Bill C-20

Build Canada Homes Act

An Act respecting the establishment of Build Canada Homes

This enactment establishes Build Canada Homes as a Crown corporation. The purpose of Build Canada Homes is to promote, support and develop the supply of affordable housing in Canada and to promote innovative and efficient building techniques in the housing construction sector in Canada. The enactment, among other things,
(a) sets out the powers of Build Canada Homes and its governance framework;
(b) authorizes the Minister of Finance to make payments out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund to fund the operations and activities of Build Canada Homes; and
(c) provides that the Governor in Council may transfer to Build Canada Homes the property, rights, interests and obligations held by any Crown corporation or subsidiary of a Crown corporation and may issue directives for measures to be taken in relation to the reorganization of Canada Lands Company Limited or any of its subsidiaries.
It also includes transitional provisions, makes a consequential amendment to the Financial Administration Act and contains coordinating amendments.

Build Canada Homes Act

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

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague knows, this was a very important issue for our new Prime Minister and the government as a whole. In fact, it was incorporated into the throne speech that was delivered back in May of last year. It is good to see the legislation before us.

Could the member provide his thoughts in regard to how important this issue is for the government of the day, in particular the Prime Minister and the Liberal caucus?

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I think my colleague is well aware that it is very important to our government to ensure that we build as much affordable housing as possible for as many Canadians as possible.

As we all know, young families and young people want access to housing. With programs like Build Canada Homes and other existing programs, we will provide families and young Canadians with the housing they need.

I think the Prime Minister has been clear. We want to see massive housing construction. That is what Build Canada Homes is all about.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise on behalf of the good people of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry. When I get the chance to talk about housing, as a former mayor for the township of North Dundas and warden in SDG, it is an issue that is near and dear to my heart, and not only because of my previous municipal experience. As we go out and talk to residents in our ridings, and I know it is the same for each and every member in this House, housing is probably one of the top national concerns in every single part of this country.

I am going to be splitting my time with the hon. member for Richmond Hill South, and I know he will have some comments as well about the latest piece of Liberal legislation before us.

What is important, as we begin this conversation on the latest Liberal attempts to address affordable housing, is that we look at where we are after 10 years. After 10 years of the Liberals in office, not just in Cornwall and SDG with the data from the Cornwall and District Real Estate Board, but right across this country, housing prices and rent have doubled. At a time when we need to build more homes and get more shovels in the ground, we are actually seeing red tape and taxes as a key part of the burden. We are actually seeing housing starts projected to fall in the coming years, which is going to make affordability and demand that much more challenging.

When we look at this, according to the government's own data, we need to build about 450,000 to 480,000 homes per year, just to meet demand and keep up with affordability, every year until 2035. Right now we build about half of that.

The Liberals have put this piece of legislation before us. Their solution is that one bureaucracy for housing was not enough, a second bureaucracy did not solve the problem, and neither did a third, so, as I guess they say in Liberal land, the fourth time will be the charm. We have the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Canada Lands Company and the department of infrastructure and housing, and now we would have Build Canada Homes, which would apparently be the bureaucratic solution to the problems we face in this country.

When I went door-knocking in the last election, and when I go out and about and talk in our community, whether it is in the united counties, Cornwall or Akwesasne, and people talk about housing, not a single person suggests to me that the thing that would make the difference, make housing more affordable and get more shovels in the ground would be one more new housing agency or bureaucracy in this country. I did not hear that anywhere, but we did hear the stories of young people living in their parents' basements, wanting to have the dream of home ownership like their parents and grandparents did.

It was the common consensus for young people in this country for decades that if they worked hard and saved up, home ownership would be achievable. They cannot even save now, because rent is so high and the cost of living is so high, but that dream of home ownership has eroded bit by bit, and here we are now with the government claiming that it is going to come in with billions of new dollars to try to address the problem.

Here is the thing with this piece of legislation that we have before us with Build Canada Homes: The Liberals claim that it is going to help bridge the gap and get more shovels in the ground and homes built. However, their own data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation show that after this plan is taken into calculation, we are not going to see that. The government said it is going to build 5,200 homes per year. That was from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, but the CMHC numbers say that housing starts are actually going to go down.

The Liberals spend billions and billions on bureaucracy, programs, photo-ops, announcements and claims that it is going to get better, but we are actually going to see a decrease in the number of homes being built. I would say it is surprising, but it is not surprising, because the Liberals just do not learn after 10 years. They are relying on the same failed approaches to get us out of this crisis in housing that we face.

There is a way that we can do better on this. I am often asked what we do as a Conservative opposition. We are a loyal opposition. We look at the legislation, we scrutinize it, we support it where we can, we amend it where we can, and we vote either for or against it. That is what a loyal opposition does. We highlight the shortcomings of the government and propose our own solutions. I am often asked what Conservatives would do that could change the game when it comes to housing and getting more homes built in this country.

