Evidence of meeting #41 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was inuit.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Sorry, can I just interrupt for a second?
I know a lot of people here have never been here before, but during the testimony we ask that people refrain from taking any photographs. Thank you.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
As I was saying, there are so many questions and so little time.
Very quickly, Monsieur Corriveau, how do you see being able to leverage the infrastructure bank that's been talked about to address some of the housing needs? We hear that housing is a big portion of poverty.
Board President, Canadian Housing and Renewal Association
There are two things about the infrastructure bank. First is that it is being designed, as we speak, as an investment program that will return for those who will be investing through the bank. We are saying that one must be careful that the bank is not there to suck up the money that should be dedicated to fighting poverty.
Social infrastructure should have a different treatment. Maybe it will go through the bank or maybe there is another means of doing it, but for the money being channelled through the bank, investors are being told now that they should be expecting between a 4% and 6% rate of return. At this point, we can get lower rates by going to RBC. The bank will have no added value if it goes that way.
The second thing about the bank is that it will invest in transit lines, for example, new bridges, new trains, and stuff like that. That has major impacts on housing conditions in the different municipalities and different territories where this will be happening. We urge the Canadian government to make sure that if there are investments that have an impact on housing through the infrastructure bank, those investments be screened and tested and harmonized with a vision that includes housing impacts.
Executive Director, Canadian Housing and Renewal Association
Can I just very quickly add to that?
There's been a lot of talk about the infrastructure bank that Minister Morneau announced as the lending vehicle for housing. One concern with that bank concept, which we've heard from our members, is that it's simply not scalable. It's essentially there for the bigger projects, and if you're a smaller housing provider you simply won't be eligible.
What we've called for, in addition to the bank, is the creation of a distinct and separate housing financing authority, which you can call a bank or whatever, that is scalable so that smaller providers are eligible. It should be long term in nature so as to lower risk, and the loans should be guaranteed by the federal government, perhaps by CMHC. As well, the rates of course should be attractive enough to make it better than what a provider could get from their bank down the street.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Thank you very much.
Sorry, Mr. Ruimy, but we are now going over to MP Poilievre for six minutes.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
In these discussions we often ask how government can help solve the problems of poverty. We forget that often government is the problem. We often ask, for example, how the government can transfer wealth from those who have to those who have not. We forget that often the government transfers from those who have not to those who already have.
One example, one proven case, of this, of course, is the case of energy poverty, on which the Ontario Association of Food Banks just wrote a very extensive report pointing out that 60,000 low-income Ontarians have had their electricity cut off.
People are going to the food banks because they can't afford their $700 electricity bills. The cause of these high prices is not market pricing. It's not that there's not enough electricity. In fact, we have an oversupply of electricity in Ontario, more than we use. In fact, we're giving it away or paying other jurisdictions to take it. The government intervened to pay 90¢ or 80¢ for something that's worth 2.5¢ in order to subsidize wind and solar power, which constitute a tiny fraction of the electrical mix of the province.
We know the people at the lowest end of the income scale suffer the most because electricity is a bigger share of their budget. We know that wealthy investment bankers have profited, because they're the ones who have been able to secure the contracts. This is a classic wealth transfer from those with the least to those with the most.
Dr. Green, you have been talking about energy poverty today. Do you have any way of calculating the distributional impacts of the Green Energy Act in Ontario; that is, how much wealth has been taken from low-income and impoverished people and how much has been transferred to the extremely wealthy?
Senior Director, Natural Resources Studies, Fraser Institute
We don't have a metric of that exactly, in terms of how the wealth was transferred from group A to group B. The auditor general has documented the extra costs paid by Ontarians for electric power compared with what they would have paid at normal market rates for, say, hydro and natural gas power generation. The exact extent of the wealth transfer you mentioned is very hard to document simply because we can't tell, in many cases, who exactly is getting the money. The Ontario power costing scheme is quite opaque. It's not very transparent, so it's hard to know exactly how much.
I would also like to point out, though, your opening statement, which is that sometimes government is part of the problem. That also applies to housing. I can talk about that as somebody who has looked at housing supply and availability in Canada. I've found there is a significant amount of red tape that slows the production and is preventing the market from actually matching supply with demand.
What we can say again is that in energy poverty, we have found the two lowest-income quintiles are by far the most affected by energy poverty across Canada. We expect that to be so in Ontario as well, and perhaps even exaggerated. As you pointed out, lower-income households expend more of their spending on energy to begin with. They live in less-insulated homes, have older vehicles that have lower fuel economy, and have greater needs to drive longer distances to work, from far suburbs into urban cores, where they can't afford to live. They can't afford to live where their work is. The impacts of high energy costs are highly regressive on the fixed income, the low income, the elderly, and those of limited means.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
That wealth transfer, according to the auditor general, has already been $36 billion, and it will be another $137 billion over the next roughly 19 years, so we're talking about a wealth transfer of $170 billion, probably the biggest single wealth transfer from one group to another in my lifetime.
