Evidence of meeting #32 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 non-market.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Mr. Chair, I'd like to speak, if I may.
Basically, the source of this frustration comes from you cancelling an hour of study on a long-awaited bill last Tuesday without consulting the vice-chairs, a major decision, even though there was consensus on this bill at committee. We did good work and wanted to move forward quickly, out of respect for bereaved parents.
Will you formally commit to consulting the vice-chairs before cancelling an hour of a meeting on the clause-by-clause consideration of a long-awaited bill?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Thank you for your intervention, Ms. Larouche.
Yes, I will as we go.
I want to clearly establish where we're at. There was a matter of privilege that was raised at the meeting on Monday. It was with regard to my changing the agenda of the meeting.
Let me read to you, for the committee—
Conservative
Rosemarie Falk Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.
Conservative
Rosemarie Falk Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK
I thought it was non-debatable.
I challenged what you ruled, and that's non-debatable. Now we're entering into debate and conversation, when it should go straight to a vote. This seems like almost another breach of privilege. We challenged your—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Ms. Falk, bring yourself to order, please. Thank you.
I'm establishing this clearly so that everybody knows the administrative responsibilities of the chair under paragraph 20.33 of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, fourth edition. The chair “decides on the agenda for the meeting while respecting the instructions of the committee; cancels scheduled meetings or modifies agendas if an unexpected development makes this necessary and there is no opportunity for the committee to consider the matter”.
It was in my scope as the chair. I rescheduled that part of the agenda to today when I found we would have the resources to do it. Bill C-222 will be at the committee in the last hour of this meeting.
You did challenge that, Ms. Falk, which is your prerogative, just as any committee member has the prerogative to do, as a matter of privilege. As I said, the chair does not rule on points of privilege. However, if the committee, by majority, feels that privilege was violated, then the committee would have to make a motion to refer the issue that was viewed as a violation of privilege to the Speaker of the House, and the Speaker would then make the ruling.
That's where we're at.
Now we're voting on it. To be clear, I'll get the clerk to read the dilatory motion that was moved by Ms. Falk.
The Clerk of the Committee Alexandre Longpré
The chair made a decision that it was not a point of privilege. Ms. Falk has challenged that decision.
The motion that we are voting on is this: Shall the decision of the chair be sustained?
(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 5; nays 4)
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
The decision of the chair has been upheld by the majority of the committee. Thank you. That will allow us to resume to the scheduled agenda item of today.
Before we begin with our witnesses, do we have agreement to adopt the budget for the Bill C-20 study, which we're undertaking now? It's $23,450. It was circulated to all of the members in advance, with time for you to have consulted every line in the budget.
Do we have agreement on the budget?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Thank you. That's good, because if we don't have a budget, the meeting will end. We'll follow the rules.
With regard to the witnesses appearing this morning, we have Alexi White, director of systems change, Maytree; Dr. Mike Moffatt, founding director, Missing Middle Initiative; and Suzanne Faiza, policy and research manager, Tapestry Community Capital.
Each witness has five minutes for their opening statement.
We'll begin with Mr. White.
Alexi White Director, Systems Change, Maytree
Hello. Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee on this matter.
Maytree is a Toronto-based human rights organization dedicated to advancing systemic solutions to poverty. We believe the most enduring way to keep people out of poverty is to reimagine and rebuild our public systems to respect, protect and fulfill the economic and social rights of every person in Canada.
In 2019, the National Housing Strategy Act declared that housing policy in Canada will be guided by the “fundamental human right” to housing. My remarks today will argue that the establishment of Build Canada Homes will further this important project.
Canada's housing shortage is urgent and systemic and solving it will require more than incremental policy change. However, our history proves that we can act quickly and decisively at scale when there is political will. That's why Canada must treat the housing crisis as a nation-building project comparable to populating the Prairies or to the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Solving big problems requires bold ideas and coordinated large-scale federal leadership. The establishment of Build Canada Homes represents an opportunity to bring this same approach to addressing today's housing crisis.