There are four things I want to highlight. The first is that we could cut the GST on all new homes under $1.3 million. That is something that the industry says would spark an extra 35,000 to 40,000 new homes in this country every year. The most expensive part of buying a new home is not the labour and not the materials; it is actually government taxes and fees. Therefore, if we could take the GST off and work with provinces to take the HST off, in the province of Ontario that is 13% on a million-dollar home or on a home that is half a million dollars. It is hard to build one for half a million dollars today, but people could be looking at savings anywhere from $65,000 to $130,000 if we were able to take all the HST off.

There is also the ripple effect. If, on a $1.3-million home, GST alone comes off, that is a $65,000 savings up front, but it also would save on the mortgage. There would be less to be mortgaged, less to be made in payments and less to be paid in interest. That would make home ownership instantly more affordable for Canadians, whether they are a first-time homebuyer or someone who is looking to build their dream home for which they have saved and worked so hard their entire life.

The second thing we could do is tie federal infrastructure dollars to homebuilding. We would say to municipalities that they need to permit 15% more houses year over year, each and every year, so we can get the tide going in the right direction. We could tie federal funding, the billions of dollars from the federal government to support infrastructure, to actual results. We could say to municipalities that it would not be when they have a plan or an aspiration, or have done a study and intend to do something, but rather when building permits are actually permitted that the municipalities get paid. That is a huge incentive for municipalities.

Further, if municipalities exceed that goal, Conservatives have said that we would bonus them. We could tie it to homebuilding, tie it to results and get municipalities on the right track, leading by example and permitting more homes that we need, to actually go up, in the right direction.

The third thing is what the Conservatives have said and what the Liberals promised in the last election, but they have broken their promise. They said they would be cutting development charges by 50%. We said the same thing. The reality is that they have not done that. They have had a budget and a Speech from the Throne, and now they have this legislation, Bill C-20, before us which would mandate municipalities to do so. The Liberals have refused to take that step.

Again, not only is it the GST and the HST on a new home build; there are development charges as well. These add up to the biggest cost: taxes and fees. Conservatives are saying to the Liberals, “Just keep the promise made during the election campaign. Agree with us, and let us cut development charges by 50%.” They have refused multiple times, at every opportunity in the last year, to keep their word and their promise with respect to housing. If this is a signature, cornerstone piece of legislation that they claim is part of their backbone to housing, that promise should have been in there, but it is not.

The fourth thing we could do is end the capital gains tax on reinvestment in new housing in Canada, which would unlock billions of dollars in investment in our country's homebuilding sector. Here is an example of what we could do. If somebody builds a 10-unit apartment building and sells that building, as opposed to paying capital gains taxes on it, if they reinvest that money in another apartment building, reinvestment could happen, and the federal government could defer that tax. We would have more units, and more building would take place. We would get more results. It would be a rocket ship of an opportunity to get our housing and our homebuilding sector fired up and going in the right direction.

We have before us another piece of Liberal legislation for a fourth bureaucracy: more bureaucracy, more plans, more studies, more photo ops and more good-intention announcements. It would lead to the same result we have had for the last year.

The Conservatives will stand with the action plan I presented, and that would be the true way we could make homes more affordable in this country. After 10 years, the Liberals are recycling the same old ideas. It is time for a new approach under the Conservative plan.

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

Mr. Speaker, there is absolutely no surprise in the member's comments. That is what we have been hearing all day from the Conservative Party. The Conservatives do not support Bill C-20. They do not support the federal government's having a stronger, healthier role in working with provinces, territories, indigenous communities and the many different stakeholders. They want to just get out of the way, as they always like to say.

We know you are voting against the legislation. It was in the throne speech. It was a commitment by the Prime Minister and every Liberal member of Parliament. Will you at the very least not filibuster the legislation so we can actually see it proceed through the process?

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I want to remind the parliamentary secretary to speak to the member through the Speaker.

The hon. member for Stormont—Dundas—Glengarry.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to apologize for that member. He does not get up and speak too much in the House too often. He needs to be reminded of the rules a little bit.

The comment was interesting that the legislation would be giving the federal government and the Liberals a stronger, healthier relationship with provinces and municipalities. I am pretty sure they said the same thing regarding the national housing strategy that they had 10 years ago, which saw housing prices double. We had the housing accelerator fund that was going to be stronger and healthier. What happened? We are not seeing shovels get in the ground. We are seeing fewer shovels in the ground. We are seeing housing prices that have doubled. We are seeing rent that has doubled. That is their record.

If we just give them the fourth chance in 10 years to get it right by using the same recycled approach, they say they will get a different result. That is the definition of insanity. We are not going with it.

