Human Resources Committee on Oct. 30th, 2023

[Romy Bowers]

Yes, they are.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

What is that percentage?

[Romy Bowers]

I don't know the exact percentage, but usually we have between 200,000 and 250,000. I think there has been a decrease of about 15,000 since last year.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you.

With CMHC bonuses continuing to go up.... We know there were approximately $20 million in bonuses in 2020, $25 million in 2021 and $27 million in 2022. When we're considering that housing starts are down, food bank usage is up, and people are living in tents, in RVs and in parking lots, would you consider these CMHC bonus levels appropriate?

[Romy Bowers]

CMHC bonuses, or incentive pay, are based on the individual performance targets of various employees.

CMHC runs a commercial business that generates close to $2 billion in income for the federal government annually. We manage a balance sheet of close to $30 billion. I employ a large number of professionals who—

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you. I think you've answered that.

During CMHC's appearance on February 17, 2023, I asked for CMHC to table board minutes from January 1, 2016, to December 31, 2022, with this committee. One of your officials responded that it would be done.

Are you tabling those minutes today?

[Romy Bowers]

I actually don't know if I'm tabling them today, but if you have not received them, I will look into why that's the case, if that's the question.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Can you commit to a date when those minutes would be tabled?

This request came in more than eight months ago, and an official did let this committee know that those documents would be forthcoming. That was in writing after the meeting as well.

[Romy Bowers]

Chair, I will look into this as soon as I finish this meeting and get to the bottom of why they have not been provided.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you very much.

To put this into context, I had asked for the copies of these CMHC board minutes over my concern with CMHC board governance, potential board conflicts of interest, and when and if board members recuse themselves of decisions.

Specifically, I'd mentioned one of your board members at the time who was a CEO of a housing organization that received CMHC funding. There was a funding announcement around this with media attention. Liberal MPs and even the current Liberal finance minister were in attendance, so this is an important issue and I would expect that these documents will come to the committee soon.

[Romy Bowers]

I fully understand and I will get the minutes to you as quickly as I can.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you.

If the proposed merger between RBC and HSBC is approved, resulting in less competition in the mortgage market, would you expect the number of Canadians seeking alternative loans to increase?

[Romy Bowers]

CMHC has done no work on this area. I cannot comment on that at all, unfortunately. My apologies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mrs. Gray.

Mr. Collins, go ahead for five minutes.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to our witnesses today.

I had the opportunity over the weekend to attend the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association conference in Toronto. Ms. Bowers, I know you were there speaking to many of those in the sector. One issue that came up was the relationship between housing and transit.

I had the opportunity to speak to Mark Richardson from HousingNowTO. He talked about the provincial government's advertisement of lands along the Ontario Line, for which they've recently put out a request for proposals to the development community for two 25-storey towers at one of the transit stops. Mark is a transit advocate, of course. He highlighted the fact that there was no requirement for affordable housing. He raises a good point.

The federal government is a partner in this space in terms of providing infrastructure to the provinces for higher-order transit, which is one of the goals and objectives of the housing accelerator fund. I think we've been pretty successful at that, but we're dealing with a situation of a provincial government that doesn't have the same priorities as our government in terms of looking for additional affordable housing support.

Ms. Bowers, you talked about growing the sector by almost doubling the number of social or affordable housing units we have in the sector. In order to do that, how do we leverage our infrastructure support to the provinces—in this case, the Province of Ontario—to ensure that its goals align with ours on the housing file?

Right now, that's not happening. What needs to happen from a legislative perspective to ensure that this is the case?

[Kelly Gillis]

Thank you, Chair, for the question.

When we look at all of Infrastructure Canada's future programming, since the change in bringing homelessness and CMHC within the portfolio—and this was announced in both budget 2022 and budget 2023—our permanent public transit program, which will be launched and starts flowing funds in 2026, will have a requirement and conditionality with affordable housing.

That said, on Ontario Line, there are discussions. There was a term sheet signed in 2019 regarding affordable housing. We do not have a contribution agreement signed, and there are active discussions with both the municipality and the province on what affordable housing would be brought to bear regarding the four subway lines.

