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

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his thoughtful intervention.

The affordable housing initiative that we are putting forward, with the removal of the GST on rentals, is part of our national housing strategy, which has a variety of different programs intended to reach different parts of the market. Removing the GST is the equivalent of a 5% reduction for developers to build rental units, so we can get more rental units into the marketplace. Now that the cost of interest has gone up, this would help decisions be made to have rental units created.

Could the hon. member comment on how important it is to have such a range of options in our housing strategy?

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, of course removing the GST from housing construction is not a bad idea. All I was saying earlier is that this is a half-measure that will not have much of an impact.

My colleague mentioned it himself in his question. Interest rates are rising well above the 5% GST and builders will pass on the cost in the price of rent.

What we really need are measures that will lower the price of rent and increase the number of available housing, by using supply and demand. The market is currently out of balance.

The solution, I repeat, is 1% of the annual budget for social housing with no strings attached in Quebec and the provinces in order to make this happen quickly, instead of blocking the $900 million — which, I would like the House to know, is still being blocked.

I find it revolting that the government claims to be taking measures for housing when it is keeping money from Quebec. They need to give us our money. We will build housing.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, with whom I sit on the agriculture committee, for his great speech. He brought up a few points with respect to farmers.

We know that grocery prices have increased in the stores. For farmers, input costs have gone up. The biggest thing is the carbon tax. The second is interest rates on loans, so the costs have gone up for servicing debt. Minimum wage has gone up in many provinces. We are seeing those three basic increases, which contribute to the increased price farmers are asking for their products from the grocers.

If we look at lack of competition with respect to the grocery stores, here is one example. I will ask my hon. colleague to comment on this: The price of lettuce in Vancouver is more expensive than that in Toronto. Why would that be, when California, which supplies the lettuce, is closer to Vancouver than it is to Toronto? Why is it that people are paying less in Toronto for groceries than they are in Vancouver? The answer is simple: It is competition. There is more competition in Toronto—

[The Acting Speaker, Mike Morrice]

The hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. I appreciate the work she does.

Indeed, competition is the key. In fact, my colleague will recall that, in the report we produced, there were several recommendations, including one that suggested working on the supply chain and doing so effectively.

The problem with this government is that it does not take action. There is a report from the supply chain task force to incentivize investment, but it is going nowhere.

As I mentioned earlier, we also proposed abolishing the tax on Russian fertilizers. In addition, we have also proposed a package of measures to make life easier for our farmers, including a modernization investment program for small and medium-sized processing businesses. When are we going to see that?

These are structural measures that will address the labour shortage and make things more efficient, which could have a long-term effect on prices.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned long-term effects. I want to ask the member this: Unlike the U.S., Canada has never broken up a corporation to protect Canadian consumers, yet the Competition Board has the authority to review beyond initial transactions. Does the Bloc see value in having the Competition Board review the Loblaws-Shoppers Drug Mart merger from 10 years ago?

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately it is very difficult to review a transaction that happened years ago. All we can do is take action for the future.

We are currently regulating future transactions, and that is fine. Now, what can we do to make it easier to enter the market?

Could the government not create measures that would favour independent grocers, that could increase food supply and therefore increase competition?

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, particularly the part about Bill C-56 that he handled so well. He spoke intelligently, very eloquently and passionately, as always.

I am a little uncertain about how to approach today's debate. Over the past few years, I have talked a lot about housing, about those less fortunate, about people who are being left behind in this country. Last week we debated a motion moved by a Conservative colleague relating to, among other things, children with disabilities. That gave me the opportunity to say that I do not think we are doing enough for the most vulnerable members of our society. They are not being properly considered, and Canada is not doing enough to address the huge problems we are facing right now. Bill C-56 is right in the thick of it. We have a major problem.

