Human Resources Committee on May 19th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

I'm sorry, Mr. Braithwaite; your time is up.

Thank you, Ms. Zarrillo.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Could I ask if Mr. Braithwaite would mind doing a written submission on the experiences with CMHC and some other barriers in financing?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Mr. Braithwaite, would you submit anything you may have in writing to the committee chair?

We'll now move to Mr. Liepert for five minutes and then Mr. Van Bynen for five minutes as well. That will conclude our questioning, because I do need some time for committee business.

Mr. Liepert, you have five minutes.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the guests, not only today, but throughout this study that we're doing on housing.

I can't help but sit here listening and thinking that if this were a weekly television show, it would be called “The Blame Game”. Most of our witnesses have been from central Canada. I happen to represent a riding in Calgary, Alberta. I think many of the things I've heard from many of the witnesses have been the same kinds of things that I hear about in Alberta. Municipalities are blamed for delays by developers. Municipalities then turn around and blame the province and say that it's not municipalities holding things up, but various departments of government.

We tie all of that in to the fact that we have a federal government that for six or seven years has been spending a lot of money and talking a lot about how much money they've been spending on housing, but we have had really no concrete evidence of what has been accomplished. It's one thing to say how much money you spend; it's another thing to talk about results. We really have seen no verified results. Ministers are picking numbers out of the air, but don't have any backup as to where those numbers come from.

I guess I'm a little bit where Mr. Pomeroy was in the first session today.

The first question we should be asking ourselves is this: Is this acceleration fund even required? It seems to me like our issue is not necessarily about more money. It's a question of not being able to get through all of the various rules and regulations to actually have the money at the end of the day get to where it needs to go.

I would throw the question out there and say that I really like the idea of Mr. Pomeroy, which was that we should be studying whether this fund is even required. What are some other things we could be doing to get rid of the problems that seem to be pretty prevalent in this industry, literally, across the country?

I throw that out to any one of the guests and ask them to comment on it.

[Seth Asimakos]

I'll comment.

As far as the municipality goes, I think our municipality is doing what it can within the framework it has.

When the money comes down from the feds into the provincial government, they make decisions. There is opportunity to use some levers there, but I would definitely never say that less money is needed to create affordable housing in this country.

I do think that the process definitely has to speed up. They talk about a rapid housing initiative, but why don't we make the current process rapid? That would be ideal.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

I happen to agree with you, sir.

Are we getting bang for our buck? At the end of the day, let's remember that these are taxpayer dollars we're talking about here. If various rules, regulations and process slowdowns are eating up a large percentage of the money that's going out the door, that's what we have to look at first, rather than pushing more money out the door.

[Brian Rosborough]

I'll just add that we're talking about a very complex array of arrangements regarding housing from coast to coast to coast, with a lot of players. Some are in the public interest and some are in the private interest. We've had a major shift in the market relating to the fact that people now see housing as an investment instrument rather than a place to live. We've had low interest rates that have artificially inflated the housing market. We've had some rent controls in the past that have positive and negative impacts.

We have a real crisis on our hands. I think we're looking at all of the tools that may be available to help address it. Some of these are systemic questions around provincial regulation and municipal actions. Anything the federal government can do to help will be welcome.

The rapid housing initiative is an example of very effective federal program that saved lives in this province during COVID. I think we have an opportunity here with this fund to put together an array of supports that help deepen affordability, help protect existing rental stock and help municipalities do a better job of fulfilling their responsibility in the public interest.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You have 10 seconds.

[Brian Rosborough]

Perhaps we even need to spend some money helping the public understand why intensification is good, why provincial regulations are helpful, and why it is that we need complete communities and why there are complex discussions around that.

Nobody wants to reduce the supply of housing. Everybody wants it increased for different reasons. Not everybody wants the price of housing to go down.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Rosborough.

You have gone over your time, Mr. Liepert. Thank you.

Now we go to Mr. Van Bynen to finish, for five minutes.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all of our witnesses for providing us with the benefit of their insights.

I'd like to direct my question to Mr. Braithwaite.

You talked about a couple of your projects. My concern with any investment that the federal government or any level of government makes is sustainability. You've had a couple of projects. I'm wondering if you could share with us some examples of what the debt-to-equity ratio would be so that it's sustainable while being deeply affordable. How much equity would be needed in a unit?

Michael.

