across Canada and how the Conservative leader's plan would slow down builders?

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our government presented Canadians with a housing plan that will increase the housing supply across the country. A core measure of the plan is the removal of GST from new apartments, student housing and co-operatives.

Earlier today, the House debated the Conservative leader's housing plan, Bill C-356. The bill would actually put the tax back on the construction of middle-class apartments.

Can the Minister of Housing tell Canadians where the government stands on the Conservative leader's plan to reimpose a rent tax on middle-class apartments?

Building Homes Not Bureaucracy Act

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-356 reiterates the Conservative leader's talking points about the housing crisis.

According to him, the municipalities are responsible for the housing crisis by tying up real estate development projects in supposedly needless red tape. One of the Conservatives' proposals is to set a target for increasing the number of housing starts. Beginning on April 1, 2024, the target would increase by 15% each year.

Bill C-356 places the entire blame for the housing shortage on the municipalities, even though the current crisis would not have been this severe had Ottawa not pulled out of funding for social housing under the Harper government.

Bill C-356 would in effect put municipalities under outside control by preventing them from taking measures to ensure a minimum of social housing or from protecting their built heritage, under penalty of having their funding reduced—including funding for the development of public transit.

In my riding of La Pointe-de-l'Île, I have met met many times with seniors, families and community associations and that has helped me realize the enormity of this tragedy. Expensive condos are already largely available on the market. What is sorely lacking is affordable housing. The resulting mad scramble for rentals betrays people's growing sense of despair. They feel that the government is doing nothing to help them.

The pressing issue is not to continue encouraging big real estate developers to participate in this frantic race, but rather to address the housing shortage affecting most low-income people. The Bloc Québécois has already made a wide range of proposals and interventions. For example, it is proposing that the federal government reorganize its funding for the various programs under the national housing strategy to create an acquisition fund. This kind of fund would enable co-operatives and non-profit organizations to acquire apartment buildings currently available on the private market, keep them affordable and convert them into social, community or deeply affordable housing units. For example, in my riding of La Pointe-de-l'Île, Corporation Mainbourg, in association with the Quebec government and the City of Montreal, acquired Domaine La Rousselière. This is a 720-unit complex that will be protected from the speculative market to ensure its long-term affordability will be maintained.

The Bloc Québécois has long said that the provinces and municipalities are in the best position to know the housing needs on their territory. It is not the federal government's place to interfere. I would remind members that housing is exclusively under the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. Since 1973, Quebec law has prevented the federal government from negotiating directly with municipalities, and Bill C-356 would tear up that agreement. It would create a series of conflicts. It took two years to reach the agreement, and we cannot afford another two-year delay that will bring all projects to a halt. All of the interference brought in by Bill C-356 means that this irresponsible bill would create a breach that would foster sustained conflict and certainly paralyze every project, right in the middle of a housing crisis.

I would remind members that we welcomed the $3.7-billion Canada-Quebec housing agreement signed in 2020. Half of that money came from the federal government, but the negotiations took three years. The funding that was supposed to go to Quebec was blocked until the two levels of government came to an agreement. Had that happened in 2017, Quebec could have built and renovated many social and affordable housing projects since then, which would have helped mitigate the current housing crisis.

In closing, the Bloc Québécois deplores the federal government's constant need to spend its money, interfere in Quebec's jurisdictions and tell Quebec how to spend its money. We are asking that the federal government transfer its share with no strings attached. That is why we will be voting against Bill C-356.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that there is a great deal of latitude in terms of how we address different speeches in this House. The issue at hand right now is housing, Bill C-356, a private member's bill brought forward by the hon. Leader of the Opposition.

The member is currently talking about provincial politics. That does not seem to fit within the scope of this bill. Furthermore, she is talking about some far alt-right conspiracy theory. Again, I am not sure how that fits within the scope of this bill.

I would ask you to make a ruling, Mr. Speaker, that would be most appropriate for this.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

The Chair has been very tolerant of the beginning of the hon. member's speech, but the Chair would appreciate it if the member would draw all this together with the private member's bill before the House at this time, Bill C-356.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this morning to speak to Bill C-356, an act respecting payments by Canada and requirements in respect of housing and to amend certain other acts, introduced by the leader of the official opposition.

On reading Bill C‑356, it is obvious that the bill blames the entire housing shortage on municipalities, but this crisis would not be nearly as serious as it is now if the federal government had not decided, under Harper, to withdraw funding for the construction of social housing.

The bill seeks to exercise control over the municipalities by preventing them from taking measures to protect their farmland, from setting a minimum percentage of social housing, or from protecting their built heritage, on pain of having their funding slashed, including funding for public transit development. This bill denies any federal responsibility in the matter and confirms that the Conservative Party will do nothing to address the crisis if it comes into power.

It is also a bill that offers no solutions. The market is not lacking in luxury condos. What is lacking is housing that people can afford. That is where the government should focus its efforts. This notion, however, is completely absent from the Conservative leader's vision. Bill C‑356 gives developers the keys to the city so they can build more condos that rent for $3,000 a month or more.

In short, the bill's solution to the housing crisis is to let the big real estate developers do anything, anywhere and anyhow. The populist solution offered by the bill ignores the fact that people do not only live in housing, but also in neighbourhoods and cities. That means they need infrastructure for water and sewers, for roads, and for public and private services, such as schools and grocery stores. Cities have a duty to ensure that their residents are well served and to lay down conditions.

This is also a bill that will cause bickering. As members know, since 1973, Quebec's Act respecting the Ministère du Conseil exécutif has prevented the federal government from dealing directly with Quebec municipalities. The Canada-Quebec infrastructure framework agreement reflects this reality, stipulating that the federal government has no right to intervene in the establishment of priorities. What Bill C‑356 would do is tear up this agreement. Although it took 27 months to negotiate the agreement, Bill C‑356 sets the stage for two years of bickering, during which all projects will be paralyzed. In the middle of a housing crisis, this would be downright disastrous.

If a municipality's housing starts do not increase as required by Ottawa, Bill C‑356 would cut its gas tax transfer and public transit transfer by 1% for every percentage point shortfall from the target the bill unilaterally sets. For example, in Quebec, housing starts are down 60% this year rather than up 15%, so transfers would have been reduced by about 75% if Bill C‑356 had been in effect. That is unacceptable.

Bill C‑356 goes even further by withholding funding for public transportation if cities do not achieve the 15% target it unilaterally sets. This policy would encourage car use, since transit would only be built after the fact, not in conjunction with new housing developments.

It is clear that Bill C‑356 is not a good solution to the housing crisis in Quebec and across Canada. As members know, the housing crisis currently plaguing Quebec, which was once known as one of the most affordable provinces, is not confined to large cities. It has been a problem in my region for more than 15 years. It has resulted in a shortage of housing units and restricted access to affordable housing.

In my riding, the housing crisis affects both availability and affordability. Prices are also limiting access to housing in the regions. Although the housing crisis initially affected mostly low-income households, it is now increasingly affecting companies' ability to recruit and retain employees.

I cannot help thinking of Nunavik, in my riding. Half of all Inuit in Nunavik live in overcrowded housing, and almost a third live in homes requiring major repairs. This overcrowding created serious issues during the pandemic. We even had to bar access to the communities to protect them from exposure to the virus.

The housing crisis in southern Quebec is nothing compared with the situation of Inuit communities in Nunavik, in the north. It is not unusual for five, six, seven or even eight people to live in a two-bedroom unit. If one of them has social issues, it impacts the entire family.

The housing problem in Nunavik is nothing new. There has been a housing shortage since 1990, when the federal government stopped funding construction for five years. Nunavik currently needs around 800 more social housing units.

The housing shortage in Nunavik has also been a long-standing obstacle for students. Its impact on students who live in cramped accommodations can be severe, since they have no place to study or do their homework in peace. In addition to affecting young people, the housing shortage and lack of infrastructure in Nunavik are having a significant impact on every aspect of education, notably the working conditions of local staff, the ability of school boards to hire and retain teachers, and the ability to offer specialized programs.

Students are not the only ones affected by the housing crisis. Entire families are impacted by toxic cohabitation. This is not something that is tracked in housing statistics, and it is often neglected in analyses of the crisis. It refers to couples who are separated but continue to live together because they cannot find another place to live. It also refers to households in which one member develops an alcohol or drug addiction, which can compromise the safety of the other members of the household.

Bill C-356 will certainly not remedy all these problems. However, the Bloc Québécois already has a vast array of potential solutions to suggest.

Let me name a few: that the federal government gradually reinvest in social, community and truly affordable housing until it reaches 1% of its total annual revenue to provide a consistent and predictable funding stream instead of ad hoc agreements; that all federal surplus priorities be repurposed for social, community and deeply affordable housing as a priority in an effort to address the housing crisis; that a tax be placed on real estate speculation to counter artificial overheating of the housing market; that the home buyers' plan be reformed to account for the increasingly different realities and family situations of Quebec households; that the federal government undertake a financial restructuring of programs under the national housing strategy to create an acquisition fund; that Quebec receive its fair share of funding, without conditions, from federal programs to combat homelessness, while also calling for the funding released in the last year of the pandemic to be made permanent.

The Leader of the Opposition should have based his bill and its wording on these sound proposals by the Bloc Québécois. A simple transfer to the Quebec government with no conditions attached would be ideal. Had this been done in 2017, Quebec could have built and renovated a number of social housing projects three years earlier. It certainly would have mitigated the housing crisis we are facing today. Unconditional transfers would make the funding process much simpler. In contrast, the various agreements add to the associated red tape and increase the wait time for actually collecting the sums in question. I would point out that the programs enacted by the Quebec government are often innovative and effective.

It must also be said that the Bloc Québécois has reiterated the need for federal funding to target first and foremost all the myriad needs for affordable social housing, as this is where the most pressing needs are.

Bill C-356 is not the way to go if we want to build housing and cut red tape. That is why we must vote against Bill C-356.

The House resumed from October 30, 2023, consideration of the motion that Bill C-356, An Act respecting payments by Canada and requirements in respect of housing and to amend certain other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Requirement of Royal Recommendation for Bill C-356—Speaker's Ruling

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The Chair is also ready to rule on the point of order raised on October 24, 2023, by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons concerning Bill C-356, An Act respecting payments by Canada and requirements in respect of housing and to amend certain other Acts, standing in the name of the member for Carleton.

On October 19, 2023, the Chair had also raised issues with this bill and invited members to make arguments on its need for it to be accompanied by a royal recommendation.

In raising his point of order, the parliamentary secretary argued that the bill would infringe on the Crown’s financial prerogative by repurposing $100 million from the housing accelerator fund and by implementing a 100% GST rebate on new residential rental property for which the average rent payable is below the market rate. Page 838 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, states:

A royal recommendation not only fixes the allowable charge, but also its objects, purposes, conditions and qualifications. For this reason, a royal recommendation is required not only in the case where money is being appropriated, but also in the case where the authorization to spend for a specific purpose is significantly altered. Without a royal recommendation, a bill that either increases the amount of an appropriation or extends its objects, purposes, conditions and qualifications is inadmissible on the grounds that it infringes on the Crown’s financial initiative.

Following a careful review of Bill C‑356, the Chair is preoccupied with some elements that would cause a withdrawal from the public treasury for new and distinct purposes.

The bill seeks, among other considerations, to authorize a minister to disburse up to $100 million to municipalities that surpass identified housing targets. This amount would be withdrawn directly from the consolidated revenue fund, although the bill requires a minister to table a plan to reallocate funds from the housing accelerator fund program to offset that amount. Moreover, the bill also proposes certain circumstances for which a 100% GST rebate on new residential rental property may be paid out.

The aforementioned elements would cause new and distinct charges against the consolidated revenue fund, thus constituting an infringement on the financial initiative of the Crown.

Accordingly, Bill C-356 must be accompanied by a royal recommendation, and without one, the Chair will not put the question at the third reading stage of the bill in its present form.

When this item is next before the House, the debate will continue on the motion for second reading of the bill and the question will be put to the House at the end of the debate.

I thank all members for their attention.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Right, thank you. In fact, it was an election promise made by the Liberal Party that we are still waiting to see come to fruition.

I asked the minister a question about this earlier. I think Bill C‑59 contains a lot of things relating to housing that seem to me to be similar to those we find in Bill C‑356 introduced by the Conservative Party leader. Could you tell us today, or else in writing, what similar items there are in the two bills?

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to split my speaking time with my colleague, Mr. Morrice, who represents very important values. If you could stop me after two minutes, I would let him have my last two minutes of speaking time.

Minister, on the subject of housing, cracking down on Airbnb is an excellent measure. Using federal lands for building social housing is an excellent measure. These are two very good measures.

A lot of witnesses have reminded us of the importance of having an acquisition fund for getting existing rental units out of the market in order to protect them from financialization and make sure they stay affordable. That is very important.

In the economic statement, I get the impression that you have stolen an idea from the bill introduced by the Conservative leader. One thing you could do is to reduce infrastructure transfers if municipalities do not build enough housing. I am enormously concerned about such a measure. With higher interest rates, for example, we have seen housing starts collapse in Quebec. That is not the municipalities' fault, but it leads to lengthy delays.

I would like to hear more details about this measure that you want to adopt, to threaten municipalities that their funding for housing will be cut if they do not build enough units.

Motions in amendment

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Madam Speaker, “We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and, ultimately, human fulfilment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down.” That is a quote by the great Ronald Reagan.

After eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, it is abundantly clear that it is not worth the cost. Its economic mismanagement, malpractice and neglect on the economy has led to some of the most miserable outcomes for Canadians today. We have a Prime Minister who says that budgets will balance themselves and who does not think about monetary policy and the misery of Canadians. However, that same monetary policy has a cause and effect relationship to the misery of Canadians. It truly shows that the government has absolutely no idea what it is doing today. As a result of the cause and effect, Canadians today are more reliant on the government. Whether or not that is the intention of the NDP-Liberal government, at the end of the day, it is the pain and misery that Canadians are facing that is making what we used to think of as the Canadian dream fade away.

Whether someone's family has been here for generations or someone is working hard to become a Canadian citizen, more and more, it is clear that the same Canadian dream is gone. We see that the government has spent more than every government before it, combined, did, which has led to 40-year highs in inflation and the most rapid interest rate hikes ever seen in Canadian history, while putting Canadians most at risk in the G7 of a mortgage default crisis. The Canadian dream is gone. Everything is up in this country: rents, mortgages, food prices, the debt and taxes. It is sad that the only thing that is truly down right now is the economy. That goes back to the cause and effect of the Liberal-NDP government, which does not think about monetary policy but is the cause of that monetary policy.

Everything feels like it is broken. Canadians who open their fridges and look at their bank accounts are seeing that the government is not only taking more but also leaving them with less and with worse outcomes than ever before. The misery is real. We travel across this country and hear that pain from everybody. When the government is taking more, it means it is taking more from somebody, from Canadians. Their paycheques are shrinking. Throw a job-killing carbon tax scam on top of that. It is not only making food prices go up; it is also taking more away from Canadians, with higher utility bills and higher costs when they fill up their gas tanks and just take care of everyday basic necessities. After eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, the most basic things have become a luxury: heating one's home, filling up with gas and even buying groceries these days. People are cutting back after eight years of the government.

There is a phenomenon that has begun in the middle class. A middle-class family with two income earners is now going to the food bank because they cannot afford to eat, to heat their home and to house themselves. That is the cause and effect of a Prime Minister who does not think about monetary policy.

