Human Resources Committee on May 25th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Please state your point of order.

[Marilyn Gladu, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Chair, the minister has been clear that he is not appealing and that the Government of Canada is appealing.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you. That's correct.

Go ahead, Mr. Gunn.

[Aaron Gunn, Conservative, North Island—Powell River, BC]

We asked for clarity. I would love some clarity myself.

Is there a particular reason that, in subsequent agreements with first nations, including the Musqueam agreement in Vancouver, you did not enshrine explicit protections for private property owners?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

It's my understanding that the Musqueam agreement has nothing to do with rights and title, and it certainly has nothing to do with housing and infrastructure.

[Aaron Gunn, Conservative, North Island—Powell River, BC]

There is certainly nothing in there about private property. That was the point I was making.

Minister, there's a bit of confusion about the reason your government is appealing the decision, of course. Do you acknowledge that, if you create uncertainty around private property and fee simple title, you can undermine the property value of individual homeowners?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

As stated by the Minister of Justice, the reason the Government of Canada is appealing is to get clarity with respect to the B.C. Supreme Court ruling. The government disagrees with the ruling.

I will say that many of us disagree with the uncertainty being whipped up by the member and some of his colleagues, who are trying to turn this into a very difficult situation, when we need clarity from the courts.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you. That concludes the time.

Ms. Harrison, you have five minutes.

[Emma Harrison, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you, Minister, for being here. I commend your patience in these situations.

I'm new to this committee, and this is my first opportunity to ask questions. I am delighted to do so because this is a topic I hear about consistently from my constituents in the riding of Peterborough. They cheer our government's commitment to addressing homelessness and getting our fellow citizens a safe place to call home.

Could you elaborate on the work our government is doing to address this issue?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

Which issue? On homelessness specifically, Reaching Home is our primary activity around tackling and preventing homelessness. Reaching Home has a number of different elements.

The unsheltered homelessness and encampments initiative is a component that has been renewed for this year. It is focused on solutions related to encampments and getting people into shelters and housing.

Reaching Home has a number of prevention-related supports, and 200,000 people have been supported by Reaching Home so that they don't become homeless. This program has housed 110,000-plus people. This works through organizations at the community level. It works with the provinces, territories and cities in an integrated way.

Ultimately, community organizations are delivering support for those trying to find housing or those needing support on the street, literally. Outreach workers are supported by this, in many cases, in different communities.

The solution side—and I spoke to this earlier—is about supportive and transitional housing. We have an initial $1 billion at Build Canada Homes. As part of this work, we have several thousand homes being built in communities across the country, and we want to see many more.

We are relying on the provinces to step up with the health funding and the wraparound supports needed to stabilize people in supportive and transitional housing. This is a piece we do in partnership with the provinces. We're pushing hard for more of those partnerships to get more housing built as soon as possible and to get people living in it.

[Emma Harrison, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

You mentioned that the Reaching Home program will be ending in 2028, or it will be continuing in a different iteration, with engagement this summer. Could you elaborate on what the engagement will entail for the national housing strategy?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

As the national housing strategy approaches its closure, we're talking about its renewal this summer. We want to be ahead of the curve to make sure everyone working on delivering housing solutions and supporting work on homelessness.... We want to make sure we send a signal early about how these programs are continuing and how they're scaling up, wherever we are able to do that.

We will be meeting with all partners involved—basically, the levels of government and the community organizations working on the ground—to deliver that support. This is for Reaching Home in particular, but it is also for the other programs that are part of the national housing strategy. We want to make sure we're learning from the past decade, almost, of work. We're making the best decisions going forward and taking into account the current challenges in the housing market. Things have changed over the years.

At the centre of this, now, we have Build Canada Homes as an agency dedicated to affordable housing and working with community builders and the private sector to build affordable housing. The other components of the national housing strategy can wrap around that to make sure we have a comprehensive approach to making housing more affordable.

[Emma Harrison, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

The Canada Infrastructure Bank has been helping support green energy projects across the country.

Could you highlight some of that work and how important it is for our government to be a partner in attracting these investments?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

Thank you for the question.

The Canada Infrastructure Bank has clean power as one of its key elements for investment. There are now 27 clean power projects that have been funded by the Canada Infrastructure Bank out of 108 projects total. Over $18 billion has been invested by the Canada Infrastructure Bank. The total capital value of those projects is almost $55 billion. They have attracted significant private and institutional capital. Over $25 billion in private and institutional capital has been leveraged by that public investment, which is paid back.

The Canada Infrastructure Bank is delivering many projects. Most of those are still under construction. About 10% are now complete, after the past few years of financing and construction, but we're seeing projects start to be completed. Many more are coming, as the transition to clean electricity, in particular, is booming.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Harrison.

