Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today. We do appreciate the opportunity to come and speak with you.
I am here on behalf of Habitat for Humanity Canada. We are a national charity, founded in Canada in 1985, in Winnipeg, in fact. We work in every single province in the country as well as our two northern territories and until recently, also in Nunavut. We build homes, we build communities and we like to remind ourselves all the time that we build hope. We do this through construction, through repair, through financing, through skills training and of course through advocacy. We are part of the global movement Habitat for Humanity International, which operates in 70 countries. We are very proud of our contributions in continents across the world.
Today I want to speak about the GST exemption included in Bill C-4, why it matters to Habitat and why it matters in the context of Canada's housing affordability crisis. Between 2019 and 2025, Habitat local affiliates, our 44 local affiliates, built steadily through some of the toughest construction years we've seen, up to and including this one, serving over 5,000 individuals, including 3,888 children, every single one of whom was very excited to be able to pick the paint colour of their bedroom, I can assure you. We have done so with energy-efficient, accessible homes and, most importantly, affordable homes—truly affordable homes—for home ownership. We also through that period of time leveraged government funding at least 2:1. Every dollar that comes into Habitat for Humanity gets put to good use in our communities and for families.
We generated over $311 million in construction activity over that time frame. We also generated $40 million in tax revenue. Over that same time frame, our Habitats and our local families paid over $19 million in GST on the fair market value purchase of their homes. We continue even now to pay between $15,000 in rural areas and $80,000 or more in high-cost markets on every affordable Habitat home that is sold. For every 100 homes upon which the GST is charged, we could probably deliver up to another 13 to 15 homes, depending on the cost to construct in a given market. In parts of the country, we are paying more in GST on Habitat-built homes than we receive in federal government investment.
We welcome the proposed measure included in Bill C-4 to waive the GST on homes up to $1 million for first-time buyers. This will directly benefit our partner families. This will also allow us to reinvest savings that don't go into the mortgage, or into our own costs, into building more affordable homes, accessible homes and energy-efficient homes.
We would urge the efficient review and passage of this provision, as delays have real costs for families. We are also hopeful that, if passed, the implementation of the provision will be applied retroactively to agreements of purchases and sales that are signed and that were signed in May 2025. The summer and fall are very busy Habitat times, with many families taking big strides on their journey toward home ownership and moving through the purchase phase. We've advocated for this relief on homes that are purpose-built for affordable home ownership. There's purpose-built rental and there's also purpose-built affordable home ownership homes. We are proud to be the organization that provides those. They're sold at fair market value. The families pay no down payment and they pay no more than about 30% of their income on mortgage payments. We figure out the rest; we figure out the rest. Every dollar we save gets reinvested into more homes and keeping the homes that we do have affordable over a long time.
These changes to the GST that are included in Bill C-4's proposal, combined with our ongoing partnerships across all governments, with the private sector, and through philanthropic participation and donation will help us build even more, even in the face of exponentially rising constructions costs, slow municipal approvals—again, slow municipal approvals—and an income gap that persists despite some market shift improvements in certain areas.
We are committed to growing our impact. We are committed to delivering more stability, continuing to contribute to Canada's GDP and continuing to help families who can increase their income by 30% over comparable families who remain in rental. Now is the time to deliver more homes—affordable homes—and we look forward to doing so with new tools and in partnership with the federal government. We are closely watching the development of Build Canada Homes, and are hopeful that our past experience delivering a large portfolio of new, accessible and energy-efficient homes in Canada through our partnership with CMHC over the last several years will help inform this new way forward.