Housing has doubled; there is double trouble everywhere. The government has doubled the cost of rent and mortgages because of all of its deficit spending and the debt of more than half a trillion dollars, which led to the interest rate hikes to tackle the inflation that was caused by the government. The other side of the equation is housing supply, which has also been affected by mismanagement and all of the government spending. Not only are people not able to get into homes because of low supply, but because of the high interest rates caused by the spending, homebuyers also cannot get into new homes they would like to buy. As well, builders are affected by not being able to build because of the high interest rates. That is why it is double trouble by the double-trouble Liberal-NDP government.

The cost of everything is up; it has exploded. The issue of housing is not being tackled. We are seeing a lot of photo ops. There is a huge fund that the government has put aside for photo ops, but there is nothing concrete to get things built. In fact, the CMHC warns that Canada will see a decline in the number of new homes being built this year. At a time when the government says we have a housing accelerator, it is too bad that everything it is doing is decelerating homes being built in this country. It is decelerating the economy as well. America's productivity, its GDP per capita and its economy itself, is booming. It grew 5.2%. Canada's contracted, and it will stay that way for a very long time. That means investment will not come in to help get homes built. Investment will not come in to create good jobs and more powerful paycheques for our Canadian people. It means that less and less productivity will be happening, which ultimately means that Canadians are getting poorer as the government is getting richer by taxing them more and more.

Anyone renewing their mortgage today knows the pain. It was just a few years ago that the Prime Minister and the finance minister said that Canadians should go out and borrow as much they want because rates would stay low for a very long time. That could have been true, but what people did not expect was for the Liberal-NDP government to dump billions and billions of dollars of fuel on the inflationary fire that the government started, which made interest rates go up because it increased inflation. All that inflationary spending is the misery that mortgage borrowers are seeing today. Rates are up, and now when they go to renew their mortgages, they are renewing at a minimum of double, and sometimes triple, the rate. There is a huge crisis looming if the government does not get its act together and balance the budget.

The dream of home ownership is dead. Nine out of 10 young people are saying the dream is gone and they will never be able to afford a home. Unless someone's parents are rich, or they owned a home, it is impossible for anyone else to own a home today, all because of the government's economic mismanagement. Rents are up, and more people are relying on renting, not being able to afford homes. The rental market is booming but also suffering. Anyone who is renting today has seen their rent doubled. That is after just eight years of the Prime Minister. It took just eight years for all of this misery to come to fruition.

What are the Liberals doing on housing? They have created billions of dollars of photo op funds that they keep re-announcing and recycling, and that is all they have. What they are not doing is taking any meaningful action on it. They have put billions of dollars toward programs, some that have 13 projects. It seems that there are members on the Liberal benches who have probably flipped more homes than they what they have gotten built under some of these programs.

It is time for a common-sense Conservative government. I encourage everyone watching today, and members on the other side, to watch our common-sense leader's common-sense documentary on the housing hell that Canadians are seeing today, and actual solutions for how to get it fixed. There is a common-sense Conservative bill tabled in the House, under our leader, called the “Building homes not bureaucracy” bill. On top of that, I would encourage everyone to take a look at our common-sense Conservative plan that would bring home more powerful paycheques by lowering costs by axing the tax on gas, groceries and home heating. We are going to bring home more powerful paycheques by balancing the budget so we can bring down inflation. That would bring down interest rates and let people stay in their homes. We are going to bring more homes people can afford. Again, I would encourage everyone to watch the documentary. It deserves awards, and it might even get some. Maybe the Liberals could actually learn something and take something away from it.

We are going to bring home safer streets by making sure we focus on jail and not bail for repeat offenders. Instead of taking guns away from lawful gun owners such as hunters, sport shooters and our indigenous communities, we are going to use that money at the border to stop the flow of drugs, illegal guns and crime that are coming in. Most importantly, we are going to bring home freedom once again. Many people who came to this country, like myself, might have left countries where there was not much in the way of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. When they come here, they are asking why they left the country they came from. Under our common-sense Conservative leader, we are going to bring home freedom and make sure we bring home powerful paycheques.

Affordable Housing and Groceries Act

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is disappointing to see that the House will have to once again sit until midnight to discuss this bill. Why? Because this government chose to impose a super closure motion. We think that this approach, the muzzling of parliamentarians, makes a mockery of democracy. Everyone here was elected by the people in our ridings, and this government should give more weight to our voices. This just shows how much respect the Liberals have for our democratic institutions.

An even more serious problem with this super closure motion is the short period of time allocated to study the bill in committee. Only two evenings are allocated, and that is it. Even though my party supports the principle of the bill, we think it is essential to study it in depth in committee. However, this super closure motion forces us to skip over the study in committee. It would therefore not be surprising if there are still problems with the bill after it is studied in committee, and that is really disappointing.

Let me give an example. The first part of the bill exempts rental property construction from the GST. It applies as of September 14. If the bill becomes law, construction projects undertaken on or after September 14 will be able to benefit from the measure. However, the bill does not say what constitutes the start of the project. Is it when the first shovel hits the ground? Is it when the first payment is made for the plans? Is it when the land is purchased? If the building has a dual purpose, what constitutes the beginning? We have no idea, because the bill does not define these concepts.

Let us use a concrete example to illustrate the uncertainty this creates for businesses. A company is planning to build a rental property. The ground floor will be occupied by commercial premises, so not part of the project, but all the upper floors will be used for rental housing. On September 14, work had not yet started on any of the rental housing floors, but work had begun on the ground floor. I repeat, the ground floor will be used for commercial purposes, so it is not a part of the rental project. The company does not know whether it will be entitled to benefit from the measure for the upper floors because of the date and the lack of definition in the bill. We also know that with skyrocketing construction costs, high interest rates and a shortage of skilled labour, developing a housing project is complex, and not having clear information from the government about its bill does nothing to help the company in its current choices. The fog caused by this bill, which was drafted too quickly, is creating uncertainty for businesses.

Will we be able to clarify the situation in committee in just two evenings? There are no guarantees. We will work on it, but I would like to remind the House that it would have been really important not to shut down the committee's work in this way.

As members know, Bill C‑56 has two parts. The first part provides a GST rebate to the builder of a rental housing building. The rebate will be given during the sale or pending sale if the builder becomes an owner.

The rebate does not apply when the buyer is already totally exempt, as in the case of a government agency or a municipality, or partially exempt, as in the case of a not‑for‑profit organization or a housing co‑operative. Bill C‑56 will have no impact on the cost of social or community housing projects. It only pertains to private housing.

In practice, the rental housing builder will bill the GST to the government instead of to the buyer at the time of sale. To qualify for the rebate, the building will have had to have been under construction between September 14, 2023, and December 31, 2030, and the project will have to be completed before December 31, 2035.

However, the bill does not include any details on the type of building or housing nor does it specify any affordability requirements to qualify for the rebate. Instead, the bill gives the government the power to clarify these issues through regulations. We are seeing the government gloss over its bills by giving too much power to the minister, who will be able to complete the bill with his own regulations once it has been implemented. That is not an approach that we appreciate.

It would be hard to impose affordability criteria on builders because they do not own buildings once they are built. However, it is possible to make the buyer pay the GST after the fact if the units are rented at exorbitant prices. These are the kinds of amendments and clarifications the committee should look at, but will it have time?

I would also point out that, in our view, it would have been possible to do more to promote the construction of housing, particularly social housing, by allocating the same amount, but implementing other measures. Obviously, we are debating what the government is proposing, and that is what we will be voting on, but we will continue to make suggestions, just in case it decides to listen.

The second part of the bill makes three amendments to the Competition Act.

The first amendment gives the commissioner of competition real power. Right now, when the Competition Bureau examines the competitive environment of a given sector, it cannot compel anyone to testify or order the production of documents. It will be able to do so under Bill C-56. The Bloc Québécois has been calling for that change for 20-odd years.

The second amendment broadens the scope of anti-competitive practices prohibited by the act. Right now, the act prohibits agreements between competitors to remove a player from the market. With this bill, it will also be prohibited to reach an agreement with someone who is not a competitor in order to reduce competition. Let me give an example. When a grocery store rents a space in a mall, it is standard practice for the contract to contain clauses prohibiting the landlord from renting a space to another grocery store. This type of practice, which limits competition, will now be prohibited under Bill C-56. We applaud that measure.

The third amendment will make mergers and acquisitions more difficult. Currently, when a company wants to buy a competitor, the Competition Act states that the Competition Bureau will allow it if it can be demonstrated that the takeover will result in efficiency gains, even if the merger shrinks competition. This provision, which favours concentration and is unique in the industrialized world, is repealed in Bill C-56. We have also been calling for this change for a long time, and the member for Terrebonne has been particularly keen to see it.

We strongly support the principle of this second part and even feel it is long overdue. We have been asking for these changes for years, decades even.

We understand that, thanks to the government's super closure motion, Bill C-56 is going to be amended. Government Business No. 30 authorizes the Standing Committee on Finance to broaden the scope of the bill to make three amendments.

The first change is an increase in fines. It is taken directly from Bill C-352, which was introduced by the leader of the NDP and amends the Competition Act. Many of its provisions would become obsolete because of Bill C‑56. The other two changes have to do with abuse of dominance and investigating powers when the Competition Bureau conducts a market study. Subject to the wording of the amendments to be submitted in committee, these changes have no real effect. They were probably added to the motion to please the party that is supporting the closure motion, but the changes will have no real effect.

Let us come back to the first change, which is to “increase the maximum fixed penalty amounts for abuse of dominance to $25 million in the first instance, and $35 million for subsequent orders, for situations where this amount is higher than three times the value of the benefit derived (or the alternative variable maximum)”. As I was saying, that is taken from Bill C‑352.

Currently, in addition to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years for executives who commit an offence under the Act, the bureau and the tribunal can impose a maximum fine of $5 million on the offending company. The motion proposes increasing the maximum fine to $25 million, and to $35 million for repeat offenders. In the case of a large company, the maximum penalty could be even higher, up to three times the value of the benefit derived from the practice.

We know that the NDP bill went even further and specified the following: “if that amount cannot be reasonably determined, 10% of the person's annual worldwide gross revenues”. Clearly, the government was not prepared to go that far. It is a good change. The maximum fine of $5 million could be seen as the cost of doing business. The revised amounts are designed to have a real deterrent effect. That makes the Canadian legislation comparable to the U.S. and European laws.

The second amendment is “allow the Competition Bureau to conduct market study inquiries if it is either directed by the Minister responsible for the Act or recommended by the Commissioner of Competition, and require consultation between the two officials prior to the study being commenced”. The Competition Bureau has significant power. It can compel witnesses to appear, demand documents and request searches if necessary. However, these powers are available to the bureau only when it is investigating a clear infringement following a formal disclosure. The investigation then becomes quasi-criminal.

However, when the bureau is conducting a study to determine whether competition is working properly in a given field or market, it has no such powers. For example, in its report on the state of competition in the grocery sector, published in June 2023, the bureau noted that the grocery chains did not really co-operate with its study. They refused to hand over the documents it had requested and refused to answer some of its questions. Bill C-56 solves that problem and gives the Competition Bureau investigative powers when it is conducting a market study.

The NDP's Bill C-352 did basically the same thing. Government Business No. 30 proposes a technical amendment to the manner in which the bureau can initiate a market study, but it does not really do much to change the current practice. This aspect was likely only added to the motion to please the NDP, but it really does not do anything.

It is the same thing for the third amendment, which proposes to “revise the legal test for abuse of a dominant position prohibition order to be sufficiently met if the Tribunal finds that a dominant player has engaged in either a practice of anti-competitive acts or conduct other than superior competitive performance that had, is having or is likely to have the effect of preventing or lessening competition substantially in a relevant market”.

Currently, a company that monopolizes a significant share of the market cannot take advantage of its dominant position to limit competition, for example, by preventing a supplier from working with a competitor. The existing act prohibits several of these kinds of practices, which effectively limit competition, prevent it from working properly or make it virtually impossible for a new player to enter the market. On the other hand, there is nothing stopping a company from taking advantage of a lack of competition to sell products at excessive prices. If, for example, a grocer enjoys a monopoly in a given region, there is nothing to stop that grocer from taking advantage of the monopoly to gouge consumers by charging exorbitant prices.

Bill C‑352 addressed this loophole. A whole range of anti-competitive practices were already prohibited, and it added a new one: “directly or indirectly imposing excessive and unfair selling prices”. It was a good measure, but clearly the government did not want to move in that direction. To please the NDP and hide the fact that it has given up on defending consumers against the major players, the government's motion adds a procedural amendment to Bill C‑56 to give the tribunal the power to prevent an anti-competitive practice that the current law already prohibits anyway. Again, it is nothing but hot air.

The day before yesterday, the Minister of Finance tabled the fall economic statement. As we all know, an economic statement is not quite as big a deal as a budget. It usually includes measures the government intends to take to deal with emergencies that have arisen since the budget was tabled.

There are emergencies aplenty, including the housing crisis, homelessness, the media, the rising cost of living, the small business emergency account deadline, seniors' buying power and scandalous oil industry subsidies, not to mention EI reform, the plight of seasonal forestry workers following the summer's forest fires, support for culture, support for the market garden and horticulture sectors following the summer's floods, and the funding that was promised for school breakfasts but has not yet been delivered, to name but a few.

However, the only emergency mentioned in the economic statement has to do with housing. Ottawa does need to do a lot more for housing, especially social housing. Unfortunately, the government's response is nothing more than what has already been announced in Bill C‑56. In fact, the rest will not be delivered until after the next election, and only if the Liberals are re-elected. Responding to the urgency of the housing crisis with election promises that are two years or more away is simply unacceptable, especially when we know that once the money is available, it takes two to three years before it is actually flows. It is like the $900 million that was finally announced for Quebec this fall, but that had been budgeted two years earlier.

We in the Bloc Québécois had proposed an acquisition fund for non-profit organizations, as well as an interest-free or very low-interest loan program, to stimulate the construction of affordable social rental housing, while waiting for a comprehensive policy in the next budget.

Still on the subject of housing, I would like to point out that the minister brought forward a good measure concerning Airbnbs, which will have to comply with municipal rules, or else the people and businesses that manage them will no longer have access to federal tax deductions for their operations. It remains to be seen whether the Canada Revenue Agency will be able to properly apply this new constraint.

One not so good measure is the creation of a new department that specializes in interference: the department of housing, infrastructure and communities. The purpose of that department is to impose its conditions on Quebec, the provinces and the municipalities. If they do not abide by the interference, Ottawa will cut their transfers. The Liberals come here to steal the only bill that the Conservatives introduced, their plan to build more housing, by threatening the provinces and municipalities with cutting their infrastructure funding. I should note that it was the Conservative leader himself who introduced Bill C‑356 in the House.

With this bill, Ottawa would impose an obligation to increase housing starts by 15% compared to the previous year on all municipalities where the cost of housing is high, and that list is growing longer and longer. If the housing starts in municipalities do not increase as required by Ottawa, the Conservative leader would cut their gas tax and public transit transfers by by 1% for each percentage point shortfall under the target that he unilaterally set.

