Adam Vaughan

[Housing, June 11th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, this government has been acting since the day we took office in 2015. A $72 billion investment into the housing sector delivers market rental solutions to families so they can rent cheaper and therefore save to get into the housing market. Our first-time home buyer program has helped more than 10,000 Canadians acquire their first property.

Our move to end chronic homelessness, as I said, has delivered 4,770 units of housing in the last six months, which is almost exactly what the Conservatives did over the last two years in office. We did it while also maintaining subsidies for co-ops, also building new housing, also repairing housing and also making sure that the reaching home dollars more than doubled, in fact, are now at half a billion dollars a year for the next three years.

Our government's record on housing is clear. The Conservatives lack leadership—

[Housing, June 11th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I will note that the Conservative member who asked that question has proposed taxing primary residences and changing the capital gains tax. That was alerted to the House in debate earlier this week. It is an astonishing reversal of position for the Conservatives.

We have done a number of different things, for example, the tax on vacant homes and offshore ownership, in terms of beneficial ownership and new rules around disclosure to help fight money laundering, as well as our $72 billion national housing strategy. To put this in perspective, in the last six months, through the rapid housing initiative, we have secured and built more homes in six months than the previous Conservative government did in its last two years—

[Business of Supply, June 8th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I have worked very hard with my colleague to try to realize better results in Saskatoon, in particular with the Saskatoon Tribal Council and Chief Arcand. It was disappointing that other projects scored higher and therefore received funding. I assure the member that with rapid housing 2.0 on the horizon, I have already been in conversation with Mayor Charlie Clark, as well as the tribal chief, to make sure that we tend to Saskatoon's challenges.

I was a little concerned about the member's call for sort of a gutting or removal of what he would call “red tape” in the Canada building code.

First of all, the Canada building code is not enforced in Saskatchewan; it has a Saskatchewan building code. It can adopt the Canadian one.

Does the member really believe that watering down housing standards is a way to make housing safer and more secure?

[Business of Supply, June 8th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, the Conservative motion would not spend one dollar on housing. The Conservative motion is a postcard of ideas that actually would not accomplish much of anything in any of the areas they want to speak about.

The member opposite talks about the desire to build transit. The way capital budgets are constructed at the municipal level is that the development charges are the driver of the capital programs. In other words, when we add new housing, there is a cost involved in delivering the roads, the transit, the schools and the libraries. Everything in the city that a house requires to be functional is leveraged off of those development charges, yet what the Conservatives are proposing is not only to gut that system, but to also cut the funding that is the federal contribution to transit.

How do we build a subway with nothing but tax cuts and budget cuts?

[Business of Supply, June 8th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member for Carleton has spoken more about housing today than he did the entire time he was the minister responsible for CMHC, which is maybe a good thing. However, much of what he said makes absolutely no sense.

I would like the member opposite to answer a very serious question. When the Conservatives decided to go after income trusts in their first mandate, and Jim Flaherty undermined the Conservative commitment to not trust income trusts, the one thing he did not touch was the real estate income trusts, or REITs.

Why did the Conservatives pour jet fuel on the fire and allow the REITs to become the dominant player in the investment side of the real estate industry? What was the thinking behind not curtailing the power that REITs have and the impact they are now having on speculative house prices?

[Business of Supply, June 8th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, if the Conservatives' climate plan was a pamphlet, this set of policies is a postcard. It is astonishing.

I really wish that the Conservatives would make these speeches at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities because, when they talk about gutting municipal regulation and gutting the rules and the planning criteria around housing, what they are talking about is eliminating the planning that is done to make sure we build the right kind of housing in the right places to the right standards to house Canadians safely and affordably in communities that are functional.

When they talk about gutting the development charges attached to new construction builds, what they are talking about is taking away the libraries, the schools, the roads, the clean water and all of the infrastructure that makes a house viable in a community.

The Conservatives do not have a policy. They have a bunch of slogans. It is like listening to people talk about the weather. They are finally talking about housing, but they do not actually have a plan to do anything about supply, cost, affordability, security or how it gets done. In fact, all they want to do is attack municipalities. If they delivered this speech at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities last week, they would have been laughed out of the room.

[Business of Supply, June 8th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, it will be interesting to see how the real estate sector responds to the Conservatives talking about changing the tax regime for primary residences. I look forward to the Conservative attack ads by this particular member in the next campaign. I assure members, Liberals are not changing the tax code as it relates to primary residences, but we now know the Conservatives are considering it.

It is also nice to hear them talk about FINTRAC, an organization and police unit that the Conservatives did not fund and did not staff. We are now funding it, but the member opposite voted against that funding. She also voted against the budget to strengthen beneficial ownership measures in this year's budget, but now she seems to have changed her mind. She does like to criss-cross on issues and political parties from time to time.

What I find most interesting about the member opposite is she often advocates for the subway on Yonge Street, which the municipalities of York Region are paying for with development charges, the development charges that this particular motion threatens to strip away.

How would the cities contribute to infrastructure that builds good, strong communities if development charges were wiped out as the Conservative Party is now proposing to do for municipalities from coast to coast to coast? How does she build a subway with tax cuts?

[Business of Supply, June 8th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, that speech was riddled with so many contradictions. I almost hope the Conservatives do not get into power ever again, because their housing policy would move in every direction except forward.

One of the big complaints from the member opposite is that the stress test creates a barrier to entry for first-time buyers, but he also complains that low interest rates are a problem. The stress test increases interest rates to take risk out of the market and make sure that home purchasers have a secure mortgage in order to move forward. His response is to get rid of that and drop interest rates, even though he thinks interest rates are too low.

Then he goes on to say that the first-time home buyer incentive has not helped people. However, it has helped 10,000 people acquire housing. We can add that to all the other programs. Yes, we can say 10,000 is small and shake our heads, but there is also 12,000 in the rental construction financing initiative, and the co-investment fund has almost 15,000 units of housing. When we total it all up, close to a million different investments have been made by this government to help Canadians secure housing, whether it is for renting or ownership.

I have a question for the member opposite. He talks about what his government would not do. One thing he just said he disagrees with was the imposition of a price on carbon. Is this yet another contradiction that he is willing to address—

[Business of Supply, June 8th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of British Columbia has been raised a couple of times now. Just to be clear, we have partnered with the provincial government to invest $517 million to assist over 25,000 households through the provincial-federal housing accords. We have invested, since 2015, not the paltry 2% quoted by the member for Vancouver East, but $5.8 billion in housing in British Columbia. These investments have supported 112,000 families throughout the province to find a place to call home. We are, right now, investing $205 million to support the creation of 700 permanent, affordable units for individuals in British Columbia through the rapid housing initiative. The dollars are real, and it is close to 30% of the total national housing strategy investment.

However, I do not think that the member who just spoke has even read the motion that his colleague passed, because the motion talks about a shared equity agreement program. Well, that is what the first-time homebuyers program is. The motion also requests action on money laundering. Well, that is in the 2021 budget, but the Conservatives voted against every single measure. They voted against the tax on vacant homes. They voted against the beneficial ownership disclosure rules and requirements. They voted against the additional investments in rapid housing and—

[Business of Supply, June 8th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, it is always interesting to watch NDP members talk about housing. For the numbers they project, the 500,000, when one goes into their campaign document to take a look at how it would be financed, two-thirds of the money would come from municipalities and provinces. It is always easy to spend somebody else's money, rather than actually generate the federal investments required to make a difference.

On that point, when they quote the number of 500,000 and put that out as an aspiration, what is the dollar amount the NDP is proposing to assign in federal dollars on that program? How much money is the member proposing to spend to realize 500,000 units of housing?