The House resumed from February 23 consideration of the motion that Bill C-20, An Act respecting the establishment of Build Canada Homes, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is important to recognize that this is substantial legislation designed and meant to support Canadians in all regions of the nation in regard to housing by working with different levels of government and the many stakeholders out there in an attempt to increase Canada's housing stock and make it more affordable in many different ways.

I wonder if the member opposite would not concede that it is important that the national government play a significant role in this. That is what our new Prime Minister and the government has done by bringing forward Bill C-20.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what I look at is the record of the Liberals over the course of the last 10 or 10 and a half years. They brought in many pieces of major legislation and many strategies to try to make housing more affordable in this country. They had the national housing strategy and the housing accelerator fund, and now they have Bill C-20, which would add a fourth bureaucracy with Build Canada Homes.

What has happened over the course of their record every time they have added a new piece of legislation or come up with a new strategy? The cost of housing in this country has doubled. The cost of rent has doubled. At a time when we need to get more shovels in the ground and build more homes, we are actually seeing that pace slow down. Forgive me if we do not want to give credit to the Liberals, because every time they reintroduce new legislation, their record is one of failure.

On this side of the House, we are talking about doing things not legislatively, to add more bureaucracy, but by getting rid of it by taking the GST off all new home builds under $1.3 million. That is a concrete way we could lower housing prices immediately.

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of promises from the other side, going back years and years. There was a housing accelerator fund, and there were promises of hundreds of thousands of new homes.

I would like to get my colleague's opinion on whether this new promise, dressed up in old trappings, is going to achieve any of the results we hope it will.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if the past is any indication, we are in for higher costs when it comes to housing and rent, and more red tape and bureaucracy when it comes to the system of trying to improve housing in this country. Actually, my colleague and I both served in municipal politics at quite a young age, and this is one of the things the Liberals have broken their promise on. They could have done it in the budget, but they did not. They could have done it in this piece of legislation, and they have not. It is to address the cost of development charges by municipalities in this country. The Liberals promised during the election, as did the Conservatives, that they would cut in half the cost of development charges.

The Liberals are breaking their promise, which is adding tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of housing in many cities. They need to keep their promise and not just add more layers of bureaucracy. That is not going to solve the problem.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, listening to the debate, as I have been, we would not know it, but there is a quiet but growing anxiety in the country. We can feel it in conversations around the community, with those who work in our offices, with the people one potentially goes to school with, with people on the pickleball court. We hear a pause before a young couple answers the question of when they are buying. We see the construction worker who is constantly checking the listings, the articles about litigation for those who were so close but just could not close on what they bought pre-construction.

The housing market in Canada is not just cooling. It is absolutely cracking for these people, for people who want to get into the housing market.

In Toronto, starts have fallen to 30-year lows. Last month, fewer than 300 homes and fewer than 100 condos sold in the entire city. That is nearly 90% below average, and 75% of people who do not own a home in that city believe they never will own a home.

Think about that. That is now a story in Canada. Three-quarters of people who do not own a home will have already given up on the idea that they will own a home. I repeated that because I want members to let that sink in. This is a country where the dream of home ownership has always been there and should continue to be there.

This is not a market correction. It is not a cycle. It is an entire generation losing faith in what their parents and grandparents, and those who came before them, had in this country. It is in moments like this, in a real crisis, that leadership and action actually matter.

When a person's house is on fire, they do not call the fire department for a literature review on combustion, and that is exactly what we are talking about. It is exactly what the government is doing with yet another piece of legislation on housing. The flames are obvious, the young people are locked out, the renters are squeezed, builders are stalled and jobs are disappearing. Now, imagine that, instead of water, the government arrives with a brand new set of clipboards. It announces a task force on flames. It creates an office of fire awareness. It holds a press conference about historic fire mitigation targets, but the house keeps burning.

For a while it sounded like the Liberals understood the urgency. For a while there was talk of a new government and a new plan. They promised the most ambitious housing plan in nearly a century. They used words like revolutionary, transformative and historic. Those are their words, but what did Canadians actually get? They got Bill C-20, which has nothing of what they said. It is just tinkering around the edges, more of the exact same thinking that got us to this point in the first place.

Do members want to know the headline feature of the bill? It is unbelievable. It is yet another housing bureaucracy, housing bureaucracy number four. What did the first three deliver? They doubled the price of homes. They doubled rent. They doubled mortgage costs, and they sent housing construction into an absolute tailspin. This year, we are supposed to, according to the government's own numbers, build 500,000 new homes just to keep up with demand. This new bureaucracy will add 5,000, which is a rounding error, at the cost of $13 billion, which is not a rounding error. That is $13 billion for a government that believes that if one studies a crisis long enough and writes enough reports and makes enough announcements, reality will somehow happen by press release.

