Human Resources Committee on Oct. 8th, 2024

[Alana Lavoie]

Absolutely.

We're fortunate that in some municipalities, we've managed to develop very strong relationships. Depending on the jurisdiction, we have some of the fees waived—development charges, for example. However, we are still seeing permit delays that are adding costs. These costs are harder for us to absorb, quite frankly, and are not reflected in the funding arrangements we have with any governments. It's definitely a very real challenge for us as well.

Again, we partner often with the homebuilding sector, and they may have.... We feel the exact same things they do.

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

What's the average household income required to qualify today for a Habitat home in the GTA, for example?

[Alana Lavoie]

GTA is an interesting case; it tends to be a little bit higher. We're now looking at what would be considered workforce numbers in terms of income levels, so we can see as high as $120,000. We would see a similar number in Vancouver. Our lowest income level that we serve across Canada is approximately $22,000. A lot of this is determined by province and by the local municipality in terms of what their affordability is and the local conditions.

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

How much has that number changed in the last, say, eight or 10 years in the GTA and Vancouver, for example—the income required?

[Alana Lavoie]

I don't have the exact percentage, but we are certainly seeing an upward pressure.

The families we are serving are increasingly families that we would have previously characterized as solid working-class families, who, with a little bit of time and a lot of savings and hard work, would have been able to achieve home ownership. We're certainly seeing more professionals falling into that category, and if not served by us, they certainly would need to be served by someone.

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

Okay. Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Mr. Long, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon to my colleagues.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming in to testify on this very important topic.

Mr. Lee, my first questions will be to you. We've met before, obviously, and you've been before the committee several times.

Before I start with my first question to you, I want to make a couple of comments.

I am proud to be part of a government that has stepped up and recognized the challenge that we face from coast to coast to coast with respect to housing, building housing, showing innovation and helping builders innovate through different programs like the apartment construction loan program, the home building technology and innovation fund, the rapid housing program and the co-operative housing development program, etc. We've stepped up, and we recognize too that most of this is provincial jurisdiction, but as a federal government, we have a key role to play.

You were in Saint John not too long ago. I think about people like Brad McLaughlin and Rheal Guimond, who are wonderful local home builders.

I will say this: I think that the residential construction industry is sometimes seen as slow to change and kind of trapped in tradition. Now, in Saint John, if you walked through the trade show there, you'd see some wonderful builders showing wonderful innovation.

Mr. Lee, just from the start, can you talk about the biggest barriers to innovation in home building?

[Kevin Lee]

I think the biggest barriers to innovation are the risk of small businesses taking on new technology, which is why I mentioned in my remarks that there's a great opportunity to create programming to help de-risk trying new things. It's not like building a test car and whipping it around the track somewhere; we can't build test houses that cost hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, and see if they work. What do you do with them afterwards?

There have been government demonstration programs in the past, but even then, when you demonstrate that technology and you have a full-blown, million-dollar house, what do you do with it afterwards if those things don't work?

There is a huge opportunity to create programming. There's a small program at Natural Resources Canada called LEEP, local energy efficiency partnerships, that is very much about helping the building industry. The “L” in LEEP is for local, and it works with local industry to help adopt and try new technologies, test them out, and then feed back to the manufacturers to help them improve by saying what the problems were during installing, what worked and what didn't work, but it's a risk.

People say that homebuilders are risk averse, but homebuilders have the biggest risk appetites of almost any business going. It is such a risky business that your job is to mitigate risk constantly. Bringing in new technologies is a new risk, and you need some help in making sure that they work well and that you can trial them.

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

Thanks for that.

Just as a follow-up to that, some construction innovation would be AI, machine learning, resource workforce management software and 3-D printing.

Are there other innovations that you see as critical, and which areas of innovation matter the most to you?

[Kevin Lee]

I think what we're seeing is a ton of pressure on the housing system and on the code system to respond to all kinds of things, such as climate change, but what we're missing is a focus on affordability and driving down the cost. Right now we've labelled over 2,200 net-zero and net-zero-ready homes across the country. We know how to build them, and we're working really hard to optimize them.

What I can't say is that the level of energy performance is ready for the building code, because it's still very expensive. What we really need to focus on is driving down the cost of all of these things. How do we look at everything that's going into the code at once, cost it all and say what our priorities are and where we drive prices down so that we can address all of these challenges at the same time, because they're all important?

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

I have one final thing for you, Mr. Lee.

You mentioned municipal barriers and how they vary. Obviously, we see that in New Brunswick. I'll stay out of the provincial politics side.

With respect to New Brunswick, how do we fix it? How do we fix that issue of differences between municipalities? What do you recommend?

[Kevin Lee]

I think that the federal government needs to set the stage and needs to collaborate with the provincial governments, because it is provincial jurisdiction.