On the issue of red tape, you have produced a report that shows the enormous cost per unit of housing in red tape. For example, in the municipality of Oakville, $60,500 is the cost of compliance. That does not include materials or labour; it's just paperwork. In other jurisdictions it ranges from $20,000 to $50,000. Of course, that can make the difference between someone affording a home and not affording it. That's in addition to the 7,200 square kilometres' worth of land that the Ontario government bans GTA-builders from developing.
Can you talk about the impact of all of these restrictions on low-income people?
Senior Director, Natural Resources Studies, Fraser Institute
The issue you're referencing is a report we did on housing in the Greater Golden Horseshoe area. We were looking at the value of permitting, the cost to get a building permit, after going through things like rezoning, getting a building permit, waiting a certain amount of time to get the permit. You pay a certain amount in that process, and it varies very widely. In the aggregate, the delays in getting building permits, the higher costs of building permits, and opposition, particularly from councils and community groups, to new housing in their area—the not-in-my-backyard kind of opposition—
Senior Director, Natural Resources Studies, Fraser Institute
All of this raises the cost of building new housing units and suppresses the supply. We know that when you have a suppressed supply and you have a high demand, prices go up even higher than they would if you had enough housing to meet demand.
We've argued that communities need to look around at their neighbours and normalize themselves with regard to how much it costs to get a building permit, how much time it takes to get a building permit, how certain you are to get one when you start down the road, when you start putting money into the process. They need to figure out ways to compete with some of their lower-cost, more-efficient jurisdictions if they do indeed want housing in their jurisdictions, in their urban cores. If they really want more development, they have to be competitive with their adjacent communities.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Here again we have this example of mayors and municipalities that are driving up the cost of housing through this insane red tape and restrictions on building, and then coming to the federal taxpayer and demanding more money for housing because housing's too expensive.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Yes.
We have to close it there. I've gotten several notes from my colleagues that we clearly did not have enough time today to really delve into questions that we needed to with each of you.
For the record, I'm going to suggest that if there are additional questions from any of you for these witnesses, have them to the clerk by the end of this week. If we could then distribute those questions to the appropriate witnesses for a written submission, that would be very much appreciated so that we'll get a more holistic experience with this.
I really do want to thank each and every one of you, and all those who came out to witness today. I think we've now determined how many people we can get into this space. We do have some committee business to deal with, so that's why we have to cut this off now.
I'm going to suspend for just a few moments. I'm going to ask those of you who don't need to be here to move fairly quickly to the lobby so that we can come back in a very brief time, maybe two minutes, to wrap up our committee business.
Thank you very much to everybody and all those who made today possible.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Could we come back to order, please? That mass exodus happened a lot faster than I expected.
I'd just remind those who are travelling to Winnipeg today that our flight is leaving at 7 p.m. Please take your own cabs. The last time, because of the timing, we arranged for the cabs, but today I think you have more than enough time to get back to your hotel or apartments and make your way to the airport.
Next week, on Tuesday, February 21, we're going to have witnesses on poverty reduction strategies; on February 23, committee business; on March 7, witnesses from Kuujjuaq, to make up for us not getting there; March 9 is to be determined; and March 10 is when we're hoping to travel to Toronto to make up for missing that.
Now I will turn it over to MP Vecchio.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Thank you very much.
As you know, MP Mark Warawa has been away, but in March 2016, he put forward a motion. I just want to read a statement from Mark before I begin.
He writes, “In my role as the Official Opposition Critic for Seniors I have met with many stakeholders and all of them are calling for the government to create a National Seniors Framework to help centralize and address the concerns of Canadian seniors. Never before has our country faced this type of demographic change, and globally, we have seen the effects of a lack of government planning for this shift. I call on my colleagues in this committee to support my motion, and begin this study at the earliest convenience.”
Putting forward the motion, the motion is:
That the Committee conduct a study on a Canadian “National Seniors Framework”;
That the study focus on the percentage of the Canadian population that are seniors and the need to prepare for this quickly changing demographic;
That the study be conducted immediately following the current study on “poverty reduction strategies”;
That the study consist of at least ten (10) sessions; and, that the findings be reported to the House.
As I indicated previously, this was a motion that Mark Warawa brought forward in March 2016. It has been outstanding for almost a year. We've done so much work on poverty, and I think this is a great segue because we have seen that there is definitely a tie. When we're looking at seniors, there has to be a next step for our senior population.
Thank you.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
I think we all agree that a national seniors strategy is something that should be studied. However—
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Actually, sorry, I would remind members, just so you know, we are in public. We're not in camera.
