Bill C-56

Affordable Housing and Groceries Act

An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act and the Competition Act

Part 1 amends the Excise Tax Act in order to implement a temporary enhancement to the GST New Residential Rental Property Rebate in respect of new purpose-built rental housing.
Part 2 amends the Competition Act to, among other things,
(a) establish a framework for an inquiry to be conducted into the state of competition in a market or industry;
(b) permit the Competition Tribunal to make certain orders even if none of the parties to an agreement or arrangement — a significant purpose of which is to prevent or lessen competition in any market — are competitors; and
(c) repeal the exceptions in sections 90.1 and 96 of the Act involving efficiency gains.

Affordable Housing and Groceries Act

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Madam Speaker, there may be multiple ways the government can support co-op housing. Why not allow co-op housing to qualify for the GST rebate for rentals? Why can it not get the same rebate? All kinds of different housing can be supported through the GST rebate. I would support an examination of how we could best do that. If the hon. member has an amendment to the bill that could include co-op housing, I would be open to supporting that or at least taking a look at it.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to know what my colleague thinks about the fact that the bill contains no specifics on the type of buildings, the type of housing or any affordability requirements to qualify for the rebate.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will note that a very big difference between the leader of the official opposition's bill and the government bill is that the actual Leader of the Opposition's bill would have required that a certain number of the units in an apartment complex, in order to get the GST rebate, had to be affordable. That might surprise some members in this place, but the Conservative position was that in order to qualify for the GST rebate, one had to have a certain percentage of those units as affordable units.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, my friend from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke anticipated my question, because the hon. member for Simcoe North mentioned co-operative housing, and that is also a large priority for Greens. We see it as a very successful form of housing. The comments from my hon. colleague from Simcoe North are encouraging. I know he is speaking only for himself, but does he have a sense of how other members of his caucus would feel about really pushing for more co-operative housing to be built?

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Madam Speaker, build, baby, build. We need to build it all: market-rate, affordable and everything in between, and in all different sizes, shapes and everything else. I would welcome any thoughtful amendments to the legislation that would see us build more homes of all types faster for Canadians.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure and honour to rise in this most honourable of House to speak to something very important: Bill C-56, the affordable housing and groceries act.

I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, who will rise after I speak.

With that, let me first say that as an individual, I love capitalism, as I believe many others here in the House do. I love the free markets and creating wealth. Why do I encourage those things? I do so because this is what creates jobs and futures. At the same time, we need government and our regulatory bodies, including the Competition Bureau, to play a role to ensure that there is competition in the marketplace. Everybody likes the free markets and capitalism, but we also need competition to ensure that innovation occurs, that prices become lower, and that the standard of living for all Canadians and for people literally across the world improves.

I am so happy to see that there are a number of items here with regard to the Competition Bureau that will strengthen its role in markets across this country. Getting rid of the efficiencies defence is one thing that I applaud the minister and his team for putting in, as well as the industry committee and other committees that have looked at these issues. It is just so important.

Bill C-56 puts forward legislation to encourage the construction of much-needed new rental housing. We are proposing to eliminate the goods and services tax, the GST, on the construction of new rental apartment buildings. This is one more tool to create the conditions necessary to build the kinds of housing Canadians need and families want to live in.

With this bill, we are also moving forward with immediate actions to enhance competition across the Canadian economy, with a focus on the grocery sector. By doing so, we are helping to drive down costs for middle-class Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

Bill C-56 includes a set of legislative amendments to the Competition Act that would do the following: provide the Competition Bureau with powers to compel the production of information to conduct effective and complete market studies; remove the efficiencies defence, which I spoke to earlier, that currently allows anti-competitive mergers to survive challenges if corporate efficiencies offset the harm to competition, even when Canadian consumers would pay higher prices and have fewer choices; and empower the Competition Bureau to take action against collaborations that stifle competition and consumer choice, particularly in situations where large grocers prevent smaller competitors from establishing operations nearby.

Our government is taking concrete actions to help stabilize food prices and improve competition in Canada. However, the industry also needs to step up with meaningful solutions. Canadians can be assured that the government will continue to work day in and day out to bring them much-needed relief.

Our government is well aware that the economic situation is still difficult for many families. Many are struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table. However, inflation has fallen from a peak of 8.1% in June 2022 to 4% in August this year. There are now almost 1 million more Canadians in the workforce than before the pandemic. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development predicts that, next year, Canada will experience the strongest economic growth among G7 countries.

