Bill C-227

National Strategy on Housing for Young Canadians Act

An Act to establish a national strategy on housing for young Canadians

This enactment provides for the development of a national strategy on housing for young Canadians to ensure they have greater access to affordable and secure housing. It also provides for reporting requirements in respect of the strategy.

National Strategy on Housing for Young Canadians Act

[Braedon Clark, Liberal, Sackville—Bedford—Preston, NS]

moved that Bill C-227, An Act to establish a national strategy on housing for young Canadians, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure for me to speak, at second reading, to Bill C-227, an act to establish a national housing strategy for young Canadians.

It is rare in political life to get a second chance at a good thing, but I am happy to say I have had that chance with the bill that is before us. As I mentioned during first reading introduction, I introduced a similar bill into the Nova Scotia Legislature almost exactly three years ago, on October 19, 2022. I checked the date today. In the three years that have elapsed since that time, the issue has certainly not gone away. It has remained a significant area of concern both in Nova Scotia, my home province, and across this country. That is the reason I brought it forward, and I hope it will be passed.

As all members know, and as I think all Canadians know very well, housing is not just a roof over one's head; housing is so many other things. It is one of the key social determinants of health. For physical health, having a roof over one's head is very important. For the mental health of Canadians, the peace, comfort and stability that comes from knowing that at the end of the day, whether it has been a rough day or a great day, no matter what, we get to go home, is huge.

Housing is obviously incredibly important for job prospects, financial security, the ability to have and raise a family, and the ability to take care of siblings, friends, neighbours or aging parents. It is essential to so many aspect of our life, and that is why it remains such a key issue and one in particular that affects young Canadians. The bill defines young Canadians as those between the ages of 17 and 34.

Do not just take my word for it. If we look at StatsCan reports from 2024 of Canadians experiencing housing challenges, we see that only 36% of them reported high life satisfaction, being happy, to put it simply. By comparison, 70% of people who do not have housing challenges reported high life satisfaction. It goes without saying that housing is critical, and it is an issue all members of the House agree on, evidently. It is something brought up in the House very regularly, and I hope it is something we can see as a relatively non-partisan issue as I put the bill forward.

The structure of Bill C-227 is fairly straightforward and easy to follow. Basically, the bill identifies three things that the government must do. As I said, the first thing would be the creation of a national strategy to address the housing needs of young Canadians, those between the ages of 17 and 34.

The strategy would be informed by consultation with provinces, territories and municipalities, because housing is an issue that has elements in all three orders and levels of government, and if all three orders of government do not work together effectively, we will not solve the problem for anyone, let alone for young people. Provinces, territories, municipalities, indigenous organizations, non-profit housing providers and for-profit developers, the entire spectrum of the housing continuum, must work together.

Again, the proposed strategy would touch on all aspects of the housing spectrum, from homelessness, which of course we know is an issue across this country in urban centres, suburban areas and rural areas, to crisis shelters and transition shelters, as well as to subsidized housing, market rental housing and up to entry-level home ownership, which as we know, is the gateway to wealth creation in this country and has been for many decades.

The strategy would be comprehensive. It would not be narrowly focused on any one particular element of the housing market but on all of them, to make sure there is a holistic response to the issue. I should have mentioned co-op housing as well, a really underutilized solution to our housing crisis.

Just last week I was in Halifax to attend the opening of a new neighbourhood, Unity North in the north end of Halifax, with 57 units of co-op housing. It was amazing to see the pride, the sense of community and the joy on everybody's face for the 200 or so people who are living in those affordable, safe, clean and wonderful places to live, as well as to consider all the benefits that will flow from that.

The bill calls for the minister to hold at least one conference with the stakeholders that I laid out, to really get down into the details of the strategy.

The bill also has clear timelines. No matter what government program we are talking about, timelines and measurables are very important. The bill would ask the minister to return to the House within 18 months to table a report with recommendations on how we can move forward, to make sure that young Canadians, not just now and not just 18 months from now but for years and years into the future, are able to be supported and that they are able to fulfill the dream of affordable housing to live in, to own and to have for the rest of their lives.

Beyond the 18 months, there would be a requirement for another status report on how things are going, four years subsequent to that. That is an important piece. I know that opposition members, as they should, care about accountability and timelines, and this timeline is in the bill, beyond the life cycle of any one government, to make sure that no matter which party is in government and no matter where we sit in the chamber, we are making sure that young Canadians and their housing needs remain central.

I would also like to thank the wide range of stakeholders that have helped inform the bill over the preceding few months, that have helped to improve it and that continue to do incredible work across the country on the issue of housing, particularly for young people.

I met with Students Nova Scotia last week, at the great institution of higher learning in Nova Scotia, Saint Mary's University. Other stakeholders include Studenthaus, the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia, and Generation Squeeze out of the University of British Columbia, led by Dr. Paul Kershaw, which is doing really amazing work on issues confronting young Canadians, housing, of course, being very much at the centre of its work.

There is also the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, as well as many more groups and, of course, perhaps most directly of all, the young Canadians whom I have met during my time as an elected official and during my campaigns, when I knocked on doors. There is no form of democracy more direct than that. There is no better way to learn what issues people are facing.

When I was out knocking on doors just a few weeks ago in Lower Sackville and in Bedford, in my riding, I heard, as I am sure other members heard as well, the concerns coming from young Canadians. While there are concerns, justifiable ones, which is why the bill is here before us today, there is also optimism, resilience and hope. That is what young people are known for, and they are still like that. I think they should be, because the bill and many other efforts we are taking as a government are designed to make sure they have housing now and into the future.

When an issue presents itself to us, there are two ways we, as elected officials and politicians, can respond to it. One way is to try to apportion a blame pie and blame this group for that and that group for this. I understand that impulse. A year ago, I was an opposition member of a provincial legislature. I know that the job of opposition parties is to hold the government to account, to raise issues; that is 100% legitimate. That is what they are designed to do.

However, in my view, opposition cannot and should not devolve into nothing more than the airing of grievances, the pointing of fingers, and the idea that there is a problem and therefore we should look back and try to figure out whom to blame for it, and stop there. I do not think that is a practical, pragmatic or serious way to approach an issue. I hope, on this bill in particular, which as I said at the beginning, I see as a relatively non-partisan one, we can treat the issue as one that deserves serious study and deserves the optimism, hope, resilience and ambition of the young Canadians I am hoping to help with the bill.

I would not sit here and say that Bill C-227 alone would solve the problem. I think we need more humility in the House, so what I would say is that it would complement a lot of good, existing work that is going on right now.

I will highlight a few things. The national housing strategy, which was launched in 2017, is a $115-billion program that goes until 2027-28. Another really important initiative, which was done under the previous government, is the first home savings account. It combines elements of an RRSP and a TFSA to allow Canadians, disproportionately young Canadians, of course, to save for their down payment on a house. We know that in many cases that is the single biggest barrier to home ownership. That program has been very successful with great uptake, and I expect that will remain the case for some time to come.

The housing accelerator fund has had positive impacts. In my own region of Halifax, there are cranes all over the city. I think the housing accelerator fund pushed things in a positive and constructive way, not pitting levels of government against one another. It led to changes in municipal bylaws, programs, planning rules and regulations, which at times, in my view, were too cumbersome and time consuming. Absent intervention from the federal government with the housing accelerator fund, I do not think those changes would have happened in as timely a manner. I think that was very positive as well.

Most recently, of course, we began Build Canada Homes, a signature commitment of our government. The goal is to build half a million homes a year in this country, with $13 billion of initial investment, and to look at different ways to build homes, such as prefabricated homes and modular homes. When meeting with businesses in my riding over the last number of weeks, I could see they were excited about the possibilities from Build Canada Homes. Non-profit housing providers in my riding and across the country are interested in how they can leverage Build Canada Homes to make sure that Canadians, young Canadians in particular, who may need additional support have it through an agency and at a scale that we have not seen since the end of the Second World War.

If someone were to go to Halifax and drive up Bayers Road toward the Halifax Shopping Centre, they would see, on either side of the street, homes built in 1946, 1947 or 1948, post-World War II, that people still live in today, 80 years later. They provided safe, affordable housing for many young people at that time, and the goal of what we want to do with Build Canada Homes is make sure that possibility continues. I know that in my riding, many organizations are excited to make that happen.

As I said earlier, this problem is not going to solve itself. This problem is not going to be solved overnight, but there are positive signs of progress. In many cities across this country, we are now seeing rents stabilizing, in some places beginning to fall from levels that were, frankly, unsustainably high. There is no question about that. Home prices in many markets have started to stabilize as well. Home starts, which are a key metric, were up 14% in September, year over year.

What I would say to members of the opposition from all parties is that each and every one of us has thousands and thousands of young Canadians in our ridings. We knock on their doors. We see them at the coffee shop. We see them when we are out and about in our ridings, and they have a consistent concern around housing. This bill does not solve that problem in and of itself. What it does is it puts a stamp in the ground that this government, this Parliament and all parties want young Canadians to have safe, affordable housing that will give them entry into the home ownership market so they can build a future for themselves, whether they are in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Northwest Territories or any point in between.

With that, I want to thank all the stakeholders who helped me craft this bill. I look forward to questions.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague rhymed off a number of federal programs from the Liberal government that have existed for about 10 years. He talked about a whole bunch of different ones. One of them, of course, was the national housing strategy.

If these programs have worked so well, why is the problem as bad as it is today? What does he hope to achieve with yet another national housing strategy?