For example, housing starts in Quebec dropped by 60% this year rather than increasing by 15%, largely because of rising interest rates. If the Conservatives' bill were already in force, this would mean a roughly 75% reduction in transfer payments to the Quebec government. This is a really dangerous and unfair bill that centralizes power in Ottawa. The fact that the Minister of Finance is making use of the principle of that bill is a major offensive action in terms of centralization of power. We will have detailed numbers shortly.

I would like to say a few more words about the new department of housing, infrastructure and communities. This announcement essentially creates a federal department of municipal affairs. Since municipal affairs fall under provincial jurisdiction, this is nothing less than a department of interference, which is threatening to cut transfers, exactly as the Conservatives are hoping for and proposing in their bill.

Here are a few more details about this new department. It is worth noting that Trudeau senior's government tried to do much the same thing. In 1971, it created the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs. A Library of Parliament research document states that, “[g]iven the inescapable constitutional limitations, the ministry had no program responsibilities”. Faced with a lack of co-operation from the provinces, this attempt from Trudeau senior's government to interfere in municipal affairs ended in failure. The research document also states that “[i]n view of the Ministry's lack of credibility and the government's desire to cut expenditures, the [Ministry of State for Urban Affairs] was abolished on 31 March 1979”.

In the coming years, we will see whether Quebec and the provinces will once again be capable of defending their jurisdiction against this new department. This is the same story a generation later, so I would like to quote a philosopher: “All great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice...the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”. I believe that is what we are witnessing now.

In closing, let me reiterate that the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of Bill C‑56 because it contains a few good measures and nothing that is downright harmful. However, Bill C‑56 is but a drop in an ocean of need. On housing, there is no indication that the bill will help lower the cost of rent. If nothing is done to correct this problem, we are headed for a major national tragedy. We need three times more rental housing in new construction to stop the housing crisis from getting worse. If Bill C‑56 did even a little to increase the proportion of rental units in new construction developments, that would be something, but we are light years away from meeting those needs.

The changes to the Competition Act are good, and the Bloc Québécois wholeheartedly supports them. Still, the government's claim that these changes will help lower grocery bills seems like misrepresentation. Removing from the act the section that called for mergers and acquisitions to be allowed if the company could demonstrate efficiencies is a good thing. This section of the Competition Act encourages concentration, which often leads to higher prices.

Since 1996, the vast majority of grocery chains have disappeared and been bought up by competitors. I am talking about companies like Steinberg, A&P and Provigo. IGA was bought by Sobey's, and Adonis by Metro. The same is true in Canada. Think of Woodward's, Commisso's, Safeway, Whole Foods, T&T, Longo's, Farm Boy and so on. Of the 13 chains we used to have, now there are only three, or five if we include Costco and Walmart. They control 80% of the market. It is an oligopoly.

While Bill C‑56 proposes some good measures, it is inconceivable that this is the government's only response to skyrocketing housing and food prices. When it comes to housing, we need to review and improve the failed Canada housing strategy.

Regarding competition, we need to review the concept of abuse of dominance to prevent the big players from taking advantage of their disproportionate share of the market to increase prices will, for lack of competition, or to abuse farmers and processors, whom they are holding hostage. These two things need to be done, whether or not Bill C‑56 is passed.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague talked about his leader's bill, Bill C‑356. With that bill, Ottawa would require all municipalities with high housing costs—the list is getting longer and longer—to increase housing starts by 15% over the previous year.

If a municipality's housing starts do not increase as required by Ottawa, the Conservative leader is proposing to cut its gas tax transfer and public transit transfer by 1% for every percentage shortfall from the target he has unilaterally set. For example, in Quebec, housing starts are down 60% this year, mainly due to interest rates, rather than up 15%. That is a difference of 75%, so transfers would be reduced by 75% for cities and towns in Quebec.

In the economic statement, the Minister of Finance said that she wants to do something similar. Could my colleague comment on that?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke and I look forward to hearing her speech.

It was October 5. What is so special about that date? That is the last time we debated Bill C‑56. It was October 5.

At the time, I was prepared to deliver a speech to share my comments and my position on Bill C‑56. Since October 5, this government, and only this government, is responsible for the fact that Bill C‑56 still has not been adopted.

Now it is urgent. That is what the minister said. She said today that time is of the essence and her government was going to get the bill passed following a motion to muzzle the opposition once again, to limit the speaking time of members when we are at a very critical time in our economy.

People across the country are suffering. The cost of living is high. Inflation is at a peak. The cost of food is so high that people are using food banks by the millions. There were two million people in just one month, numbers we have never seen in the history of our country.

However, as I was saying, Bill C‑56 could have been debated a long time ago, but the Liberals did not see it as urgent. I have been waiting since October 5. For over 50 days, I have been asking the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons almost every week when we would be debating Bill C‑56 so that we can finally talk about homes, housing and solutions to help Quebeckers and Canadians. It has been radio silence.

The government was in no hurry to pass Bill C‑56. We could have passed this bill at second reading six, five, four or three weeks ago. The bill could have already been sent to committee, but no, they did not put the bill on the agenda. All of a sudden, it is urgent this week.

By doing it this way, the government even prevented its own members from giving voice to the suffering and hardships faced by people in Liberal ridings, but that was not important. There was no hurry.

Quebeckers and Canadians are paying the price for this incompetence every day. We have come to realize that the Liberals are simply incapable of managing the business of the House properly. The only way they can get anything passed is to find a partner and impose a gag order. Apparently it took longer to convince the NDP this time, but they succeeded. There was nothing stopping the government from putting Bill C‑56 on the agenda much sooner.

There is one thing I agree with. Today the minister said that this is urgent, and I think she is right. Half of Canadians say they are living paycheque to paycheque. More and more people are having to find a second job just to get by. The government did nothing for two months and now, as time goes on, it is becoming increasingly urgent because people simply cannot pay the price for Liberal incompetence any longer.

The Liberals' inflationary deficits were back again in this week's mini-budget. Not only did they prove that they cannot do anything about the inflation crisis, the cost of living crisis, but also, they continue to make it even worse. We were horrified to learn that, as of next year, Canada will spend more on the interest payments alone on the national debt than on health transfer payments. Next year, Canada will spend twice as much on interest payments on the national debt as on national defence. That is what we get after eight years of Liberal government incompetence. Nobody else is to blame. The Prime Minister has been in power for eight years. The Liberals have been promising the world and spending recklessly for eight years. Now, because of them, Canadians everywhere cannot make ends meet and are having to resort to food banks.

This is happening in my riding. Last week, the headline on the front page of our local paper, the Courrier Frontenac, read, and I am not making this up, “Requests for food aid skyrocket”. The number of people who have had to use food banks has gone up by 40% in recent months.

The Liberals will say that this is because of the global economic situation and wars. There are all sorts of reasons, but Scotiabank is telling it like it is. The bank calculated that this government's inflationary spending drove interest rates up by 2%. Do members know what 2% can mean for a family with an average house? That is $700 a month. People need wage increases to be able to afford $700 more a month for their mortgage payment, but unfortunately, wages are not keeping up.

How many families will lose their homes because of the Liberals' wilful blindness? Who will pay in the end? It is families, mothers and children.

Before, people in Canada had hope. Every young person had the hope of being able to buy a house one day and of being able to pay it off in 25 years. They had the hope of a decent retirement with a house and, one day, being able to sell that house and have even more time to enjoy life. Today, it takes 25 years to save up for a down payment on a house. I have spoken with so many young people who no longer have any hope that they will be able to find a house and live the Canadian dream, which has basically become a nightmare. Once again, all of this is because of eight years of wilful blindness.

I remember when the Prime Minister asked if we knew why the government was going into debt, that it was to prevent Canadians from going into debt and that we needed to take on the debt so that Canadians would be able to live a good life.

This attitude and this Prime Minister who said that he was not really concerned about monetary policy, that it did not interest him, have created the worst crisis in the history of Canada when it comes to access to housing and land. We are in Canada to boot, a country with a lot of land and places to build. Unfortunately, that dream is shattered. It will take years to fix the mistakes of these Liberals.

The Conservative leader presented a plan to find solutions, or to at least help with the housing crisis. It is a very clear and precise plan. Let me share a few points that would have enabled us to move forward. The government could have put it on the agenda. I am talking about Bill C‑356 from the member for Carleton. The bill called for cutting unnecessary bureaucracy and holding Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation executives to account. It is common sense. We will push cities to speed up construction projects and encourage density to increase construction in cities by 15% a year, reward the good performers and make sure the laggards get moving. Since Bill C‑356 was introduced, cities have started moving. As if by magic, cities have realized they have a role to play, and that is because the Conservative leader has made it clear. He told them they had a role to play. The cities got the message. So much the better, but with Bill C‑356, it would have been even easier and quicker.

This will breathe new life into empty federal offices and free up federal lands for development. That is what the Liberals promised years ago. There has been zero construction, and zero federal buildings have been converted into housing. I believe one development happened on federal lands, but I am not even sure it is done.

The bill does have the GST refund to stimulate the construction of units that cost less than the average.

What Canadians want is efficient, competent, common-sense government. That is what they will get with a Conservative government.

[Fabrice Fortin]

Thank you for the question.

Last week, there was an announcement about 8,000 residential units being built for Quebec. That was welcome news for sure, but more must be done.

According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the CMHC, 1.2 million units have to be built by 2030. That means keeping up the pace, improving the fund and making it permanent. Several measures need to be taken, and Bill C‑356 is part of that, of course.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses.

I'd like to take 10 seconds or so to respond to my Bloc colleague. The Conservatives will stand up for the rights of Quebeckers and the rights of the Quebec nation. We will use all parliamentary tools. We would hope that all parties, particularly the Bloc Québécois, would be willing to stand up for Quebeckers.

I want to move on from there to talk to Mr. Cardinal and Mr. Fortin with respect to Bill C-356, which of course is Pierre Poilievre's private member's bill on housing, and build upon what my colleague was talking about. One of the things it says is that the CMHC will have to get the response to a funding application out the door within 60 days or the executives will suffer a 50% loss in bonuses.

Do you support the quickening of the pace that CMHC processes are worked on?

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Thank you very much.

First, I'd like to speak on behalf of the committee of which I am an active member, the Standing Committee on the Environment. We've just started a study on the federal freshwater policy. Given your comments, I would encourage you to submit a brief focusing on the investment municipalities need for their water infrastructure, particularly in relation to water treatment plants, sewers and so on. I urge you to do so, by the way.

Do you agree with Mr. Poilievre's Bill C‑356?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I have to move on, because my time is limited.

I would like to hear your opinion on Bill C‑356, which was introduced by Mr. Poilievre and whose purpose is precisely to make processes simpler and faster. What does the Association des professionnels de la construction et de l'habitation du Québec think about that?

National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-34, otherwise known as the national security review of investments modernization act.

With it being so close to Remembrance Day, I too would like to offer my appreciation for all those who have served and continue to serve, and all the families that support them. I would encourage everybody to make sure they attend a ceremony this Saturday to honour and respect veterans for all of the work they have done.

Speaking of our security, the NDP-Liberal coalition has, for far too long, not taken our national security seriously, so it is good to see some efforts being made through the legislation before us. Unfortunately, our reputation on the world stage has taken a beating over the past eight years. We have seen numerous diplomatic debacles over those years, and a Prime Minister who regularly embarrasses Canada on the world stage. It seems that every time I go on social media, another country's news broadcast is mocking the Prime Minister. It is one thing to embarrass oneself with a tickle trunk of outfits to wear to another country or by wearing blackface more times than one can remember, but the Prime Minister has forced our allied nations to lose confidence in us as a partner.

Just this past July, Dan Sullivan, a United States senator from Alaska, called out the Liberal government for consistently failing to meet NATO’s 2% GDP target for defence spending. What is worse is that the Liberals are cutting $1 billion from our defence budget this year. While the American ambassador played it nice a few weeks ago and said he is not yet worried about our failure to meet our NATO targets, we all know and can recognize how our allies feel about Canada these days. If we had been taking our national security seriously, perhaps Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States would not have separated off from the Five Eyes alliance and created their own strategic defence partnership without Canada.

With regular disruptions to our ports and railways, we are losing the perception of us as a reliable trading partner that can deliver the goods we produce here in Canada to market. With a changing climate, our adversaries see the north as an opportunity. They see a wealth of resources and future transportation routes, and we are increasingly unable to protect our own sovereignty in the north. The sad reality is that under the Liberal government, we have become a bit of a laughingstock on the world stage, and it is disappointing to admit that. However, I cannot think of a single nation around the world with which our relationship has improved over the past eight years.

Given all of the failures internationally, one would assume that perhaps we would want to take care of our domestic economic needs here at home, but we have not done that. Although we are taking a good step with this legislation, after eight years, foreign state-owned enterprises, particularly those connected with the Communist regime in China, have heightened their influence in Canada. I will provide a few examples. In 2017, the government allowed Hytera Communications, a firm with ties to China, to acquire B.C.-based satellite communications company Norsat International. In 2020, Nuctech, a company owned by the Chinese government and founded by the son of a former Chinese Communist Party secretary general, won a bid to, get this, provide security equipment to over 170 Canadian embassies around the world. Imagine that. The government was going to entrust the security of Canadians stationed abroad to technologies linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

I know there are a lot of examples like this, but I will end with one more. Just last year, the CBC revealed that in 2017, the CBSA began using radio equipment and technology from Hytera, the company I just referenced. It was quite literally using the technology at our borders while our main ally, the United States, was indicting the company for 21 espionage charges. It banned the company from operating and doing business because it posed an unnecessary risk to national security. At the same time as our border guards were using the equipment, our American counterparts and friends were kicking the company out of their country.

It seems as though often the current government is focused on political interests and not our national interests. We should not be surprised. We all remember when the Prime Minister alluded to his level of admiration for China's basic dictatorship. It is perhaps why the Liberals have given China so many passes and why they have allowed Chinese-linked companies and agencies to infiltrate our university campuses, co-opt our research and take our technologies that innovative Canadians, innovative students and innovative companies in Canada have been spearheading.

We could talk about all these failures all day, but I want to address specifically some pieces of Bill C-34. I was pleasantly surprised that the Liberals brought the legislation forward, because it is an important idea to try to always enhance our national security, particularly as things evolve and our competitors become our allies and our allies become our enemies in the global world.

The goal in the legislation of amending the Investment Canada Act to protect our national security is not a bad one at all, but I really thought that for once, the Liberals had come up with their own idea. However, looking back to our 2021 platform, I noticed we had pledged to do the same thing: “Canada's Conservatives will: Protect Canadian intellectual property with a strengthened Investment Canada Act”. As the old proverb goes, imitation is the highest form of flattery, and there has been a lot of mimicking going on lately. My first speech in the House was just last month, about the affordable housing and groceries act, which was plagiarism, effectively, of two Conservative bills, Bill C-356 and Bill C-339. Of course we also saw, just last week, a climb-down on the carbon tax for home heating for some Canadians in some parts of the country.

Not all mimicking is bad, but at the end of the day, as my fellow Manitoban colleague from Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman said, “The Liberals are tired, they are weary and they do not have anything else to bring forward”. This seems to be the case. While I would prefer an election so we can put forward a strong platform that will include enhancements to the Investment Canada Act, among many other things, I do hope the current Liberal-NDP coalition keeps copying a few of our ideas. It can start with axing the carbon tax in its entirety, but I am not going to hold out a lot of hope.