This summer, I set out with my pilgrim's staff. I had read in the newspaper back in February that homelessness was now a reality in places where that had never been seen before in Quebec, places like Sainte‑Anne‑des‑Monts, Lebel‑sur‑Quévillon or Saint‑Jean‑de‑Dieu in the Témiscouata region. There were people sleeping in tents on the side of highways and in buildings in places where no one had ever seen anything of the sort. We know that the situation is dire. We have seen the numbers. We need 3.5 million housing units. That was mentioned earlier, and I will come back to it later.

When I heard about that, I decided to take a trip across Quebec over much of the summer. I left in May and June, and again starting in mid-August. What I saw was terrible. Quebec is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. There are tent cities everywhere. I mentioned Lebel‑sur‑Quévillon, but there are some in Val‑d'Or, in Shawinigan, in Joliette, in Trois‑Rivières. How can we, in this country, accept that a single mother has to sleep in her car with her two children? I cannot accept that. I tell myself that I have some power. I was elected here. I am only one of 338, but I still have the power to do something. We need to act. I got on the road to get a sense of the situation.

This summer, we also heard about a young pregnant woman who gave birth in a wooded area in downtown Gatineau, about one or two kilometres from here. The mayor of Gatineau talked about it. She asked how we could accept that. As an elected official, she too finds that completely unacceptable.

Last week, I was in Quebec City at a symposium on homelessness. We talked about how to deal with this crisis. Bill C-56 brings us back to the housing crisis. What are people telling us about the homelessness problem? This was a problem 20 years ago in Quebec. We know how to deal with these issues. We developed a continuum of services for homeless people, which included emergency resources that are available 24/7, where people could go if it was -20 degrees outside and where they could sleep. These types of resources are not available everywhere, but they were there at one point. Then, there was a continuum of services for people with addictions and mental health issues. They could be brought to a transition house, where they could stay for a month or even two. There were services available there. There were psychologists that could help people. They were working to reintegrate these people back into society. Those who had an addiction got support. At the end of this community help chain to support the most vulnerable, this sort of service pipeline, this process for taking care of people, there was housing.

However, I have seen that, now, there is nothing at the end of the service pipeline. There is no more housing. The result is that homelessness resources are at maximum capacity. There is no room for anyone else, so people are sleeping in tents across the province. How is that acceptable?

I spent the summer talking about that. Everyone is talking about it. It makes the headlines in the media almost every—

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

I understand that the discussions are interesting, but when the House of Commons is not very full, as is the case right now, private conversations tend to carry a lot more. Hearing our colleagues' conversations makes it hard to concentrate. I wonder if it would be possible to ask them to take their conversations elsewhere or to lower their voices.

[The Acting Speaker, Mike Morrice]

The hon. member raises a good point. I would ask all members to be quiet while the member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert has the floor.

The member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert has five minutes left to finish his speech.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was saying that we are at the end of the continuum of service for homelessness. As we saw, there are 10,000 homeless people in Quebec. That was a snapshot of the situation in October 2022, and every organization told me that it was likely just the tip of the iceberg, because the homelessness we see hides the homelessness we do not see. I am thinking, for example, of women trapped in toxic relationships who are forced to stay in the home because they have no resources. Every day in Quebec, a woman who is the victim of domestic violence knocks on the door of a resource for victims of domestic violence and returns to her apartment with her two or three children and her abusive husband. How is such a thing acceptable?

Here we are being offered a half measure. After hearing these testimonies all across Quebec, I expected the government to do something. I saw a poll or two this summer. I imagine that the Liberals saw the same thing and told themselves that the housing crisis was important and they needed to take action. Then they present us with a half measure, a GST credit.

This country needs to build 3.5 million homes by 2030, including 1.1 million in Quebec. We would expect the Liberals to take action if they want to be re-elected. That is one of the major problems of our time. We would expect them to introduce a structuring measure that will change people's lives and enable us to build housing quickly. Instead we are getting a GST credit.

Of course, private builders will benefit from this, but will they really build housing for the less fortunate? Will they build social housing? Rarely in my lifetime have I heard of private contractors getting involved in social housing. That does not happen very often.