The past decade of Canadian housing policy has been an attempt to build more housing through a series of subsidies to private and non-profit housing developers. While this has had positive effects at the margins, it has failed to create new housing on a scale commensurate with the magnitude of the crisis.
The reason the government is reluctant to do what is necessary to build at scale is that there are real limits on how much the treasury can afford to spend to incentivize others to build. That's why Maytree has recommended a different approach, based on the simple fact of government accounting. Giving away land and money for housing depletes the treasury. Investing in housing on government-owned land grows the treasury by creating an asset on the government's books that offsets the upfront investment. Government itself does not have to build or operate the housing. This can be contracted to those with expertise.
Consider, for example, if Build Canada Homes were to contract with non-market developers to build on government land, with the resulting housing managed by a non-profit provider. The government would retain ownership of the built asset and depreciation costs would be offset by rental income remitted annually by the operator. Like a toll on a new bridge, those with homes would pay rent to cover the expenses booked by the government over the life of the asset.
By removing or reducing the typical land and financing costs, and by eliminating profit margins through partnerships with non-profit developers and operators, BCH could make these projects viable at rents well below market rates.
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—
Liberal
Caroline Desrochers Liberal Trois-Rivières, QC
On a point of order, the witness is speaking really fast. It's hard to follow—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
To follow the interpretation...? Okay.
Can you continue, Mr. White?
Director, Systems Change, Maytree
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.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Thank you, Mr. White.
We'll now go to Dr. Moffatt for five minutes, please.
Mike Moffatt Founding Director, Missing Middle Initiative
Thank you for having me here today.
First, I would like to congratulate the federal government on the recent agreements with the Province of Ontario to provide a full HST rebate on homes under $1 million and to cut development charges by up to half. The combined impact of these moves will cut the costs of new homes by 15% to 20%, and make new homes competitive with resale homes, which will increase housing starts. Since these are temporary measures, the Missing Middle Initiative encourages all governments to use this time to first extend these agreements to other provinces, but also to enact further reforms to drive down the costs of building new homes.
Earlier this year, the CMHC released projections showing that housing starts will fall in each of the next three years. The HST and DC reforms will help reverse that trend, but they are insufficient to reach the government's 500,000 annual housing start target. We would encourage the federal government to take further action, such as implementing the MURB reforms promised during the 2025 election. We would also encourage the government to develop a goal, and not just a target, to address the middle-class housing crisis.
I'm here to today to discuss Bill C-20 and Build Canada Homes, which can be important pieces in achieving the government's housing target. We believe that there is merit to BCH's approach of using federal land to build housing that the market otherwise would not, while simultaneously using government procurement as a tool to drive innovation.
Missing Middle, however, has significant concerns around implementation and transparency. BCH lacks a clear goal, lacks targets and lacks key performance indicators and accountability measures. The public has not been told how many homes the program will complete, what types of homes, what the rents or prices will be, and over what time frame. I can't tell you, five years from now, whether or not BCH has been working, as there are no benchmarks for success. That's a problem.
Our team is also concerned about the lack of transparency regarding the unit mix to be created, and that those homes will not meet the needs of larger families. In Canada in 2021, there were roughly 300,000 households with five or more persons who rented their homes. Over half of this group lived in unsuitably small housing, according to the federal government's national occupancy standard, and of those approximately 150,000 families living in unsuitable housing, to meet the government's standard, 78% needed a home with four or more bedrooms. Despite this, we do not know what proportion of homes built by BCH will be large enough to suit these families.
However, what we do know is concerning. In BCH's investment policy framework, project proponents are encouraged to, “leverage the [CMHC's] Housing Design Catalogue” in their proposals. However, in that design catalogue, for Ontario, only one of 21 units has four bedrooms, with 16 of the 21 having two bedrooms or fewer. This leaves us concerned that BCH will build few homes that are suitable for larger families. We encourage the government to provide greater transparency regarding the types and sizes of the units to be created, and to not forget that households come in all shapes and sizes, including multi-generational families.
