Evidence of meeting #22 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 units.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Natilien Joseph Liberal Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
A lot of people in my riding are talking to me about non-market housing accounting for 40%. People would like you to be a little more specific.
What does “non-market” mean?
Will it be housing for a homeless clientele or for public servants, for example?
Chief Executive Officer, Build Canada Homes
For the 40% of housing, we're going to work with local non-profit organizations that will operate it for us. We'll look very closely at the local needs and working with the non-profits, and we will respond to the populations to serve the people who need it the most in those local communities.
We look forward to working with the non-profit sector and in your community to make sure we respond to the needs and have these services as well from the non-profit organizations.
Liberal
Liberal
Natilien Joseph Liberal Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
What role does Build Canada Homes play specifically in funding and implementing—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Mr. Joseph, your time is up.
That was a good try.
Ms. Larouche, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Let's talk about homelessness, since my colleague brought it up.
This is an issue for the city of Granby and the region.
Earlier this month, I met with organizations at their request. They work with people experiencing homelessness and deplore the fact that the encampment program will not be renewed.
For an organization, that means $30,000 less, after all. In other words, they're losing $30,000. For another organization, that means three or four fewer beds. Those are concrete spaces. Fewer people will receive services from those organizations because the program will not be renewed.
Those organizations told me about the comparison with the step principle. They are told that there is the Reaching Home program and Build Canada Homes.
I want to point out two things.
First of all, people don't see Build Canada Homes as a solution. They need homelessness funding to be able to provide emergency beds. Despite what you believe, before people get to the homes from Build Canada Homes, even if they are supervised, the organizations need this crucial funding. It's a principle. It's about what steps need to be taken before getting there. They need that funding.
Then they are told that, in any case, there is the Reaching Home program and Build Canada Homes, but there is no new opening in terms of communities, and Granby is not a designated community.
I'd like to hear what you have to say about the connection between Build Canada Homes and homelessness.
In my region, organizations need a homelessness program. For them, Build Canada Homes may be a step too far or a much higher step.
Janet Goulding Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Housing and Homelessness Branch, Department of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities
Thank you for the question.
The program I think you were talking about was two years of funding under the unsheltered homelessness initiative, or perhaps you were referring to Reaching Home, the federal homelessness program.
The program targeting encampments had two years of funding. The idea behind the program, when it was launched, was that it would help support capital investments in things like transitional and supportive housing. However, in the province of Quebec, they chose not to invest in capital investments, which was really the intent of the program, but instead invested more in services.
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
This announcement was made in the middle of December, when winter was coming and people were going to be spending winter on the streets.
Liberal
Conservative
Scott Aitchison Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to talk to you about a couple of specific things.
I understand that you have a call coming up with an organization that I had the opportunity to visit while I was in Calgary on the weekend. It's called the Calgary Drop-In Centre. It's truly an amazing organization. What I particularly love about what they're doing is that they are aggressively working to find permanent housing for clients, as opposed to...just constantly cycling through the shelter system. I really admire people who recognize that the job, ultimately, is to put themselves out of business if they can, and that's their effort. I know you have a call or a meeting planned with them, and I will take the opportunity to say that I hope it goes very well, that you find a way to work with them. Maybe we can help other shelters operate in a similar kind of way. I just throw that out there.
I don't often do this, but there's another specific project that I'd like to mention to you. I think it represents the possibility of a model that can help housing within other organizations. You're probably familiar with a couple of different Legions across the country that have redeveloped: Sault Ste. Marie is a good example, and there's one in Toronto, I know, and in the city of Calgary. In my riding of Parry Sound—Muskoka, there's a very small community called Bala. It's tiny, but they have a 75-year-old Legion that is well past its best-before date, and its president just so happens to be Dennis Mills, a former Liberal member of Parliament—and we get along famously. They are working very hard, in a little place like Bala, to redevelop that Legion site to have 125 units of housing, much of which will be affordable.
Of course, they've been ready to go. The municipality was all on board. They got things done quickly, which doesn't always happen. They submitted things to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and now it has been bumped over to your agency. They're not looking for huge grants, of course, because these things actually generate some revenue. They're looking for affordable financing. This is one of the tools that, I'm told, you have available to you, so I'd love to encourage you to look specifically at this Bala Legion project.
I wonder, though, whether you'd be interested in looking at something more broadly with Dominion Command. A lot of these Legions, especially in rural communities—which I think have been largely neglected on the housing file for the last 10 years—are old Legions with dwindling membership and old buildings that are in a state of disrepair. I see this as an opportunity not just to create new housing but also to save the Legion. I'm wondering whether you'd be interested in looking at such a model, which works collaboratively to redevelop Legions and provide thousands of housing units at the same time, without huge grants.
Chief Executive Officer, Build Canada Homes
Absolutely, I would. This is exactly the model that, with the flexibility we have at Build Canada Homes, allows us to work with organizations such as Legions. It is ideal because they come with land as well. We know the different components of the cost of housing, and dipping more into those—taking out the land costs, taxes and financing costs—is how we create the affordability.
When you have a program, such as the Legions or.... The United Church, for example, created its own corporation years ago to develop its own lands. These are the kinds of things that we can partner with and support.
We are seeing very interesting proposals coming to us: For example, small rural municipalities are getting together, with their own lands, and then coming together with one of the development managers—because it's hard for a smaller municipality—and creating the capacity.
