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

[The Acting Speaker, Mike Morrice]

That is obviously not a point of order.

The hon. deputy House leader.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, of course that is the narrative the Conservatives are playing all the time and they want everyone to believe it.

How about this one? Ukraine was growing 15% of the world's grain. What happens when that stops all of a sudden? Do members think the price of grain is going to increase by 15%? If someone has even the most rudimentary understanding of free trade and the global economy, they will realize very quickly the price is going to shoot up.

Conservatives come into the House day after day and try to paint the picture as though this is strictly a problem that exists within Canada, but that is just not true. I started my speech by giving the statistics on that and letting the House know exactly where we stood in the world. This is a global problem. If we are just going to look day in, day out at how this is a problem and if we are just going to look within Canada and not look at it globally, we are never going to come up with a proper solution because we are not recognizing the real problem.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, with this bill, which is a mini-reform and contains a few small measures, is the government admitting that the Canadian housing strategy is a failure? Objectively, it has been a failure.

Is that what the government is admitting?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I focused my remarks today on the Competition Act amendments part of this, and to suggest that it is minor is an incredible disservice. I already told members about how, in 2022, we brought along provisions that led to a $50-million fine for Canada Bread Company earlier this year.

What we have already done in terms of anti-competition, which the Conservatives voted against, has resulted in significant fines and significant abilities to do something about the competition and anti-competition practices in this country.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for bringing up the merger between Loblaw and Shoppers Drug Mart. I am sure the member knows now that bread is also for sale at Shoppers Drug Mart.

If the member knows that Loblaw has 40% of the market share on bread, why have the Liberals not tried to break up these monopolies?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this bill is at the stage where it is going to go to committee. The member will have the opportunity, at that time, to raise these very important questions and then decide what the recommendations out of committee will be.

My point in my observation earlier was to show how anti-competitive things are in Canada right now, especially as compared to the United States, as I did in my speech.

[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.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, in Vancouver Kingsway, we have an intense housing crisis and have had for several decades.

I would say that one of the most successful models of affordable housing has been co-ops. We had a very successful federal co-op program in this country that started in the 1970s and 1980s. It built tens of thousands of units across this country, many of which in my riding still exist today. This was thanks to CMHC long-term financing combined with provincial government support. The municipalities contributed land and were helped by non-profit societies that did the building.

I am just wondering whether my hon. colleague would agree with me and the NDP that we need a vibrant, robust, modern co-op program to build hundreds of thousands of co-op units for Canadians. Does he think that would help solve the problem? Would he support that?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, of course. Just name it: co-ops, market housing and purpose-built private rentals. We need it all. However, to get a co-op housing complex completed, there need to be rapid permits. The local gatekeepers need to get out of the way.

The NDP premier in the member's province said recently that he was trying to fund housing for developmentally disabled people that has been held up for two years by local government gatekeepers. The question is, why has the NDP government there not legislated away those obstacles that municipalities, which are creatures of the province, have put in the way? The reality is that under the NDP in B.C. and the Liberal-NDP coalition in Ottawa, housing costs have doubled. Nowhere is it worse than in NDP Vancouver. We need to get the government out of the way and build homes, not bureaucracy.

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

Madam Speaker, unfortunately, the Leader of the Opposition comes here and just recycles old slogans. He is not providing anything substantial. He is threatening municipalities with cutting infrastructure but expects them to build more housing.

This bill is already having impacts, and it has not yet passed. Today, we have already seen a Toronto developer announce 5,000 new units of housing in Toronto. Without this bill having passed, it is already having an impact. Why is the Conservative Party standing against it?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, we are not. I do not know what he is talking about.

Speaking of 5,000 homes, if he believes removing the GST on purpose-built rental is what is needed to build 5,000 homes, then why did the Liberals not do it eight years ago when they promised it? More importantly, why did the Liberals decide to do it now? It is because they got wind that I was going to announce it, and they wanted to front-run my announcement and avoid the embarrassment of having, once again, been outdone and outperformed by the Conservative opposition, which has led this debate from the very beginning.

The bill before us today is mostly promises that the Liberals already broke or things they stole from the Conservative Party. All the Competition Act components of this bill came from my competition shadow minister, the member for Bay of Quinte. Of course we are going to support the measures we have proposed. However, this would go only a small step towards undoing the damage the Prime Minister has caused by doubling housing costs. If the Liberals really want a solution, they should pass the building homes not bureaucracy act.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have blamed municipalities for the delays in housing construction. However, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the National Bank and TD Bank, the lack of housing in Canada has more to do with a sharp rise in demand. This sharp rise in demand is partly the result of immigration.

What does the Leader of the Opposition think of the government's immigration targets?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, government targets have nothing to do with the ability to build houses. That is why the Conservative Party had common-sense targets when it was in power. We welcomed immigrants, but we were also able to build housing, create jobs and reduce wait times in the health care system, all at the same time. That is a common-sense approach.

The Bloc Québécois, on the other hand, will never be able to do anything about that, because all it wants to do is drastically increase taxes on the backs of Quebeckers. We in the Conservative Party will cut taxes.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am always very happy to rise in the House. It is always a privilege. I will say one thing, though. Speaking right after the leader of the official opposition is quite a challenge for me.

Before going into the bill we have to address today, I just want to warn the leader when he talks about hockey, because he made an analogy with a hockey team in the NHL and he talked about the Toronto Maple Leafs. I like them. I am the one who likes them, even though I am from Quebec City. We have to win in Toronto, by the way, so we will win, first of all, with the Maple Leafs.