[Braedon Clark, Liberal, Sackville—Bedford—Preston, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the national housing strategy my hon. colleague refers to, which was adopted back in 2017, did not have as explicit a focus on young Canadians as I would have liked. I certainly was not here at that time, but the idea, as I said during my speech, is not to endlessly litigate a litany of things that may have happened in the past, but to look forward to the future to make sure that, through this strategy and others, we find ways for young Canadians to have more affordable places to live, rent and eventually own.

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

Mr. Speaker, why not simply release the money owed to Quebec and the provinces for housing—we are talking about billions of dollars—with no strings attached, and I want to emphasize the “no strings attached” part, instead of introducing a bill that ultimately aims to issue a mandate for developing a strategy?

We would like to know how this bill really changes anything and what purpose it serves, compared to simply giving a local authority with a greater degree of proximity, and therefore a better knowledge of local needs, the ability to make the right housing choices.

[Braedon Clark, Liberal, Sackville—Bedford—Preston, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think it comes down to which level of government is best placed to address the housing crisis.

There are community organizations for this, and housing is in many ways the responsibility of the provinces. I know that very well having served in provincial legislatures. However, I believe strongly that the federal government has a role to play, which oftentimes is lacking, in coordinating provinces, municipalities and housing providers, particularly on the non-profit side. That is a role the federal government can and should play through this bill.

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to congratulate my colleague for his excellent speech and most of all for the important project he is proposing to this House.

Housing is a key issue for our government. It is an important issue for my own riding, Madawaska—Restigouche, as it is for many other ridings across the country.

I would like to hear his view on how this bill would ensure that young Canadians benefit fully from the historic investments we are making in housing through Build Canada Homes.

[Braedon Clark, Liberal, Sackville—Bedford—Preston, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Madawaska—Restigouche for his advocacy. He is another young member of the House, a bit younger than me, and I thank him.

As I said during my speech, Build Canada Homes is a key part of this bill. Its strategy dovetails very nicely with both Build Canada Homes and the national housing strategy, which is due to expire in 2027-28.

For me, it is critical for the focus on young Canadians, the group most disproportionately impacted by the housing issues across this country, to be reflected in Build Canada Homes to make sure there are many places for students in particular and young Canadians to live, both on the rental side and on the home ownership side. I think there is a natural connection between Build Canada Homes and the strategy I am proposing.

[Fares Al Soud, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise in the House on behalf of the fine people of Mississauga Centre. It is also always a privilege to rise alongside my colleague and good friend, the member for Sackville—Bedford—Preston, particularly on a topic as important as this one.

I proudly jointly seconded this bill, because at the end of the day, politics is not just about policies; it is about people. Bill C-227, the national strategy on housing for young Canadians act, acknowledges this reality.

I would like to hear from the member how he believes this policy is ultimately going to benefit Canadians, particularly in tandem with other policies we currently have in place.

[Braedon Clark, Liberal, Sackville—Bedford—Preston, NS]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Mississauga Centre is another great young Canadian in the House.

As I said in response to my colleague from Madawaska—Restigouche, the spotlight and focus have to be on young Canadians in particular. That is an area where we have perhaps not been as diligent as we needed to be in the past. The strategy I proposed would do that very particularly.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in April 1910, Teddy Roosevelt arrived in Paris on the heels of his Smithsonian-sponsored, year-long scientific expedition to East Africa. While he was there, he delivered his famous “Citizenship in a Republic” speech at the Sorbonne, made famous largely because of that stirring “man in the arena” passage. However, in his speech about the importance and the value of public participation in our democracy, there is actually another line from that speech that I am thinking about today, which would be this line: “The gravest wrong upon his country is inflicted by that man...who seeks to make his countrymen divide primarily on the line that separates class from class”.

Today, in Canada, we have a housing system that has become a division, class from class, between those who have and those who have not. In our housing system, the lines have quite clearly been drawn. While Teddy Roosevelt was clearly not talking about housing that spring in Paris, his words ring true today here in Canada in an uneven housing system of over-regulation, painfully long approval processes and skyrocketing government charges, taxes and fees on housing.

Seniors, on the one hand, are counting on the equity in their homes to retire; young people, on the other, are saving every penny, hoping that they can one day buy a home. There are young people who know for sure that the bank of mom and dad will be there when they go to buy a house, and then there are other young people who are not too sure how they are going to make the rent payment next month. Tradespeople are sitting at home, waiting for that phone to ring to get back to work to build more homes; meanwhile, housing starts are plummeting in this country at a time when we are desperate for millions of new homes.

For over 10 years, we have heard about Liberal promises with respect to housing. We heard Justin Trudeau tell young people in 2017 that his national housing strategy was going to be “transformational” and “life-changing”. Many young Canadians thought this was the first time that the government was going to take housing seriously in their lifetime. Maybe, just maybe, they were going to be able to afford to buy a home, as the generations before them did. However, we know that this is not what happened. Since then, rents have doubled, prices have doubled, down payments have doubled and mortgages have doubled.

Some think this is when the national housing crisis began, when the national housing strategy actually turned out to be a bureaucracy-building strategy. While the Liberals have made things exponentially worse, the genesis of our current mess actually began with the first Prime Minister Trudeau. Back in the 1960s, there was a period of significant expansion of social housing. The federal government, through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, partnered with provinces and municipalities to build large-scale public housing projects, for example, Regent Park in Toronto, Bayers Road in Halifax and Churchill Park in St. John's. The government's aim was to address housing shortages with a focus on integrating public housing into existing communities, thereby making complete communities. The first Prime Minister Trudeau also brought in a special tax program to incentivize the private sector to build rental units. It was called the MURB program. It was wildly successful. It worked, so he cancelled it.

In the 1980s, the federal government began engaging more, and more directly, with the provinces, and it began to reduce its own leadership role. Recessions and budget constraints led to a slowdown in new social housing development. The focus began shifting away from building new units to maintaining the existing stock. By the early 1990s, the federal government withdrew completely from funding new social housing, transferring responsibility to provinces and municipalities.

By the 2000s, Prime Minister Harper, to his credit, saw this crisis coming. He recognized that there was a growing homeless population all across the country. His government's housing first policy aimed to focus on just that. Non-profit organizations and community groups had funds available for housing, and those organizations actually committed to getting it built.

Then came the second Trudeau era. Before Justin Trudeau, it took 25 years to pay off one's mortgage. Now it takes 25 years just to save up for the down payment. Taxes, charges and fees make up almost 30%, on average, of the cost of every new home. Cities and towns have planning departments that have slowed the approvals process by adding layers of reports and processes and new and ever-more-complicated zoning regulations. All new homes are subject to the high cost of red tape, reports and studies by experts, as well as studies of those studies by other experts. The cost of approvals has skyrocketed.

On top of all those layers of bureaucracy, many cities also use a tool called development charges, a tool designed to help municipalities offset the cost of new housing infrastructure, all related to growth. It has been fairly abused by a lot of municipalities to pay for pet projects and overpriced infrastructure under the mantra that growth will pay for growth. Municipalities in Ontario alone sit on development charge reserve funds of over $12 billion. Housing-enabling infrastructure is not getting built, and development charges continue to rise, in many cases to over $200,000 per home, which just sits in these cities' bank accounts.

Here we are with a crisis that is quickly becoming a catastrophe. We know what the housing problem young people are facing in this country is. Industry stakeholders and housing experts and advocates have been abundantly clear that the cost and burden of government make it too expensive to build.

The national price of a home today is 58% higher than it was in October 2015. We know what the solutions are. We must cut the cost of building by getting the government out of the way on market housing. We must incentivize the private sector to build affordable units. We must focus scarce public dollars on social and supportive housing for the most vulnerable in our society.

The last thing we or young Canadians need is yet another bureaucratic report for the minister to review and update the House on, yet here we are. We have a proposal from a very well-meaning and earnest new Liberal MP who wants to make a difference, and I applaud that. The problem is that his proposal is to offer more studies, analysis and reporting back to the House of Commons about what the federal government intends to do to solve a problem that has become a national crisis under its watch and national strategies.

They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. While the Liberals build more bureaucracy and engage in further studies, the Conservatives just want to get more homes built. To all the people who accuse nasty Conservatives of only criticizing the government, I want to be very clear that while we criticize on housing, we have also proposed many great ideas and solutions, such as cutting the GST on all new homes under $1.3 million, which would get homes built; tying federal infrastructure dollars for municipalities not to promises on hopes and dreams of being better, but to real results; cutting local taxes, charges and fees on housing, something the Liberals promised in their election campaign and have not done anything about yet, to make homes less expensive; and cutting the capital gains tax on reinvestments into new housing to attract more capital and investment and get more homes built.

These are proposals supported by industry, housing advocates and housing experts that will restore the dream of home ownership once again to the millions of young people in this country who are tired of being patronized with Liberal promises and spin.

Owing a home is an important source of stability in our lives. For generations, owning a home has formed the foundation for building a life. I want to speak directly to the millions of young Canadians who see that foundation slipping further away.

To the young people who have been told by older generations that it was hard for them to buy a home too and that if they work a little harder, they can buy a house, Conservatives know that it is not just a matter of working a bit harder or sacrificing even more. The deck is literally stacked against them. Fifty years ago, $50,000 could get someone a beautiful home. It was a great start. After inflation, that is about $300,000 today. The problem is that the average cost of a home today is $700,000.