However, we know that the past three years have been really hard for Canadians. COVID took its toll on our mental health and on the economy. Thankfully, we are past that. We have gone through COVID, the COVID recession, Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine, supply chain snarls, wildfires and hurricanes. We continue to see high global inflation and are now enduring elevated interest rates.

Our government will do everything we can to help Canadians get through these challenging times and to build an economy with strong and steady growth, stable prices and abundant, well-paying middle-class jobs for hard-working Canadians. Our government has always believed in investing in Canadians, restoring middle-class prosperity and building a country where everyone has a chance to succeed and prosper.

There were 2.3 million Canadians lifted out of poverty between 2015 and 2021. In 2015, 14.5% of Canadians were living in poverty. Today, that is down to 7.4 %; this is real progress for Canadians across this beautiful country.

Our Canada-wide system of early learning and child care is making life more affordable for hard-working families, saving families in Ontario up to $8,500 this year per child after tax; pre-tax, that is over $10,000. With a record 85.7% labour force participation rate in July for prime-working-age women, it is helping to address labour shortages and grow our economy at the same time.

From enhancing the Canada workers benefit to creating the Canada child benefit and a new Canadian dental care plan, we have strengthened the social safety net that millions of Canadians can count on and depend on. All the while, we have ensured that Canada maintains the lowest deficit and net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7.

On the housing front, we have been active. We created the tax-free home savings account and doubled the first-time homebuyers tax credit, which will in turn help Canadians afford the home they deserve in the future.

With Bill C-56, we are proposing to do even more by eliminating the GST on the construction of new apartment buildings.

Our goal with this legislation is to temporarily change the economic equation so that builders who are dealing with higher construction costs as a result of global inflation get financial incentives to build projects that otherwise would not get built. The removal of the GST will encourage builders to build more housing in communities across the country, which will lower the cost of rent for Canadians.

Our objective is very clear. We want to eliminate the obstacles to building a larger number of housing units more quickly to reduce the cost of those units. Of course, we will also need the co-operation of our partners.

Our government is calling on all provinces that currently apply provincial sales taxes or the provincial portion of the harmonized sales tax to rental housing to join us by matching our rebate for new rental housing. I would like to say that organizations such as RESCON, the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, and its members that build high, low and medium housing have come out in favour of the removal of GST on new purpose-built rental housing. It is something for which I have called for a long time. It was in our platform, and I am glad we are having it done now.

We would also require local governments to end inclusionary zoning and encourage building apartments near public transit in order to have their housing accelerator fund applications approved. Canadians need support when it comes to accessing housing. We need all levels of government to come together in this effort.

In conclusion, there is a lot of work ahead of us to do. As global inflation and the cost of housing continue to impact Canadians, we must continue to take real action to make life more affordable and build an economy that works for all Canadians. With this legislation, we are leading the charge on housing, to create the necessary conditions and build the types of housing we need and that families want to live in.

Since 2015, our priority has been to build a strong middle class to offer everyone the chance to succeed, but there is still some work to be done.

The measures we are proposing in Bill C‑56 line up with this goal by making it possible to build more of the housing units that Canadians need and to work on lowering the price of groceries.

I invite my colleagues to support this important bill.

I am so glad to see Bill C-56 come to the floor of the House of Commons for debate. I encourage the House to get this bill to committee as soon as possible so the finance committee, or whichever committee will be looking at it, can debate it and even look at amendments to strengthen it. There are many things that are good for the economy in this bill. They are good for the housing sector, for the Competition Bureau and for helping our businesses, as we have done with the Canadian emergency business loan, which put in place during COVID and helped hundreds of thousands of businesses survive in our country.

Let us all work together in the House to get this bill approved for all our businesses, for our stakeholders and, most important, for every single Canadian in this beautiful country.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. Today, I rise for one special person. I would like to recognize my mother's birthday. Obviously, without her sacrifice and my father's sacrifice, I would not be here. My family came from southern Italy, as did that of the hon. member opposite who gave the speech.

The government said that interest rates would be low forever. The Liberals told people to borrow, and they borrowed like crazy; so did the government. Would the member agree with me that this is in part why we are in the crisis that we are in?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

[Member spoke in Italian].

[English]

Madam Speaker, my family and the member's family have known each other for over six decades, if memory serves me well. There is much respect between our families, who both immigrated here from southern Italy.