This reminds me of a good joke made by Prime Minister Harper in 2014 when he was in Quebec City. Maybe the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles was there too. The prime minister said that Quebec and Toronto have a point in common, common ground in some aspects. Those two cities dream about having an NHL again team one day, because the Toronto Maple Leafs are not exactly a very NHL-level team, but that is coming.

We are gathered here to talk about Bill C‑56, which basically covers two things: the Competition Act, which I will talk about a little later in my speech, and support that needs to be provided for building houses.

We all know that Canada is in the midst of the worst housing crisis in our history. We need concrete, effective, well-thought-out measures to re-energize the construction sector. People say that, when construction goes well, everything goes well. In Canada, that has never been truer. Construction is not going well here, and neither is anything else, certainly not when it comes to the economy, taxation or inflation.

Earlier, our leader astutely pointed out that, in just eight years of Liberal government, the housing situation overall has deteriorated dramatically, and that has really hurt Canadians. That is why we have to take concrete, effective, meaningful measures that will have a positive impact on everyone. It is time to stop setting easy targets, spouting lofty principles and making grand announcements. It is time to produce results.

That is why our leader introduced a bill that essentially reflects the broad outlines he set out in his now-famous speech in Quebec City on September 8, when 2,500 Conservatives from across the country gathered together. In his speech, the leader laid out the key areas we will focus on as a government when Canadians put their trust in us in the next election.

It is essentially about incentivizing performance to build housing and encouraging real results. This means that, as a first step, cities will have to have realistic ambitions of more than 15%. We need to increase housing construction by 15% to have more than 15% new housing, year after year. Cities that meet this target will have the necessary funding. If cities exceed that target, they will be rewarded and encouraged, because we will give them more. We are not going to punish performance. On the contrary, we will reward it. Conversely, if, by chance, some cities do not reach this target, funding will obviously drop. It is just common sense.

The same goes for public transit. Residential density will have to be established where public transit already exists and must go. The funding will guarantee both. If we build high-density housing near public transit services, more people will take public transit and there will be more funding for that. It makes sense. It is not a question of announcements to please one side or the other. It is about results.

We are also introducing penalties for blatant cases of “not in my backyard”. All too often we see developers and people in the housing sector saying that they want to work on a certain project, that they are going to do it in a particular location, but not where a certain population lives, because it might upset Mr. or Mrs. X. That is not the right approach. Rather, we need to encourage construction and go where the needs are. We must avoid the “not in my backyard” principle, which unfortunately all too often hinders housing construction.

That is essentially what our action in terms of housing will be based on, because that is what we need. There are other aspects to our housing strategy. Our approach to housing also considers the fact that, at this very moment, there is unused space in federal buildings, mostly because of the pandemic and telework. How many federal buildings are there across the country? The answer is 37,000. That is a lot.

We want to turn 15% of these 37,000 buildings into housing units. Federal buildings are essentially office buildings. Office buildings are usually located downtown. Turning half-empty buildings into housing units is a very smart and common-sense solution. Work areas will simply need to be set up more efficiently and the workforce will have to be reinstalled accordingly. It will not be easy, we are aware of that. Not all buildings will be well suited for that. It is up to us to figure that out to make sure that we can bring people back and revitalize the downtown cores and have affordable housing in the downtown areas of our cities so that people can have access to housing and services. We would do that in the first 18 months of a government led by the member for Carleton.

It is also important to be aware that there is an organization in Canada that was created several years ago to provide assistance with housing construction. I am talking about the CMHC. We are well aware that, in a situation as urgent as this one, it is time for a swift kick in the pants, as they say, to make sure there is a review of the CMHC's mandate.

I am not saying that what the CMHC is doing is not good, but we need to ensure that things are done correctly and a lot more efficiently. Since the CMHC is a Crown corporation that is a bit more independent from the government than others, it must be accountable. That is especially true for public agencies.

That is why we want to speed up the issuing of permits. Right now, it takes far too long to get a permit from the CMHC. We need to speed that up. We therefore need to reduce the salaries and bonuses of the decision-makers who are not delivering the necessary results. We need to target an average of 60 days and be very sure this will get done faster than the average we have right now.

I would like to remind the House that in my region, Quebec City, we currently have an extraordinary project called the Fleur de Lys project. It is a private investment of $1.7 billion. I had the chance to visit it two weeks ago in my riding. This project by the Trudel family is absolutely fantastic. It is getting support and assistance from the municipality. The people from Quebec City are drawn to this project because it is in a sector that was not necessarily at its peak. They are in the process of creating an extraordinary focal point. It is a $1.7‑billion private investment. These are successful people who want to share their success with everyone.

This project is so impressive that it is a bit too much, it seems, for the CMHC. The CMHC needs to be more flexible to ensure that projects like this, in Quebec City, can achieve their full potential. It is perfectly normal. We do not want to turn things upside down just to please everyone, but it is normal, in an extreme housing crisis like the one we are in right now, to have another look at the entities and the rules that are in place. When we are in an emergency situation, it takes new emergency measures to see things.

That is why Canada, now more than ever, needs a common-sense government. Now more than ever, Canada needs people who will lead the country by focusing on results instead of trying to cajole the people with empty announcements. Now more than ever, we need realistic targets and real action that will address the issues that are directly impacting Canadian families. We all have friends or family members who struggle with housing. We need action. We must build more housing units.

Our approach will build new housing units by incentivizing people to do more with better incentives and financial support instead of pretending that everything is fine. Over the last eight years, the situation has gotten so bad in this country that new constructions, sadly, are not welcome. We need to start building again in the second-largest country on the planet, where there is no shortage of space. That is common sense.

Yes, more than ever, we will be proud to welcome new Canadians.

[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?