Other nations, such as Austria, Demark, Finland and France, have used similar direct build policies to create a sustainable stock of non-market rental housing. This same model could also be applied to acquisitions of market buildings or conversions of other buildings to residential use, provided the government remains the owner of the asset.
Military bases are an obvious place to start. Our military needs hundreds of thousands of new housing units, and these projects are a perfect way to demonstrate that we can deliver at scale through innovative techniques. Importantly, all expenditures would count toward Canada's NATO targets.
There's no need to stop at what the military needs for its own use. About a dozen bases in Canada are close to major urban centres, as are many more defunct bases and stations. BCH could build two or three times the needed housing and rent the surplus in the non-military market.
For these reasons, Maytree has for several years called for the creation of a government agency tasked with developing housing on public land. That's Build Canada Homes.
Already, $3.1 billion of the first $13 billion that will be invested through Build Canada Homes is earmarked for asset development. As the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer noted when examining BCH's spending plans, “Some cash expenditures do not affect the budgetary balance” and “BCH asset development expenditures increase the value of federal properties by acquiring new properties or building new residential structures on those properties.”
This is an important start. It represents a new mechanism for building housing at scale without breaking the bank, but we need to be bolder. Rather than allocating $3.1 billion over five years, Maytree-funded research suggests that we could increase this by a factor of 10 or more—delivering tens of thousands of new government-owned non-market rental units every year—and make no impact on Canada's deficit. We have the solutions. Build Canada Homes is the institution that can manage these bold new initiatives.
If there is a place where the legislation could be strengthened, it would be to make explicit that Build Canada Homes will advance the right to housing. The rights of the Crown, the rights of other agencies and the rights of BCH are all mentioned. Surely, there is space to recognize the rights of each of us as well.
I mentioned earlier that the National Housing Strategy Act declares that the right to adequate housing is to guide Canada's housing policy. For Canada to comply with its own legislation, we must apply a human rights lens to the daily work of managing housing policy and programs in Canada, including through BCH. Thus, we ask that the legislation be amended to include the progressive realization of the right to housing as an explicit and central component of the BCH mandate.
The practical implication of this change would be to make sure that BCH develops the capacity to apply human rights-based approaches to all aspects of its work—for example, through robust targets, metrics and reporting that drive measurable results for priority populations.
Thank you for your time.