Minister, I rarely use my prerogative as chair, but I have a question.

I ask if you could elaborate on this: You referenced “unsheltered homelessness and encampments”. I just began the process of working with a community group in the largest community in my riding on this very issue. The province has been co-operating as well.

What opportunity would we have there?

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

The unsheltered homelessness and encampments initiative was a two-year program that ended in March. The government has now extended it for another year, so there is more funding available to the groups doing the work on the ground. We've seen really good results from the work done by those groups, bringing stability and helping people find housing.

As I mentioned, we have to continue to build the housing that works for people coming off the street or out of encampments. Shelters are not always the best solution, so transitional and supportive housing is a key investment. There is more funding available for the year ahead, through the UHEI.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Okay.

[Gregor Robertson, Liberal, Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, BC]

You can follow up with me for more info.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Minister. It piqued my attention when you referenced it.

This concludes the rounds of questions.

Before we move on, I need to put the following question to the committee.

Shall vote 1, under the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, less the amount of $1,532,929,841.75 granted in the interim supply, carry?

CANADA MORTGAGE AND HOUSING CORPORATION

Vote 1—Reimbursement under the provisions of the National Housing Act and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act..........$6,128,083,371

(Vote 1 agreed to on division)

Shall I report these votes on the main estimates to the House, less the amount voted in interim supply, or would members rather wait until after Thursday's meeting?

[Some hon. members]

Report them to the House.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Okay.

Thank you to the minister and officials for appearing.

We'll suspend while we transition to the next hour.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

I call the meeting back to order.

For those newly joining us, I will review a couple of points.

You have the option to participate in this meeting in the official language of your choice. For those in the room, please select a channel on the headset to get the language in which you will participate. For those appearing virtually, please click on the globe icon at the bottom of your Surface and choose the official language you wish to participate in. If there's an issue with the interpretation, please get my attention. We'll suspend while it's being corrected.

The witnesses appearing virtually have been sound tested in both languages and cleared to participate.

Please direct all questions through me, the chair.

I would like to welcome our three witnesses for this panel.

From the Real Property Association of Canada, appearing in person, we have Michael Brooks, chief executive officer. From the Toronto Community Housing Corporation, we have Sean Baird, president and chief executive officer. From Wesgroup Properties, we have Brad Jones, chief development officer. The latter two are appearing virtually.

Each witness has up to five minutes for their opening statement.

We will begin with Mr. Brooks, who is in the room. You have five minutes.

[Michael Brooks, Chief Executive Officer, Real Property Association of Canada]

Thank you.

REALPAC: Who are we? We're a 55-year-old trade association representing institutional real estate owners, almost every pension fund in Canada, every major TSX-listed real estate REIT and real estate operating company, all the banks and all the lifecos through the lending group. Just call it institutional real estate, generally income-producing real estate, and all asset classes, including multi-family. Our members would own probably a quarter of a million residential units, coast to coast, as long-term holders and investors.

Today you're focused on housing starts in relation to federal housing programs. I want to take a moment for definitions and on what the forward-looking definition ought to be as opposed to housing starts. For those of you who were here when Mr. Moffat spoke, I think he went through a technical definition of what a housing start is. What I would say about housing starts generally is that they're a trailing indicator of economic activity. A housing start represents a decision made two, four or five years ago based on a budget that the developer hoped would come to fruition. When you think about purpose-built rental, how could that be a risky proposition? It's risky because the costs change between the time you commit to the project and the time it's available for rent-up to an end-user.

Headline starts can look healthier than the future pipeline. If you really wanted to have a forward-looking indicator, you would look at sales of new for-sale housing and you would look at commitments to build purpose-built rental, probably through CMHC loan programs. If you look at that data now—I would commend a more recent BMO economics report on this—there are so many purpose-built rental projects under way that we arguably have a bit of an oversupply. We will have a bigger oversupply if we keep the current immigration levels in the years to follow. BMO says there are 180,000 units coming with purpose-built rental projects under construction in this country.

Urbanation says that the vacancy rate in Toronto, the GTHA, is around 5%. The availability rate is around 8%. Economists think the equilibrium rate for purpose-built rental is between 3% and 5%. That's the number at which both sides have choice. We'll have rental units that are vacant, and we'll have perhaps even more aggressive pricing, usually in terms of rent-free periods, as the owners of these apartment buildings hunt for new tenants for these buildings. While the spring economic update announced some increased funding for purpose-built rental loan programs, I'm speculating that some of it might go unused because the demand will wane.

I'm already reading a headline from Nova Scotia that Killam properties says they're not building any more projects. Why? It's because the economics don't work. If you have rents falling, there are rent-free periods that you have to give and the project economics don't then make sense, particularly given the risks, why would you proceed? That's the rental market situation I think we're coming to.