The desire of young people to become homeowners has not changed. Young people are willing to compromise to make it a reality, and facing the new reality, young Canadians are adapting their expectations. For 60% of first-time homebuyers, this means compromising on the size, location or type of home. Young Canadians are willing to change; they see home ownership as a core part of their identity and aspirations. It remains central to how people define progress, belonging and fairness in this country.

Bill C-227 seeks to assess the current state of housing for youth, but we know the problem is bad. We do not need another national strategy to solve it because we also know the solutions. The crisis is today, not years from now, and it is time for results today.

Young people in this country deserve a home. They deserve the promise of Canada that previous generations have enjoyed. They need a government committed to removing the lines that divide us, class by class, into those who have homes and those who are giving up hope of ever owning a home.

To all young Canadians holding out hope for one day owning a home of their own, do not give up hope. There are solutions, and there is a path for them to own a home. Our Conservative team will never stop until those solutions are implemented and we restore the dream of home ownership to every single one of them.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today we are discussing Bill C‑227, an act to establish a national strategy on housing for young Canadians. After reading the bill, it appears that this strategy would specifically target young people between the ages of 18 and 34 who are having difficulty accessing housing.

I cannot dispute the fact that young people between the ages of 18 and 34 have difficulty accessing housing or becoming homeowners. This week, I had the opportunity to meet with representatives from the Canadian real estate brokers association. They told me that 20 or 30 years ago, people became homeowners, on average, at the age of 26. Now, in 2025, people are becoming homeowners at the age of 36, on average. I am 36. At 36, people usually hope to be able to start a family and have children. I am fortunate to have three children. People sometimes choose to rent, but other times they have no choice. This can mean postponing the decision to have children because it has been too hard to put money aside. If people have not been able to save money by 36 and their biological clock is ticking, well, that is a problem.

I think that my colleague from across the way has put his finger on an important issue. That is indeed a serious problem. However, the devil is in the details of this bill. What does my Liberal colleague's bill actually do? It does nothing. The only thing it does is say that the minister would now have a mandate to work on this file, consult people and develop a strategy. That is great. I am all for the minister consulting people and developing a strategy. I do believe that it is a problem that needs to be addressed. However, do we really need a law to do that? Does it take a law to address the housing crisis? Does it take a law to develop a strategy to solve the housing crisis? The answer is no. We do not need a law to do that.

The reality is this. On the other side of the House, backbenchers, particularly those in government, are told to keep quiet, ask as few questions as possible, and make as little noise as possible. Everything they say must be in line with the government's position. They cannot make announcements because it is the ministers who make the announcements, and everything is written in advance. As a result, instead of introducing real bills in the House that would really change things, Liberal members often introduce insignificant bills that do not change anything in people's daily lives.

That is exactly what we are being presented with right now. This is a bill that will change nothing and do nothing to address the housing crisis. It is sad because, in the meantime, the average age at which people become homeowners has risen from 26 to 36. A Liberal member will be happy to say that he has passed a bill that may one day lead to a strategy to address the housing crisis among young people. However, he is not the one who will create the strategy, and no concrete measures are included in the bill.

In the meantime, this is monopolizing the resources of the House of Commons. All the members here are going to debate this. The bill will be referred to committee and people will come testify. That is good, because we will be able to talk about the issue, and I think it is important to do so. Despite any merit the bill may have, nothing will come of it. That is the sad part. The fact is we could very well do this work without monopolizing the entire House of Commons. We could adopt policies.

I would like to make a suggestion to my Liberal colleague and his government. It is a very important suggestion. Not long ago, I met with the Union des municipalités du Québec. Its representatives told me that there is still no agreement between the federal and provincial governments about the $8.5 billion to deal with municipal responsibilities. This is money owed to Quebec that is sitting in Ottawa's coffers. There is a whole stack of envelopes. Who manages most of the housing? Who is primarily responsible for housing? It is the municipalities, and there has been $8.5 billion sitting in Ottawa's coffers all this time. Perhaps my colleague across the floor could have introduced a bill to force Ottawa to release the money that cities need to build housing.

The Canada housing infrastructure fund alone is worth $1.3 billion. That would be enough to build a few sewers and a few water mains. I think that would go a long way to improving the situation.

I can give another example of a federal problem that we are currently facing. There is this thing that we now call the Build Canada Homes program. To start with, let me point out that no one in Ottawa could even get its translation into French right; that should give members an idea of how competent the staff here is. Everyone in the media made a big joke out of it.

More specifically, while we are on the topic of the Build Canada Homes program, we were told that federal lands would be used to accommodate prefabricated homes, all under federal management, that some great announcements were on the way, and that we should be pleased that more houses are getting built.

To add insult to injury, the government is still telling us that it is going to work with the provinces, that it is going to work hand in hand with the municipalities and that everything will be all hunky-dory and just fine. It keeps repeating that like a broken record.

In the end, in the case of a project planned in Longueuil that we found out about, the mayor of Longueuil learned of it through the media. The government is working so closely with others that the mayor of Longueuil had to learn through the media about a project about to break ground in her municipality. That is how this government operates.

I can give another example of working hand in hand to help Canada's municipalities and cities. Not long ago, the federal government was planning to build a new courthouse in Montreal, Quebec. They wanted to renovate an old courthouse to make upgrades to it. So far, so good. What we ended up learning was that the federal government wanted to build it without providing the city with any plans, without a clear intent to harmonize the architecture, without anyone knowing what it was going to look like or how many storeys it would have. Right in the middle of Old Montreal, a historic neighbourhood that is bustling with tourists, they were going to build a multi-storey building without anyone knowing what it was going to look like. Héritage Montréal warned us that the federal government was going to do whatever it wanted without consulting anyone. That is what it looks like when this government works hand in hand with the cities and provinces.

Every time the Liberals meddle in a project that is not under their jurisdiction—the municipalities are primarily responsible for urban planning and housing—it only leads to more trouble and more problems. The same thing is happening right now. What is going on with all the money I mentioned that is sitting in Ottawa? What is happening during all that time?

While the money is sitting in Ottawa and not flowing to the cities, the Liberals are patting themselves on the back because they announced funding for housing. Meanwhile, what is happening? There is inflation. Cities are going under because everything costs more. Everything costs more, and yet, the money is sitting in Ottawa. Ultimately, we are getting less and less bang for our buck because Ottawa is blackmailing us with our own money, pure and simple.

It is blackmailing us because it wants to impose its conditions, its urban planning rules and its density standards, even though everyone is already committed to those things. That is not enough for the federal government. It wants to decide everything that happens everywhere, as if there were no other governments and no other elected officials. The federal government needs to calm down a little, listen to what the cities are saying, listen to what Quebec is saying and, most importantly, send us the money instead of coming up with new strategies and talking non-stop. In the end, nothing is being done on the ground. I am really disappointed to see that the Liberal government is not disbursing the money it should be.

On top of this, we could mention that one of the causes of the housing crisis is also linked to population growth. This is worth mentioning. In Canada, the population has increased by 1.2 million in the last 12 months. That is quite a lot of people. At the same time, Ottawa has very lax immigration policies. The goal of reaching a population of 100 million by 2100 has ultimately changed the situation on the ground. Perhaps no one considered that this would require housing. Perhaps no one considered that it would require additional resources.

In the meantime, young people are suffering. Newcomers are unable to find housing. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that rents have increased by 26% solely because of the Liberal government's lax immigration policy. It is crazy, but that is the reality. I am not the one saying it, the Liberal government is.

I will conclude by saying that before lecturing others, perhaps they should take a hard look at themselves.

[Fares Al Soud, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, once again, it is a privilege to rise in the House on behalf of the fine people of Mississauga Centre. It is also always a privilege to rise alongside my colleague and good friend, the member for Sackville—Bedford—Preston, particularly on a topic as important as this one.

I said it already, but I proudly seconded this bill because, at the end of the day, politics is not just about policies; it is about people. Bill C-227, the national strategy on housing for young Canadians act, acknowledges this reality.

This past weekend in my riding, I spent some time speaking to neighbours, joined by over 30 young Canadians from Mississauga. While the conversations at the doors were, as always, delightful and informative, my conversations with those young Canadians served as a firm reminder that young people care. They are watching, and they are counting on us to do the right thing. This is the case for public safety; our role on the international stage; Canadian language, culture and heritage; affordability; and most certainly housing.

The member for Sackville—Bedford—Preston explained the bill perfectly, but I think it is important to contextualize it and its potential relative to the national housing strategy. Introduced in 2017, the national housing strategy was Canada's first-ever long-term plan to make sure that everyone in this country has a place to call home. It was created in response to growing concerns about affordability, rising homelessness and the lack of coordinated national leadership on housing. For decades, Canada faced deepening challenges in ensuring access to safe, suitable and affordable homes, challenges that were felt most acutely by young people, low-income families, indigenous communities and newcomers.

The national housing strategy addresses the needs of Canadians, whether they are seniors looking to downsize, young families wanting to move into a larger home, or young Canadians entering the housing market. All Canadians deserve housing that meets their needs. Young Canadians need housing that is right for them.

The strategy represents a commitment to housing as a human right, anchored in the belief that access to adequate housing is essential to health, security and dignity. By focusing on both immediate needs and long-term sustainability, the strategy seeks to break cycles of poverty and housing insecurity that have held too many Canadians back. At its core, the national housing strategy is about partnership. It brings together all levels of government, indigenous partners, the private sector and community organizations to tackle Canada's housing crisis from every angle.