With regards to the question on interest rates, as an economist and someone who worked on Wall Street for a number of years and on Bay Street for over a decade and who follows the financial markets very closely, there is obviously a period of normalization of rates going on across the world, not just here in Canada. Following the 2008-09 financial crisis, rates were made very low.

I will stop there, but I would be more than happy to sit down with the member and give him my views on interest rates, on where the long bond will be and on where short and mid rates will be in the future.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, this issue is important. The housing crisis is affecting every single one of our communities. Certainly, in Timmins—James Bay, when we look at the indigenous communities, we have massive rates of homelessness. Even in our urban centres now, where we have a young population looking to live, there is no place to live. We have a growing economy; people cannot move in. For senior citizens who cannot stay in their old farmhouses and want to move into town, there is no housing.

I would ask the hon. member about a sense of urgency. I have heard about housing since this government was elected, but I have not seen the urgency on the ground to actually move towards mixed units, co-operative housing and apartment opportunities so that we can get housing now, whether for new Canadians, students, workers or senior citizens in communities like Timmins, Kirkland Lake or Belleville. In any community we name, it is the same crisis.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member for Timmins—James Bay and I sit on the natural resources committee together and have travelled together, and so I know the individual quite well.

Housing is obviously a priority for all Canadians, and we do know that there is currently a housing crisis happening here in Canada. We do know that we have to build, which is why we are working with all levels of government.

We saw a very important step. We have seen the rapid housing initiative with our national housing affordability plan put in place, which has helped a lot of Canadians who are very vulnerable find housing, but we also know that we need to build. That is why we have the $4-billion housing accelerator fund working with municipalities to end exclusionary zoning so that we can get that density up. We are working on ensuring that funds that are invested by the federal government for infrastructure have density with them, much like what is happening at the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre in the City of Vaughan where we had a population of zero going up to almost 50,000 in over a 10-year period. It is very dynamic to see and a lot of good stuff is going on.

We know that the builders are up for it, we know that the skilled trades are up for it, we know that municipalities are up for it, and we are working with them.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have a question about the grocery portion of Bill C-56.

I am reading the Competition Bureau's report from June of this year entitled, “Canada Needs More Grocery Competition”. In that report, the Competition Bureau makes the point that the big three retailers earn a profit combined of $3.6 billion. It sounds like a lot of money, but that is on $100 billion of sales. So, that is a 3.6% profit margin, which certainly does not sound like greedflation, as our NDP colleagues like to call it.

My question to the member for Vaughan—Woodbridge is whether he thinks 3.6% is too much profit.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Madam Speaker, I always believe in looking at the first derivative, what the percentage change in a number is and so forth. I would obviously look to see how the margins have fared over the past couple of years.

Having covered the grocery sector and the private sector, I know quite well how they operate. Literally tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, of people work for grocers across Canada along the continuum from the food terminal in Etobicoke to our local grocers in my riding, such as Cataldi, Longo's and Fortinos. Those are wonderful folks who need to be supported. They need to have good wages and good benefits, and we will make sure that we encourage that—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

We have to resume debate.

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Rural Economic Development and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Rural Economic Development and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House to share my views on a bill. This one is extremely important because it deals with housing affordability and the cost of groceries, an essential matter.

Throughout the summer months, I too heard clearly from constituents about the price of groceries.

I heard it from my kids. I have three kids and they remind me whenever they see me. When I go to the grocery store, I notice the prices are much higher than I believe they should be. I can go to certain grocery stores and see items at half the price. Something needs to be done, and our objective is to try to bring stability in pricing.

In my speech today, I will talk about what we have done thus far, what we are going to do now to help affordability, because it is a real issue to Canadians right across this country, but I will also talk about the importance of investing in our strengths so we can bring more revenues to the table and do more to support Canadians.

Prosperity is the key to success, as my dad used to say, and we have shown big investments that look into the future. Electric vehicles is one, of course. We have given big contracts in Ontario for batteries. The trade agreements we have signed over the last four or five years bring prosperity. I will also talk about offshore wind farms and the Atlantic Accord, which the Conservatives do not want to support.

Let me start with some of the key things we did to help with affordability, because this is crucial. We doubled the GST to two quarterly payments to help those in need, the low-income Canadians, which is so important. There is the Canada workers benefit; depending on one's salary, one can receive $2,400 a year. We made some changes so every three months one will receive a quarter of that sum, so one can have more money as one faces some the challenges out there.

There is the disability benefit, which we passed in the last legislation and is so important, because we know people with disabilities are the most vulnerable. The highest poverty in the country is among people with disabilities, so we need to move forward on that very quickly.