Overall, Bill C-34 needs to go further. It does not go far enough to address the risks faced by Canadians. By and large, the largest threat we have to investments here in critical services is by state-owned or state-connected enterprises from authoritarian regimes like China and Russia. Canadians are rightly concerned about this problem. Foreign direct investment is a good thing. We should want to draw investment dollars into our communities. However, we should also want to maintain our sovereignty and our national interests. The reality is that we have become a place where people do not want to do business. Investments in our natural resource sectors, among many others, are flooding out. Our counterpart, the United States, which does not have a carbon tax, is more appealing to do business with. Companies would rather go just south of the border, south of my riding, and set up business there.

The bill does not include the ability for the government to create a list of authoritarian countries that are prohibited from owning Canadian companies or assets, which I think it should do. The Conservative team, at the committee stage, did a great job of bringing forward common-sense recommendations for changes to the legislation. Not as many were adopted as should have been, but Conservatives did work hard to fix some of the flaws.

One last issue that is becoming increasingly important and visible, particularly in my area in the Prairies, is the increased buying of farmland by Chinese-linked companies and organizations. Not only does this threaten our long-term food security but it also significantly increases prices for young farmers who are trying to enter an already very difficult industry to get into. It is important that we enable the Investment Canada Act to be broad enough and flexible enough to have cabinet be able to make important decisions on whether a takeover or change in ownership is in the best interest of Canadians. This seems like common sense to me. We know it is something only Conservatives can provide.

Public Accounts

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present our dissenting opinion.

After eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, Canada has been plunged into a never-before-seen housing hell. Forty-eight per cent of Canadians have given up the hope of ever owning their own home, mortgages have doubled, rents have doubled and Canada is in a housing crisis.

To address this, Conservative members of the committee recommend the immediate implementation of Bill C-356, the building homes not bureaucracy act, which includes seven recommendations:

(a) establish a target for the completion of new homes in high-cost cities that increases 15% every year and ties federal infrastructure funding allocated to high-cost cities to that target;

(b) provide for the reallocation of $100 million from the Housing Accelerator Fund to municipalities that greatly exceed housing targets;

(c) require that federal transit funding provided to certain cities be held in trust until high-density residential housing is substantially occupied on available land around federally funded transit projects’ stations; and

(d) make it a condition for certain cities to receive federal infrastructure and transit funding that they not unduly restrict or delay the approval of building permits for housing.

It also amends the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act, the National Housing Act and the Excise Tax Act in order to

(a) eliminate executive bonuses unless housing targets are met and to reduce executive compensation if applications for funding for new housing construction are not treated within an average of 60 days; and

(b) provide a 100% GST rebate on new residential rental property for which the average rent payable is below market rate.

It would also require “the Minister of Public Works to table a report on the inventory of federal buildings and land, to identify land suitable for housing construction and to propose a plan to sell at least 15% of any federal buildings and all land that would be appropriate for housing construction”.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Greetings to the witnesses.

My questions are for the representatives of the UMQ, the Union des municipalités du Québec.

Ms. Fournier, the Chair introduced you as the chair of the UMQ housing committee. That's one of the hats that you wear, but you're also the mayor of Longueuil, one of the largest cities in Quebec. It's a magnificent city. Thank you for being here, and I'd also like to greet Ms. Fortin, the UMQ's policy adviser.

Ms. Fournier, you explained in your statement how significant the issues are. There is homelessness, and there are needs for social housing and housing in general, and, for the cities, there's the whole infrastructure issue.

In Ottawa, we saw the Prime Minister and the Conservative leader accuse the cities of delaying housing starts. Then the Conservative leader introduced Bill C‑356, which would require the cities to increase housing starts by 15% every year. If they fail to meet that target, he says that it will reduce their payments from the gas tax fund, which is used to finance infrastructure, and from public transit funding. He would reduce those payments in proportion to the amount by which the cities fail to meet the new housing target. However, in the past year, as a result of interest rates, housing starts have declined by 60% instead of increasing by 15%, as the bill would require. That would therefore amount to a difference of 75%. Consequently, the municipalities would have lost 75% of their infrastructure and transit funding.

Do you think that might be a solution to the problem?

Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, I had the opportunity to read Bill C-356 and it sounds a lot like our housing accelerator fund. I guess the best form of political flattery is political plagiarism.

I have had the opportunity to look through the last several housing plans from the Conservatives. They have talked about money laundering, about making land available through the Canada lands initiatives and addressing amortization periods. They have talked about everything except providing support to people: seniors, persons with disabilities, the people who sit on affordable housing wait-lists.

My question to the member opposite is: Why?

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, it has been really interesting to sit in the House today and listen to Liberal speaker after Liberal speaker declaring victory on the housing situation, talking about all of the fantastic things they are doing right now and announcing new fancy program title after new fancy program title. We have seen, over the last eight years, ever-larger announcements in terms of spending, but never as part of the conversation do we get to actual outcomes. By “outcomes”, I do not mean the fancy titles or the big numbers; I mean actual homes being built for Canadians.

It has been eight years that the government has been in power, and it is now in partnership, coalition or whatever we want to call it with the NDP. We have never, ever, been so short of homes in this country. Rents have never been higher than they are right now. The cost to purchase a home has never been higher than it is right now. It is harder for Canadians to get housing than it has ever been in our history. Today it is harder than ever, after eight years of the Liberal party's being in government, yet speaker after speaker has come out there and, with a straight face, declared victory and made ever bigger pronouncements.

I do have to point out that I will be sharing my time with the hard-working member for Peterborough—Kawartha, and I thank my colleague beside me here, who snuck a little note in. Some might have noticed that, and every colleague of the House knows what that is like.

The interesting thing about this is that it has never been worse, but the only time it was even close was in the disastrous Trudeau years of the seventies and eighties. Many, but not all, members of the House remember the disastrous Trudeau legacy. We had a housing crisis, an inflation crisis and an economic crisis. We had a unity crisis. Does that sound familiar? Sometimes it gets a bit confusing when I talk about the disastrous Trudeau legacy, and some Liberal members from time to time bounce up and get defensive of their own government right now, another disastrous Liberal government. I understand the confusion, but if we remember those days, the real difficulty around them and the real tragedy around what happened in the seventies and eighties were not just the 14 deficits in 15 years that led to that unbelievable economic pain for families. Many of us remember it; we have just heard another member talk about how difficult it was during that time. However, we were not trading short-term pain for long-term gain; we actually had long-term pain as well, so it was short-term pain and long-term pain, because in the mid-nineties, from 1995 to 1997, another Liberal government had to pay the price for all of the deficits we ran up.

We ask this question on a regular basis in the House: How much interest is the Government of Canada going to be paying today on the debt it has run up over the last eight years? We never get an answer from the Liberals, but the answer is that it is in the $44-billion range, and the suggestion is now that, because of interest rates, that number could be higher. We pay the same on interest, on nothing, as we pay in the Canada health transfer right now in this country, after eight years of a Liberal-NDP government. We are throwing away between $44 billion and $50 billion a year on interest payments that we could be spending on other things that are important. We could be unlocking the potential of our housing sector if we just got a handle on our economy.

The Liberal answer, if they had that money, might be to just spend $50 billion, do a big announcement and call it something fancy, but we would say on this side that our leader today did a fantastic speech as he introduced his bill, Bill C-356. I would highly recommend that people check out his speech on social media: on X, Facebook or Youtube. His message is resonating with a growing number of Canadians. There are many points in the speech that people can reference. If people want to get a bit of hope and a bit of wind in their sails as they are trying to deal with crisis after crisis that they have seen befall them because of actions undertaken by the NDP-Liberal government of the day, they should read Bill C-356 and watch the speech the Conservative leader, the future prime minister, made today. I guarantee them they will find some hope in that speech.

However, we are dealing with the issues we have right now, and we could be dealing with this issue for two more years. It was very interesting today to hear NDP speakers. Many of them are very passionate about these issues and have very different views of the world than I would have. They have very different ideas than we have over here on how we achieve results for Canadians. It was very interesting to hear them speak so critically of the Liberal government and meanwhile every single day they vote to keep the government in power. As bad as an incompetent Liberal government is, it is even worse to be the party that is voting consistently to keep its members in power and is propping them up day after day.

I will touch on another thing that is kind of interesting. Over the last few days, when we talk about the economic situation, these things all connect together of course as we deal with the devastating economics. As we learned from the Trudeau debacle of the seventies and eighties, everything is connected and eventually there is a cost.

Over the last couple of days, we have had this conversation around the carbon tax. Apparently there are places in this country where Liberals hold seats but they are worried they will not hold them for very much longer. We found out that those Liberal members of Parliament have a lot of influence over their government, because the government is so scared it is going to lose those seats as it looks at the polls. It not just Atlantic Canada; it is other places too.

The Minister of Rural Economic Development told the entire country, in an interview, that the reason people are getting a break in one part of the country on the carbon tax is not because it makes environmental sense or even because it makes economic sense but because it makes political sense. If someone votes Liberal, they will be rewarded with tax breaks, but if someone is in a part of the country that does not vote Liberal, they do not get those same rewards.

As we are having this conversation, I started thinking about where this goes next. Is there going to be another interview next weekend that is going to talk about a housing program, for example, that is going to benefit municipalities that vote Liberal? I do not think the NDP has this kind of power, but does it maybe extend to NDP ridings too? I do not think NDP members have been strong enough negotiators to work that into their deal, but perhaps. These are reasonable questions Canadians might have. Where does this end?

The Liberal Party is clearly panicking. It is clearly plummeting. It is in a free fall right now and making decisions that, in a normal context, would not make any sense. It has been making those types of decisions for the last eight years, which has brought us to where we are right now, but Canadians are waking up to this.

My hope is our NDP colleagues start to see this as well and that at some point in time we have an opportunity to have a confidence vote in this Parliament, like we have on a fairly regular basis. Maybe this confidence vote would be different. Maybe rather than just saying with words that they do not have confidence in the government, because we all understand that, they will actually vote that way on behalf of their constituents. Maybe we can have these debates in a meaningful way, get this country back on track and have these debates during potentially an election time even. That is how dire the situation is right now.

As I wrap up, I really look forward to questions. I hope in the questions coming from the Liberals' side maybe they will ask us about Bill C-356. I have some points I can get to if they are curious to know answers to some of the challenges we have.

Building Homes Not Bureaucracy Act

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-356, and I have a lot to say about this bill. In my speech, I will try to address first the Conservative position and then that of the Bloc Québécois. If I have time, I will speak briefly on homelessness.

Bill C-356 reiterates the Conservative leader’s rhetoric on the housing crisis. In his view, the municipalities are responsible for the housing crisis by tying up real estate development in useless red tape. Let us recall that the Conservatives were among the first to play politics on this issue by directly attacking municipal democracy when they stated, during their opposition day on May 2, 2023, that they wanted to penalize municipalities that do not build enough housing.

The Bloc Québécois has long held that those best positioned to know the housing needs in their respective jurisdictions are the provinces, Quebec and the municipalities. The federal government has no business interfering. Moreover, let us keep in mind that housing is the exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. Should our colleagues need a reminder, I invite them to refer to subsections 92(13) and 92(16) of the Constitution, which give the provinces exclusive jurisdiction over property and civil rights as well as matters of a local nature. The federal government therefore has no right to interfere.

Let us keep in mind the importance of municipal policy, the importance of this level of government and its closeness to the people. Municipalities know their areas and the actual needs of their citizens best. They are the ones that provide direct services and organize their living environment and their neighbourhoods.

When the Conservatives say that municipalities and cities are the ones that delay the process, that is nonsense. They call the phenomenon “not in my backyard”. We believe that the Conservatives prefer to dodge public consultations that help obtain social licence by communicating effectively with the neighbours of a given project. Instead, they prefer to give a free pass to real estate developers. To their mind, the public consultations that cities and citizens are calling for are a terrible scourge that harms everyone and blocks the construction of new homes. Nonetheless, the Conservatives should understand why public consultations exist; they exist particularly because we do not build just anything, anywhere, willy-nilly.

When it was elected in 2011, the Conservative government did not see fit to increase the budget to assist households still deemed to be inadequately housed, letting it stagnate at its 2011 level, or $250 million a year. When it introduced its 2015 budget, that government chose not to extend the funding for social housing stock. Bill C-356 blames the entire housing shortage on municipalities, but this crisis would not be nearly as serious as it is now, if, under the Conservatives, the federal government had not withdrawn funding for the construction of social housing.

The bill aims to control municipalities. It is an irresponsible bill that denies any federal responsibility in the matter and confirms that the Conservative Party will do nothing to address the crisis if it comes into power.

It is also a bill that offers no solutions. There are lots of condos on the market at $3,000 a month. What is lacking is housing that people can afford. That is where the government should focus its efforts. This notion, however, is completely absent from the Conservative leader’s vision. Bill C-356 gives developers the keys to the city so they can build more $3,000-a-month condos.

In short, the bill’s solution to the housing crisis is to let the big real estate developers do anything, anywhere, in any way they see fit. The populist solution offered by the bill ignores the fact that people do not only live in housing, but also in neighbourhoods and cities. That means we need infrastructure for water and sewers, for roads, and for public and private services, such as schools and grocery stores. Cities have a duty to impose conditions and to ensure that their citizens are well served.

Bill C-356 is also disrespectful and divisive. Since 1973, under the Robert Bourassa government, the Quebec Act respecting the Ministère du Conseil exécutif has prevented Ottawa from dealing directly with Quebec municipalities. The Canada-Quebec Infrastructure Framework Agreement reflects this reality, stipulating that Ottawa has no right to intervene in establishing priorities.

What Bill C-356 proposes is to tear up this agreement. Considering that the agreement took 27 months to negotiate, Bill-356 promises two years of bickering, during which all projects will be paralyzed. In the middle of the housing crisis, this is downright disastrous.

If housing starts in a city do not increase as required by Ottawa, Bill C‑356 proposes cutting gas tax and public transit transfers by 1% for each percentage point shortfall under the target it unilaterally set. For example, housing starts in Quebec dropped 60% this year instead of increasing 15%. If Bill C‑356 were in place, this would mean a reduction in transfer payments of about 75%.

Bill C‑356 goes even further, proposing that financing for urban transit be withheld if cities do not meet the 15% target it unilaterally set. This policy would result in a greater use of automobiles, since transit would only be built after the fact, not in conjunction with new housing developments.

Furthermore, the Bloc Québécois already has a wide range of proposals for solutions to deal with the housing crisis across Quebec and Canada. First, we welcomed the Canada-Quebec housing agreement signed in 2020. This agreement is valued at $3.7 billion, half of which comes from the federal government. However, we lamented the fact that negotiations for this agreement spanned three years. Funds that should have gone to Quebec were frozen until the two levels of government found common ground. The Bloc deplores the federal government's constant need to dictate how Quebec spends its money. Quebec wants its piece of the pie, no strings attached. If it had gotten it in 2017, Quebec could have started the construction and renovation of several housing projects, including social housing, three years sooner. This definitely would have eased the current housing crisis.

Unconditional transfers would greatly simplify the funding process. The multitude of different agreements creates more red tape and delays the actual payment of the sums in question. The Bloc also reiterated how important it is that federal funding address first and foremost the needs for social and deeply affordable housing, which are the most critical. Here is what we proposed during the last election:

The Bloc Québécois proposes that Ottawa gradually reinvest in social, community and deeply affordable housing until it reaches 1% of its total annual revenue and implement a consistent and predictable funding stream instead of ad hoc agreements.