For young Canadians, the strategy acknowledges the unique challenges of entering today's housing market. It also aims to create pathways to enable youth to find secure, affordable places to live, whether through rental assistance, community housing or programs that encourage innovative and sustainable housing design. It also recognizes that when young people cannot find stable housing, it affects their ability to pursue education, build careers and contribute fully to their communities.

With this mind, over the past few months, time and time again, I have heard from organizations from across the country and in my riding, housing advocates, youth groups and local service providers. They have made one thing abundantly clear: Young people need solutions that are exclusively and explicitly geared towards them. They need policies that reflect their realities, from rising rent costs to barriers in home ownership, and they need to know that their government is listening and responding. I have heard this from high school students, university students and young Canadians entering the workforce. Housing policy must be people-centred, grounded in lived experience and adaptable to the changing realities of today's youth. When we listen to those directly affected, we create solutions that last, that restore hope and that build stronger, more resilient communities.

Far too many young Canadians experience homelessness. What is perhaps most tragic is that their struggles are often hidden. They couch surf with friends or relatives, stay temporarily with family, or sleep in cars. These are young people whose lives are disrupted, whose education and work opportunities are impacted, and whose sense of security is fragile. This bill recognizes them.

As a young Canadian, I stand proud today in support of Bill C-227, the national strategy on housing for young Canadians act.

Housing is not just a roof over one's head. Housing is security. Housing is dignity. Housing is the foundation on which young Canadians can build their lives. Imagine how difficult it is for them to study for exams, start a new job or even sleep well at night when they do not know if they will have a bed tomorrow. That is the reality for many young Canadians today.

I would like everyone here to take a moment to imagine something simple: a room of their own, four walls, a door that locks, a quiet space where they can dream, focus and plan for their future. For millions of Canadians, that is not a given. It is a privilege. That is precisely what this strategy seeks to provide.

Across the country, from Vancouver to Halifax, from Montreal to Mississauga, young Canadians have been clear: They want a fair chance at affordable housing. They are not asking for charity, they are asking for hope, they are asking for stability. They are asking for the freedom to pursue an education, build a career and contribute fully to society.

Let us consider the cost of inaction. A young Canadian who cannot find stable housing may delay finishing their education, miss working opportunities or be forced into unsafe living conditions. They may experience anxiety, depression or a loss of confidence in their future. These are not abstract outcomes. They are the consequences of a system that has not yet caught up with the rapidly evolving realities of today's youth. Here, we have the power to change that.

University is a distant memory for many in the House. For me, it was merely a few years ago. I proudly studied and graduated from the University of Toronto Mississauga. During my first year, I lived right on the Credit Woodlands with three incredible people who have become lifelong friends. They were a year above in a similar program, which, needless to say, came in clutch. We lived 10 minutes from campus, so I had the privilege of being able to go to class, learn and then have lunch at home. It was while I was in that apartment that I found my first job and my first extensive volunteering opportunity. Needless to say, I would not be me without that room. As small as it may have been, it was home.

This is why this bill is about more than mere bricks and mortar. It is an opportunity. It is about hope. It is about equity. It is about telling every young Canadian that they matter, their potential matters, and this country will not leave them behind. We often talk about the future, but the future is not some distant concept. The future is being written today in dorm rooms, first apartments, shared homes, traditional housing, and yes, sometimes shelters. Every decision we make here shapes that future, and every young person whose life is stabilized by this strategy would become a testimony to what is possible when government, regardless of parties, listens, acts and cares.

This is why this bill matters. It is a promise, a promise to recognize and support young Canadians, to address hidden and transitional homelessness, and to invest in affordable housing solutions that meet their unique needs. It is a commitment that housing is not a privilege reserved for a few, but a foundation available to all. I propose that we act now.

Too often, we see politics take precedence over real priorities. This bill is non-partisan. It is an opportunity to truly demonstrate a cross-party, collaborative understanding of the priorities that matter most to young Canadians in all of our ridings. When young Canadians are secure, when they have a place to call home, they are not just surviving, they are living. They are contributing to their communities, to our economy and to the Canada we all envision. This is why we are here. This is why this bill matters.

[Sukhman Gill, Conservative, Abbotsford—South Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise on behalf of the good people of Abbotsford—South Langley, whom I represent so proudly in the House.

Today I am honoured to rise on behalf of youth across this nation. Young people across Canada are sacrificing their dream of home ownership, just to make ends meet. In my hometown of Abbotsford, the number of people experiencing homelessness continues to rise every single year. Families are struggling, rent is unaffordable and the dream of owning a home feels farther out of reach than ever before. I am tired of watching the Liberal government's political theatre while Canadians suffer.

The Liberal private member's bill before us, Bill C-227, which claims to introduce a national housing strategy for youth, is yet another example of performative virtue signalling, with big promises but no real results. The bill would do nothing to address the root cause of the housing crisis. It would simply create more bureaucracy, more studies and more expensive government offices that would not put a single roof over a young Canadian's head.

Let us be clear: The housing crisis did not appear overnight. It is not a naturally developing problem. It has been created by the Liberal government's policies. Liberals inflated the housing bubble with excessive money printing and immigration, then blocked supply with taxes and red tape for builders. Building permits in Canada now take longer to approve than in any other country in the G7, stalling development and driving up costs.

On top of that, nearly 30% of the price for new homes is government taxes, fees and charges. CMHC says we need to build 480,000 homes this year to restore affordability. We are on pace to build only 212,000. The government has turned housing into a source of revenue instead of a necessity for all Canadians. That is what we call greed, and it has no place in a government that was elected to serve Canadians and not to profit from their struggles.

Young Canadians deserve better, and so do workers, because the crisis affects not only young families but also all workers whose livelihood depends on construction, including tradespeople and suppliers.

Housing comes down to basic economics: supply and demand. When government restricts housing development through endless red tape, and when construction is bogged down by taxes and fees, supply dries up. When supply dries up, prices skyrocket, and Canadians are the ones who end up paying the price. It is unbelievable that we are facing a shortage in a country as vast and as resource-rich as Canada. We have the land, the material and the talent, but we are missing the leadership.

While the Liberals continue with useless studies, fake announcements and photo ops, Conservatives are focused on solutions. We have introduced common-sense bills that would tackle the housing crisis at its source, yet time and time again, the Liberals have voted them down.

Conservatives have proposed to cut the GST on all new homes under $1.3 million, saving families up to $65,000; to tie federal infrastructure dollars to homebuilding, ensuring that municipalities permit at least 15% more homebuilding every year; to cut development charges by 50%, a promise the Liberal government made but failed to deliver on; and to end the capital gains tax on reinvestments in housing, unlocking billions of dollars for the homebuilding sector. These proposals are grounded in research, not rhetoric.

Nearly half of Canada's housing costs stem from restrictive land-use regulations, municipal red tape and government overreach. Homebuilding taxes alone account for one-third of the total cost of a home. Taxes and fees on housing are so high that developers struggle to make projects viable, but many are being forced to lay off skilled workers because they simply cannot afford to keep them employed.

Since the Liberals doubled housing costs, the Prime Minister celebrated the housing accelerator fund as a great Liberal success, but the numbers tell a different story. CMHC's own data shows that the fund does not build homes; it builds bureaucracy. In cities that received the so-called accelerator funding, housing starts went down, not up.

The numbers speak for themselves. Vancouver received $150 million, but housing starts went down by 10.4%. Toronto received $471 million, but starts are down 58.5%. Guelph is down 78.6%, Hamilton is down 50.7%, London is down 72.3% and Kelowna is down 33.6%.

This failure is compounded by the Liberals' choice for housing minister. The Liberal housing minister, as the mayor of Vancouver, increased homebuilding taxes by 141% while home prices rose 149%, making Vancouver the least affordable city in North America. In one of his very first interviews as housing minister, he flatly said no when asked if housing prices should come down. He was even caught admitting that the $4.4-billion housing accelerator fund would not result in more homes being built in Canada.

All the government does is continue to waste taxpayer dollars on studies and not answer Canadians as to the root causes. How dare it claims to champion youth while refusing to take meaningful action.

Young Canadians do not need another Liberal photo op; they need homes, affordable homes. A house is not only a lifetime achievement for many folks, but a safe place for building a generational foundation. It is about more than just owning a property. It represents stability, security and a future to work toward.

What this crisis is doing to people my age in my community is creating anxiety, scarcity and fear. We are watching the opportunity to own a home slip away and are being told to simply accept it. I am afraid to see what the future holds for people my age if this continues.

The Prime Minister has spoken about how young people need to make sacrifices, but I believe sacrificing a stable future with a family in a safe home and a safe neighbourhood is unacceptable. There is nothing fair or reasonable about asking young Canadians to give up the hope of home ownership.

I find it personally troubling that the government continues to deliberately ignore the blaring alarm of the crisis it has caused. The Liberals have had years to act. Housing costs have doubled under their government, and young Canadians are being left behind.

I want to end my speech with a message to all young people in this country and to those who have been told by the Liberal government to give up, to lower their expectations and to sacrifice their dreams. It does not have to be this way. My message to them is very simple. They should never sacrifice their future. They deserve opportunity, stability and the chance to build the life they have always dreamed of.

The Conservatives are here to make that possible. We will not rest until young Canadians have access to a good job, an affordable home and a fair shot at the Canadian dream. We will hold the government accountable every single day for the failures it has imposed on them. There is still hope, and together we can build a brighter tomorrow.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

The hon. member for Saint‑Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton. There are roughly two minutes left in this debate.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be with you at this critical time as this sitting of the House draws to a close. During these final two minutes in your company, I will be pleased to speak to you and hope that I will not put you to sleep or make you wonder whether this will ever end.

