Human Resources Committee on Aug. 17th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

The floor now goes to Ms. Gazan, for six minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions are for Madame Corriveau. I apologize that I will have to ask them in English. I am taking French classes, though so maybe the next time I can ask in French.

I really appreciated your comments on the need to invest not just in affordable housing but also in affordable social housing. There's a huge difference between the two. I want to speak more specifically about persons with disabilities who have been, in my opinion, completely disregarded during the pandemic, including in terms of our having a real housing strategy with real investments and affordable, accessible social housing. I'm wondering if you could speak more to that.

[Marie-José Corriveau]

What more can I tell you? We still have no clear picture of the way in which each of the groups has experienced this pandemic, except what I was able to describe to you based on what has made the headlines or the number of calls that we have received in recent months. They were dealing with COVID-19, but what made things untenable is that they were also dealing with a housing shortage. That shortage is still with us. Whether there's a second wave or not, we still have a housing shortage.

That shortage is a reality in the large cities of Quebec and Canada but it is even more of a reality in indigenous territories. In our opinion, it is clear that every effort must be made in order to create new housing as quickly as possible to assist that segment of the population.

We know, as scientists are telling us, that because of climate change, pandemics are going to increase in the coming years and decades. We are going through one at the moment and we are finding it difficult. But goodness knows how many others are apparently waiting for us, because we are heading for serious environmental problems. Clearly, in that context, we have to act starting now, if only to avoid the worst of it.

That is more or less my message. Yes, some steps can be taken immediately, if only to provide households with the income they need to have suitable housing. We can't ask them to finance that effort because they have no savings. That makes no sense. Renters have no houses on which they can take out a mortgage. They have no goods they can sell, for example. Social housing has to be developed as quickly as possible. However, it has to be built properly in order to make sure that it will last.

I do not know whether that answers your question. One thing is for sure: we do not have a precise picture of the situation for people with disabilities. There have been calls for assistance, but is difficult to quantify the needs. However, we know that there is always a need for housing for those with disabilities, if only because the population is aging.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Just to expand on that, would you say it's important for the government to collect data? I know we talked about it for black and indigenous peoples. For persons with disabilities, there seems to be a real gap in data collection.

Can you expand on that, please?

[Marie-José Corriveau]

Yes, I agree with you. Each time we have a census, we produce a report using the data that Statistics Canada sells us. However, for those with disabilities, we don't manage to get a clear picture, because the only data that we have available are not about households, but about individuals. For example, we have no way to determine whether a person with a disability belongs to a household that has a core housing need. For that reason only, it would be helpful and meaningful to have that information. I imagine that we would then be in a better position to grasp the extent of the need and to budget for it as a result.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madame Corriveau, I have just one last question in that regard. Would you say that the failure to collect data further marginalizes disabled persons from accessing their human right to housing?

[Marie-José Corriveau]

I hesitate a little. I agree with you that we need more specific data. But I am more concerned about the homeless. I was talking about that earlier with another member of your committee. Currently, we have a problem: we are unable to accurately estimate the needs in terms of homelessness, because people are using a number of strategies to avoid ending up on the street. That is specifically the case with women. In actual fact, however, they are homeless. They have nowhere to live, nowhere to rent. They move from one person's house to another. Because it is impossible for them to find accommodation, they end up in violent situations that put their lives in danger.

People working in shelters for women in difficulty told us once again how much danger some women were in last spring because there was a shortage of housing, of cheap housing. But it was also because the places in those shelters had been restricted because of the lockdown measures. Because of the pandemic, a number of women were turned away and did not receive the help they needed.

I would have a hard time determining who wins the prize for being the worst off. We certainly need more data on those with disabilities. However, I am not able to tell you whether, on a per capita basis, that is the group in the worst situation. I just cannot tell you at present.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mrs. Corriveau and Ms. Gazan.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I have one last question on the national action plan.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

No, Ms. Gazan, you're out of time.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Sorry. I had myriad questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Now it is the Conservatives' turn.

Mrs. Vecchio, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to turn to Mr. Taylor, but first of all, I would really like to thank Ms. Corriveau and Ms. McGee for talking about the continuum as we're looking at it. When I look at housing, I look at the whole thing and the impact in terms of that simple physics measure that whenever there is one action, you're going to get the opposite reaction as well. I look at that, and when we're talking about housing and homelessness, we also have to look at the other end.

However, my major concern right now is in the middle of this continuum. From some statistics I was looking at from the CREA, the Canadian Real Estate Association, one of the greatest concerns I have right now is about supply. Right now, housing inventory is at a 16-year low, and in my community it's at about 1.1 months of inventory, when we should be having averages of between five and eight months of inventory. This is just way out. The average cost of a house in Canada right now is $571,500. We know that it's gone up. Of course, there were going to be people wanting to get into the market, so we were expecting a bit of a boom, with sales going up by 26% in the month of July. I'm really concerned about the impact and I'm just going to tell you a little story about my own community.