This is the flexibility that Build Canada Homes brings to the table, to work with and to give certainty to those models, because we have flexible tools. We're not a program. We're not just a grant or financing. We can come at it in different ways and foster partnerships and bigger models.
Conservative
Scott Aitchison Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON
We're almost out of time, so I have another quick question for you. Can you give me a sense of timelines for organizations like the Bala Legion, which have submitted their proposal to your office? What kinds of timelines are we looking at? What should we expect in terms of a response to the Bala Legion?
Chief Executive Officer, Build Canada Homes
We do a very initial response. We just set up at the end of November. For example, right now we have about 400 proposals in progress, so the organization started and they haven't completed the submission. Number one is the completed submission. The moment the proposal is complete, our goal is to—between 30 and 60 days—start engaging with the proponent.
Sometimes we find, as well, that we might not be able to engage in exactly the way that they're coming to us, so we initiate the dialogue and put on the table, “Maybe, if you look at it in a different way, and maybe, if we look at it and we can't come with such big financing, we'd do more of a bridge loan or a grant.” We try to work with the proponent to unlock the project and to make it work.
Conservative
Scott Aitchison Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON
Thank you. This is my official invitation to Bala. Come visit us.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Thank you, Mr. Aitchison.
The subject matter is most interesting, and I agree with you on the opportunity with Legions across the country.
With that, we'll move to Ms. Fancy for five minutes.
Liberal
Jessica Fancy-Landry Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you very much.
Through you, Chair, it's nice to have you here, Ms. Bailão.
I'm one of the Nova Scotia MPs, except I'm not from the HRM. I'm from a couple of hours away from HRM. It's nice to hear the word “rural” thrown around here today.
I'm going to talk about a story within my riding of South Shore—St. Margarets and then ask you a couple of questions about rural-centric policy and development with Build Canada Homes. As you said earlier, we need the speed, the scale and the innovation.
I've been talking with a lot of the developers in my area. So far, so good, but there are a few concerns that are developing as we get the portal and the structures and supports in place for Build Canada Homes. For example, in terms of rural advocacy and a rural lens, a lot of the developers are stalled in my area right now because they got proposals in, but they're feeling the lack of criteria. There are places in my riding where they're saying you need sidewalks, public transit and street lights, which we don't really have in rural Nova Scotia.
My colleague across the way talked about 100 units. For us, in our community, a development of 20, 30 or 40 units is huge. I wanted to get that out there in terms of some of the feedback that I'm receiving within my riding, to help support local needs.
You mentioned collating the municipalities for a larger application, similar to what we're seeing happen in New Brunswick, but the reality is that it's going to fall through when you're dealing with that many fingers in the pot and trying to get everybody together.
I'm asking, how do I have a small municipality or a small non-profit that can't compete on an application basis because they can't afford the $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000 for a consultant to help put applications together? Once again, I'm advocating for that.
I was at two or three of the round tables with the minister this summer, where I had brought quite a few developers that deal with affordable housing and deal with efficiency, especially efficiency in Nova Scotia, and gave a lot of great feedback. Now, as I'm seeing a lot of the policy and development and as things roll out, nothing of what they were talking about that we need for rural Nova Scotia or rural communities throughout the country is tabled in a lot of this. I wanted to put that out there to advocate for them.
For Canadians, municipalities or industry partners who may not understand the Build Canada Homes model coming from that CMHC model, can you please address the housing crisis and how you would describe the agency's mandate for structure in a rural approach in a way that clearly communicates purpose, objectives and mechanisms? We represent 40%, and we really want to have a piece of the pie.
Thank you.
Chief Executive Officer, Build Canada Homes
Thank you.
Let's be clear. When we were talking about the proposals, one of the internal discussions we had was scale. We want to build at scale.
Scale is very different in different communities. We purposefully don't have a minimum, because 10 units in a rural community can be a huge scale. It's not the same as 10 units in Ottawa, for example. We do not look at a rural community the same way as we look at an urban community. They can come on their own.
The reason we're seeing some municipalities coming together is more a resource and convenience than our imposing on them. They know that, because they could come and have some certainty of funds; they could most likely have the resources available and the funding available coming together. We are not imposing that.
Another thing is that we're very different from CMHC. We act on a part of the continuum in terms of the transitional, all the way to.... I say the middle when we start working with a private development to create affordable housing, but we are focused on affordable housing.
Another difference is that CMHC is a financial institution with great programs for finance and insurance. We are partners. We are here to work with your non-profit organizations, developers and rural communities to partner. We need proposals. We don't have a check box to go check, check, check. We have the needs of the community and how we respond and unlock those projects to create the affordability the community needs.
Liberal
Jessica Fancy-Landry Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you so much for that.
It's good to see that I have you on record now. I hope you'll pull through for us in rural Canada.
Liberal
Jessica Fancy-Landry Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Oh, I didn't actually talk about the budget.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Just a moment. We're going to do another round.
It's not a complete round. We'll do five and five and two and a half for the Bloc.
Now, for the official opposition, we have Mr. Aitchison.
Conservative
Scott Aitchison Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON
Lucky you: I get to go again.
Ms. Bailão, during the election campaign, the Prime Minister talked about cutting development charges. He seemed to understand that local government charges and fees are a major impediment to getting homes built and making sure they are a bit cheaper for consumers to purchase.
Is Build Canada Homes involved in any part of this? We haven't heard anything more about it since then. I wonder if your agency is going to be part of that process. Is that part of your mandate?
Chief Executive Officer, Build Canada Homes
No. That's not part of our mandate—