Since my time is very limited, I will get straight to the point: The Bloc Québécois is going to vote against this bill. In our opinion, it is useless, an empty shell. It claims to be creating a national strategy when in fact it does nothing of the sort. At best, it allows the Liberal Party to boast about having a strategy and claim that it has the knowledge to tell the provinces what to do.

The government already has a whole host of programs and, in any case, its only role is to transfer money to the provinces and, potentially, to cede land that Ottawa owns but does not use. It should be providing transfers with no strings attached and ceding unused land. Even that would move us closer to something that makes more sense as far as housing goes. Housing is a major crisis for most of Quebec's big cities and a common problem in western countries generally, but it could be mitigated with the tools at our disposal.

We know that centralization gets us nowhere because Quebec and the municipalities have a better understanding of local realities and citizens' needs. Although Ottawa claims it wants to collaborate, its usual “Ottawa knows best” attitude leaves little doubt as to how it will implement such a strategy.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired, and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.

The House resumed from October 29, 2025, consideration of the motion that Bill C-227, An Act to establish a national strategy on housing for young Canadians, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, as far as I am concerned, we are resuming debate and I an resuming my speech, because I was barely able to begin it the last time. The two minutes I had was barely enough time to say good evening.

I will pick up where I left off. Housing is an issue that is—

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

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

Mr. Speaker, the member speaking is certainly a member who asks questions. I invite him to listen first and then ask questions.

Housing is an issue that is extremely important to me because there is a major housing crisis in my region, like everywhere else. It is hitting us so hard that the city of Saint‑Hyacinthe, which is home to two-thirds of my riding's population, has long had the dubious distinction of having the lowest vacancy rate in Quebec. I think it is somewhere around 0.4%. Today, it has gone up, and that is a good thing. For a long time, however, it remained at an extremely dangerous rate of 0.4%. It is the same as saying there were no more vacancies at all. It is as simple as that.

On top of this, there has been a series of fires in downtown Saint-Hyacinthe. The people they affected were primarily vulnerable individuals, many of whom did not have insurance. It was even more difficult to relocate them afterward and help them out of the hardship the fires had caused.

Of course, the Saint-Hyacinthe region is not in an easy position either. We will never have extremely advantageous vacancy rates for the simple reason that we have the best farmland in Quebec. It is not a region that can easily be rezoned either, but there are still ways to implement smart, responsible projects.

We obviously fully agree with the intention behind the bill, namely, to promote access to affordable and secure housing for young Canadians and Quebeckers aged 17 to 34. There is no issue with the intention itself, but we will vote against the bill because, unfortunately, it is a useless empty shell that claims to create a national strategy while containing nothing whatsoever to that effect. At best, it will allow the government to boast that it has a strategy and claim to have the expertise to show the provinces how to proceed, because centralization and Canada-wide standards are second nature to Ottawa.

The government already has a multitude of programs and, in any case, its only role is limited to transferring money to the provinces and, potentially, transferring ownership of federal lands that are not being used. That would be relevant if that were the case, but this bill would amount to giving the government carte blanche right now. Although it provides for consultations with the provinces and other stakeholders, we have plenty of examples where consultations are limited to sending emails without any actual dialogue. Basically, these consultations are essentially briefings. That is what they end up being. People are told what is going to happen, and that is about it.

Quebec and the municipalities have a much better understanding of the local realities of their residents. That is the virtue of decentralization. Even though the federal government claims to want to collaborate, the usual “Ottawa knows best” attitude leaves little doubt as to how it will respond to such a strategy, and that is not very reassuring. If the past is any indication of the future, it is not at all reassuring.

The federal government already has a $55-billion, 10-year program and is struggling to make it work because of all the red tape. Now it wants to add to that. In any case, Ottawa does not build anything. The municipalities do all the work. That is why we are calling for all housing funding to be unconditionally transferred to Quebec. That would be a much better solution than what is being proposed here. That is the simplest and most economical way to create favourable conditions for housing construction. By adding conditions, the federal government adds public servants, in both Ottawa and Quebec City, to create reports and track the money that is spent. This approach is both costly and inefficient.

What is more, Ottawa's definition of “affordable” is inadequate. We want the government to adapt, adjust and clarify the definition of “affordable” in relation to housing so that the funding is actually used to build affordable housing.

The bill gives any designated minister the mandate to conduct consultations to develop the national strategy on housing, although, as I said, the word “consultation” is debatable. However, the government could conduct these consultations without a bill. Do we need a bill to say that a project or consultation should be launched? I see this as window dressing, a potentially useless empty shell.

The strategy, which is not created by the bill—for the reason I just mentioned—would aim to ensure greater access to affordable and secure housing for young people, that is, people aged 17 to 34. As I said, there is no problem with that. To develop the strategy, the minister will conduct consultations with representatives of provincial, territorial and municipal governments and other groups.

Not everything about this is crazy. There are things that make sense, such as cracking down on real estate flipping, but it is clear that the best solution would be to provide unconditional funding for any Quebec initiative to develop student housing as a way to take pressure off the residential and rental market, particularly in the regions and at the initiative of colleges and universities. I have a few in my riding. I have the CEGEP, the Institut de technologie agricole du Québec, the faculty of veterinary medicine, and the vocational school. All of them could benefit.

Fundamentally, the housing crisis needs to be taken seriously. It should be our chief concern, because housing must be seen as a right. Some community organizations are doing outstanding work in many places to keep tenants informed of their rights, because not all landlords are able to keep them adequately informed all the time. There are organizations doing outstanding work in that area.

Of course, we need to be able to build. Building takes money. Addressing the housing crisis involves more than simply drafting a bill that does not launch a strategy, but rather a discussion. Ottawa's track record when it comes to discussions is a little unsettling. Maybe the funding could consist of a permanent reinvestment. For example, 1% of the government's annual budget could be earmarked for housing construction. It could be that. It could be a fixed percentage that would stay the same year after year, regardless of inflation, and that would also reflect increases in costs and expenses. The percentage would always stay the same.

[Tim Watchorn, Liberal, Les Pays-d'en-Haut, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise today for the second time in 2026 on behalf of the people of Les Pays-d'en-Haut.

We are studying Bill C-227, an act to establish a national strategy on housing for young Canadians. The bill speaks to me personally. I have two children, aged 20 and 23, who are in university. They have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for housing in Montreal. In the coming years, they will have to find another place to live or buy their first home.

Bill C‑227 would require the minister to consult with other levels of government as well as stakeholders to develop a national strategy on housing for young people and ensure greater access to affordable and secure housing. We all know that coordination between levels of government is crucial to get results. During my time as mayor of a small municipality, I worked with the provincial and federal governments on a project to build 30 housing units for seniors, and I can confidently say that the complexity of the programs and the time it takes for files to be processed discourage those who want to create housing, whether they are municipalities or non-profit organizations. In our case, five years passed between the initial announcement and the completion of the project. We need to do better.

Bill C-227 aims to develop a coordinated national strategy to examine these unique barriers and identify targeted solutions in collaboration with provinces, territories and municipalities. That is what is needed now.

Speaking more specifically about young people, young Canadians today are faced with a housing market that is unlike anything we have seen before. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a home, even a rental. The result is a generation that is struggling to put down roots. This challenge is being felt across Quebec and Canada. Without affordable housing options, young Canadians are faced with difficult decisions, such as turning down a job that is too far away, delaying starting a family or feeling disadvantaged compared to previous generations. This undermines Canada's long-term productivity and economic growth.

To address these issues, two things need to be done: more money must be put in the pockets of young Canadians, and housing must be built. In the past nine months, our government has done exactly that, and I would like to outline the measures we have put in place to promote affordability for all Canadians and to enable young people to pay their mortgage or rent. As soon as we were elected, we eliminated the carbon tax for individuals. We have made generational progress for Quebeckers, notably by granting a tax reduction for the middle class, which allows Quebeckers to keep more money in their pockets. We are talking about savings of approximately $800 per family.

To reduce the upfront cost of buying a new home for young people and stimulate new home construction across the country, we eliminated the GST for first-time homebuyers. That represents savings of up to $50,000. That is very encouraging. We also know that the FHSA, the tax-free first home savings account, is an extraordinary program. My children contribute to it, as do many young Canadians. It represents tax-sheltered savings of nearly $40,000 toward our young people's first home.

Canadians work hard to afford housing, but high mortgage payments are a barrier to first-time home ownership, especially for young people. That is why we have relaxed certain mortgage criteria to allow more young people to qualify for a loan. More recently, we announced the new Canada groceries and essentials benefit to protect Canadians' purchasing power. We will put more money directly into the pockets of millions of families. This allowance will benefit more than 12 million Canadians. Child care and dental care programs and school breakfasts will also help ease the financial burden on families.

In addition to proposing all these measures to make life more affordable for Canadians, we have also been working on building homes.

We have created Build Canada Homes, a new federal agency that will finance and build affordable housing on a large scale. It will also act as a catalyst for a more productive residential construction industry. This is a bold approach that will have positive spin-offs for young people across Canada.

One of our government's key commitments is to double the pace of housing construction in Canada to 500,000 units in 10 years. By combining access to federal land, development expertise and financing under one roof, Build Canada Homes will enable us to build new housing more quickly and easily. As of today, 4,000 homes will be built on federal land, with a significant portion of that being affordable housing.