That need to link infrastructure and affordable housing is really important in everything we do from a community perspective. As we look at the next generation of infrastructure programs, that will be a requirement in all of our programming, not just transit. There will also be requirements for housing in the Canada Community-Building Fund, which is being renewed as of April 1, 2024.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

That's great to hear.

Ms. Bowers, you talked about seed funding earlier. I have a lot of organizations that have obviously successfully applied to the national housing strategy for seed funding. That helps organizations that don't have a lot of capacity in terms of staff or resources to undertake the due diligence required in order to receive funding with some of the other programs that we offer under the national housing strategy. I think my friend and colleague, Mr. Van Bynen, mentioned that earlier in terms of the challenges that small organizations face.

Seed funding is important, but you also talked about growing the capacity within the non-profit sector. We need a doubling of units, which you referenced earlier. I know that many of the non-profit organizations in Hamilton have active applications: Indwell, CityHousing Hamilton, Good Shepherd, Mission Services, and the list goes on. They are doing their part and are doing good things with the resources we provide, but if I were to say to them today that we need them to do twice as much, I think they would all look around the table and say that it's not possible, in terms of the size of their organizations and maybe even some of the development expertise they lack in order to make that happen.

What is CMHC doing in terms of trying to grow capacity within the sector to get at the doubling of those units that you referenced that needs to happen by 2030?

[Romy Bowers]

We have a very dedicated group of people at CMHC who are familiar with the real estate development process. We are not a capacity-building organization but an underwriting organization, but to the extent that we have time and resources, we are working with smaller non-profits to help them through the real estate development cycle.

I don't want to call it matchmaking, but we try to sometimes link larger non-profits to smaller ones or even non-profits with for-profit partners who are willing to provide support to the non-profit sector in a pro bono or support capacity.

When I look at international examples, I do think there has been a concerted effort by other countries—for example the U.K.—to increase the capacity of the non-profit sector, but it's not something that happens overnight. I think it's something that we need to be focused on over a number of years to make sure this happens, because the non-profit sector plays such an invaluable part of providing housing for vulnerable Canadians, and we need to provide them with greater support.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

Ms. Chabot for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you.

I want to come back to the issue of non-profit organizations.

I was talking about potential ways to maintain that affordability. CMHC has already considered creating an acquisition fund to allow non-profit organizations to take housing off the private market and ensure they remain that way.

What would be the benefit of such a fund? Has this always been something you've been considering?

[Romy Bowers]

Currently there is no acquisition fund at CMHC. It's something that is not part of the national housing strategy programs, but definitely, if a decision is made in future years to include it, CMHC would be in a position to be able to implement it.

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

Could you see a benefit to creating such a fund, given the situation that has existed for a number of weeks and even years now?

[Romy Bowers]

We have, in Canada as a whole, four million apartment units. Two million of these are condos that are rented out and two million are purpose-built rentals that are aging. It's this aging stock that provides the most affordable housing for Canadians. The purpose of the acquisition fund would be to purchase those aging units and transfer them from the for-profit sector to the non-profit sector. That's the goal. It requires a significant amount of capital. The Province of B.C., for example, has started to do this.

It is something that could be done in the short term to increase the supply of non-profit housing.

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

A colleague talked about the following problem when the minister appeared. Since Ottawa and Quebec haven't reached an agreement on how much needs to be invested, several thousand apartments in Quebec are boarded up and awaiting renovation.

Is it true that CMHC is stopping payment because it refuses to assume the costs, which continue to increase? Already, thousands of apartments could be made available in Quebec alone by July, if an agreement could be reached.

What is holding up this file?

[Romy Bowers]

The national housing co-investment fund, which is one of our flagship financing programs, has a stream for renovation and repairs. The target for the fund is to repair 260,000 units of aging housing stock. To date, we have committed funding to repair 130,000 units.

Unfortunately, I don't have the breakdown for Quebec, but it's part of the program that has been very successful. We're very happy to be supporting the preservation of this aging housing stock.