Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and committee members.
I'm Daniel Rubinstein. I'm the senior director of policy and government relations at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
FCM is the national voice of local government. We have 2,000 members, and we represent 90% of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
We appreciate every opportunity to discuss how our two levels of government can work together and improve people's quality of life, including housing affordability.
There's no doubt that housing affordability is one of the greatest challenges facing Canada today, and for us the solution is clear: It's action, coordinated, ambitious, immediate action from the federal government, from provincial and territorial governments, from municipalities and local governments, from our non-profit housing partners and from the private sector.
Local leaders across the country are ready to do their part to improve housing options for Canadians, and budget 2022 includes key investments to enable municipalities to take action on the housing crisis.
In particular, FCM and our members welcome the $4 billion housing accelerator fund. We believe it has transformative potential to help get housing built faster through direct and flexible investments, which allow municipalities to tackle the most serious local barriers to supply.
We know that housing supply is influenced by a variety of factors, such as financing, availability and cost of land, and the regulatory context and systems in place to review and improve development applications. Today we know that there's particular attention paid to the supply chain availability of skilled labour and materials as well.
Across the country, cities are putting in place systems to speed up the review and approval of development proposals and to accelerate local and regional level planning, and more can definitely be done in this space with support from HAF. HAF's focus on expanding supply is critical, but more important is ensuring that HAF unlocks and accelerates the right supply, and for us that means affordable options, both market and non-market, aligned with our shared federal-municipal vision of low carbon intensification and transit-oriented development.
The right supply also means focusing on the specific local supply gaps unique to each local housing market. In some cities, the challenge might be building enough affordable rental options, particularly family-sized apartments, this is a pretty serious gap in what the market is currently creating on its own.
In others, access to and cost of land is a barrier to transformative projects, especially those that include serious affordability targets. In others, important steps are being taken to improve access to so called “missing middle” options, secondary suites, laneway suites to accelerate TOD, and inclusionary zoning.
The government's commitment to making sure HAF is flexible to the needs and realities of cities and communities recognizes that housing markets are local and that municipalities are best placed to identify what will make the biggest contribution locally to increasing housing supply.
We also note and welcome the budget's commitment to achieve a balanced supply, which includes a needed increase to the supply of affordable housing, and that's critical for us at FCM.
To make HAF a success, it must be designed with municipalities to directly empower action and results, and we have a model that's working well with the rapid housing initiative, RHI. For us that means borrowing from the major city stream model, which provides flexible upfront allocations to major centres. This gives our major urban centres the predictability, flexibility and upfront cash flow needed to act quickly and ambitiously.
Our recommendation is that at least 50% of HAF should be delivered through a major city stream.
The other major component of RHI, rapid housing initiative, is an application-based stream that all municipalities have access to, and this kind of stream is particularly well suited to applications focused on improving planning and development review processes, including regional collaborations.
I want to note that the budget made an important commitment to ensuring that HAF supports rural and smaller communities that are growing quickly, and we know this application-based stream can easily be adapted to include a targeted carve out for projects from rural and smaller communities.
Before concluding, I want to note that HAF is a new addition to the national housing strategy, and I've heard from other witnesses today and at your previous meeting about the success being linked to the rest of the broader national housing strategy. The budget did make important commitments to improve the rental construction financing initiative and the national housing co-investment fund. These program changes are equally important in addressing barriers to expanding affordable housing options for Canadians. We look forward to contributing our advice on how to optimize those programs as well in the future.
Thank you.
I'm happy to participate in the Q and A.