Human Resources Committee on June 6th, 2024

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you very much.

Again, thank you for the work you do to support veterans. It's important work, and I personally appreciate the work you're doing.

Mr. Irwin, I have a quick question.

The removal of GST is something that hasn't been taken up by the Province of Ontario. They haven't matched that initiative. How important is it to apartment builders in Ontario when it comes to the removal of GST from construction?

[Tony Irwin]

Thank you very much for the question.

It is important. It is our impression that the Ontario government has indicated they intend to follow suit, and we very much encourage them to do so as quickly as possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Coteau. Your five minutes are up.

Ms. Chabot, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Mahboudi, the C.D. Howe Institute is no stranger to this committee, particularly when it comes to housing issues. You expressed strong criticism of the national housing strategy, citing its poor track record in making affordable housing more available. You also commented on the recent federal budget, but not necessarily on the new housing measures announced. Do you think that these new measures will make a difference this time?

[Dr. Parisa Mahboubi]

Thank you for the question.

There is no doubt that we are in a situation where any initiative, any policy, that can encourage building more residential units and increase the supply of housing would be helpful. There is no doubt that, because of the pressure we are seeing in the housing market and the lack of enough supply of housing, it forced the federal government to step in and start significant programs and introduce a large number of initiatives. They are all positive steps that needed to be taken.

Something I want to highlight is that there is a role for the federal government, but at the end of the day, we need collaboration among all levels of government, because when it comes to housing and housing supply, it's mainly in the hands of the cities and provinces. To be able to move the needle and see some results.... We need quick results.

For example, given that we are facing high immigration, that means we need a housing supply more immediately. It's not like giving birth to individuals where it takes years for them to grow up before they need housing. We need an immediate response in terms of the housing market. To be able to do that—

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

Sorry to interrupt, but I don't have much time. I would like to ask you another question.

We all understand the principle of supply and demand. However, the current housing crisis is placing pressure on social housing, non‑market housing and affordable housing. There isn't enough investment to meet the high demand for these types of housing units.

What are your thoughts on this? You can send us your written response later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

I would ask the witness to provide a written response to that question, if you choose.

To conclude, next is Monsieur Boulerice for two and a half minutes.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Hughes, I'm also honoured to speak to you today on the anniversary of the Normandy landings, which were so significant for veterans. I want to thank the members of your organization who took part in this historic feat.

Housing insecurity for veterans is also a gender issue that affects women somewhat disproportionately. In your opinion, what are the immediate housing needs of your members, particularly women?

[Carolyn Hughes]

There needs to be more supply. I agree with the other panellists on that.

A lot of the problems we see in regard to women specifically are that they're leaving an abusive relationship. They have to leave very quickly and they don't have supports in place.

In regard to veterans overall, with homelessness.... I apologize if I go off track a bit, because I am very passionate about veterans. We see a lot with addictions. We see a lot who have fallen through the cracks over the years. My grandfather was one. He came back from World War II, was an alcoholic and ended up on the streets.

I am very passionate about homeless veterans. It changes lives to have these supports out there. When we can get a veteran off the street, whether it's a woman or a man, if there are addictions, it's housing first and then we deal with the addictions, get them back on their feet and help them get employment. Housing has to come first. They have to have a safe environment to move forward.

I hope I have answered your question, as much as I can. I'm very passionate about this topic of veteran homelessness and veterans in general. I am happy to answer any questions at any time.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Hughes. Studies and consultations aren't enough. We also need to create action plans with concrete measures to provide housing for veterans. I agree with you on that.

Unfortunately, I've run out of time. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Boulerice.

This concludes the first hour of witnesses.

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank the three witnesses for appearing and providing testimony on this important study.

With that, we'll suspend for two minutes while we bring in the next panel. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Committee members, the committee is back in session for the second group of panellists.

I would like to welcome, appearing in person in the room, Jim Facette, executive director of the Canadian Roofing Contractors Association. From the Réseau québécois des OSBL d'habitation, we have André Castonguay, executive director. From Victoria Park Community Homes, we have Lori-Anne Gagne, chief executive officer. These last two witnesses are appearing virtually.