The Bloc Québécois proposes that federal surplus properties be repurposed for social, community and deeply affordable housing as a priority in an effort to address the housing crisis.

The Bloc Québécois will propose a tax on real estate speculation to counter artificial overheating of the housing market.

The Bloc Québécois will propose a reform of the home buyers' plan to account for the many different realities and family situations of Quebec households.

The Bloc Québécois proposes that the federal government undertake a financial restructuring of programs under the national housing strategy to create an acquisition fund. This fund would enable co-ops and non-profits to purchase housing buildings that are already on the market, ensure they remain affordable and turn them into social, community and deeply affordable housing.

The Bloc Québécois will ensure that Quebec receives its fair share of funding, without conditions, from federal programs to combat homelessness, while also calling for the funding released in the past year during the pandemic to be made permanent.

In fact, I floated these ideas during the last election campaign in a regional debate in the Eastern Townships. The groups really liked the Bloc's recommendations. However, they lamented the fact that both the Conservatives and the Liberals did not attend the debate. Their absence did not go unnoticed. When parties say they want to make housing a priority but do not show up for the debates, what message does that send?

I am going to take a few moments to quickly talk about homelessness, a phenomenon that is on the rise throughout Quebec and Canada. We are now seeing that homelessness is becoming regionalized. In 2018, 80% of homeless people were in Montreal, compared to 60% in 2022. I am seeing the effects of this in Granby, which is in Shefford, the riding I represent. It is having an impact. The increase in homelessness is caused by issues stemming from the financialization of housing and real estate speculation. All of that reduces the availability of affordable housing.

In conclusion, the Bloc Québécois will be voting against Bill C-356.

I would like to add one last thing. Families and seniors affected by the housing crisis need realistic solutions for social, community and deeply affordable housing that meets their needs. Granby and the broader Shefford community are already concerned about social housing and certainly do not need to be hit with another example of Conservative misinformation. Our communities are capable enough to handle this themselves.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

moved that Bill C-356, An Act respecting payments by Canada and requirements in respect of housing and to amend certain other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, the Prime Minister admitted he was not worth the cost. He found out that I was holding a monster rally in a Liberal stronghold, and he panicked. His phones lit up as Atlantic Canadian Liberal MPs, bawling their eyes out, pleaded with him to relent to the pressure that the Leader of the Opposition was mounting to axe the tax.

The Prime Minister said that he was stiff in spine and that he would never back down, and the Liberal MPs from the Atlantic caucus said that they would oust him as leader and he would lose his job. What would that do for his ego? The Prime Minister said, in that case, that they would pull together a press conference that afternoon, try to time it right before the Conservative leader's great rally in Windsor, where a thousand people were scheduled to rise up against the tax, and they would promise to pause the tax until after the election.

Now Atlantic Canadians know that if they elect the Prime Minister, they will get a massive tax hike on their home heating oil. If they elect the common-sense Conservatives, they will have tax-free heat. That is a pretty simple choice. The Prime Minister has just defined the issue of the next election. They can vote for him and have a massive home heating tax, or they vote for common-sense Conservatives and we will axe the tax for everyone and forever. Who would you vote for, Mr. Speaker?

The Prime Minister sent out one of his Newfoundland MPs to say that the reason only some Canadians were getting a pause on the carbon tax was that other Canadians did not vote Liberal. Soon they will have a new income tax rate for provinces that do not elect Liberal MPs, a new sales tax rate and new tax rates everywhere else. The problem with this bloody-minded divide-and-conquer tax strategy is that some Liberals seem to have failed to win over the Prime Minister's heart.

The Liberal MP for Sudbury does not get a carbon tax exemption. The two Liberal MPs in Thunder Bay, a very cold climate, do not get a carbon tax exemption. The Liberal member for Nickel Belt did not get a carbon tax exemption in those harsh, cold northern Ontario communities that use gas and propane. The extremely ineffective Liberal MP for Edmonton Centre did not get a carbon tax exemption. There is the loquacious, loud and never quiet member from Winnipeg, which they call “Winterpeg” because it is cold. The member for Winnipeg North, a man of many words but few actions, has failed to get a carbon tax exemption for Winnipeggers.

Apparently those people are forced to pay higher prices for their heat, because their MPs are so ineffective that they could not mount pressure on the Prime Minister to back down.

It is proven that he is not worth the cost, just like he has not been worth the cost for housing. After eight years, the Prime Minister has doubled mortgage payments, doubled the rent and doubled the needed down payment for a home.

Let us just review the housing hell he has caused since he promised to lower housing costs. It now takes 25 years to save up for a down payment in Toronto. Before the Prime Minister, a person could pay off a mortgage in that time. Families are now stretching out their mortgage terms to 90 years and 120 years, because interest rates on their exorbitant mortgages have stretched out the amortization. People used to pay off an entire mortgage 25 years in and then they could retire mortgage free.

Now, not only will they never be able to pay off their mortgage in their entire lifetime, but even if they hand their house and mortgage to their kids, they might not be able to pay it off in their lifetime. They would then have to hand the house to a third generation that would still inherit a mortgage. So much for the government taking on debt so Canadians do not have to.

Under the Prime Minister, homes cost 50% more than they do in the United States, and a person can buy a castle in Sweden for the price of a two bedroom in Kitchener. Toronto is now ranked the worst housing bubble in the world by UBS Bank. Vancouver is the third-most unaffordable housing market on earth, when we compare housing costs to income, and Toronto is the 10th. Vancouver is now more unaffordable than New York, London, England and Singapore, which is a tiny island with 2,000 times more people per square kilometre than Canada.

Canada should be the cheapest place in the world, because, of course, we have more land per person than all but four countries on the planet. In other words, we have a lot of space, just not a lot of homes. In fact, we have fewer homes per capita than all other G7 countries even though we have by far the most land on which to build. In fact, we have fewer homes per capita today than we did eight years ago when the Prime Minister took office, promising more homes and more affordable homes.

If members want the best all-in-one measurement of the Prime Minister's performance on housing, look at the OECD, which compared housing costs to income, starting in 2015 to present, among all 37 OECD countries. How has the ratio of home prices to family incomes grown in Canada relative to the other 36 OECD countries? We are the second worst. In other words, housing costs outgrew incomes in Canada at a faster pace than in all but one of the other 36 OECD countries. This is a new problem that occurred after the Prime Minister took office and it is a problem that is unique to Canada. He cannot blame some prior government and he cannot blame other countries, because it is worse than Canada has ever been and worse than almost anywhere else in the world.

This is a made-in-Canada problem unique to the Prime Minister. Why? Because he has spent the last eight years building bureaucracy rather than building homes. He brags that he has the most expensive housing programs. He complains that when I was housing minister, my programs did not cost as much, and he is absolutely right about that. I had far more affordable housing programs. In fact, there were far few billions in my housing programs than there are in his programs, but we do not measure the success by how expensive we can be. We measure success by how affordable we can be.

He even made up a fact. He looked at a CBC headline, which is always a dangerous thing to do, and he said that when I was minister we only built 99 homes with $300 million. I thought, “What the heck is he talking about?” I have a mind like a steel trap. I would have remembered if I had announced a $300-million housing project, and so I checked into it. Here is what actually happened.

First, the program was created in 2008, a half decade before I even became the minister. Second, it did not spend any money. The program was designed to encourage private home ownership by first nations. It invested capital of $300 million, but did not spend a penny. Because the money was invested commercially, it actually grew to $380 million. Also, it was not 99 homes; 7,000 homes were built, purchased or renovated for first nations people.

It did not cost any money. It made a profit and it built, renovated and bought 7,000 homes. By the way, the entire thing is run by first nations themselves. No wonder the Liberals do not like any of that, but forget the facts. If I had to deal with the bare body of facts in litigating the housing file, I do not know what I would do. I might have to hallucinate to come up with some other facts too. I might even get desperate enough to read CBC headlines as well.

In the meantime, let us talk about the real common-sense plan to bring in homes Canadians can afford. Let us talk about my bill, the building homes not bureaucracy act.

Principle number one is that it will require cities to boost home completions by 15% per year or they will lose federal infrastructure money. We give them $5 billion a year in direct transfers. They can pretty much do whatever they want with that money. I am saying that this is going to be a housing incentive. We are going to start paying city bureaucrats the way real estate agents get paid, on volume. They get housing completed, they get more money. They do not get it completed, they get less money.

The bureaucrats will have to wake up every morning and think about how they can approve as many permits as quickly as possible so Canadians have a place to live. It is going to be very mathematical. I will require them to hit 15% more home building per year. If they beat that by, say, 10%, they get 10% more money. If they miss it by 10%, they get 10% less money. Maybe then the bureaucrats and the mayors will wake up everyday and think about how they can get it done quickly. Mayors would then be forced to move their offices right into the permitting room, a big open room with big screens. Permitting times would be on one wall showing the number of homes waiting, how many people are on hold right now and how many homes are being held up. Imagine if they had big screens in city hall and all the bureaucrats were busy motoring away, trying to get to a “yes” and getting things done. Would that not be incredible if we actually focused on results, rather than on building more bureaucracy? That is what my bill would incentivize.

Right now, by contrast, the current housing minister has come up with a program that works very simply. He calls up the mayors. He says to them that everyone knows housing is hell after eight years of the Liberal government. He asks if he can go to the town and take credit for homes that it were already going to build. He then will write a big cheque for it if the town does that. He shows up and notes that there was already a subdivision being built. If the town gives the minister credit for that, in exchange he will stroke a big cheque for $40 million with which the government can build more bureaucracy. Then the bureaucrats will be happy, the politicians will be happy and everyone else will be miserable. That is what he has been doing.

We know that this is not leading to more housing construction, because housing starts this year are down 9%. Yes, he can show up and say, “Look at these 24,000 homes, which were already going to be built”, but the overall housing starts, the number of shovels put into ground, is down 9%. Two years after the so-called housing accelerator was created, not a single solitary new house has been completed; a $4-billion housing program that does not build housing. My plan would create a strict, mathematical formula that pays for results.

The second principle is that we will require federally funded transit stations to be surrounded by housing so people can live right next to the bus or train. I have been right across the country and countless stations do not have housing. In fact, in Winnipeg, the gatekeepers actually stepped in to block 2,000 new homes right next to a transit station that was built for those homes. They had to get slapped down in the courts. What did the Liberals do? They gave more money to the incompetent politicians at Winnipeg city hall to block housing for the people who needed it.

I am going to put all the federal funds for transit stations into a trust. The city will not get the money for the transit station until there are apartments occupied all around the station. That way they will have to hurry up and approve the housing if they want to get that money. We will, again, pay for results.

Next, the bill would require that the federal minister of public works do a full inventory and come to the House within months to announce all the buildings that would be sold in order to build housing. The Prime Minister promised that eight years ago. In eight years, with all the 37,000 federal buildings, the 6.2 million square metres of office space, and the thousands of acres, how many homes has he managed to build on that federal land and in those federal buildings? I asked him and he did not know either. It is 13; not 13,000, not 1,300. My bill would make it mandatory by law that the minister come here with a plan to sell off 15% of all federal buildings and thousands of acres of federal land so that we can build on that land that is being used for nothing.

On the fourth principle, federal bureaucrats will have to get their act together as well. I was speaking with a builder who builds beautiful environmentally friendly homes and apartments in Atlantic Canada. He is in the process of building a carbon-neutral building right now. It will be the greenest apartment complex in the world. He had to wait two years for CMHC to approve the financing on that building.

The benchmark is supposed to be 60 days, so here is how life is going to work around here when I am prime minister with what is in this bill. CMHC bureaucrats will have to hit the 60-day target within six months. If they do not, I am cutting their pay in half. If they do not do it within a year, I am firing the entire executive. It is right in the bill. That is life. If a barber does not cut hair well, they get fired. If a mechanic has an engine block fall out, they get fired.

In the real world, when people do not do their job, they do not get bonuses. That is not how life works under the Prime Minister for the senior, six-figure bureaucracy. This bill would put an end to that. We are going to pay for results, not for bureaucracy and the privilege of incompetent bureaucrats who make life miserable and costly for everyone else.

The building homes not bureaucracy act is common sense, the common sense of the common people united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.

Requirement of Royal Recommendations for Bills C-353 and C-356

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I rise with respect to what the Speaker said on Thursday, October 19, when he raised two items for Private Members' Business that appeared to infringe on the Crown's financial imperative and asked members to bring forward interventions on these matters.

Without commenting on the subject matter of the two bills in question, I submit that Bill C-353, sponsored by the member for Thornhill, and Bill C-356, sponsored by the member for Carleton, both infringe on the Crown's financial prerogative and that both bills require a royal recommendation.

Subclause 21(1) of Bill C-353 relating to the programs to encourage co-operation provides that:

The Minister may, in cooperation with the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, establish and implement programs designed to encourage individuals to co-operate with the Government of Canada to secure the release of Canadian nationals and eligible protected persons who are held hostage or arbitrarily detained in state-to-state relations outside Canada.

Subclause 21(2) of Bill C-353 further provides that “the Minister may pay a monetary reward to the individual who provides that information in an amount and manner determined by the Minister.”

I submit, respectfully, that there is no authority in statute or in an appropriation to establish such a program set out in subclause 21(1), nor the authority to make payments subject to the provisions set out in subclause 21(2). Therefore, subclause 21(1), in toto, seeks to impose a new and distinct draw on the consolidated revenue fund in a manner that is not currently authorized.

Turning to Bill C-356, I submit that the repurposing of $100 million from the housing accelerator fund and the provision to give effect to a 100% GST rebate on the new residential rental property for which the average rent payable is below market rate both seek to infringe on the Crown's financial prerogative.

First, the housing accelerator fund was established as a program administered by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and is funded by a voted appropriation by Parliament through the estimates process. The member is seeking to change the terms and conditions and the purposes of the housing accelerator fund in a manner that is inconsistent with the program parameters as established and that therefore deviates from the authority granted by Parliament. The tabling of the main estimates and supplementary estimates is preceded by the recommendation of Her Excellency the Governor General for voted appropriations. That royal recommendation sets the maximum amount, the purpose and the terms and conditions of the voted appropriations contained in the estimates documents and voted upon by Parliament.

Second, the 100% GST rebate on new residential rental property would be a rebate paid out of the consolidated revenue fund for which a builder, landlord or buyer could claim the said rebate. I would point out that Bill C-56, which also proposes a 100% GST rebate for purpose-built rental housing, while different in design, was accompanied by a royal recommendation. Since, when brought into force, it would create a new and distinct draw on the consolidated revenue fund, it stands to reason that the program for which the terms, purposes and conditions of the GST rebate envisioned in Bill C-356 cannot rely on the royal recommendation provided with Bill C-56. Bill C-356 must, similarly, require a new royal recommendation to authorize a new and distinct draw on the consolidated revenue fund.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

The Chair would also like to make a statement on the management of Private Members' Business. The consideration of legislative measures involves certain procedural issues of a constitutional nature that impose constraints that the Speaker and the members must address.

As a consequence, every time the order of precedence is replenished, the Chair reviews the bills added to draw the House's attention to those that appear, at first glance, to infringe the financial prerogative of the Crown. This enables members to rise in a timely manner to present their views on whether these bills require a royal recommendation.

Accordingly, following the addition of 15 new items to the order of precedence on Wednesday, September 20, two items concern the Chair.