What's happened in our industry is a bit of an immigration whipsaw. Three years ago, we had somewhere between 1.3 million and two million immigrants. That includes temporary foreign workers and students. I've seen both numbers. It's somewhere in between. Rent spiked, as we all know. We had some projections of how much new supply we would need in both for-sale housing and for-rent housing at that time, but again, quoting a more recent BMO economics report, we are now into a net-negative immigration scenario in this country.

How can we be net negative? Well, it's because the international students have to leave and we've cut back on temporary foreign workers. It's easy to see, when you have net-negative immigration, where the renters are.

They're not here, and that's why you're seeing a lot more rent-free periods. We need immigration to be part of the discussion on housing, and it has to be normalized.

Finally, I would talk about demand-side stimulus, the GST rebates. They're very useful, but it's too early to say whether they'll be successful, particularly given that the extra GST rebate ends in March.

I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Brooks. You'll be able to expand on some of your points in the question round.

We'll now go to Mr. Baird for five minutes.

[Sean Baird, President and Chief Executive Officer, Toronto Community Housing Corporation]

Thank you, Chair and members of this committee, for the invitation to appear.

My name is Sean Baird. I'm the president and CEO of Toronto Community Housing Corporation.

TCHC is Canada's largest public housing provider and one of the country's most significant public builders of deeply affordable housing. TCHC is home to more than 100,000 people living in 60,000 homes throughout Toronto.

Our portfolio is a $20-billion public asset that was built over decades with federal and municipal investment, and it represents a major portion of Canada's deeply affordable housing supply.

Since 2019, TCHC has accessed nearly $100 million in federal funding through CMHC's affordable housing fund, and we have built more than 10,000 homes in recent history.

We are not only a housing provider; we're a fully integrated solution to the housing crisis, with the ability to repair, manage and build affordable housing at scales unmatched in Canada. That capacity matters, because the issue before us is not only how much housing Canada can build but also whether we can maintain and preserve what we already have.

I want to acknowledge the framing of this study. Housing starts in relation to federal programs is the right question, but if we focus only on housing starts, we risk missing the most urgent housing crisis in the country today: the loss of deeply affordable housing that already exists.

At Toronto Community Housing Corporation, without renewed investment, our capital repair backlog is projected to reach $4.7 billion by 2034. The share of our units that are in critical condition would rise from 4% to 54% over the next decade, leading to 30,000 homes in disrepair. Even a historic surge in new housing construction starts would struggle to replace that loss.

We have solved this problem once before. In 2019, the federal government committed $1.34 billion in funding under the national housing strategy, and together we reset the life cycle of thousands of homes to newbuild levels. This history is true for most other affordable housing providers across Canada as well.

Prevention is far more cost-effective than rebuilding, and every unit we lose is one we will struggle to replace in the future. At today's cost, replacing a deeply affordable unit requires significant upfront public capital and generates no capacity to service debt.

This brings me to my second point: Deeply affordable housing cannot be financed exclusively through loans.

This is not primarily about interest rates; it's about economics. A household that is paying rent geared to income at 30% of a modest income simply does not generate the returns required to repay a housing loan. Even highly favourable financing cannot bridge that gap.

Federal loan-based programs are effective for market housing and moderate-income housing, but they do not produce housing for the lowest-income Canadians at a rent-geared-to-income level. Only capital grants and direct contributions can do that, and we welcome the focus of Build Canada Homes on deeply affordable housing supply.

We see this in practice all the time. Even on publicly owned land and with municipal support and preferential financing, deeply affordable housing projects still require substantial upfront government investment. Without it, they simply cannot proceed.

This matters at a system level. Canada's social housing stock represents approximately 3% to 4% of total housing in the country. In other OECD countries, the average is closer to 7%, so we're just over half of that average. We're not close to that, and we're not currently on track to close that gap.

My recommendations are relatively straightforward.

First, renew and expand federal capital funding for the repair and preservation of existing public housing, with a clear commitment well beyond 2027.

Second, establish a dedicated deeply affordable housing stream within federal programs, structured explicitly as capital grants, not just loans.

Third, measure success not only by housing starts but also by units preserved, by depth of affordability and by the number of Canadians paying no more than 30% of their income for housing. Show the full measure of the positive impact we can have on Canadians.

When deeply affordable housing is lost, pressures increase across health care, shelters and social services. Labour mobility declines and employers struggle to find workers. Public costs rise, often far beyond what would have been the cost to provide the housing in the first place.

Housing starts matter, but so does maintaining the housing that we have. Together we can preserve those homes, protect those households and avoid much larger social and economic costs in the future.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.