Human Resources Committee on Feb. 4th, 2021

[Romy Bowers]

Yes, we are.

As I mentioned, we are oversubscribed and the quality of the applications for projects has been quite outstanding.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Okay.

I wanted to talk to you about the application process again. I know you are oversubscribed, but I think that has to do with almost every program that the government rolls out, whether it be infrastructure or housing—you name it. There's alway more. At that point, you get community fighting against community.

I'm always looking for ways to streamline the process so that there is the ability for communities to get that. I'm thinking with municipalities, too, where they can see stable funding—the gas tax is one—and where they can debenture programs or projects knowing they have x amount of dollars coming in.

This might be something that could be of interest in housing, whether it be rapid housing or others. This way, every municipality—or first nations community or however you want to do it—is able to see a steady stream of funding come in and they don't have to compete against each other.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Give a quick answer if you could, please, Ms. Bowers. We're out of time.

[Romy Bowers]

I can't agree with you more in terms of the need to form strong partnerships with cities and municipalities and streamline our processes as much as possible.

Thank you for that feedback.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Schmale.

We have Mr. Long, please, for six minutes.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good evening, now, to all of my colleagues. Certainly I want to thank Ms. Bowers and other officials at CMHC for coming in and giving us answers to our questions with respect to the very exciting rapid housing initiative.

Housing is a human right. I'm proud that our government has entrenched the recognition of this right into law through the National Housing Strategy Act. I'm also proud that we have made historic commitments to help implement that right through our $55 billion national housing strategy.

We still have a lot of work and a lot of catch-up to do to ensure that this right is upheld for all Canadians and the promise of the NHS is fulfilled.

In my riding of Saint John-Rothesay, were experiencing, unfortunately, a housing affordability crisis, much like across this country. It's been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. There are currently over 1,500 people on the waiting list for affordable housing. Unfortunately, despite all of our efforts, that list continues to grow by the day. That's why I've advocated for additional pathways for direct federal funding for affordable housing through the NHS. It's why I was thrilled when our government announced the $1 billion rapid housing initiative this past fall. Immediately after this announcement, my team and I began working closely with the City of Saint John and other proponents in the riding to ensure that our community took full advantage of this opportunity to rapidly and significantly increase the stock of affordable housing within it.

This effort resulted in the submission of an application by Housing Alternatives and their group for funding through the projects stream of the RHI to create 30 affordable housing units in the old St. Vincent's High School in Saint John.

We have been working closely with Minister Hussen's team to advocate for this project. I was pleased to see positive announcements through the major cities stream in recent weeks, but I am also keen to see this and other projects stream applications accessed quickly by CMHC. I'm pleased to hear from you that all proponents will have news from CMHC by the end of the month.

Obviously, I certainly understand and respect that there were the two streams. Halifax was the only city in Atlantic Canada that qualified for that stream. Obviously, in my province, we have Moncton, Fredericton, Saint John, Bathurst, Miramichi and other cities that are very anxious about their applications.

My first question for you, Ms. Bowers, is what was the regional breakdown of the 765 applications received through the projects stream?

[Romy Bowers]

As intended, we received applications under the projects stream from all across the country. Large cities, small cities and rural areas were represented in all the project applications.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Again, certainly the officials here in my city of Saint John have submitted an application. They haven't really heard anything back. I know you mentioned the timelines earlier.

Can you go through the timelines again as to when they should expect to hear something back? Obviously, the applications were submitted by the end of December. There's a lot of anxiety. I get calls every day from proponents who submitted applications.

[Romy Bowers]

Absolutely. We took the month of January to do the assessments of the projects and the prioritization.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Right.

[Romy Bowers]

During the month of February all proponents will receive notification of the status of their application. We are planning to have all funds, commitments and contracts in place by the end of March.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Okay.

There has been talk about the stream that Saint John applied to as being oversubscribed. I know that's a good thing. Obviously, it shows there is a lot of interest in that program.

Are you able to share with the committee what lessons can be drawn from the success of the city stream?

[Romy Bowers]

Mr. Chair, I'm not sure if you're signalling that I have a time limitation, but—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

You have almost a full minute.

[Romy Bowers]

Fair enough.

I think one significant lesson learned is that for the large city stream, we worked in collaboration with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and that we developed the methodology for allocation and the selection of the 15 cities in that collaboration. I think that was a first for CMHC. It was a great partnership, and something I think we can build on in the future.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Is it worth considering expanding it to include small major cities like Saint John?

[Romy Bowers]

I think that is a decision for the government to make. CMHC is ready if it's the desire of government to implement that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Ms. Bowers and Mr. Long.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Mr. Chair, on a point or order, I just want to point out that the staff have been kicked out of the Zoom meeting room. If the technicians could please let them back in, that would be most helpful. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Madam Clerk, I hope you were able to hear that.

Okay, we're on it, Mr. Vis. Thank you for raising that.

You have six minutes, Ms. Chabot.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you for being here today.

I have a very simple question for you.

At the beginning, you talked about the number of projects that were received. This $1-billion program was a very short-term one. There were probably more project proposals than positive responses.

How many projects do you estimate were rejected by this program?

[Caroline Sanfaçon, Vice-President, Housing Solutions, Multi-Unit, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation]

We didn't reject any of them. We received many applications, as we said.

To date, we have sent responses for only 90 applications that were incomplete or that did not meet the eligibility criteria. We still have to process 678 applications for eligible projects, and we will be communicating our decisions on those files in the coming weeks.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Do you have a regional breakdown of the applications?

[Caroline Sanfaçon]

Yes, we do. We can send it to you in writing.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

All right. I suppose that, although there were criteria, the issue of fairness must have come up.

My other question is about the second stream.

I won't make any false comparisons, but we know that some organizations are more robust and have more resources and better capacity. We see it, even as MPs, in all kinds of existing projects, from real estate projects to Canada summer jobs. Those organizations are familiar with these types of programs and they are better at preparing applications than more vulnerable groups or smaller organizations. However, the second stream is very much about the latter.

We want to know how they became aware of the program and what difficulties they may have had. Could they apply as easily as organizations that have much more expertise?

The difficulties of smaller groups and organizations with fewer resources is an issue that is often raised.