Then, at that provincial level, we really need to restrict the changes and all the differences from municipality to municipality. It is fully within the rights of the provinces to work with the municipalities to say that we don't need all these different zoning issues. We don't need all these different bylaw changes. They don't need to be different literally from one side of a street to the other, and when we interpret code, it's the same provincial building code. We should have the same interpretations. What works in one city should work in the next.

That's something that the federal government and provinces can collaborate on.

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

Ms. Lavoie, thank you for all you do for Habitat. I was at the ReStore opening in Saint John in January, and it's a wonderful thing that you do for our community.

My question is this: Habitat for Humanity has built an excellent and unique reputation for themselves within the housing landscape and with us in government when we see the important work you do benefiting people in our communities like Saint John—Rothesay.

We've had the pleasure of establishing a financial partnership with Habitat for Humanity through CMHC to build hundreds of affordable homes and units and to provide further support to some of the local chapters through channels like co-op housing. Can you share with the committee how the unique housing model for Habitat for Humanity offers a lens to innovation?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Madam Lavoie, you will have to answer that at another time. I'm keeping the times tight, and Mr. Long is six minutes over.

The floor is yours for six minutes, Ms. Chabot.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I really thank all the witnesses.

There have certainly been numerous studies on housing at the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. A particular element has recently been added to these studies as a result of today's motion, which will bring us to our consideration of issues relating to advances in home building technologies.

I would like to welcome everyone, but to express particular thanks to the FTQ-Construction representatives. Behind everything involved in housing, be it homes, rentals, or affordable housing, there are workers. Without these workers, there would be no construction, and so it is important to hear their views.

Mr. Lapointe, you spoke earlier about challenges, which I find very interesting. Fortunately, you play a large role in Quebec in relation to health, safety and skills issues. I think you were about to tell us about how the culture needs to be changed. Can you continue with your remarks about what you wanted to tell us?

[Philippe Lapointe]

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

Basically, it is important to remember that construction workers live in an extremely precarious situation, just as do construction contractors. There is huge competition when it comes to tenders and access to various projects.

As we said earlier, and as Mr. Lee also talked about, there must therefore be a certain ability to adapt to the risks and the capital needed for going into business. Construction contractors will not opt for innovative proposals on their own if they do not have the freedom to do it in a tender. The federal government has a huge role to play in this regard, because in awarding contracts or placing orders for certain projects, it could instigate these innovations and allow contractors to make the necessary proposal.

When we sat on numerous committees with employer associations in Quebec, we made some observations about the capacity to implement new things, such as a circular economy scheme for construction and demolition materials. We have noticed that if obligations, penalties or compulsory requirements are not imposed, the structuring changes needed in order to be able to recover the materials in good condition and reuse them in other projects will never be sufficient.

When the time comes to issue an invitation to tender, contractors try to submit the lowest bid, to be sure of getting the project. If it takes an hour or two more to be able to dismantle a house the right way, they will no longer be competitive.

So these things have to be requested in advance, and this calls for government intervention. We really need to think ahead about how we ask for buildings.

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

Thank you.

In your testimony, you said that workers are part of the solution in all this. They have to be involved from the outset, a bit ahead of the projects. In concrete terms, that is how it might work. Ordinarily, we support social dialogue here, but, in concrete terms, how can we improve and expand workers' involvement in projects?

[Philippe Lapointe]

Regarding how to prepare plans for building a house, I am going to ask my colleague, Mr. Trudel, to address that.

[Nicolas Trudel, Assistant Director, Fraternité nationale des charpentiers-menuisiers, Local 9, Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec - Construction]

Yes, I'd be happy to.

What workers in the construction industry mainly need is training, to adapt to the new technologies. They already have the skills they need and they will just need to develop new strategies.

I think we have everything to gain by providing a safe and stable workplace so we can maintain a good pool of workers so we are able to carry out the large-scale projects to come. These two challenges are primarily what I see.

I see that Mr. Lapointe has some comments to add.

[Philippe Lapointe]

I do.

Sometimes, the workers are more familiar with how to carry out a project that has to be done than the people who created the plans. That is something we have noticed recently.

I want to come back specifically to the question of demolition. We took a few moves from people who do demolition in general. I told them I was going to pay them by weight for the materials in a room that they were able to demolish and we could reuse. They were able to recycle 98% of the materials in the room. There was only 2% waste, and all the rest was recyclable.

That was possible because we gave them the time they needed and we told them to use their expertise to figure out how to demolish the room. An employer would probably have come in with a sledgehammer and told them to demolish the room as fast as possible.

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

That is very interesting.

[Nicolas Trudel]

To add to that, I just wanted to say that we have to involve workers in this change so they feel important, because I think they want to participate in it. They are the first ones to be directly involved on the spot on project sites.

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

Thank you, gentlemen.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Chabot. Your time is up.

Madam Zarrillo is next, for six minutes.