In Quebec, things are also moving forward. We have a shared commitment to take action to increase the province's housing supply. The governments of Canada and Quebec are stepping up their collaboration to accelerate housing construction and support community development. Through a joint collaboration table, the two governments will work together to fund housing projects aligned with their shared priorities, to simplify and accelerate approval processes and to ensure better coordination between municipal and community partners.

That is exactly the spirit behind Bill C-227. As the former mayor of a small municipality and an engineer by trade, I am well aware that all of these new housing units will have to be serviced by roads, water systems and sewers. Recognizing that accelerating housing construction requires major infrastructure investments, the Government of Quebec and the federal government have also announced the signing of a Canada housing infrastructure fund agreement.

We will invest close to $1 billion, which Quebec can use in accordance with its policies and local needs to upgrade and develop critical infrastructure, including the drinking water, waste water and storm water infrastructure essential to new housing developments.

These measures and investments and Bill C-227 will provide young people with more housing opportunities. In my riding of Les Pays-d'en-Haut, the average price of a single-family home is $540,000. The average price of a condo is $385,000. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment ranges from $1,200 to $1,500 a month.

Most young people in my riding work in recreation and tourism, whether in restaurants, hotels, shops or ski resorts. They tell me that it is extremely difficult to afford housing on the wages they earn. Many young people are leaving Les Pays-d'en-Haut for other regions where housing is less expensive. That is unacceptable.

Bill C-227 allows us to take another step in the right direction. I can say that we are here for young people. I hope that my colleagues across the aisle will prioritize the demands of our young people and vote in favour of this bill. On behalf of my children and all young people across the country, I thank the member for Sackville—Bedford—Preston for his work on this issue.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Madam Speaker, I want to begin by saying it is an honour to rise on behalf of my constituents, the good people of Brandon—Souris and of Westman. It is an important topic we are discussing here today. I often hear from constituents, when I am back at home and when I am here, about the challenging housing climate we are living in. No part of Manitoba is escaping that.

I represent Brandon, the province's second-largest city. I also represent some of the smallest communities in our province. There seems to be a lack of housing and affordable housing options just about everywhere one goes, regardless of the size of the community. We know that action does need to be taken on this front, so it is good to hear that my colleague, one member of the class of 2025 whom I have had the pleasure of meeting, has brought the bill forward. I am glad to hear that somebody on that side of the aisle is thinking about young people and affordable housing.

Members on the front bench on the Liberal side seem to think everything is doing great, all their initiatives have been a roaring success over the last 10 years, there should be no housing shortages and the programs run perfectly. We know this is not the reality on the ground that our communities and young people across the country are facing when they are trying to get out of their parents' house and into the housing market themselves.

While we appreciate the member from Nova Scotia's bringing this forward, unfortunately it is only another framework, which is part of the problem in terms of why there is a housing shortage in this country. We are very skeptical on this side of the House that it would have any impact on improving the situation. In fact it could quite likely make it worse.

Young Canadians do not need another strategy from the Liberals. They have had a few. They already have the national housing strategy. They already have the housing accelerator fund. They have other programs under the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The Liberals have all kinds of different initiatives, such as Build Canada Homes, that they have announced and announced.

Almost no homes have been built relative to the amount of money that has been allocated to all the different initiatives, strategies and frameworks. Why is that? It is because the Liberals have put so many barriers in place to actually accessing the money; it is completely burdensome for builders to access it. I hear from them often. Brandon got money under the housing accelerator fund, so I ask why more affordable units are not being built in the city.

The developers, quite honestly, have been very candid with me that there is so much red tape and bureaucratic nonsense at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and hoops to jump through and boxes to tick, that many of them have just completely walked away from dealing with the government and trying to build the units. It is just so difficult to get anything built through it. They do not need to build affordable housing units; they are running successful businesses on their own.

The government needs developers to be doing it, so it should be making it as easy and as accessible as possible for businesses to be incentivized to build affordable housing units and to build homes that people can afford to buy. I do also get concerned that we are often talking just about affordable rental units and not about incentivizing the private sector to build homes and encourage home ownership. Too often the Liberals get sidetracked talking just about the rental market, with not enough time spent focusing on home ownership.

We had hoped that Build Canada Homes might take a different approach. It has been a pretty slow start, but nonetheless we still have hope that the Liberals will perhaps find a way to remove the bureaucracy that they have massively expanded and put in the way, so builders can actually get to work and build homes that Canadians can afford.

Also too often, I must say, programs are focused on the major urban centres in our province. The motion today is talking about young people and affordable housing. I represent a lot of very small communities, as do many others in this chamber. Often, I hear about young people having to leave small rural areas because there is nothing available to buy.

Some of those towns may have just one builder, or they may not even have a builder and would have to bring one in from another community. Those builders are coming in at the request of, perhaps, a retiring farmer who has a little bit of money, and the builder is eager to build a large home for their retirement.

However, there are very few houses of an affordable size being built in our rural communities, which means young people leave. They have good jobs, but they cannot find anywhere to live. They do not want to stay with their parents anymore. They want to get out, live independently and move into that phase of their life, but there is nowhere to live, so they take off for Brandon, Winnipeg, Regina or somewhere else, and we lose them. We lose their job, their spouse's job, and their kids out of the schools. Our rural communities are fading away.

We have to make sure that these programs that the Liberals continue to deliver are accessible to small towns and small municipalities. To some people in this chamber, the city of Brandon, with 56,000 people, is small. I am talking about a town of 1,000 people. Those municipalities do not have a whole lot of extra staff to fill out immensely complicated applications for government grants and programs. They are running as lean as they can possibly run already.

I hear that from builders too. Builders in small towns do not have massive staffs with the time and resources to fill out application programs. Quite often, it is the builders themselves who are doing the books, either very early in the morning or very late at night, and then they are working on a job all day. They do not have time to sit down and spend hours and hours building an application for a large government program.

The Liberals need to stop talking about frameworks and strategies. All that means is red tape, red tape and more red tape. They need to get all of the red tape they have added over the last 10 years out of the way so that people can actually get out there and build homes.

We would strongly encourage our colleague who brought this forward to maybe consider adding some red tape reduction measures to this bill. It would still move through the legislative process, I am sure, with hopefully some measures that would not add to the regulatory burden for builders but actually remove some of that burden. Those measures could get added on to the bill as we move along. At that point, then, it might actually give builders in this country some optimism.

It is also important to recognize that we often hear the Liberals say they do not think we have any solutions. They say all we do is complain all the time. Perhaps it is just that they do not like our solutions, but we have a number of them. I would just like to outline a few of them here today.

One is reducing housing costs by cutting the GST on all new homes under a $1.3-million build cost, saving up to $65,000 on the cost of a new home and $3,000 a year in mortgage payments.

Another is identifying 15% of federal buildings and lands to sell for housing in livable new neighbourhoods within 100 days. That would allow us to build thousands of new homes much faster than the glacial pace that we are seeing.

We would cut building taxes. We need to incentivize municipalities to reduce development charges. We would then reimburse them up to a maximum of $50,000 and scrap the underused housing tax, which costs more to administer than is collected.

We need to remove gatekeepers to fast-track homebuilding through shovel-ready zones that the federal government would create, so that municipalities could then enable builders to get in right away and get the work done. We need to tie federal infrastructure dollars to results. That goes for municipalities as well.

The carrot-and-stick approach is not new. We need to start incentivizing municipalities to bring down development fees, so that builders can build without adding development fees on to the cost of rent. I mean, we could have a building with 15% affordable housing units. The rest of the units in that building could also be reasonably priced, but when municipalities are doubling or tripling their development fees, all that just gets passed on to the consumer, the young people who are trying to rent in this country until they can save up for a mortgage and get into their first home.

Those are the ways that the federal Liberals could use the billions of dollars that are tied up in bureaucratic red tape and actually deliver more affordable homes and units for young Canadians.

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

Madam Speaker, as I talk about housing, I would like to also broach the subject of young people, justice and hope.

First, let us talk about our young people. They are buckling under the weight of a triple crisis: unaffordable housing, crushing debt and unemployment, which is two times higher than other generations. In fact, 59% of people under 35 report having serious housing problems. That figure is 38% for the rest of the population. Rents are skyrocketing. The cost of a two-bedroom apartment in Quebec has increased by nearly 8%, while average salaries have only increased by 4.5%. The average income of students in Quebec is approximately $16,500 per year, and they spend an average of $11,220 on housing. That does not leave much at the end of the month.

People are so desperate that 10% of student tenants report sharing a one-bedroom apartment with two other people. Worse still, unemployment among young people aged 15 to 24 soared to nearly 14% in December 2025. It reached a peak of 14.7% in September 2025. That was the highest rate in 15 years.

Youth homelessness has also been on the rise in recent years. An estimated 20% of homeless people in Canada are between the ages of 13 and 24. There are 6,000 young people experiencing homelessness every night, and 35,000 young people experiencing homelessness over the course of a year. This is a generation that is facing challenges, often unable to find housing, deeply in debt, or stuck in precarious employment.

Now let us talk about intergenerational justice. Mortgage debt remains overwhelming. The average rate has risen from 2.5% in 2020 to over 7% in 2023. When they were 25, baby boomers could easily buy a home. With just one or two modest incomes, they could make a down payment, and the payments generally represented one-third of their income. Today, young people need to save for 14 to 20 years to make a 20% down payment. Even with lower interest rates, the absolute price of housing is 10 to 15 times higher when adjusted for inflation. However, incomes have not increased 10 to 15 times. Rather, they have increased two to three times since the 1980s. The result is that, without significant parental assistance, buying a home at age 25 is often impossible for the majority of young people.

