Finance Committee on Dec. 7th, 2023

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Okay. That's very helpful.

Another thing has come up quite a bit, and I'm not quite sure that it's anything that your department is directly dealing with.

What we're hearing is that there are a number of measures at the provincial level that are stopping affordable housing from being available or are taking affordable housing stock off the marketplace. I'll give you an example. In Ontario we don't have a vacancy rent control. Does your department gather data on how much affordable housing that takes off the marketplace? Is that data that you collect and follow so that we can have some policy prescriptions around it, or is that not something that you're looking at?

[Chris Forbes]

I'll maybe turn to Ms. McDermott. Generally this would sit with the housing department, but Alison may have more to say on this.

[Alison McDermott]

I think that housing at Infrastructure Canada, CMHC and we, to a degree, would certainly monitor with interest some of the developments on the provincial front, but we don't have a specific reporting duty associated with that.

I'll note that the housing accelerator fund is obviously an instrument that's put in place to try to encourage those at lower levels of government to introduce policies that will be supportive of housing supply and removing impediments.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I appreciate that.

I'm going to ask one more question.

You may or may not be gathering information, but I think that as we're looking at policy prescriptives, we're always looking to improve. Our federal government has allocated over $80 billion to the national housing strategy, and I know that's largely in housing and in infrastructure, but again, finance does a lot of the policy prescriptions.

Are we evaluating which programs are more successful than others so as to look for how we could start redirecting some of the funds from one area that's not being used very much or very efficiently to other funds? Can you maybe talk to that?

[Chris Forbes]

My general answer is yes, that's what we do. We try to make sure that dollars and programming are used effectively and that we're seeing results, and we do that regularly.

I'll maybe turn to Alison if there are specifics on the housing front, but one observation would be that some of these things have long time frames, so it's difficult to know. We were talking earlier about incentives that improve the financing of multi-unit rental construction. It's a multi-year process to put your financing and permitting together, so the exact efficacy of those, the evaluation of their effectiveness, will take a number of years. You can look at things in the middle.

Alison, is there anything specific on the housing side?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

If you could tell us which programs have been most successful, that would be helpful too.

[Alison McDermott]

I'll stop short of that, but I will note that in the adjustments that happen between programs and even sometimes within program volets, like components of programs, we're often involved in supporting the minister to get authorities to make those kinds of adjustments.

Generally, they would be around.... Maybe one program has an amount of funding allocated and it's not using that funding at the same rate. We might transfer that over to programs that are using up funds more rapidly. Most of this gets reported in the budget documents. You can look at the history of those two.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Dzerowicz.

We want to thank our officials for appearing. Thanks for your testimony on this study—

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I have a point of order. You can release the witnesses. I just have a brief point of order.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In the last meeting.... You're supposed to have consent, as a chair, before adjourning. I was clearly audible, saying, “Point of order”, and you refused to recognize me. I would appreciate an apology and a commitment that this type of lack of decorum won't occur again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Lawrence, I looked around the room and it looked like everybody was ready to go. We had concluded the meeting.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

On that point of order, there's video evidence confirmed by the clerk that I said, “Point of order.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Lawrence, I looked across the room. I saw that everybody was ready to go, and I adjourned as I usually do, but shall we adjourn today, members?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I'm looking around.

We're adjourned.