Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to Mr. Redekopp for the motion. As he rightly highlights, this is an important issue. It's one that, as I had mentioned earlier, I think would be a good idea for this committee to study, not just in one meeting with the minister but actually a little more systematically.
I take Mr. Baker's point that another committee has already looked at this issue, but I do think the finance committee may have a point of view that is a little different from the other committee that had examined it. I think we should be particularly focused on the question of how investor activity is heating up the real estate market. Often the conversation in Parliament has been around whether government spending in general has been fuelling inflation that's contributing in some way to what's going on in the housing market, but I think you can glean, from the comments of Mr. Redekopp and others around the table today, that it's not just a function of government spending.
In fact, in my view, government's not spending enough on housing. There are some other things it may be doing that may have contributed to increasing prices, but there's no question that investor activity in the private sector, independent of whatever government is doing, is also heating up the real estate market. That's true at the corporate level, where large corporate landlords are cannibalizing affordable housing in order to turn it into condos or higher-rent luxury units. It's also true at the level of smaller investors, who are acquiring four, six or eight different properties and renting them on Airbnb. That's creating more demand, as you have people who aren't just looking to buy houses as homes but are looking to buy houses as investment properties, with no intention that they be lived in for significant portions of the year but just enough occupancy to be able to make a reasonable return on investment from a financial point of view with short-term rentals.
Those are just some examples of things that are happening in the housing space outside of things that are directly under the government's control that I think we need to take a bigger look at. When New Democrats are talking about the role of various kinds of financial greed in the economy, and the nefarious impact that it's having on the budgets of Canadians households, those are some of the things we have in mind that we think we need to look at and ask some good questions about in terms of what kind of society we want to be. Wrapped up in that is whether we want to treat housing as strictly a commodity and a kind of investment tool or whether we want to see housing as a social good and a human right.
There are some big discussions there, and I think they're worth getting into. Obviously, we're having a bit of a discussion now. I'm not going to take up all the rest of the time until two o'clock, because I know there are others who want to say some things. I am in favour of keeping to our originally scheduled adjournment time of two o'clock. We've dealt with the business that this meeting substantially was called to deal with.
In parting, I would just say that a few months ago, I think we got a lesson from Mr. Genuis on how challenging, sometimes, subs can make the life of a committee. Of course, in June we had a meeting to discuss a prospective schedule for the fall and what that might look like for the committee, including pre-budget consultations and the existing open studies that we have. I do think that we could make time for this in the fall. I would rather do it as part of the kind of study that I've suggested, and that Mr. Chambers suggested earlier, on the financialization of housing. If we issue a stand-alone invitation to the Minister of Housing, and then a few weeks after we come back we're issuing another invitation to appear as part of our study, I don't think we're going to get both invitations answered. I'd much rather have him appear in the context of an organized study of the issue than as a one-off.
This wasn't something that I was aware was going to be brought to this meeting. It's not something that I'm in a mood to make a quick decision about. I think we absolutely should be seized with this issue as a committee, but we should try to do it in an organized and structured way that will bear the most fruit and allow us to make the most of a ministerial appearance. I'm hopeful that Mr. Fraser will be more inclined to respond appropriately to the invitation of parliamentary committees than the other minister we've spent our time discussing today.
With that, I'll close. I see we still have some time before our scheduled adjournment time.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