[Michael Braithwaite]

I'm going to talk about Parks Canada. I mentioned that there are 44 vacant homes. We talk about sustainability over time. We were able, through various government programs, to raise the capital to take one of those vacant homes. Parks Canada didn't have the capital to do so. Not only did we invest the money in the home to create a duplex for two families—I think they were two three-bedroom homes—it's like paying your rent in advance. Now we've created 30 years of affordable housing. There's no debt on that. We can operate it. It's sustainable and easy. There are not a lot of operational costs attached to that.

The other piece to that is that the people who did the work on the home are part of a construction social enterprise. You're actually preventing youth from falling into homelessness because they're doing the work there. They're launched in the trades where they make a living wage and have meaningful work. There are 43 more of those homes sitting vacant with land available. It's things like that.

It is tough when you talk about the debt-ratio piece. We're looking at a small house that has a big piece of land in Newmarket. We want to work with Habitat for Humanity to do a mixed kind of rental and ownership model, but through the current programs offered at CMHC, it's really hard to get that mix to make it affordable for us as a non-profit over the long term and to balance that out. The more rent-geared-to-income units we offer, the more unaffordable it becomes. You want to put some market in there. To truly make all of those units below market rent or rent geared to income we'd need a heck of a lot more support than some of the CMHC programs are providing at this moment. It takes innovation and different partnerships.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I have two other questions that I'd like to direct towards AMO.

We heard some testimony from a municipal officer a couple of weeks ago. They said there should be no changes and that the efficiency of the housing development process is as good as it gets. Has AMO at any time undertaken an end-to-end study that would talk about what we need to do, such as initiating changes to the building code? Should we be funding additional staff for processing, or should we fund an end-to-end process review to streamline the development process?

Have there been any studies that this committee could have a look at that point to the efficiency of the development process or the time consumed in the development process, or any types of studies that have reduced the number of things required and that could expedite the process? Is there a study that AMO can provide us with?

[Amber Crawford]

The short answer is that a few years ago we did streamline the development process document, which I'm more than happy to share. That started the conversation. I'll also include some case studies from some municipalities that have done some great work at streamlining. I won't list them, but there are probably about four or five of them in that document that also illustrate exactly what you're speaking about.

Continuous improvement is something that AMO has definitely looked at. We work with different staff organizations, from planners to building officials. We've certainly been on files such as building code harmonization, etc. We take a holistic approach.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I hate to interrupt you, but I understand the philosophy. The next question is about the disbursement of funds. I'm aware that AMO was managing the gas tax on a population base. There's the suggestion that the funding should go directly to municipalities either through FCM or AMO, or be on a population basis as opposed to a project basis. What are your suggestions?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Make it as short answer, please.

[Brian Rosborough]

That requires the wisdom of Solomon and we don't have a recommendation for a particular allocation formula. We do want to suggest that it's important that this be available to all types of municipalities, including northern, rural, and large urban ones, and not be limited to one type. We've seen some progress on that. You're right, we do deliver the Canada community-building fund on the behalf of the Government of Canada. We do that effectively. That's on a per capita basis as it's distributed nationally. This is a little more complex. I think we need to understand what the outcomes of the program are to know for sure how it should be allocated. We are certainly prepared to engage in further discussions on that as the work of the committee proceeds.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Rosborough.

The time has gone well over, Mr. Van Bynen.

I will suspend for a few minutes while the witnesses leave. We need a few minutes for committee business.

The witnesses have left, so we will move to committee business for a few minutes.

We need to discuss the upcoming meeting that is scheduled for next week as per the motion that was adopted on Monday, which referenced the Standing Committee on Finance adopting their motion inviting HUMA to consider the subject matter of part 5, divisions 26, 27, 29 and 32 of Bill C-19. We thought today would we would be dealing with that, but we did not have any witnesses.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Did we really?

I don't think so, but anyway, continue.

What do we have for next week?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

It was one of today's, but it's totally for the committee to commit.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

I don't really think we thought it was going to happen, but let's see what's on deck for next week, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Currently, we have confirmation for a meeting on Tuesday from 2:30 to 4:30, and we just received confirmation for a meeting for Thursday from 11 to 1.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Are those all eastern standard time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Yes, EST.

We have witnesses who have been submitted. The clerk has received witnesses from the following.

Clerk, can you speak to that witness list?

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

No, go ahead, I'll go afterwards.