We'll begin with you, Mr. Facette, with five minutes for your opening statement, please.

[Jim Facette, Executive Director, Canadian Roofing Contractors Association]

Good morning, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity today to discuss a key issue for our country, especially this week.

I emphasize this week because, for the Canadian Roofing Contractors Association and our 400 member companies across Canada, we are celebrating roofing in Canada. June 2 to 7 is “National Roofing Week”. By using social media platforms, we bring public attention to the role our industry and the people in it play in society.

The Canadian Roofing Contractors Association represents over 400 Canadian industrial, commercial and institutional roofing contracting companies and needed suppliers. Some of our members do both non-residential and residential roofing. In fact, many started in residential and moved over to non-residential. Companies vary in size, from as many as 6,000 employees across North America to as few as 12. Most contracting companies would likely be classified as small to medium-sized enterprises.

What follows are our thoughts on the current state of housing affordability and related challenges. On the surface, affordable housing and industrial, commercial and institutional roofing companies may have little in common. Beneath the surface is the reality that CRCA member companies are likely the ones not only re-roofing existing muti-unit buildings and their respective building envelopes, but CRCA member companies also do new builds. New housing investments of any nature create communities. Communities need infrastructure services, be they schools, hospitals, recreational complexes or shopping facilities. CRCA members will be called upon to meet the demand.

Government investment into housing will have a positive impact for many CRCA members. That said, there is a related challenge. In the roofing and building envelope industries there is an acute need for people in all facets of the business. We need skilled and unskilled labour. We need superintendents, project managers, estimators and so on. This is why, over the past year, the CRCA has lobbied for changes to the immigration system, changes that would treat the roofing trade equal to that of someone with a Ph.D. in the humanities.

No matter the technology, innovation or enhancement of other types, we still need people to build and manage the construction of buildings. On May 13 we announced a first in construction: a partnership that makes use of the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada's economic mobility pathways pilot program. We teamed up with Talent Beyond Boundaries, a non-government organization, to bring economically displaced workers into Canada as permanent residents. Already there are a dozen CRCA member companies that have begun the process with Talent Beyond Boundaries, and we expect that number to increase. Over the next two weeks, in fact, we're hosting a series of webinars for our members on said initiative.

The impact of federal investments into housing will have an impact on non-residential construction. However, we cannot lose focus on the need for workers. CRCA member companies have the business capacity to meet increasing demand. We need the people to build.

What can governments do, you may ask? To be honest, it's something we can all do, and I stated this in my closing remarks during an online meeting with the Minister of Immigration last fall. We can all encourage our children and grandchildren—or anyone else for that matter—to pursue a career in a trade.

We are all touched in some way by the current housing situation in Canada. The CRCA does not see a one-size-fits-all solution going forward, and the housing crisis will not be resolved overnight. It's going to take time. As I stated earlier, the connection between the federal government, housing investment and non-residential roofing companies may not be an obvious one. Our members want to see governments and industry work together to build the communities Canadians want to live and thrive in.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Facette.

Mr. Castonguay, you have the floor for five minutes.

[André Castonguay, Executive director, Réseau québécois des OSBL d'habitation]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, committee members.

The Réseau québécois des organismes sans but lucratif d'habitation brings together, supports and represents community organizations that provide housing for low‑income or modest‑income households or for people with special housing needs. By working to ensure the recognition, development and sustainability of these organizations, our network helps to improve housing conditions for thousands of Quebeckers.

In Quebec, over 55,000 housing units managed by non‑profit organizations are administered by 1,250 organizations grouped into eight regional federations, all affiliated with the Réseau. Over 10,000 people volunteer in our network, which also draws on the commitment of 8,000 paid employees. Overall, the property value of non‑profit housing organizations is around $6 billion.