First, Bill C-353, an act to provide for the imposition of restrictive measures against foreign hostage takers and those who practice arbitrary detention in state-to-state relations and to make related amendments to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, standing in the name of the member for Thornhill.

Also: Bill C‑356, an act respecting payments by Canada and requirements in respect of housing and to amend certain other acts, standing in the name of the member for Carleton.

In the Chair's view, these bills may require a royal recommendation. Members who wish to make arguments regarding the need for bills C‑353 and C‑356 to be accompanied by a royal recommendation should do so as early as possible.

I thank all members for their attention.

Affordable Housing and Groceries Act

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is an incredible honour to rise for the first time in debate in the House of Commons since being elected this summer.

While I will certainly get to the substance of Bill C-56, I would first like to take a few moments to express my appreciation to the residents of Portage—Lisgar for placing their trust in me to be their representative in Ottawa. It is a great responsibility to be their voice and I am humbled by the support they have shown me. I, of course, have some very big shoes to fill in succeeding the Hon. Candice Bergen. I appreciate her friendship and her mentorship over the years, and I will do my best to follow in her footsteps in fighting for our riding and our rural way of life.

I need to thank my wife, Cailey, for her unwavering support, her patience and her love. The life we have entered together is not an easy one, as all my colleagues know, but I am lucky to have her by my side. I would also like to thank my parents, Jim and Shauna-Lei Leslie, for their guidance, their encouragement and their unconditional love.

I need to thank many friends and neighbours who supported me in the nomination and in the by-election. I wish I could name them all, but I have only 10 minutes here today. To all those who played a role, big or small, in helping me over the past six months and throughout my entire life, I want them to please know how much I appreciated their help in becoming their member of Parliament. Together we have proven that when individuals come together with a shared vision, unwavering determination and a commitment to change, we can achieve the seemingly impossible.

The chamber is made up of people from diverse regions, experiences and backgrounds, each working to represent their community and our country. As I said many times during the campaign, I am just a farm kid from Portage. I say “just” because far too often, that is what I would hear folks say, folks like my dad and many others who, when asked what they do, say, “I'm just a farmer.” Farmers are so much more than that and should give themselves credit, as should all Canadians. Farmers produce the high-quality, nutritious food that feeds Canadians and people all around the world. They quite literally bet the farm, every single year, while facing countless factors outside of their control and, currently, a government that is making their job harder. They provide for their families. They help their neighbours and they support their communities.

It is not just farmers who fall into this “just” trap. It is not “just a plumber”. I am not “just a construction worker”, “just a welder” or “just a teacher”. People are more than just that. People are the foundation of our country and are our future. People work hard. People play by the rules, give back to their communities and support their families. They should be proud of it.

In the case of my riding, families choose to live a rural way of life. We live with and appreciate nature. We hunt, fish, sled and quad. We know our neighbours because, during a Manitoba blizzard, even a truck can get stuck in the middle of a gravel road on a windy night, and we might need a helping hand. It is also because we want to know our neighbours. We support our churches, our local businesses, our sports teams and our charities. I am proud of my family, my community and my country. I will be a steadfast advocate for our riding, our province and our way of life.

Today, that starts with speaking to Bill C-56. This bill claims to address two very pressing issues: affordable housing and access to affordable groceries. I can tell members, after knocking on thousands of doors throughout the campaign this summer, that these are two issues that were front and centre at the doorsteps.

In the first six years of the Liberal government, housing prices went up 43% in Manitoba, and it has only gotten worse in the last two years. I cannot tell members how heartbreaking it is to walk up to knock on a door and see a family loading up their half-ton truck with a couch in the back, or they open the door and there are some boxes behind them. These people are moving out of their homes because they can no longer afford their mortgage. Worse, they are moving and paying almost as much in rent for much smaller accommodations elsewhere. Countless people, moms and dads, told me they were being forced to stop buying healthy food for their kids because they just cannot afford it and because Kraft Dinner is cheaper. That is not the Canada that I want to be fighting for. People expect government to improve their life, or at least just stay out of it. Instead, after eight years of the Liberal government, they can barely afford to live any more. It is hard to express just how fed up and frustrated people are at the doorsteps.

I found it funny that yesterday, during question period, the Prime Minister confidently stated that he had been speaking with rural Canadians this past summer and that they supported his carbon tax. It was such an absurd statement that I could only shake my head in disbelief, because I can confidently say that my constituents want to scrap the carbon tax. If the Prime Minister had spent time talking to any everyday people in my riding during the by-election, he would have heard that message loud and clear. The common sense of the common people recognizes a tax when it sees it. They know that this costly Liberal-NDP coalition is driving up the cost of everything. It is time to axe the tax.

Recently, the Liberals did begin recognizing that reducing taxes does spur economic growth, and Bill C-56 seeks to remove the GST on new rental housing construction across the country. I am glad to see the Liberals are starting to come around to Conservative ideas. Just a day before the Minister of Finance announced the legislation, our leader introduced Bill C-356, the building homes not bureaucracy act. Its goal is simple: to make life more affordable for Canadians. Bill C-356 would provide a 100% GST rebate on new residential rental properties for which the average rent payable is below market rate. We can talk about actually trying to accomplish affordable housing, but I do suppose that imitation is the highest form of flattery.

However, our leader's legislation would do much more. It would eliminate CMHC executive bonuses if housing targets are not met, and reduce their compensation if funding for new construction is not completed within 60 days. It would create a home completion target and give bonuses to cities that increase the number of new builds completed. It would utilize incentives to build things again in this country and not build bureaucracy. It has to be about results. It is about putting forward policies that get homes built in this country, and it is high time we had a government that focused on outcomes, not process.

Speaking of that, the second component of Bill C-56 is a prime example of process. The Prime Minister promised Canadians that he would somehow magically lower grocery prices by Thanksgiving, and I guess we can chalk that up as another broken promise on the long tally. Canadians are not holding out hope that, by allowing his bloated bureaucracy to conduct another lengthy study, their grocery bills will start to go down any time soon. When we tax the farmer who produces the food, the manufacturer who processes the food, the trucker who ships the food and the grocer who sells the food, how on earth can we honestly expect prices not to go up?

However, there is an easy solution. We can axe the tax. Instead, we have a tired Liberal government touting the legislation before us as a saving grace for Canadians who cannot afford to live anymore. Copying ideas from our Conservative leader is a good start, but the reality is that there is still much more to do.

The Liberal government's inflationary spending has driven up prices, inflation and interest rates, and it has worsened the lives of so many families, seniors and small business owners. While the Liberals will blame international factors for the current mess we find ourselves in, they cannot bring themselves to take any responsibility for their inflationary deficits that have only poured more fuel on the fire. Even Bill Morneau, the former Liberal finance minister, has admitted that fact, and the government has dramatically grown the bureaucracy and created more red tape. It is abundantly clear that more process does not deliver better outcomes. Instead, the Liberals have frustrated businesses, added costs and headaches for municipalities and not-for-profits that are applying for funding, ignored the priorities of stakeholder groups and provided worse service to Canadians.

After eight long years, the Liberal government has run out of ideas. Everything in Canada feels broken, and we know exactly how we got here. It is time for a new Conservative government to come in and fix it. It is time to bring homes that people can afford. It is time to bring home powerful paycheques and lower prices for food, fuel and home heating. It is time to bring home prosperity for Canadians. Let us bring it home.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Mr. Speaker, indeed I am proud to be here as part of the blue team. It is always an honour to stand in this House and to debate some of the legislation that is before us. Today we are discussing Bill C-56, the affordable housing and groceries act. First of all, I have to congratulate the leader of the official opposition who tabled his bill, the building homes not bureaucracy act, of which the Liberals lifted part and implemented it here through Bill C-56.

I also have to congratulate the member for Bay of Quinte for his private member's bill, Bill C-339, which was to amend the Competition Act by further defining the efficiencies defence under the Competition Act. Of course, that was also lifted by the Liberals and put into Bill C-56.

I guess it is true, as Oscar Wilde used to say, that imitation is the sincerest, and I would say the greatest, form of flattery. For the Liberals to take Conservative legislation and put into their own government bills is a form of flattery, and it is one that I think we should really recognize. This is Conservative ideology that the Liberals are implementing here.

I think it is also important to point out that the Liberal government is all out of ideas. It has been eight long years. The Liberals are tired, they are weary and they do not have anything else to bring forward, so they are now going to be going through all the private members' bills that the Conservatives have laid before this House and they are going to be lifting parts they can use of the great ideas the Conservatives have. They are going to put those into their own legislation going forward.

I am looking forward to what else is going to be coming forward from the government. When it comes down to the issues of grocery prices and housing, they have no ideas, and for the eight years we have been watching, things have gotten harder for Canadian families. It has gotten tougher for Canadians to live that major Canadian dream, which is to own their own home, but millennials and young Canadians just do not have that opportunity.

After eight long years, we have mortgage rates that have now gone up to the highest levels in 30 years. We have seen mortgage rates increase 10 times. The Bank of Canada preferred rate has gone up 475 basis points. Rent in this country on rent a two-bedroom home is going to cost, on average across this country, $2,339 as of last month. Canada now has the most expensive housing market in the world, with some communities like Vancouver and Toronto by far the most expensive places to live, and incomes have not kept up with the cost of living.

It is said that societies often come to the brink of collapse when things like putting food on the table and a roof over one's head exceed 75% of one's disposable income. That is what is happening under those Liberals and their mismanagement of our economy and our government. They are really making it impossible.

We talk about the Canadian dream. When I was 21 years old I took out my first mortgage, under the Liberal Pierre Elliott Trudeau government, and paid a 21% interest rate on that mortgage. It is like father, like son, and now we have again out-of-control interest rates, out-of-control inflation and a government that is running up these massive deficits, contributing to inflationary spending. We are in a situation where those millennials and young Canadians are now not doing what we did, taking out a mortgage and paying it off over 25 years. They are taking 25 years to save up for the down payment to go out and buy that new home.

We always talk about how this is impacting our young people, those millennials out there and the 30-somethings who are still living in their parents' basements. It is also impacting seniors. Edna in my riding wrote to me, and said, “Now, everything costs so much more. Many seniors are suffering and don't have the means to get help”. She was talking about her mortgage and insurance on her house, the meagre life insurance she pays for, all the utility bills and her groceries, and she cannot make ends meet. This is in Manitoba where, compared to the rest of Canada, rental rates, mortgage rates and housing prices are still relatively affordable compared to Ontario, B.C., Atlantic Canada and Alberta, yet she is struggling to get by.

What the Liberals are planning here is to give a GST holiday to wealthy landlords who are going to go out and build more rental units. There is no classification on whether this is affordable housing, but they are going to make sure that these are homes that people can afford to live in on their income. They could have looked at what we were proposing. I welcome the Liberals to plagiarize more of the Leader of the Opposition's bill, the building homes not bureaucracy act.

On top of removing the GST over the next five years on new home builds, why do the Liberals not make it easier for all developers so they can build more single-family homes as well make sure we are out there to support the people who want to buy their first home, not rent, whether it is a condo, a multi-family unit or a single home in a new development? Let us make sure that all developers, not just the landlords who are out there, are going to be able to get the GST holiday.

Let us make sure that we are also taking away the bonuses paid to bureaucrats who are part of the problem right now in creating the red tape. I am talking specifically about the bonuses that were paid out to Bank of Canada and CMHC executives. There was $26 million paid out in bonuses to CMHC executives who, in my mind, are part of the housing crisis as they are not addressing it well, and the Bank of Canada executives got $20 million in bonuses. Again, this is the Bank of Canada that keeps increasing the interest rates to try to balance off the inflation that was created. The Liberals printed more money for this bank to borrow and the government continues to use that money to run up these huge inflationary deficits.

The current Prime Minister has now run up more national debt than all prime ministers before him going right back to Confederation. That to me is a crisis. It is about passing on debt to our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. We are talking about intergenerational abuse because of the misappropriation of funds by the government and the lack of investment in the future of this country, which is making it tougher for Canadians.

I have to say if we want to talk more about what the Liberals can take and lift out of the Leader of the Opposition's bill, let us make sure we also talk about getting rid of the gatekeepers by incentivizing municipalities to actually build more homes and doing away with all the red tape that is stopping them.

We want to make sure that we take all the excess land and buildings the Government of Canada owns and convert them into housing.

Let us not stop there. If the Liberals want to take another Conservative policy and plagiarize it, I welcome them to axe the carbon tax. If we want to talk about groceries, which this bill has actually nothing to do with, let us talk about taking away the inflationary carbon tax because it is making food more expensive. I am a farmer. My friend from Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa is a farmer. My friend from Portage—Lisgar is a farmer. We were all a bunch of farm kids growing up and are proud of it. When we tax the farmer who grows the food, tax the trucker who transports it to the processor, tax the processor who makes the food, tax the trucker again to get it over to the grocery stores, and then the Liberals not only charge the carbon tax on the grocery stores, but penalize them, fine them, then pass that on to the consumer as well, it means we all pay more for food.

Let us make sure that the Liberals continue to make use of good, Conservative policy, that they do away with all the destructive and wasteful spending on their side and do more to work with our side, follow our lead and take our examples, because then they will make a difference. If they do not, I promise all Canadians they will have a chance to pass judgment on the government, get rid of the Liberals, and bring in the common-sense Conservatives for a better and brighter future.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise today to speak about Bill C-56, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act and the Competition Act, or the so-called affordable housing and groceries act. I call it a sham, a desperate attempt by this desperate government to make Canadians think it is tackling these problems by using a name that falsely labels the purpose of the act. It is pure propaganda.

Let us talk about groceries. People watching might be surprised to learn that the bill has literally nothing to do with groceries. Once it is passed, grocery prices would not suddenly drop because of anything in the bill. The bill is, in fact, about something else entirely. It would make amendments to the Competition Act.

First, it would remove the efficiencies defence, an idea Conservatives first proposed, but we never said that it was a solution to high grocery prices because that simply would not be true. However, what its removal would do is make it more difficult for major corporations to merge using economies of scale and savings as an argument. The bill would also introduce new market study powers and give the Minister of Innovation the power to order expensive market studies, which many argue would politicize the process and is financially onerous for industry. Ironically, the bill would drive up the cost for industry, making food even more expensive.

This does not sound at all like inflation-busting measures to me because they simply are not. Members need not take it just from me. They can take it from the Business Council of Canada, which released a statement saying, “As the Competition Act amendments included in today’s bill will in no way address the inflationary environment now facing Canadians – and could, conversely, worsen inflation by introducing uncertainty and instability in the free market”. This is not a ringing endorsement.

Its president, Goldy Hyder, had more to say. He said that it would “stifle” business through “bad regulation” and called it a “trojan horse”. He went on to say, “Ottawa wants Canadians to think the bill will improve affordability for families by giving consumers more choice...but that’s not its actual purpose nor what it will achieve.” He also said that the government “is acting in bad faith” and that the “amendments came as an ambush” and without proper consultation. As well, he said, “If the government is truly serious about lowering prices...lower import tariffs on certain goods...or eliminate...interprovincial trade barriers”.

However, he is not the only critic. Michael Osborne, the chair of Cozen O'Connor's Canadian competition law practice says of the bill, “Some of the amendments are good, more are bad, but most are useless.”