Though I know that people who live in Toronto love having Mr. Vaughan there, they like to move to my community where they get a more affordable house, a variety of different things, especially with COVID. We have backyards, we have so many great things, but we're seeing the price of housing going up. Just recently a house that was on sale for $289,000 went over the asking price by $83,000. That's almost a 33% increase. That's what we're seeing in my community, especially for first-time homebuyers, for the people tyring to get into the housing market.

What do you think the federal government needs to do, or what are some of things we should be aware of as we're moving forward, knowing that we have low inventory and that first-time homebuyers are being pushed out of the market because we're seeing such high prices right now? Knowing the financial turbulence facing many people right now, how are they going to be able to get a mortgage?

[Paul Taylor]

Thank you very much indeed for the question.

How long do I have?

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Go for it.

[Paul Taylor]

There's definitely going to be pricing pressures on real estate for the foreseeable future. I think there's a shortage of supply of housing almost everywhere, and it's been exacerbated by a number of different varying factors, especially in the already quite dense areas in Toronto and Vancouver. We've had internal migration to those areas. Immigration tends to flow to those regions as well. They're economic engines. That's generally where employment exists, so that's where people go. We are unable really to keep pace with demand with additional supply. It's something we definitely need to be spending more time thinking about.

It would probably be really beneficial for the government as a whole to start discussing emergency measures almost to create housing supply in all forms. Social housing is definitely needed and government-supported subsidized properties are needed, but almost rather than investing in something like a first-time homebuyers incentive plan, for example, where the government is owning a portion of equity, perhaps the government should actually become the primary investor in some commercial spaces that they themselves would resell to individuals. Oftentimes it's the investment that gets the property project kick-started in the private sector. If the government is comfortable owning property as a percentage, potentially it might want to think about owning projects to get them going—ultimately of course with the goal to provide that inventory back out to Canadians.

I think we really need to focus on trying to promote owner occupation of properties, though, rather than keeping properties potentially reserved for investor purchases. I understand that we are concerned about overall levels of indebtedness in Canada, but by continuing to address the supply-demand imbalance by adding demand tapping measures, we're always seemingly excluding young and upcoming folks, or the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, who frankly need the most support, and the people who are really transitioning from what would be social or community housing through rental housing and then onto that first rung of the ladder. As we continue to make it more difficult to extend credit to those folks, we are effectively keeping those properties on sale, as it were, for investor purchases, and those people still need to live somewhere. They're definitely going to be renting from those now sort of amateur landlords, and as the supply there becomes continually constrained, we're actually not assisting their monthly carrying costs at all.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Adding to that, we're just hearing that the cost of softwood lumber is going to go up by about 30%. The cost here in our community, as one of the hardware store owners just explained to me, is going to increase by 30%. If we're trying to build a house and one of the main things it needs is framing and there's a a 30% increase in the cost of creating this house, what are some of the factors we should also look at, and what can we do to help there?

Obviously, that's probably for a trade negotiation that just hasn't been happening, but what can we do there?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Give a short answer, please.

[Paul Taylor]

Unfortunately in that instance, I'm not sure we can do very much. Something like the pricing of the raw materials is very much a supply and demand constraint. You can't really legislate your way into securable pricing on that, unfortunately.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mrs. Vecchio and Mr. Taylor.

We go to Mr. Vaughan, please, for five minutes.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Thanks very much.

Madame Corriveau, would you agree that if the federal government puts new dollars on the table for provinces, the provinces should not be allowed to cut provincial spending limits on housing? As we put money in the front door for the housing system, the Quebec government should be required not to take money out the back door so that it becomes a wash. Would you agree that's a reasonable request by the federal government?

[Marie-José Corriveau]

In terms of reducing their own contributions, yes, I quite agree. If the Government of Canada puts money on the table, it should come with conditions, as it has previously done in the past, after all. When I said that I did not want the federal government to create programs in place of the provinces and territories, that did not mean that I feel it should provide money without requiring some conditions.

The government should do everything in its power to have the right to housing acknowledged. It should also go back to proven strategies, such as developing social housing. In addition, it must make sure that the provinces do not use federal money to replace the budgets that they otherwise should be putting on the table.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Exactly, and in terms of new rent supplement programs, for example, the Canada housing benefit, which aims to subsidize rents for the very individuals you talked about, if the federal government has a program that requires cost-matching dollars from the provinces, should the provinces have to match the new program or should they be allowed to say that we're already doing that and, therefore, we don't have to add any of our new dollars?

Should provinces be brought into a stronger housing system with the federal authority, as long as it's provincially designed and delivered? Would you agree with that?

[Marie-José Corriveau]

I am not sure I know what you mean by a stronger system. However, I do know that we have to consider housing allocation programs that the provinces already have and make sure that they are not withholding their cash. Quite the opposite, we need the amounts allocated to surpass the provinces' and territories' current objectives. At the moment, for example, in Quebec—