There was an attempt in Montreal. Mayor Plante tried, with the 20-20-20 bylaw, which required developers who build 80, 100 or 120 units to build 20% social housing, 20% affordable housing and 20% housing for families. Many developers would rather pay the penalty than build social housing. Obviously, people who live in $2,500-a-month homes do not really like having poor people as neighbours. It can interfere with property values.

Nothing is being done to solve this problem. As my colleague so well put it, the government had one chance, and now that makes two missed opportunities.

The first missed opportunity was withholding the $900 million. I cannot believe it. There is a program called the housing accelerator fund for municipalities. It was part of the 2022 budget, and not a penny of the program funding has been spent in Quebec. Clearly, no one has figured out how to accelerate this program. It has been a year and a half, and there is a desperate need, yet not a penny has been spent. We are being told that the Quebec government is investing money as well. That could add up to more than $1 billion to quickly build housing to help our people. It makes no sense. How is that acceptable?

What I am hearing is that the people in Quebec City want to use this money to build housing, but the people in Ottawa want the accelerator fund to be used to help municipalities with zoning and infrastructure and so on. Perhaps that would be helpful, but right now, Ottawa is the one hindering housing construction. It has been a year and a half since this $4-billion program was passed, and they have just started building homes elsewhere in Canada.

The second missed opportunity dates back to 2017, when the government launched its major national housing strategy, an $82-billion program. It took three years before even a single penny was spent in Quebec. Who is holding up the projects? Both the Liberals and the Conservatives like to say that it is the cities that are delaying projects and that they are going to fix the problem. No, it is not the cities that are holding up the projects. It is the federal government that is holding up the projects. That is unacceptable.

There is something else the government could do quickly. In Quebec's low-income housing stock, 72,000 housing units were built before 1993, and 4,500 of them have been boarded up because they are too dilapidated. These housing units still come under agreements with the federal government. It seems to me that funds could be allocated pretty quickly in the current context. These nearly 5,000 units already exist, and we would not need to zone anything. They are there; they exist. These are actual social housing units that could house people.

The government made a promise and it has to pay for these renovations, but it is nitpicking, fussing over the colour of the wallpaper and the tiling, or the depth of the sink. We are not too sure. There are discussions among people of taste. How are these homes going to be built? There are 4,500 housing units. If the government signed a cheque now, it could have 5,000 brand new social housing units ready for next July 1 in Quebec. The victims of domestic violence I was just talking about could be housed there.

It seems to me that the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities could make a quick call to Ms. Bowers—

[The Acting Speaker, Mike Morrice]

The hon. member for St. Catharines.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that there are so many in the House who are passionate about building housing. I was concerned that he was downplaying the impact of the GST credit. It is not a magic bullet that will solve anything, but it will be significant. It will produce hundreds of thousands of units of housing.

Just today we have seen, in Toronto, 5,000 units of housing that are going to be built because of this tax credit. That is one announcement, in one city, in one moment.

Why is he downplaying this when it is already having an impact?

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to know why Bill C-56 does not include an affordability criterion as part of the eligibility for the GST credit. Including it would have made things simple. The government could force private builders to make housing truly affordable. However, it was not included.

Perhaps my colleague from Joliette will manage to get this added at committee, but I do not understand why the government did not include it. With this GST credit, all the government is going to do is hand out more money. The main problem with the major national housing strategy that was launched is that it is giving a lot of the money to private developers. The private sector wants to line its pockets. That is how capitalism works.

It is absolutely essential that the government invest in building real social housing.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to join in the debate today. I have heard, often, my Bloc colleagues talk about there being no carbon tax effects in Quebec. I am sure all of the food that is consumed in Quebec is not produced in Quebec.

There is a carbon tax on the farmers that produce the food. There is a carbon tax on the truckers that truck the food, so why would he not think that the carbon tax would affect the consumers in Quebec?

It gets produced in other parts of the country and trucked from all across the country, so that food is more expensive in Quebec because of the carbon tax.

Would he not agree with that?