It is not high praise. It is useless because competition law is simply not designed to solve macro economic problems such as inflation. He pointed out what we have been saying for two years, which is that inflation is caused by expanding the money supply too quickly by loose monetary and fiscal policy.

He went on to say, “By design, competition law cannot limit increases in the money supply; that's the job of central banks...If a lack of competition is responsible for rising grocery prices, then competition law might be able to help. But the evidence doesn't support this.” He also indicated that the bill vests too much power to order market studies with the minister, reducing the bureau's independence and increasing the risk of politicizing competition law enforcement.

It is becoming a disturbing trend with this government to hand power directly to politicians at the expense of other departmental officials. This will lessen the independence of the Competition Bureau and politicize the way that we deal with competition law.

Even if there were more room for competition in the grocery industry, Mr. Osborne opines that removing the efficiencies defence would have little effect on lowering prices given how small margins are on grocery sales. These are damning opinions from industry regarding the efficacy and forthrightness of Bill C-56.

If the Liberals really wanted to make groceries more affordable, they would drop their inflationary carbon tax to stop taxing the farmer who produces the food, the trucker who transports the food and the grocer who sells the food. It is the height of Liberal hypocrisy to claim to be lowering food prices while they are taxing food production and transportation every step of the way.

The bill before us also claims to be the affordable housing act, which is another sham. Although it would reduce the cost of a new build by the 5% GST it would eliminate, it would do nothing to bring down the price of existing housing in the near term.

After eight years of the Prime Minister, housing costs have more than doubled. Toronto now ranks as the worst housing bubble in the world. Vancouver is now the third most overpriced housing market in the world when we compare average income to housing price. It is worse than New York, London and Singapore, a tiny island with 2,000 times more people per square kilometre. All these places have more money, more people and less land, yet somehow, miraculously, their housing is more affordable.

Canada has the fewest homes per capita of any G7 country, even though we have the most land to build on. That is because we are the second lowest in being the slowest with building permits out of all 40 OECD countries. It used to take 25 years to pay off a mortgage. Now it takes 25 years just to save up for a down payment. Only in Canada has housing become so unaffordable so quickly. This is happening because the Prime Minister subsidizes government gatekeepers and the red tape that prevent builders from getting shovels in the ground and our people into homes they can afford.

In Vancouver, nearly $1.3 million of the cost of an average home is due to government gatekeepers adding unnecessary red tape. That means that over 60% of the price of a home in Vancouver is due to delays, fees, regulations, taxes and high-priced consultants. In Toronto, the added cost is $350,000.

Housing prices have doubled; mortgage payments have doubled. According to the IMF, Canada is the G7 country most at risk of a mortgage default crisis. We have the most at-risk housing market among developed economies. As low-interest mortgages come up for renewal, defaults are sure to rise.

Conservatives have a real plan to get housing built. Our leader and party's act, the building homes not bureaucracy act, would incentivize cities to speed up the rate at which they build more homes every year to meet our housing targets. Cities would have to increase the number of houses built by 15% each year and then 15% on top of the previous target every year. If targets were missed, cities would have to catch up in the following years and build even more homes, or a percentage of their federal funding, equivalent to the percentage they miss their targets by, would be withheld. Cities that exceed that target would get bonus funding; cities that miss it would have their funding reduced. Federal transit funding would be provided to certain cities only when those stations are surrounded by high-density residential buildings.

We would empower Canadians to file complaints about Nimbyism with the federal infrastructure department. When complaints are legitimate, we would withhold infrastructure and transit dollars until municipalities allow homes to be built. It would ensure that CMHC executives cannot receive bonuses unless housing targets are met and applications for new construction are approved within 60 days.

In addition, there will be a 100% GST rebate on new residential rental properties for which the average rent payable is below market rate to ensure that low-income housing gets built in this country.

This bill would also require the housing minister to report on the inventory of federal buildings and land to identify land suitable for housing construction, and to propose a plan to sell at least 15% of any federal buildings and land that would be appropriate for housing construction.

The sad reality is that, under the Prime Minister, housing costs 50% more in Canada than it does in the United States. To bring market equilibrium, we need to build 3.5 million homes by 2030. This act will not get the job done.

I find it troubling that the government that caused this affordability crisis because of its inflationary spending and taxes has now brought legislation that blames food producers and grocers. Deflecting blame from itself and using the power of the state to impose a solution on industry is a bullying tactic unbecoming of a responsible and ethical government.

It is time for the Liberals to get out of the way and let Conservatives fix what they broke. This bill is a sham, and the Prime Minister is not worth the cost.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise for the first time in this session of Parliament to speak to Bill C-56, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act and the Competition Act.

The lack of affordable housing has been top of mind in my riding of Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound as home and rental prices have continued to increase over the last eight years.

To give members some data, in 2015, when the current government took office, rental units were on average $700 a month, I did have a fairly wide variance as I represent a large rural riding, but now that rent is well over $1,000 per month. An average house price in 2015 was $311,000 whereas now it is over $608,000. Further complicating this is home sales are down over 27% below the five-year average, and over 31% below the 10-year average.

This speaks directly to the impact the Liberal government's inflationary deficit spending is having on the economy and the ability for people to get into homes, not only to get them built, but to afford to build them or to move into rental units. This has finally come home to roost with the Liberal government, which is acting now, albeit far too late. It is funny that it finally comes forward with a bill to help make life more affordable for Canadians at the same time that the hon. leader of the official opposition introduced his bill, the building homes not bureaucracy act. It liked the bill so much it decided to take a piece of it and call it its own. I guess we could say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I would offer that it could save itself a lot of work by just passing the more comprehensive bill from the Leader of the Opposition.

One of the aspects of the bill that I question is how it is going to address the immediate housing crisis that Canadians are facing right now. If we read the bill, these rental housing units do not even have to be completed until 12 years from now, in the year 2035.

This housing issue has been going on and I have been hearing about it almost the whole time since I was elected. I hosted a housing task force meeting just over a year ago back in my riding because I recognized that this issue transcends all levels of government, elected officials and stakeholders. Everybody has a piece to play in solving this. Those stakeholders included my counties, health units, realtors, builders, chambers of commerce, not-for-profits, co-op housing groups and the construction sector. I would like to paint the picture of the complexity of this issue we are facing and why this bill does not go far enough. There is the increasing cost of land to build on; rising interest rates; the Nimbyism that is existing at all levels, but in particular at the municipal level; development charges and red tape; labour shortages in the construction sector; high inflation on building goods and everyday goods caused by not only supply chain issues, but more importantly, the carbon tax; and the deficit spending of the Liberal government.

This cost of living crisis has basically exhausted the not-for-profits in my area as the demand for aid continues to increase. They have been calling for the removal of the GST on not-for-profits as well, not just what is being proposed in Bill C-56. Existing landlords are hesitant to rent out their properties due to the challenges that so many Canadians are facing because of a frequency of home takeovers, and the excessive red tape for private investment because federal government programs are too restrictive. Ultimately, removing the GST from eligible purpose-built rentals is just one small drop in the bucket for what the residents in my riding of Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound need to see in order to fix this housing crisis.

The government likes to talk about some of its other programs, like the housing accelerator fund. I had the privilege of sitting on the HUMA committee when we first studied the housing accelerator fund, but it has failed to demonstrate its utility. Today, I am only aware of one announcement of any funding going out under that program.

When I asked the minister specifically at committee a year ago about how this is going to help a large portion of Canada, i.e., those of us who live in rural Canada, he admitted on the public record that this funding is geared toward the major urban centres in this country, not for the rest of Canada.

I was lucky enough to question the president of the CMHC at that committee as well about the level of bureaucracy and complications. I will mention a specific example of the challenges that not-for-profits were facing. Ultimately, I was successful in advocating for a change.

There was a not-for-profit senior housing development that was running into roadblocks because of the Liberal government's inflationary spending and the costs that have gone up, as I highlighted earlier, to the point where it had to buy down, according to the CMHC, through its financial institution, the actual lending rate.

It was not allowed to talk or renegotiate that, because now the prices had doubled. I will get into specifics a bit later. It was being told it could not communicate in it. Fortunately, when I had the president there, we were able to come to a solution, but the point is that too much bureaucracy is causing the problems. We need fewer gatekeepers, not more.

I will get into some of the specifics I just mentioned. In this case, the construction costs had gone from $3 million to $7 million for this not-for-profit. That is why it is so important that we change it.

In prepping for this speech, I reached out to a number of stakeholders and not-for-profits in my area to ask how this would help them. They feel it is a step in the right direction, but there are plenty of tangible steps the government needs to take in order to make more substantial changes.

I mentioned charities and not-for-profits. I have Habitat for Humanity in my riding; it is a charity that builds homes for low-income residents, and it suggested removing the GST from the sale of homes being built for charities as well, because that is not mentioned at all in the bill. A challenge it specifically faces is that, when fair market value rises, so does the GST, which makes it more expensive for charities such as Habitat for Humanity to build these homes for low-income Canadians, especially given the affordability crisis that Canadians are facing, which has now reduced the charitable donations these charities are receiving.

Additional feedback I got from charities was to remove the compounding carbon tax and clean fuel standards, as they increase costs significantly for charities, which receive no rebate off these additional taxes.

Ultimately, Bill C-56 contains a number of half measures, ideas taken from opposition parties, including, as I already mentioned, the hon. Leader of the Opposition, and, on the competition side, from my colleague from the Bay of Quinte. They have an overreliance on existing programs that are obviously not working, and they are just redoing funding announcements. As I said, while there are some solid measures in this bill that may encourage the construction of more homes, more must be done now to catch up and ensure that Canadians have a roof over their head immediately.

Specifically regarding the housing portion of the bill, the reality is that there is a lot more value in the hon. Leader of the Opposition's building homes not bureaucracy act as a bill, because it goes far beyond just removing the GST from certain new builds. It sets out a road map for bringing homes that people can afford to more Canadians.

Ultimately, if the Liberal government is serious about addressing housing affordability, it would fast-track the Leader of the Opposition's bill and make it law today.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and to the Minister of Sport and Physical Activity]

Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned the bureaucracy, and the previous speaker, the member for Carleton, took credit for other people's work. One of these people is Mike Moffatt, author of the National Housing Accord. He had the chance to read the Conservative proposal for affordable housing.

He said that “this bill is an exceptionally weak response to the housing crisis, riddled with loopholes.” I am referring to the private member's bill, Bill C-356, which is not the bill we are talking about today but is the bill that they have been referring to on the other side.

He notes that this bill is going to increase bureaucracy, that it is going to bring more red tape, that it is actually going to increase the cost of housing and create more bureaucracy for housing.

When the foremost speaker and thinker on housing rejects his plan entirely, what is his response?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.

After eight years of the Prime Minister, housing costs have doubled, rent has doubled, mortgage payments have doubled and the down payment needed for a new average home has doubled. Before the Prime Minister, it took 25 years to pay off a mortgage. Now, in Toronto, it takes the average family 25 years to save for a down payment.

Before the Prime Minister, one could buy an average home for a modest $450,000 and at significantly lower interest rates. Now, one has to pay over $700,000 for the exact same home with the exact same walls, roof, windows, floors and basement, and one must pay much higher rates on the mortgage for that home. Under the Prime Minister, housing costs 50% more in Canada than it does in the United States, and one can buy a castle in Sweden for the price of a two-bedroom, rundown home in Kitchener.

After eight years of the Prime Minister, Toronto now ranks as the worst housing bubble in the world, according to the UBS bank. Vancouver is now the third most overpriced housing market in the world when we compare average income to average house price. It is worse than New York; London, England; and Singapore, a tiny island with 2,000 times more people per square kilometre. All these places have more money, more people and less land, and yet somehow, miraculously, their housing is more affordable.

According to the IMF, Canada now has the riskiest mortgage debt in the entire G7. We have by far the most indebted households, all of which have had to take on these massive mortgages to pay for the exorbitant house prices that have skyrocketed under the Prime Minister.

Speaking of those rocketing prices, they have two causes. One is that the Prime Minister had the central bank print $600 billion. When it does that, it does not just drop the money out of airplanes or deliver it to the PMO in a Brink's truck, as much as he might like for that to be the case. Rather, it buys government bonds on the secondary market, which makes it easier for the government to borrow and spend, which the Prime Minister loves, but it also has the by-product of massively increasing the cash in the financial system that gets lent out in mortgages, disproportionately to the wealthy insiders who have connections to the banking system, who then bid up housing prices. During that money-printing orgy, we saw the number of homes bought by investors literally double in a year and a half, a 100% increase, which led to the fastest increase in house prices ever recorded in Canadian history.

The second cause deals with supply. After eight years of the Prime Minister, Canada has the fewest homes per capita of any country in the G7, even though we have the most land to build on. Why? It is because we have the second-slowest building permits out of all 40 OECD countries. Only the Slovak Republic is slower.

So what are the solutions to that? One, we need to cap spending and cut waste to balance the budget and bring down interest rates and inflation. Two, we need to get rid of the government gatekeepers who block home building.

Now, the government has come up with this idea of a housing accelerator fund. It is a $2-billion program. The Liberals announced it a year and a half ago and so far it has not built a single, solitary home anywhere. They had one photo-op announcement, where there was a promise that it would eventually build 2,000 homes. Well, it sounds like a lot, but according to CMHC, we need to increase the projected home building by 3.5 million homes between now and 2030. In other words, even if they keep their promise of building 2,000 more homes in London, Ontario, they would have to do that same announcement and execute the announcement, with results, 1,500 times to get up to the 3.5 million homes we need.

Now, there is a very big difference. A lot of the media tried to say that the Prime Minister's accelerator is an attempt to copy my housing plan. It might be the same in messaging and rhetoric, but in practice it is totally different, and here is the difference: He is funding bureaucracy; I will fund results.

Let me use a hockey analogy. A team wins the Stanley Cup if it scores the most goals in the most games, gets into the playoffs, wins the most games in every series and ultimately win the finals. Winning is about putting pucks in nets.

Can members imagine if, instead, the referee said that he was going to give points based on the practices of the team members? He would go to the Calgary Flames' Saddledome and say that they have an excellent skating drill, so he is going to give them 10 points. Then he would go over to the Maple Leafs, which may be a bad example, and say that they have an excellent pep talk before each game, and he is going to give them a few points. Then he goes over to the Vancouver Canucks and says that they do an excellent job of practising their shooting accuracy on the ice, and gives them a bunch of points.

However, he does not realize that, when he has turned his back, the Flames hockey team might be having a beer and pizza party every night that fattens up the teammates and makes them less successful on the ice, or the Toronto Maple Leafs spend more time on the golf course than they do on the ice, or the Vancouver Canucks do not practise when the referee is not looking. Therefore, when the referee is not looking, he does not know what they are doing.

Let us bring this example to housing. The Liberals want the Minister of Housing to go around to judge the practices, as he sees them in his eyes, of each municipality and then give them lump sum grants based on what practices they take. They might speed up permits one day when the minister is looking, but then they might increase the cost of development charges on the next, or add a new site plan process that adds a bunch of extra time after it has this big grant and photo op from the minister. In other words, it might not build more houses. Just today the minister was forced to cancel a photo op with the City of Vancouver because it is proposing to raise its development charges on new home building, even though last week it made a favourable announcement.

