Evidence of meeting #19 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Vincent Ho Conservative Richmond Hill South, ON
Minister, you're spending $219 million per year on a fourth housing bureaucracy, the so-called Build Canada Homes. What does it do that the last three Liberal housing bureaucracies couldn't do?
You're burning through the equivalent of $4 million per week, and this isn't money for housing or for municipalities. This is money just to pay the salaries of bureaucrats and other overheads. I want to get an understanding of where that money is going.
Liberal
Gregor Robertson Liberal Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC
Build Canada Homes is a new agency that is scaling up the investments in affordable housing across Canada and offering to our builders, our homebuilding partners, a one-stop shop for them to advance their affordable housing projects as fast as they can.
Conservative
Vincent Ho Conservative Richmond Hill South, ON
What has this new Liberal bureaucracy achieved in the last week, would you say?
Liberal
Gregor Robertson Liberal Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC
Well, we've already announced a whole set of projects: six locations across Canada on Canada Lands Company federal land.
Conservative
Vincent Ho Conservative Richmond Hill South, ON
What does it do that other bureaucracies that preceded it could not do?
Liberal
Liberal
Gregor Robertson Liberal Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC
Build Canada Homes is focused on affordable housing.
The Government of Canada has not had an agency for many decades that's entirely focused on affordable housing. It has been spread among a number of different agencies and departments. What we want to do is make sure that we have focus and that we have a nimble organization that can get affordable housing built at scale as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
Conservative
Vincent Ho Conservative Richmond Hill South, ON
The $219 million doesn't seem very nimble to me or to the average Canadian taxpayer.
Liberal
Gregor Robertson Liberal Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC
I think it will be a very efficient use of taxpayer dollars when you stack it up against the volume of affordable housing that is going to be built in these years to come. I think it will be a great investment.
Liberal
Jessica Fancy-Landry Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Robertson, for being here today.
The thing I'm most excited about in Build Canada Homes for my families in South Shore—St. Margarets in Nova Scotia is the build communities strong fund. I'd like to give you the rest of my time today. This is what excites me. What excites you about this fund?
Liberal
Gregor Robertson Liberal Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC
The build communities strong fund is a $51-billion fund that is in budget 2025 and really is focused on housing-enabling infrastructure that can accelerate the housing we build across the country: water, waste water and stormwater infrastructure. There's a community stream that is basically the Canada community-building fund, CCBF, evolving into this new stream. That is delivering a wide variety of infrastructure at a community level, giving a lot of flexibility to communities and going direct....
We also have a provincial-territorial stream. That stream is also addressing health and education needs at a provincial and territorial level, and again, in a lot of flexibility and partnerships with the provinces and territories. They will work with local governments through that stream as well as a direct delivery stream that, again, goes straight to communities for regionally significant infrastructure.
It's a very large, new infrastructure investment across government focused on those partnerships with other levels of government at a big scale, but also having flexibility and making sure that we're doing everything we can to tie it to getting more housing and complete communities built that support that housing.
Liberal
Jessica Fancy-Landry Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
For me, as a former educator, I know that seeing us helping out with the schools is going to be huge for communities in my area.
Thank you, Minister.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Thank you, Ms. Fancy.
Finally, I give the floor to Mrs. Gill for two minutes.
Bloc
Marilène Gill Bloc Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, I have one last question to ask about the government’s objectives with respect to Build Canada Homes and, more specifically, about the needs of the different clients. Earlier, you mentioned students but we could also include persons with disabilities looking for accessible or adaptable housing, or even seniors.
What does the government intend to do through this program to serve that population as well?
Liberal
Gregor Robertson Liberal Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC
Thank you for your question. That's very important to us.
We need to be sure that we're addressing accessibility. With proposals coming in, we are providing a lot of flexibility. Proposals come in and will be vetted against the investment policy, which has all of these criteria. Accessibility is an important criteria. We want to make sure that we meet accessibility standards for those Canadians—that's a critical part of what we build—as well as for seniors and youth.
There will be a constant review of the balance of projects and what they're delivering for Canadians to make sure that we are reaching everybody with the affordable housing and types of housing that are needed for those people.
Bloc
Marilène Gill Bloc Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC
Does this mean that the government has a specific objective with respect to this program, or will it fund projects based on the requests it receives through calls for proposals? Will funds be set aside for certain types of housing? There’s a strong demand for accessible or adaptable housing, for example. I would also reiterate that an adaptable housing unit and an accessible housing unit are two different things. That's very important to the groups that reached out to us.
Liberal
Caroline Desrochers Liberal Trois-Rivières, QC
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, in addition to calling into question the integrity of the clerk last week, at the last meeting, they've just called into question the non-partisan, well-established nature of the public service.
This is absolutely unacceptable. This is a slippery slope, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
Liberal
Caroline Desrochers Liberal Trois-Rivières, QC
I told you not to call [Inaudible—Editor] be negative about the public servants—
Liberal
Caroline Desrochers Liberal Trois-Rivières, QC
—by calling them [Inaudible—Editor]. That's unacceptable.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Members, order, please.
Madame Gill, did you conclude your question?