I'll try to keep it tight, to just a few minutes.
Thank you for inviting me here today. I am pleased to discuss with you the challenges and opportunities associated with housing in Canada.
I'm really looking forward to the conversation that we have an opportunity to be part of today about how we're going to build more homes. We are living through a housing crisis in Canada, and if we're going to get out of it, we need to build more homes and build them by the millions.
When I look at the challenges that people are facing, this is impacting them in a very real and serious way. When I talk to students, I hear they have a challenging time finding places they can afford, and if they can find a place, it's often a lengthy commute from their class or it's an overcrowded situation. When I talk to young people who are thinking about opportunities to start their career, I hear they're worried about their opportunity to find a place to live in a city that may create that opportunity, or potentially to buy a place where they can raise a family at some point in time. I've talked to seniors who want to age in place, in the same community where their grandkids are being raised, which I don't think is too much to ask, but who find themselves without an option to downsize to a place they can actually afford. I think constantly about the impact on communities that miss out on the opportunity for people to contribute their dynamism to the economy and their talents, should they be able to find a place they can afford.
The place we are at today is the result of a confluence of different factors. Some of them have been decades in the making. Some of them have arrived more recently. I think about decisions taken by different governments of different political affiliations over the course of 30 years to not invest in affordable housing. More recently, I think about the pattern we saw when interest rates were extremely low during the pandemic. People bought up properties and are suddenly facing a higher interest rate environment. That has not just put pressure on the people who bought those homes, but has also crowded others out of the market.
Despite the enormity of the challenges we're facing, I do believe we can solve this challenge—we as a society. The federal government can't do it on its own, but we need to play a leadership role. The way I think we can do that is by putting measures in place that are going to help build more homes, that are going to support Canadians in need and that will make it easier to rent or buy a home.
When it comes to building more homes, we need to make the math work for builders. We have seen an increase in the cost of materials, labour, supplies and land and, of course, an increase in interest in recent years, which has caused a lot of projects that were marginal before to not move forward because the economic case has fallen apart.
Obviously, we have removed the GST from new apartments. We've put low-cost financing on the table through the apartment construction loan program. We've recapitalized the Canada mortgage bonds program to put more cheap money on the market.
However, it's not enough for us to just address the cost of building. We also have to address some of the systemic challenges around how communities allow homes to get built.
We need to squeeze more productivity when it comes to housing policy out of the infrastructure investments we are making. Obviously, we have been rolling out deals with communities—I believe 36 now—across the country, through the housing accelerator fund, to put federal money on the table, not necessarily to directly construct the homes, but to change the rules on how homes are built. That will have a positive impact in perpetuity around zoning practices and permitting processes in particular.
We also need to adopt an industrial strategy around homebuilding, with a focus on training opportunities for Canadian workers and immigration streams that bring talent to Canada where it doesn't exist today. We also need to incentivize innovation in homebuilding, particularly to get more homes built in factories across the country.
When we put together this plan that will help build more homes, we can't ignore the fact that there are vulnerable people who need particular kinds of homes to be built. This is where investments in affordable housing come into play. The affordable housing fund, which was recently recapitalized with an additional billion dollars in the fall economic statement, is designed to help with the capital cost of putting up homes for people who have intense needs.
In addition, we've rolled out programs to support communities that are dealing with homelessness challenges. Despite the fact that we have made serious investments, I'll be the first to acknowledge that we have a long way to go, given the extraordinary nature of the challenges that communities are dealing with today.
We have other programs that have supported people directly—for example, the Canada housing benefit—but we can't ignore the fact that there are people from different demographic communities are disproportionately impacted. I think in particular of indigenous people across Canada, who will benefit from upcoming federal investments in housing and who have for too long been ignored and have not benefited from the same level of investment that other Canadians have benefited from when it comes to housing policy.
Finally, we need to make sure that young Canadians in particular have a place they can rent or buy. We've created the first home savings account, which, I'm pleased to share, has now seen more than half a million young Canadians sign up for a tax-free savings account towards a down payment on their first home.
There's a suite of other measures we are looking at or have implemented to help reduce pressure on rental markets.
I'm pretty sure I am exhausting my five minutes, Mr. Chair. I'll cut my opening remarks off there and gladly take what questions committee members may have.