Thank you for your time.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Thank you, Dr. Moffatt.
We will now go to Ms. Faiza for five minutes, please.
Suzanne Faiza Manager, Policy and Research, Tapestry Community Capital
Good morning. Thank you for having me here.
Tapestry is a national non-profit. Our job is to help other non-profits, charities and co-ops raise investment directly from their communities to finance affordable housing, renewable energy, art spaces and more. To date we have helped more than 60 organizations raise over $135 million in community bonds from over 4,000 investors. Right now, we're working with 26 affordable housing providers across Canada, seeking to raise $161 million to create or acquire more than 5,000 units of affordable housing. This is work that CMHC has recognized twice through its housing supply challenge.
What is a community bond? A community bond is a loan that everyday Canadians make directly to a local non-profit or co-op to, for example, build or buy affordable housing. This is paid back with interest over time. Instead of your money sitting in a bank, it's building homes in your community with a return to you.
Community bonds matter, because they fill financing gaps that government programs and conventional lenders leave unmet. They do it at a lower cost of capital, because the investors are mission- and impact-focused. This matters at scale. Canadians hold approximately $3.49 trillion in retail savings and assets, so redirecting even 1% of that is roughly $30 billion for community housing and infrastructure.
I can show you how this works. Indwell, a supportive housing provider in southern Ontario, raised $6 million from 68 investors in five months to bridge pre-construction financing gaps for four projects and is now launching a subsequent $15-million campaign. Places for People, a small rural housing provider in Ontario, raised $850,000 in 10 weeks. It let them acquire eight more units in just two years, after spending 12 years acquiring their first 12.
Community bond raises are typically between $1 million and $15 million. To reach scale, these raises do need to be bundled. That's exactly why we built the Weave Community Capital Fund, a $30-million fund that pools institutional capital across multiple community bond issuers. This fund improves housing providers' access to the larger financing they need to grow their impact.
We are pleased to see Build Canada Homes established through Bill C-20. It's the right institution for this moment, especially if it scales non-market housing. Here's the good news: Clause 20 already broadly gives BCH the power to invest in entities by acquiring their securities. Community bonds and intermediaries like Weave are exactly like that, but the bill gives BCH the power and not the direction. As community bonds and intermediaries like Weave are not explicitly named in clause 20, there is no guarantee that BCH will prioritize these tools. BCH's underwriting could choose to not treat community bonds as legitimate instruments.
This matters because intermediaries like Weave invest directly alongside housing providers who hold community bonds. That creates two key risks. First, BCH could impose deal structures that strip everyday Canadian investors of their rights. Second, BCH could prevent community bonds from stacking alongside its financing altogether. That's the gap we're here to close.
We have two simple asks. The first is an amendment to clause 20 to explicitly name community bonds and community finance intermediaries as eligible instruments and entities that BCH can invest in and lend alongside. The second is a commitment from relevant ministers to issue a directive to BCH on how to work with these tools in practice. This includes investing in intermediaries like Weave and allowing community bonds to stack cleanly alongside BCH loans and equity. Such a directive would allow BCH's capital and community capital to work alongside—together and better.
Canada has a housing crisis and $3.49 trillion in savings looking for somewhere meaningful to go. Build Canada Homes, designed well, can connect the two not just by financing homes but also by giving everyday Canadians a proper stake in solving the crisis in their own communities. We're asking this committee to make sure that Bill C-20 gives BCH the direction it needs to get there.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Thank you, Ms. Faiza.
We'll now go to member questioning.
The six-minute round will begin with Mr. Aitchison.
Conservative
Scott Aitchison Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses. I know two of you. It's nice to see you. Thanks for being here.
My first question is actually for you, Mr. White. It's nice to meet you as well. You made a statement in your opening comments that investing in housing on government lands for building makes a lot of sense. Did you say that?