I need to talk about something extremely important, which is indexing. Indexing of inflation is key here, because if one's pension or the benefits being received do not increase with the cost of living, it makes it even more difficult. Therefore, we came forward with the CCB, which is tax-free, but it is now indexed to inflation so young families can continue to count on that growth to help them. This is so important.

The GST is exactly the same; we have adjusted that. As well, there are changes to the Canada pension plan, to help Canadians not fall behind. We already made a big improvement in that area, and where a person was getting about $11,400 a year, now it is up to $20,000 a year, which will be a great help.

I want to talk about the OAS and the GIS, because those are specifically touching seniors. In here, we have ensured indexing for these as well. This indexing, which is so important, will see a 30% increase by 2027-28 in the OAS and GIS, which is crucial. Our government will be investing about $20 billion a year to continue to support our seniors, which is over and above what we are paying now.

Early learning and child care is such an important investment. It is tax-free as well. Already, today we see that 50% of the provinces have lowered the price to $10 a day, with the rest to follow in the next couple of years. This is having an effect on affordability for young families.

On housing, last year in one of our bills there was a top-up that helped 1.8 million low-income Canadians. As well, there was a one-time payment for groceries that helped 11 million Canadians, with single people receiving a little over $200 and a family of four over $400. Those are specific investments helping affordability, but it is not enough, which is why we will bring more forward.

Also, we talked about students in university, now having a tax-free interest rate, which is very important. We increased, by 40%, the grant funding so that they can have more money to pay for their expenses because we know the challenges. Just the interest rate and the student loan is over $600 a year for a student. That is a help, as well, toward affordability.

Who can forget, of course, our very important investment in dental care for Canadians? We will see over nine million Canadians, by 2027, receive dental care. Already today, over 340,000 children have received support through dental care, which is crucial.

My riding of Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook has seen some of these benefits but so have the ridings of many other members of Parliament in the House. We have seen investment in child care spots in my riding. It means more space. We made 500 more spaces in Nova Scotia. My riding of Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook will receive 119 of those 500, well over 20%.

We are also receiving, of course, the CCB, for young families. The CCB in my riding alone will be over $5 million per month for young families. That is over $60 million a year. People in all of the MPs' constituencies are receiving those monies to help them, which is so important.

We then see an investment in the Canada community revitalization fund, which allows many of my communities to benefit from these important investments.

I cannot understand why a Conservative would not be in favour of the tweaking of the Atlantic Accord, which is so important. For the first time ever, we are going to see an offshore wind farm here, right here. It will be the only one in Canada. There are none today. This creates that opportunity to allow this industry to bring more revenues and more great jobs for Canadians. These are major steps and there is a trillion dollars to be had in investment by 2040.

This legislation today that needs to move very quickly to committee is the GST rebate and this is focused on various types of housing, which is crucial, of course.

The minister tells me that the five main grocery chains, when they were here last week, did understand that they too have a role to play to support Canadians with regard to affordability. It is important that they play a role and they are open to coming back to us, I understand, by the end of this week with some proposals that will see those costs lowered, which is so important.

I want to talk about the Competition Bureau's act. The competition bureau has a major role to play. We are going to make some major changes here. This came out of a report back in 2022, that more competition is needed, more innovation is needed and this is one way we can ensure that the prices, again, find their way downward.

As I said, we have made some investments in the past. We are bringing forward some major investments this time around. We also have to keep our eyes focused on our strengths and that is investing in our people and looking to, in the future, where our investments should go. We did it with the electric car. We did it with the batteries.

On the wind farm project, it is hard to believe that Canada has the biggest coast and shores in the world and Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador have the fastest winds in the world. This is how we can grow this economy. There is so much to be had through this investment.

Why, again, I ask, are the Conservatives not supporting Atlantic Canada, especially today when we need to?

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member from Atlantic Canada for his inspiring speech. What inspires me is what you are missing. There is an easy way to address affordability for housing and groceries and I think you have overlooked it.

You have recently, as a government, announced that there is going to be a GST credit for new construction of rental properties. That is a start, but that is a one-time tax credit. Why do you not look at the carbon tax, which is a compounding credit? It compounds every single process in a product and it compounds every single movement that a grocery item makes to the grocery store.

If you really want to make life more affordable for Canadians, why do you not drop the carbon tax, both of them, the clean fuel standard tax and the carbon tax?

Let us axe the tax.