In the context and preparation of this presentation, we took into account the committee's areas of interest. These areas are human resources, skills development, social development and the status of persons with disabilities. In addition, our presentation is part of a study on federal investments in housing. Lastly, we took into consideration the fact that the Réseau is being called on for its expertise on the strengths and challenges of developing, operating and maintaining rental housing provided by non‑profit organizations in Quebec. The Réseau has brought these rental units together through its close ties to these organizations and after years of advocacy and collaboration with both administrative and governmental state entities.

With this in mind, our approach is as follows. We can see that, right off the bat, the study points to the lack of federal investment in rental housing development in recent years and decades. Thank you for raising this issue. First, we need to talk about the federal government's commitment in the 20th century and withdrawal in the early 21st century; the subsequent and modest commitment of provincial governments; Quebec's noticeable but unfortunately insufficient investment in developing social and community housing compared to the other provinces; and the unforeseen maze, in this first quarter century, affecting every facet of the Canadian housing system. For our sector, this is a matter of course.

Canada's—and Quebec's as well, to a certain extent—long‑standing government culture around housing investment has proved incapable of preventing the current crisis. As is the case today, it has often failed to meet current needs. The lack of quantitative investment has often been criticized, and rightly so. However, we now understand that the lack of qualitative investment has also been an underestimated contributing factor to the current crisis.

We can see how the imbalance between supply and demand for rental housing has played a role in triggering the current crisis. That much is clear. However, we strongly believe that, when this factor or focus is singled out, it paints an inaccurate picture of a highly complex crisis. This incomplete picture affects both the methods and the time frame for emerging from the crisis. The truncated view of the issue means that the resulting solutions lack teeth, and the process drags on.

We gather from the issues raised by the study that it focuses specifically on the supply of rental housing, but also on the type of tenure. As a result, our opinion contains some comments on the quantitative supply of housing. However, it focuses more on the investment objectives and methods.

As we heard earlier, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation announced in 2023 that, to achieve a balanced rental market in Canada, over 3.5 million housing units must be built by 2030. For Quebec, this would mean an order for 680,000 units within this time frame. Moreover, some financial institutions have added to this figure with their studies.

Regardless of the number of housing units required—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Monsieur Castonguay, could you slow down your speaking, please? The interpreters are having trouble interpreting.

[André Castonguay]

Yes. I'm sorry.

Regardless of the number of housing units needed to achieve this balance, we believe that the key decision‑makers at different levels of government should focus specifically on social and community housing. Like the for‑profit rental market, non‑speculative housing must also help achieve this ideal balance.

As we'll discuss in the next point, and based on the experience of certain societies over the past 100 years, we believe that social and community housing should account for at least 20% of the total rental market. In Quebec, this figure is currently around 10%. In fact, for the first time in years, we're seeing a downward trend, while the need for non‑speculative housing continues to grow.

Obviously, the targets set by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation won't be met by 2030. We must be realistic. It's a matter of both money and resources. We have a long way to go, but we're also optimistic. In 2017, we all applauded the federal government's firm commitment to start investing in housing again through the national housing strategy. It was a welcome announcement for community real estate developers. Meanwhile, Quebec settled for creating only about one thousand social and community housing units each year through the AccèsLogis Québec program. This program was hampered by an increase in standards and a decrease in provincial investment.

However, after seven years, despite the success of some initiatives of the strategy—which focused on the still vague concept of affordable housing—we must acknowledge that, without a national housing policy that ideally ties in with provincial initiatives, the issue of access to housing priced according to household income and needs remains unresolved. The situation has actually become much worse.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Castonguay.

Your time is up.

[André Castonguay]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Ms. Gagne, you have five minutes or less, please.

[Lori-Anne Gagne, Chief Executive Officer, Victoria Park Community Homes]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, distinguished committee members. Thank you so much for inviting me to speak to you today about affordable housing as part of your study on the federal housing investments.