What is the solution to this? Why do we not judge our cities and their approval processes by how many homes they complete, or in other words, how many pucks go in the net. That is judging by results. My common sense approach is very simple math. I would require every city in Canada to boost housing completions by 15% per year. If it beats that target by 1%, it gets 1% more money. If it misses it by 1%, it gets 1% less money. If it beats it by 10%, it gets 10% more money, but if it misses it by 10%, it gets 10% less. It is very simple: build more, get more. Incentives work. That is why we give kids who perform best on their exams a higher mark to take home on their report card to their parents. That is why employers pay bonuses to high-performing employees. That is how the real world works.

I am not going to tell the cities how to do it. As long as they safely allow for builders to complete 15% or more home building every single year, they would get more money from my government. By the way, they would generate more money for my government because more home building means more people working, which means more people paying taxes.

All of this is common sense. My government would be paying for results across the board. We would clear away the bureaucracy and get things done. Those who help me get things done would be rewarded. Speaking of rewards, just like with the Stanley Cup, those superstar municipalities that massively increase home building would be eligible for an even bigger home-building top-up, a massive building bonus, so they can take that money and use it to service the new communities they have allowed to be built.

Some say it cannot be done, that we cannot safely build homes faster. The Brits and Americans approve building permits three times faster than us, and they do it just as safely. It is not just them. Thank God the Squamish people in Vancouver do not have to follow Vancouver city hall rules because they are on a reserve. Can members guess what they did? They approved 6,000 new homes on 10 acres of land. That is 600 homes per acre. Now people will have affordable homes built that would not have been possible if the gatekeepers had been in the way.

Imagine if we could have stories like that right across the country. That is what my plan, the building homes not bureaucracy act, would enable. Let us build homes of the future. Let us base it on the common sense of the common people united for our common home, their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to address the House of Commons on behalf of the people of Chilliwack—Hope.

We are here today discussing Bill C-56, the affordable housing and groceries act, which the government whipped together after its London caucus meeting. The government is great at the announcement part of things. It is great at the glitzy announcements and the flashy photo ops, but it really is terrible at delivering results for Canadians.

This is no more evident in any file than in the housing file. It had billions of dollars and promises for eight years about how it was going to revolutionize housing in this country, and what it has delivered is failure. Time and time again, when the rubber meets the road, it has not delivered the housing units that it promised, it has not delivered the funding that it promised. It is Canadians who have paid the price.

On the first day of the London caucus meeting where the panicked Liberals said they had to do something because what they were doing was not working and they were getting crushed at people's doors, the Prime Minister actually reannounced, for maybe the third time, the same funding that he had announced in previous budgets in years past. He said that Liberals were working with London and announcing new money, and, for once, the media did not buy it. It said what they were announcing was something they announced before and were a year behind in delivering, that this was old money and not a new promise of new housing for Canadians.

That did not work, so what did the Liberals do the next day? They came out with an eight-year-old promise from the 2015 Liberal red book. They again failed to deliver on the promises they made to Canadians at that time. They promised the GST rebate for apartments in 2015. It was 2023 and, on the back of a napkin half an hour before the Leader of the Opposition was releasing a comprehensive housing plan that included a GST rebate for rental housing, they whipped out this promise that they had buried and forgotten about for eight full years. That is not leadership, that is admitting failure, which is what they have done again and again on this file.

It is the same thing with the grocery store photo op. It is the same government that gave millions and millions of dollars to Galen Weston and Loblaws to subsidize freezers and fridges. It is a good thing it gave the money. I heard that Loblaws barely scraped by last year. It barely made a profit and it is a good thing that the federal Liberals reached deep into taxpayers' pockets and took out $12 million for fridges and freezers to gift to Loblaws. Then they have audacity to say they will bring representatives of grocery stores to Ottawa, they will tell them what is what, they will have a photo op and things will be different, that we should trust them. Nothing happened at that event except a photo op for the industry minister and a talking point for the Liberals.

When we asked the Liberals, as a result of this meeting, what will happen to the outrageous price of a head of lettuce, a bag of carrots, a bag of potatoes and a turkey, we heard nothing. They have no idea. This is a complete and total photo op by a government of complete and total failure. Every single time there is a problem, it comes up with a communications plan that does not deliver anything for Canadians.

Canadians are not holding their breath in my riding that a photo op meeting with some CEOs is going to make any difference in their grocery bills, but they know what would make a difference. What would make a difference in their grocery bills is axing the Liberal carbon tax because we know that when farmers pay a tax, they pass that on, when truckers have to pay a tax to pick up food from farmers, they pass that on, when manufacturers and food processors have to pay the carbon tax, they pass that on, and the grocery stores pass it on. The Liberals say it has no impact on the price of groceries. We know that it does. We know that taxes have an upward effect on grocery prices, but the government refuses to look at that and, instead, has gimmicks and photo ops that do not make a difference to the bottom line of Canadians.

The parliamentary secretary to the government House leader spoke just a few moments ago. He said that things were going well for Canada. It reminds me of the new justice minister. When he was appointed to his position, he said that the rising crime wave Canadians were feeling in their communities was all in their heads, that it was not actually happening. However, the data shows that it is happening, that the crime rate is soaring across the country. It is the same with the price of groceries. When the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader says that it is all in their heads, that things are going well, he obviously has not spent much time talking to his constituents.

People are suffering. People need help. People in my riding are living in RVs full time. They are living in their cars, they have taken over highway rest areas, which have become permanent encampments for people to live, and they are live in tents. It is because the price of rent has doubled in eight years under the Liberal government. The price of mortgages has doubled in eight years under the Prime Minister. The cost of a down payment has doubled under the Prime Minister.

We see a recycled promise from eight years ago, just in advance of the Leader of the Opposition's announcement, and the Liberals want us to applaud them for their housing plan. It is not working. I wish they would adopt the rest of the Leader of the Opposition's private member's bill, Bill C-356, the building homes not bureaucracy act. We need to incentivize municipalities to actually get homes built, not talk about it, not plan for 15 years from now but to get keys in doors and people in homes. That is what the Leader of the Opposition's plan would do by incentivizing municipalities to get more homes built and punishing municipalities that stand in the way.

We know that the cost of red tape and gatekeeping in Vancouver, for instance, now adds over $1 million to the price of a home. It has been revealed that even upper middle-class Canadians can no longer qualify for the average home in Canada. They cannot qualify for a mortgage, making $170,000 a year. That is the state of play in our country, and the Liberals want us to say that they are doing so well.

One of the great tragedies, and having young people in my life, I think of my own family, is that nine in 10 young people, 90% of young people, have given up on home ownership altogether. They do not believe they will ever be able to afford a home. That was not the case before the Liberal government, and it will not be the case after the Liberal government is gone.

It is time for real action on housing. It is time for the Leader of the Opposition's plan on housing, which would take real action. Real steps and real metrics would be realized to deliver actual results. The Liberal plan has failed. We saw refugees coming to our country with the promise of a better life. They have been living on the streets and using food banks, living under overpasses. We have seen students forced to live in shelters and use food banks.

This is the legacy of eight years of the Liberal government, and this bill would not change that. Having a photo-op will not change that. Having a re-announcement will not change that. What will change it is real action. As I mentioned, the Conservative leader's plan is a real plan, unlike the back-of-a-napkin approach of the Liberal government.

We have said that we would withhold transit and infrastructure funding from cities until sufficient high-density housing around transit stations is built and occupied. That is key. Not planned, not built at some stage but when they are occupied is when they will get the money. We are going to incentivize cities with a super bonus if they do better. It is not just a stick; it is also a carrot. That is an important part of the Conservative leader's bill that is better than the Liberal bill.

We are paying performance bonuses to executives of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation for this dismal failure of getting Canadians into homes that they can afford. We will cut those performances bonuses unless they can deliver results for Canadians.

This bill just scratches the surface. If the government were serious about getting more Canadians into homes, it would axe the tax, which would not only help with the price of homes but would help with the cost of groceries. The fact that it has not done that shows that the government is not yet serious about this very important issue.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Parry Sound—Muskoka.

We have a cost of living crisis in Canada. The prices of housing, groceries, fuel and home heating have pushed far too many to the financial breaking point. Once upon a time, if people worked hard in Canada, they could earn a paycheque that would comfortably pay for their necessities. They would even have some cash left over and maybe take a family vacation.

My father was an electrician. One of my brothers is an electrician and another is a carpenter. These are good blue-collar jobs in the skilled trades. We grew up in a safe neighbourhood on Vancouver Island, a place that is not that safe anymore. My father worked hard, and he was able to raise and support six children. We did not always have a lot, but we always had enough. My brothers worked hard and were able to live comfortably. Sometimes, we did not have a lot in our kitchen cupboards, but my father never had to visit the food bank to put food on the table for us.

That was the promise of Canada, but under the Liberals, that promise is broken. After eight years of the overbearing NDP-Liberal government, Canadians are out of money and they are turning their backs on the Liberal Party and the Prime Minister knows it. Out of pure political desperation, he has put forward new legislation to address the mess he has made of housing and grocery prices. Unfortunately, this legislation, Bill C-56, is inadequate.

The Liberals could have adopted the comprehensive housing policy put forward by the Leader of the Opposition in the building homes not bureaucracy act, but instead, they are taking a patchwork approach to the housing crisis. The bill would remove the GST for rental unit construction projects, a campaign promise the Liberals made and broke in 2015. I support this proposal, but would have preferred that the Liberals adopt the positive and sweeping reforms contained in our Conservative leader's bill. I will have more on that in a moment.

Bill C-56 also includes Conservative policy introduced by my colleague from Bay of Quinte in amending the Competition Act by removing the efficiencies defence. This change would give the Competition Bureau more teeth to prevent mergers that would lead to higher prices and less choice. The changes in the legislation are positive and supportable, but it is lamentable that we are in this economic position in the first place.

After eight years of the NDP-Liberal costly coalition, the promise of Canada is broken. Canadians with higher education and many working in the skilled trades find themselves living in tents or in their cars. Crime, chaos, drugs and disorder plague our streets, and we have a Minister of Justice who says it is all in our heads.

After eight years of the NDP-Liberal government and its punitive carbon tax, the cost of groceries is out of control, and Canadian families are hurting. There is a tax on the farmer who grows the food, a tax on the trucker who ships the food and a tax on the store that sells the food, and they are all a tax on the family struggling to buy the food. One in five Canadians is now skipping meals because they simply cannot afford food, and food bank usage is now up at levels we have never seen before. Food banks in my community are at risk of bankruptcy because they cannot keep up with demand. Put simply, our citizens cannot afford to feed themselves because of the NDP-Liberal government.

They also are struggling to put a roof over their heads. Nine in 10 young Canadians believe the dream of home ownership is just that: a dream. Mortgages have doubled. Rents have doubled. Down payments have doubled. Greater Vancouver is now the third most overpriced housing market on the planet. In the city of Vancouver, the average rent is over $3,300 a month, and for a two-bedroom apartment it is nearly $3,900 a month. We can add that to the $2 plus for a litre for gas.

A recent C.D. Howe Institute study determined that in Vancouver nearly $1.3 million of the cost of an average home is from government gatekeepers adding unnecessary red tape. That means that over 60% of the price of a home in Vancouver is bloated by delays, fees, regulations, taxes and high-priced consultants.

Data from Statistics Canada shows that residential construction investment has declined for the fourth consecutive month, including a decrease of 3.2% in Vancouver. In Canada, it used to take 25 years to pay off a mortgage. Now it takes 25 years just to save up for a down payment. The NDP-Liberal government's record on housing has been nothing short of disastrous.

Just a few weeks ago, the Liberals met in London, Ontario, for a three-day retreat. They said that housing and affordability were their top priorities. What did the retreat accomplish? They reannounced their broken campaign promise from 2015 to remove the GST from new, purpose-built rental housing. After the Liberals heard about our common-sense Conservative plan to axe the housing tax, they flip-flopped and tried to take credit.

To address the increase in the price of food, the Prime Minister announced that they were calling in the grocery store CEOs for a meeting. I am sure they were very intimidated. He then threatened them with tax measures that would inevitably be passed on to consumers if they did not lower prices. As expected, this amounted to nothing more than a stunt, a grocery gimmick, theatre. Photo ops, announcements, virtue-signalling, and now they are plagiarizing ideas from the Conservatives.

If the NDP-Liberal government is looking for another idea to plagiarize from Conservatives, it should repeal its carbon taxes and stop the reckless spending that caused this affordability crisis in the first place. These are the real reasons Canadians are struggling with the high cost of living: high interest rates, and high prices in the grocery stores and at the gas pumps.

Bill C-56 does not go far enough and simply would not cut it when it comes to addressing and fixing the housing crisis in this country.

The Leader of the Opposition introduced the building homes not bureaucracy act in Parliament last week. This is a real plan that would tie housing completions to infrastructure funding so we can get shovels in the ground while providing a building bonus to municipalities that exceed their home-building targets. Simply put, if one builds more houses efficiently, one would get more money. Projections are that Canada needs 3.5 million new homes by 2030. We had better get started. Our message to municipalities is clear: build, build, build.

The Prime Minister rewards big city gatekeepers with tax dollars, regardless of whether or not they build homes. Our Conservative plan would require municipalities to build homes close to transit. Conservatives would also list 15% of the federal government's 37,000 buildings so they can be turned into affordable housing. We would remove the GST for any new home with rental houses below market value, incentivizing the construction of affordable homes. Conservatives would cut the bonuses of the gatekeepers at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation if they are unable to speed up approval of applications to an average of 60 days. Under the watch of the Prime Minister, these bureaucrats have been rewarded with huge performance bonuses for an abysmal performance. Much like the current Prime Minister, Bill C-56 is weak, inadequate, and reeks of desperation.

Only a common-sense Conservative government would fix this housing crisis by building homes not bureaucracy. Only a Conservative government would bring home lower prices for Canadians by ending the inflationary deficits and axing the carbon tax. The promise of Canada is broken, but hope is on the way. Conservatives would reverse these reckless policies and restore the promise of Canada.

Building Homes Not Bureaucracy Act

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-356, An Act respecting payments by Canada and requirements in respect of housing and to amend certain other Acts.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to introduce the building homes not bureaucracy act, and now, more than ever, it is necessary. After eight years, the Prime Minister had doubled the national debt, which has ballooned mortgage rates, and he has funded local bureaucracies to block homebuilding. We have the fewest homes per capita of any country in the G7, even with the most land to build on. Now he has a program that will add even more bureaucracy. It has taken a year and a half for the first announcement and has not built a single home.

My common-sense plan is based on the success I had when I was minister, when housing costs were half of what they are now. The approach that I take in this bill is to keep the existing GST rebate on purpose-built rentals, but also extend it to all new construction of rentals for which the rent is below average to encourage affordable home building, not $2-million penthouses.

Second, we will cut the bonuses of CMHC officials if they do not provide decisions on financing new homebuilding construction within the promised 60 days.

Next, we will make it a legal requirement that municipalities approve and allow construction of affordable housing around every single federally funded transit station, and the dollars will not move until people are moved into those apartments.

Finally, we will incentivize cities to speed up and lower the cost of building permits and free up land by linking the federal dollars they get to the number of homes that actually get completed. There will be a target of 15% more homebuilding per year, which would double home construction within five years at a compounding rate. Those that beat the target by 1% will get 1% more money; those that miss it by 1% will get 1% less. It is a simple mathematical formula for which no new forms, no new bureaucracy and no new delays are required.

It is common sense of the common people united for our common home. Now let us build some homes.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)