Even for me, as someone who is not a baby boomer, it was easy to do that as soon as I started working. When my group of friends and I in the Gaspé were in our 20s, no matter what work we did, it was obvious that we would become homeowners. We were going to work and buy a house. The size could vary, but access to a property was not really an issue in the early 2000s. Now, it absolutely is. These young people feel a sense of injustice that I understand and that we must address.

Let us talk about hope. There is hope; there are solutions out there. There are a multitude of programs that already exist, and the government could invest more in them. We believe that an additional $7 billion should be invested over five years in the rapid housing initiative, and an additional $1.7 billion over five years to address homelessness, which is half of what the Parliamentary Budget Officer said would be needed to reduce this tragedy by 50%. It would take an additional $1.5 billion over five years for municipal infrastructure. So there are several things we can do. There is hope, provided the government takes action.

We also believe that the federal government should transfer all of the funding for housing to Quebec with no strings attached. Quebec has already set up an affordable housing program, and we think that the federal government should contribute to it directly.

Until these things happen, the Bloc Québécois will work to streamline federal programs and try to ensure that they align with those of Quebec so that the money goes where it should, to housing for Quebeckers. In order to give hope to our young people and respond to their legitimate aspirations, we need to resolve the alignment issues between Quebec and Ottawa.

Along with the Government of Quebec, the federal government made an announcement in Quebec City on January 21. It was announced that the portion of the Canada housing infrastructure fund earmarked for Quebec was finally being transferred. It was a $1-billion announcement, but the important thing to remember is that this fund was announced in April 2024 by the Trudeau government. Unfortunately, it took until January 2026 before an agreement was reached and the funds could be released.

It is an interesting program because it enables municipalities that want to develop a residential area to seek grants to invest in sewers, water systems and roads. However, as long as Quebec City and Ottawa fail to reach an agreement and as long as Ottawa wants to impose conditions in areas that are not under its jurisdiction, it will delay things. It is easy enough to understand, and it could have a fairly direct impact. If, two years ago, municipalities had already been able to obtain funds to invest in their infrastructure, housing projects could already have been completed. Homes would already be under construction and part of the problem would be solved. However, what happened instead was a series of lengthy negotiations between the federal government, which wanted to impose its conditions, and Quebec, which wanted to defend its jurisdiction.

Housing takes a lot of effort and coordination by all the partners. I see it in my riding. Housing projects get started by organizations and municipal housing offices. Every time, these people have to do cartwheels to move their project forward while meeting the deadlines set by Quebec and the federal government. Last fall, there were times when some projects were in serious jeopardy because Quebec grew tired of waiting for a confirmation, but a federal election was in progress.

We also see that some programs are not properly aligned. That is something this government can work on. I also think that it needs to acknowledge that Quebec has jurisdiction and that its own role is to transfer funds. If that happens, each province will finally be able to set up programs the way they want. Programs will be better suited to provincial realities, and housing can get built. In any case, this is what we propose as a way to give hope, especially to our young people.

As for Bill C‑227, unfortunately, it does not address the hopes of young people and the intergenerational justice we are seeking. We, in the Bloc Québécois, oppose this bill. My colleague spoke about it a few minutes ago. This bill seeks to develop a national housing strategy for young people through consultations. It raises issues of policy consistency and public efficiency.

It is a very short bill that tells us that a national strategy will be developed and that consultations will be held. It is important to be wary of legislative bloat. We know that the government does not need a law to consult young people and the provinces. All it takes is a telephone or a computer and an email. All of my colleagues from all parties here are in fairly constant consultation with groups that have housing projects in their ridings. I am convinced of that. As for the notion of consultation in this bill, it is rather astounding.

Furthermore, developing a strategy when one has already been launched is, unfortunately, an initiative that we consider unnecessary. We believe that the Government of Canada has already consulted sufficiently. What it must do is respect Quebec's jurisdiction and transfer funds to Quebec. That is how to give the provinces the means to act to restore hope to our young people and to re-establish the intergenerational justice that we have unfortunately lost in recent years.

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

Before resuming debate, I would remind members to please be very careful with the way they move papers on their desks. Those sounds are amplified for the interpreters.

[Chi Nguyen, Liberal, Spadina—Harbourfront, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of Bill C-227, an act to establish a national strategy on housing for young Canadians, introduced by the member for Sackville—Bedford—Preston.

I represent Spadina—Harbourfront, one of the most densely populated ridings in the country and one of the youngest. In fact, I want to thank my youth council, which is meeting for the first time this evening back in the riding.

According to the 2021 census, 94% of homes in my riding are in buildings with five or more storeys. Our median age is just 32 years old, nearly a decade younger than the national average. Over the past few decades, Spadina—Harbourfront has been transformed with rapid growth, bringing thousands of young people to live, work, play and build their futures in the heart of our city. We have reshaped the Toronto skyline, bringing more people closer to jobs, transit and community. We have created opportunities for young people to live near where they work, study and build their lives.

This growth has not come without pressures, but it offers important lessons for the national housing conversation we have been having over the past several years. One of these lessons is the vital role that non-market housing, particularly co-operative housing, plays in keeping communities livable and inclusive, especially for young and low-income households. Co-operatives like Harbour Channel Housing Co-operative and Arcadia Housing Co-op, in my riding of Spadina—Harbourfront, are thriving waterfront communities, where residents share governance, build strong neighbour-to-neighbour support systems and access stable, below-market housing in one of the most expensive areas of our country.

These homes have allowed families, seniors, newcomers and young people to remain in the downtown core for decades. They stand as powerful examples of the type of housing enabled by legislation such as this. The fact that these communities are still thriving today is not accidental. It is the result of deliberate public investment and long-term thinking.

The challenge we now face is not a lack of what works, but a failure to scale it for a new generation of Canadians. A national housing strategy for young Canadians that meaningfully considers co-operative housing alongside student housing, purpose-built rentals and pathways for first-time buyers is not just sensible; it is long overdue. As serious as our government is about building homes, we must also be serious about building the right mix of homes, so young people can actually afford to live in the communities they study in, work in and help to build.

Why is this overdue? It is because our young people today face a housing affordability crisis unlike any generation since the post-war period. For far too many, home ownership is out of reach. Even securing a stable, affordable rental has become a challenge. When young people cannot afford housing or cannot move for housing, the consequences extend far beyond shelter.

As I knock on doors in my riding, I hear the same message again and again. Young people and young families want to stay in the communities they love. They want to build their careers here, raise their children here and remain close to the networks and supports that make urban life possible.

However, the homes we build must reflect the lives people are trying to live. We cannot keep building cities as if they are only for singles and short-term renters. If we want young Canadians to put down roots, our housing supply must include family-friendly homes that make long-term life in our downtowns possible. The ripple effects are obvious: lower productivity and economic growth, and decreased well-being, both over the short and long term of one's life.

The economic case is just as compelling. A 2024 report from the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis found addressing housing unaffordability could generate $24.4 billion in additional disposable income, increase our GDP by $22 billion and create 189,000 jobs, while delivering $5 billion in new tax revenue. These are real, tangible benefits for young Canadians and our entire economy.

When housing instability begins to shape who can move, who can work and who can plan for their future, it stops being only an economic problem and becomes a social one with real consequences for safety, autonomy and equality.

Let us be clear. Housing insecurity is not gender-neutral. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has reported that women are more likely to experience acute housing need, and those rates are higher for racialized women. For young women in particular, the shortage of accessible options, whether it is emergency shelters, transitional housing, co-operative housing or affordable units, can carry serious safety implications.

Without safe and affordable alternatives, some young women cannot leave unsafe and unhealthy living situations. Some remain trapped in abusive relationships simply because they have nowhere else to go. This is why housing is about far more than affordability alone. It is about safety, it is about dignity, and it is about security.

A national housing strategy for young Canadians must also reflect this reality. Housing lives at the intersection of personal autonomy and personal security, and this must find its way into our legislation. This is precisely why Bill C-227 is so important. Establishing a national housing strategy for young Canadians would ensure that federal housing policy responds not only to market pressures but to the social realities that shape young people's lives.

The economic and social benefit of government action to address affordability is clear, and our government understands that. With the launch of Build Canada Homes, the federal government is taking decisive steps to accelerate the construction of affordable housing at scale through a single, streamlined agency. By financing and prioritizing non-profit housing, including transitional, supportive, co-operative and affordable housing, the federal government would be ending a decades-long retreat from building homes that Canadians can truly afford. This would create real opportunities for young Canadians, not only to find housing that meets their needs in the short term but to build the conditions for home ownership in the future.

By easing the costs faced by non-market builders, Build Canada Homes would increase supply of deeply affordable housing, help cool an overheated market where these housing options have not been sufficiently built and ensure that housing policy once again works in the public interest. By establishing a national housing strategy for young Canadians, as Bill C-227 seeks to do, the purpose and impact of Build Canada Homes becomes sharper and stronger, ensuring that federal investments deliver real, generational impact for Canada's young people.

Housing is foundational. When it is unstable, everything else becomes unstable too, especially for young people who are trying to establish themselves. The government is building Canada strong by recognizing housing as essential infrastructure. Bill C-227 builds on that momentum, recognizing that young Canadians face unique barriers in today's housing market and that meeting those challenges requires coordination, data and long-term planning.

