Finance Committee on Oct. 20th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Good morning. I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number seven of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. I hope everybody had a happy Thanksgiving and a good week in your ridings. We're glad to be back here in Ottawa.

Before we begin, I would ask all in-person participants to read the guidelines written on the updated cards on the table. These measures are in place to help prevent audio and feedback incidents, and to protect the health and safety of all participants, including the interpreters. You will also notice a QR code on the card which links to a short awareness video.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format.

I would like to remind participants of the following points: Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.

For those on Zoom, at the bottom of your screen you can select the appropriate channel for interpretation—floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel. For members participating in person or via Zoom, please raise your hand if you wish to speak. The committee clerk and I will do the best we can to maintain a consolidated speaking order. I will remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, June 12, 2025, and the motion adopted on Monday, September 22, 2025, the committee shall resume consideration of Bill C-4, an act respecting certain affordability measures for Canadians and another measure.

I would like to welcome our witnesses. We have the honourable Gregor Robertson, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities—thank you for joining us—and Paul Halucha, deputy minister

Minister, you have five minutes for your opening remarks.

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Minister of Housing and Infrastructure]

Thank you.

Hello, everyone. It's good to be with you. Thank you for inviting me to appear before you to speak about the making life more affordable for Canadians act.

Canada is facing a housing crisis, leaving many Canadians without affordable homes. The Government of Canada is taking action to create transformational change in our country’s housing system, implementing a range of measures to help lower housing costs. As part of the proposed Bill C-4 currently being studied by the committee, the federal government has introduced a number of tax measures to help improve affordability and boost housing supply. If passed, the measures in Bill C-4 would help more Canadians get into the housing market.

One example is the first-time home buyers' GST rebate, which is intended to help first-time home buyers enter the housing market.

The measure would support first-time homebuyers by eliminating the GST on new homes up to $1 million and reduce the GST for new homes between $1 million and $1.5 million. By implementing this measure, Canadians would save up to $50,000 on a new home.

This GST rebate will help incentivize first-time home buyers to consider buying a newly built home rather than a home in the resale market. In turn, increased demand for newly built homes will encourage developers to build more homes and grow Canada's housing supply.

It is estimated that, at maturity, this measure would apply to approximately 47,000 newly built homes annually and deliver as much as $3.9 billion in tax savings to Canadians over five years. This measure would be available to eligible first-time homebuyers who are at least 18 years old and are either Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Buyers will not be eligible for the rebate if they have lived in a home owned by either themselves or their spouse or common-law partner as the individual’s primary place of residence in the previous four years.

The rebate will be available for many different types of housing, including detached homes, semi-detached homes, row houses, townhouses and duplexes, residential condominium units, certain shares of co-op housing corporations, and mobile homes and floating homes. It really applies to a very diverse range of different new homes.

This legislation is only part of this government's plan to lower housing costs for Canadians.

On September 14, the Prime Minister and I launched Build Canada Homes, a new federal agency that will finance and build affordable housing. It will leverage public lands, offer flexible financial incentives, attract private capital, facilitate large portfolio projects and support manufacturers to build the homes that Canadians need. With an initial capital investment of $13 billion, it will catalyze a more productive homebuilding industry and support more affordable housing options for low- and middle-income households.

We are also taking action to lower costs for Canadians who cannot or do not want to own their home. The government already has introduced a 100% GST rebate for new purpose-built rental housing, which is having a positive impact on the construction of new rental housing.

Building more rental supply means more options for Canadians who rent their home, and will help lower rents, particularly in tight housing markets.

Together, these measures will lower costs for Canadians and help young people buy their first home, a dream that was attainable for their parents’ and grandparents' generations and which we are working hard to help them realize.

The Government of Canada is committed to building a housing system that works for everyone.

We are taking bold action through the creation of Build Canada Homes and with targeted tax measures, like the first-time homebuyers' GST rebate, to restore affordability and lower housing costs for Canadians.

I look forward to answering your questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you, Minister Robertson.

I will now open the floor to questions.

We'll begin with Mr. Hallan from the Conservatives for six minutes.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Minister, how many housing starts will Canada see this year?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

We're on track at this point at about 14% higher than last September, the CMHC number, so we're tracking north of 250,000 starts this year. If it's annualized—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

What's the number?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

—it's closer to 280,000. Somewhere between 240,000 and 280,00 would be my assumption—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Your housing department says that housing starts will be down this year.

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

The stats are from CMHC. The latest stats came in for September, which showed us tracking 14% above last September in terms of housing starts across the country.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Your government announced back in March that you would build 500,000 homes a year. With that announcement, if you look at the numbers, that means you would have to build 57 homes per hour per day every year. Are you currently building 57 homes an hour?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

Canada is not building at that scale. That is a longer-term goal—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Your government promised that back in March.

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

We're looking at, over a decade, doubling construction up to that level, but that certainly will take many years to achieve, given the changes that need to be made in the industry. At this point, we don't have the labour force to manufacture at that scale. That's why Build Canada Homes is focused on the manufacturing side to make the building of housing more efficient.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

When is the first year that Canada will build 500,000 homes?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

The language we've used is “over the next decade”. I think it's reasonable. It's still very aggressive and ambitious to get to 500,000 over the next decade, but that's what we need to scale up to.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

I mean, giving yourself that much leeway without any specifics is a bit misleading. Can you tell us what year would be the first year over the next decade that Canada will see 500,000 homes being built in a year?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

The goal is to get to 500,000, to double construction, over the next decade, so it's ramping up to that level. That will start to make up the ground of the gap we have in housing supply as identified by the stats and CMHC research.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Your own housing department at CMHC says that housing starts will decline next year by 4.1%. How do you square that?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

That's a projection. We can only work with the facts we have in front of us, which, for September, were a 14% increase over last year. This is what we're tracking.

Pre-sales are down in some markets. Vancouver and Toronto are examples we're concerned about. That's why we're pulling out all the stops with Build Canada Homes and with measures like this that will get more affordable housing built and that will get home ownership opportunities with new homes the industry can build. We want to see this—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Minister, why are sales down?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

Given the global economic conditions right now, I think there's a lot of uncertainty in the markets, particularly in the big cities.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Are you saying that global factors have something to do with Canadian home prices? Are you saying that we import our own land and homes?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

What I'm saying is that many buyers are concerned about the current economic circumstances. The tariffs from the U.S. that have been extremely challenging for the Canadian economy—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Home affordability was out of control before the tariffs hit. Your government was responsible for doubling housing costs in this country before the tariffs hit.

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

I can speak from experience.

In my city, in Vancouver, we had a housing crisis 20 years ago—