I feel the need to say that I don't see myself as an expert. I can only share with you my 40 years of on-the-ground experience in the affordable housing space, where I've been fortunate enough to participate through many angles: as a developer focusing on indigenous housing; as the owner of a property management company; as a team lead for the Agency for Co-operative Housing; and now, finishing my career, by leading Victoria Park Community Homes, which is one of the oldest and largest private non-profit housing providers in Ontario.

Affordable housing has been my life's work, and I am extremely passionate about it. “Those that fail to learn from history are [doomed] to repeat it,” said Winston Churchill, a much smarter person than I am. I would like to start with a quick look at our affordable housing history in Ontario, which is the lens that I look at housing through, and what lessons were learned, because they need to be applied today.

In the 1960s and 1970s, we built large-scale projects that were 100% rent-geared-to-income. We created, in essence, mini-ghettos of poverty. Our lesson learned during that period was that this model is extremely challenging and not financially sustainable.

In the late 1970s, the federal government introduced its first full social housing program. It ended in 1985 but yielded over 52,000 units. In 1986, the focus shifted to provincial programs and, by 1992, 37,884 units had been built under the provincial program, using the lessons learned from that earlier experience. Instead of large-scale 100% rent-geared-to-income, during this time we created smaller, mixed-income, community-sponsored affordable housing developments. However, we developed a new lesson learned, with no scale or capacity, there are great inefficiencies and millions of dollars being wasted—I like to use the example of audit costs—under this model.

In the mid-1990s, the province abruptly stopped all programs, and for the next number of years no new affordable housing was built, causing us to fall substantially behind the need. In 2001, the province devolved housing to municipalities, a unique model that has created additional inefficiencies.

Meanwhile, the federal government continued to fund housing through various programs, such as the affordable housing program, SHAIP, SHRRP and SHIP. There were many initiatives. In 2017, as you well know, the federal government launched its national housing strategy, and we in the affordable housing sector celebrated.

However, the need is greater than ever before and, as the previous speaker said, we are not on track to meet the goals of ending homelessness by 2030.

How can we incorporate the lessons learned and move towards achieving the goals of the national housing strategy? My recommendations for the committee to consider are numerous, and I could have had pages but I appreciate summarizing.

Continue to invest. We must continue to invest in affordable housing development as our percentage of the overall rental market is pathetically low, around the 3% mark, compared to other G20 countries.

Recognize affordable housing as an economic positive. The investment you make in affordable housing is great for the country overall from an economic perspective, as it has a substantial impact on productivity, and I refer you to the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association's economic study.

Stop the losses. Affordable—let this sink in—affordable housing is being lost 11 times faster than it's being built, for a number of reasons, but one of those reasons is the sale and loss of former federal housing developments. In Hamilton specifically, where our head office is, since 2011 that area has lost 23 affordable units for every one unit developed. These are staggering statistics.

I recognize that the federal government has implemented acquisition funding, which will greatly assist some non-profits, co-ops and supportive housing providers in the purchase of these buildings being sold as a preservation tactic.

Reconsider mixing. Over the past 10 years, all funding programs have integrated supportive housing into affordable housing, and it's not working as well as intended. This will be a lesson learned, quoted into the future.

Please be cautious about subsidizing private developers. They are generally not committed to affordable housing in the long term. This investment by government is short-sighted.

Incentivize and reward amalgamations and mergers being done for efficiency, scale and capacity.

Please simplify the rules for GST rebates for affordable housing providers. Under the new funding formula or funding mechanisms, we non-profits will lose our eligibility for GST—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Could you wrap up your comments, please?

[Lori-Anne Gagne]

Absolutely.

On a final note, I'll say that, in the past year, we've definitely seen a change in the government's behaviour. Significant funding has started to flow, and it will significantly help us preserve housing going forward.

Thank you so much for your time and attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

Mr. Aitchison, you have six minutes.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the time.

Thank you to all the witnesses.

I'd actually like to start with Ms. Gagne from Victoria Park Community Homes.

Ms. Gagne, you spoke a bit about the loss of units, which is significant. Can you speak to the age of our housing stock, particularly rental housing stock in Ontario, for example, where you work?