Here is the truth. No one can live inside a housing accelerator. That was part of their first plan. No one raises their children in a federal task force. That was their second plan. No one calls bureaucracy home. Builders build homes. Workers build homes. Communities actually build homes. The government's job is to get out of the way rather than stand in it.

If the government is short on ideas, I will be happy to help. In fact, we are going to help it throughout this entire debate, and maybe there will be a bill that could come back to the House that would actually be supportable.

Those who get in the way cannot possibly be rewarded. Incentivize cities to actually build homes, not to do the paperwork. Sell federal land. Empty buildings, so that families can live in them. Cut the federal GST on new homes for everyone, up to $1.3 million, to get buyers buying and builders building. I know that they are thinking about that, because the plan they brought forward to cut GST for first-time homebuyers on new homes under $1 million is not working, and they know that. I invite the Liberals to go back to the drawing board. I do not really care how they do it. They just need to do it. It is not rocket science.

Clinging to ideology is a really powerful blindfold on the other side. The Liberals always just get halfway there. Sometimes we have to wonder if they are comfortable with this being the new reality, where those young people I talked about do not believe they will ever buy a home.

Maybe that is the entire plan. Maybe the plan is to give up on the dream of home ownership and have a permanent class of renters forever. The only problem is that it is not the Canadian promise. It is not how we have lived for generations. It is not how anybody wants to live. The Canadian promise was very, very simple. People work hard, they save, they play by the rules and they build a life. They do not rent that life forever.

The answer to the crisis today is that it was created by too much government interference. Certainly, we are seeing that today, but it cannot be another study or another agency. Every month that they wait with the same plan over and over again, another young person believes that the dream is not for them.

Again, maybe that is the plan. A country where people stop believing they can build a future is a country that is headed in the wrong direction. It is a country that gets hollowed out by the fact that the youngest, smartest people in our society, who really want to attain the dream that was promised to them, end up looking elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the bill that we have in front of us proves that the government still does not understand. Canadians do not need another government program that sounds good in a press release and fails in reality. The bill would not do the very things that the current government itself admitted it needed to do at the beginning of its term. A year later, we are here with yet another announcement of another federal bureaucracy run by another insider.

People need homes. We need supply. They need costs to come down. It is really not that complicated. Builders are telling the government the exact same thing regarding what is required: Get out of the way, cut taxes, cut red tape and let them build. Bill C-20, unfortunately, would do none of that.

Conservatives believe that there is a solution to the housing crisis, but it is not bigger government. It is more homes. Until the government understands that basic fact, Canadians keep paying the price. Over the course of the last 10 years and a year of the pretend new government, with all of the same ministers sitting in the front benches and all of the same people piping in on the same exact policy, we have seen housing prices double, rent double and a payment on a mortgage double, and now we see an absolute stalling of new construction in housing.

The Liberals know the problem. They have admitted the problem. In fact, the fix that they put forward before this piece of legislation was part of the problem. Now, I know they are thinking about announcing a wider GST cut, but we continue to hear about that over and over again, and it never happens. I do not know why they did not put that in this piece of legislation. At least there would be a piece of it that we could support: a full-on GST cut for homes under $1.3 million for everyone, no matter what. They would have to do a few other things, but we could at least support that measure. Hopefully, the government will revise this legislation to include some of our suggestions on lowering development charges, cutting red tape and lowering the cost of housing, so that young people one day will be able to afford a home in this country.

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing and Infrastructure]

Mr. Speaker, it is really ironic to hear the Conservatives talk about ideology and pretend to defend young Canadians, when they voted against all measures to improve housing affordability for young Canadians. They voted against GST cuts for first-time homebuyers, against expanding mortgage criteria, against first home savings accounts and, most recently, against Bill C-227, which proposed a housing strategy specifically for young Canadians. Just today, the Conservatives are looking down again on home renters, so we know which side they stand for.

The only question I have for my colleague is this: Which Canadians are they standing for?

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that is the burden she thinks it is. We stand on the side of young people who want to afford a house in this country, and she is part of a government that has doubled housing prices, doubled rent and doubled mortgage payments. The Liberals have sat comfortably here while they have done it. Builders have asked them to lower development charges. Builders have asked them for things they want in order to get housing done, and they have done absolutely none of it, so it is not very hard to say that we are on the side of home ownership in this country.

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we, too, are concerned about Build Canada Homes. One of our concerns is that it is a large bureaucratic entity that is too far removed from the action and does not provide adequate justification for its decisions. That is what is happening already. In my riding, proponents of a housing project received a letter saying that their proposal was rejected because the program is so competitive. How would my colleague improve Build Canada Homes, if it can be improved?