The evidence is clear. Addressing housing affordability strengthens our economy, boosts productivity and creates opportunities. Housing insecurity and instability carry real social costs, especially for women and those seeking safety, dignity and independence. Through Build Canada Homes, our government is acting to scale what we know works. Bill C-227 would enhance that effort by ensuring young Canadians are not an afterthought but a focus of our plan.

For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation and vote in favour of Bill C-227.

[Jonathan Rowe, Conservative, Terra Nova—The Peninsulas, NL]

Madam Speaker, there is a rumour spreading. It has been around a while, but it lingers. People thought that by now this rumour would be dead, but unfortunately, it still lives on. In almost every corner of Canada, we hear the three big words: Canada feels broken. Why? Why does Canada feel broken? Once we start asking that question, we will get many answers, but at the core of all those things, I see one issue that affects almost every neighbourhood across this country: a housing crisis.

Housing conditions have changed dramatically in recent years. Cost has risen faster than wages. Demand has increased. Supply has not kept pace, and young Canadians are feeling the pressure more than any generation before them. Housing is not just about shelter. It is about economic stability. It is about mental health. It is about whether young people can make a wooden box into a home. Young Canadians are not asking for guarantees or handouts; they are asking for fairness. They want to work. They want to contribute. They want the same opportunities as the generations before them. They want to own a home.

In my province, we face the highest unemployment rate in the country. Add that to rising rents, rising home prices and limited supply, and young people are being forced into impossible choices. Some are staying with their parents. Some are even staying with their grandparents. These are grown men and women, oftentimes older than me, working full-time, yet still having to face these unfavourable choices.

I went to university. I got a degree in civil engineering. Even with a degree that offered great employment like that, in order to afford a home, I still had to work two jobs. I would work week on, week off at a gold mine. On my weeks off, I would work with a consulting company in the oil and gas sector. These are the consequences of the inflationary Liberal decade. Us young people have to work twice as hard to get the same things our parents had.

We are seeing even greater consequences of the lost Liberal decade. Youth shelters are full. Housing wait-lists are growing. Homelessness, once unthinkable at this scale, is now a reality in communities across my province and this country. Over the summer, I was able to have a tour of the Salvation Army homeless shelter in St. John's. I spoke with a few young men in the cafeteria. I heard their stories. They started out not much different than we did.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, they lost hope, and when hope was lost, they searched for something to fill that void. Like many young people, especially young men, they turned to drugs. Why did they lose this hope? As the inquisitive young man that I am, I asked workers at the facility that exact question. A young lady working there came up to me and said, “All these men, they just hit their breaking point. We see these kinds of surges when the economy gets bad. They lose their jobs, which causes stress. They often lose their wives and their families too, and they end up here.” How heartbreaking.

Her statement stuck with me because what we do here in Ottawa does not just affect our economy. It does not just affect unemployment, and it does not just affect housing stats. It affects real people, real Canadians, people who are hurting and looking for hope. Now these men are homeless. They have no jobs, and it is like a dog chasing its tail. Last night, as I was writing this speech, I came up with a revolutionary idea. What if we started building more homes to create more jobs for these young men and to give families homes to live in? I think that is an idea we can all get behind. The question is, how?

Economics 101 is a lesson on supply and demand. As supply increases, the demand decreases. This means that the more homes we have in Canada, the lower the demand will be, and prices will begin stabilizing to make houses more affordable for all Canadians. The solution seems simple: build more homes. Unfortunately, nobody in this country seems to be doing that. Why? Canada has an abundance of land, we have record high unemployment, and we have young families ready to move in. Once we start talking to developers, though, they will quickly tell us it is often the government's fault.

Developers spend years and thousands of dollars trying to acquire the land, the permits, the developmental fees and the approvals, oftentimes having to work with three levels of government. Once again, the developers want our government and bureaucrats to simply get out of the way, but the Liberal government wants to do the opposite. The Liberals now want to introduce a new bill so they would be directly involved in maintaining the illusion that they are trying to put out the fire they started.

This is not the first time that the Liberals have done this. In 2017, they launched a national housing strategy that was administered by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. If they already have the solution, why do they need to repackage the same old plan? They spent over $115 billion to build 170,000 homes. That works out to $676,000 per home. The money was wasted on bureaucracy.

Can members imagine how many homes we could have built if the Liberals had worked with the Conservatives to remove the GST on new home builds? Taking off GST would have instantly saved 5%, which would have encouraged thousands of Canadians to build new homes right across this country. By partnering with Canadians, we could have stretched our dollar and built 95% more homes with that same dollar.

Instead of letting Canadians keep their own money, the Liberals want to keep taxing things such as housing, which they call a human right. Then they give that money to corporations and landlords to build homes, not for young people to own, but to rent. “Own nothing and be happy” is the slogan of the Liberals' plan for their new world order.

Young people do not want to rent their whole lives; they want to own a home, a place where they can paint their kids' bedrooms and build a fence for their dog. They want to own a home that builds equity toward retirement and gives them pride and hope for the future. This cannot be done by building rentals; it is achieved by letting the free market do its thing.

For generations, we had a system. Young people would buy a small starter home from a middle-aged family. This allowed them to build equity and their careers. When it was time to have kids, they could sell off their starter home to another young family and afford to build their new family home, perhaps even their dream home. Once their new home was built and their family raised, couples often decided to sell their home to the next generation as they downsized for retirement. Using their equity from the sale, they could build a small home for retirement. Once their lives came to an end, the family would sell off the property so that a young couple could start their journey on this housing cycle. Hakuna matata, it was the circle of life.

When bureaucrats got in the way, they damaged the whole cycle. It became too difficult for people to build new homes and move up the housing ladder, so they just stayed. No homes were built, the demand grew and prices skyrocketed.

Give a man a fish and he is thankful; give five men a fish and the whole village wants one. That is the problem with handouts: Everybody gets in line with their hand out. Investors no longer want to build homes with their own money because they are in line, waiting to see if they will win the Liberal lottery. Even in housing, instead of making housing incentives that would encourage all Canadians to build homes, the Liberals want to pick winners and losers.

Last year, the Liberal government announced that it wanted to build programs similar to the one described in this bill to build modular homes. Is it a coincidence that, when our Prime Minister was the chair of Brookfield, it acquired a modular home company called Modulaire Group? I think Canadians are curious, and even anxious, to see how much Modulaire, Brookfield and our Prime Minister will financially benefit from the programs in this bill.

It is time to build homes and hope. It is time to be more focused on getting our hammers up instead of our elbows.

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

The hon. member for Sackville—Bedford—Preston for his right of reply.

[Braedon Clark, Liberal, Sackville—Bedford—Preston, NS]

Madam Speaker, I thank all my colleagues who spoke today to my bill, Bill C-227. In particular, I want to thank my colleagues from Spadina—Harbourfront and Les Pays-d'en-Haut for their comments.

I want to touch on a few things here quickly. The first is that one of the privileges I have had in my life, in addition to being here, was serving as a member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly for about four years. I served most of that time as the housing critic for my party. One of the things I learned during that experience is that housing, more than any other issue facing our country, demands collaboration, co-operation and teamwork between levels of government. It is simply not possible to say one level of government by itself is going to fix the housing crisis or make any difference for anybody, especially for young people.

Cities set bylaws. Cities do zoning. Provinces provide affordable housing and deal with homelessness. The federal government, in my view, has a critical role to play to set policy, set strategy and put forward a system so that, in all corners of this country, from Victoria to Halifax to Nunavut, and all the places in between, young people have hope for the future. We will not achieve that if we simply go into our silos and say, “The federal government only does this, while the province only does that and the city only does that.” That is one of the reasons we have ended up in the situation we are in today.

I also want to touch on one other comment that was made during the debate. My colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe called the bill useless. That is offensive. It is not offensive to me, as I have thick skin and it does not bother me, but I will say that it is offensive to the young people across this country whom I spoke to over the last number of months while developing this bill.

I visited people at the University of Ottawa two weeks ago. Dozens of students in their late teens and early twenties whom I spoke to came up to me afterwards and said, “This is interesting. What can we do? How can we help?” They came to my office here on the Hill a couple of days later, filmed videos with me and put the message out there that the government is interested in solving the housing crisis for young Canadians. It is offensive to the young Canadians I met at Saint Mary's University in my hometown of Halifax and the students in Nova Scotia who are interested in making sure that they are part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. That is the essence of what I have put forward today.

My colleague from Brandon—Souris has a background very similar to mine in the provincial legislature in Manitoba. He talked about red tape reduction measures, which is an interesting step forward.

What I would ask is that all of us work together to bring this bill forward to committee, sharpen it and make it as good as possible so that young Canadians have hope and a vision for the future, so that all those people whom I have spoken to over the last number of months feel that the federal government and all parties have their back on this issue, because I know, on this side of the House, we have their backs.

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

The question is on the motion.

If a member participating in person wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

[Braedon Clark, Liberal, Sackville—Bedford—Preston, NS]

Madam Speaker, I would request a recorded vote on this matter.

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

Pursuant to Standing Order 93, the division stands deferred until Wednesday, February 11, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

The House resumed from February 5 consideration of the motion that Bill C-227, An Act to establish a national strategy on housing for young Canadians, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Pursuant to order made on Wednesday, February 11, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-227 under Private Members' Business.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #68

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I declare the motion carried.

Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

(Bill read the second time and referred to a committee)