Public Accounts Committee on May 18th, 2023

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Okay, perfect.

When I'm travelling across the country and speaking to friends and family.... There is a project, I think in downtown Toronto, with prefabricated housing. It's something very unique.

The zoning and some of the permitting processes take a long time. We're looking forward to seeing some of the funding through the housing accelerator fund from the federal government being used at the municipal levels. We know there's a bottleneck there on the municipal side to get some of those permitting processes to be more efficient and faster. A lot of my constituents are looking forward to that.

Can you speak to some of the innovation you've seen across the country?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

There is absolutely a lot of effort being made by local governments to speed up the permitting process, the delivery of housing, but also to adopt inclusionary zoning policies that will encourage more density and a healthier mix of housing. It's also focusing on transit-oriented development, building more densely around transit nodes so that you take advantage of access to transit and other community services.

I think the housing accelerator fund will definitely help with all those efforts that are already under way. Recently, the City of Toronto passed a council resolution that allows single-family homes to build up to four units in a multiplex fashion across the city, as a right. That's a big step forward. A number of other communities are taking similar approaches.

We need more housing supply in Canada. We have the fastest-growing population in the G7. We have a very low housing supply of all types. We need to encourage that, and the housing accelerator fund will help us get there.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much. That is the time.

Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné, you have the floor.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll be fairly brief because I have a notice of motion to file now. The motion reads as follows:

That the Committee request that the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics forward to the Committee all documents and correspondence received from Ms. Pascale Fournier, ex-President and CEO of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

I will yield the rest of my speaking time to my colleague.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

This information will be forwarded to the members and the motion will be set for deliberation on Monday.

Mr. Trudel, you have the floor.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Mr. Minister. We've seen each other often recently. We met for half an hour on Monday evening. Let me tell you, you're certainly determined to get the job done. It's a pleasure to meet you and to talk to you again.

Housing and homelessness go hand in hand. They are closely connected, and part of a continuum. Basically, we want to find housing for people in Canada. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, released a study you're familiar with, since you yourself quoted from it this past Monday evening in the House of Commons committee of the whole. The study says we need to build 3.5 million homes in Canada by 2030 to address affordability and accessibility. The study dates back to June 2022.

This year's budget includes investments in Indigenous housing in rural and northern communities, but no new funding to increase the supply of housing in Canada.

Given this figure of 3.5 million housing units, which is a major amount, do you have an action plan? At any rate, do you plan to meet this target by 2030?

[Nadine Leblanc, Senior Vice-President, Policy, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation]

Mr. Chair, I'll answer the question, if I may.

The CMHC did produce a study indicating that we need 3.5 million units by 2030. We just launched the housing accelerator fund, which is designed to help build over 100,000 units. That was just announced.

The national housing strategy has helped us build over 118,000 units. We have also repaired 298,000 units.

I'd like to mention that 95% of housing in Canada is built and delivered by the private sector. Meeting that target will require a collective effort from all three levels of government, the private sector and home construction businesses.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

If I understand correctly, we're going to build 100,000 units by 2030, but we would need to build 3.5 million units. Is that right?

[Nadine Leblanc]

Mr. Chair, the housing accelerator fund will help build 100,000 housing units over five to seven years.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Okay.

According to a CMHC economist, Quebec will need 1.1 million housing units over the next 10 years. You talked about the private sector building 500,000. We will need them one way or another, because the private sector won't do all the work, that is to say it won't build all the housing. The private sector is building condos everywhere, but that doesn't help us in terms of affordability.

The programs the government is putting in place don't solve the problem of housing affordability. In Quebec alone, the private sector is going to build 500,000 units. All levels of government must work together to build 600,000 housing units in Quebec over the next 10 years to address affordability and accessibility issues.

Can we meet that target? Has a supplementary plan or another approach also been proposed to address the problem?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Right now, Canada is building about 200,000 units a year, but we know that's not enough to meet the demand for affordable housing. That's why the 2022 budget introduces measures so we can double that number over the next decade. More than $14 billion in additional federal funding has been allocated to help create more housing.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

How many housing units will be created, Mr. Minister?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

We will double the number of housing units.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

How many housing units does that represent?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

We will build 3.5 million housing units.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Will 3.5 million housing units be built over the next 10 years, Mr. Minister?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Absolutely.

When you add the private sector and our efforts, it's 3.5 million additional homes. Just to add to what Ms. Nadine said, with the housing accelerator fund, the 100,000 figure is just the immediate acceleration and the unlocking of that, but the systems changes that the program will fund over five years are supposed to set Canada up for a doubling of the number of homes that we currently build. That's the plan, and the idea is that those systems changes will outlive the program.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Okay.

According to the National Housing Council, 115,000 have been built since the national housing strategy was introduced. You say we're going to build 250,000, but we need 3.5 million units.

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

I think you're referring to the 150,000 for affordable housing, not all the homes. I think that's what you're referring to. Is that correct?

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Not quite, Mr. Minister.

In fact, the National Housing Council said the opposite. It says that 115,000 housing units have been built. However, for those in core housing need or those experiencing homelessness, the vast majority of housing being built is not affordable, and the subsidies administered through the Canada housing benefit are having zero effect. According to the National Housing Council, which is responsible for overseeing the strategy, we're not making it right now.

Will all this be reorganized?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

That's not true. The national council, for example, said that the rapid housing initiative was the most affordable program. They also acknowledge that although the national housing co-investment fund is building affordable housing, it should go deeper than that, so they asked us to do more. They didn't say we're not doing anything. Let's be honest about this.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm sorry, but your time is up.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the minister for being present with us, and the officials.

It's quite a serious issue, and I'm sure that you're more than seized with this. I have some particular questions that I hope we can find answers for, in particular the social conditions that we find people in.

When the Auditor General came and gave us this report, of course, we were dismayed. We don't like it when the Auditor General, an independent officer of Parliament, says that our investments are not working.

She mentioned in particular a concern I had—this is from the report—which is that when folks are cycling through chronic homelessness they are constantly at the whims of bureaucratic processes that make them develop a lack of trust, and that exacerbates the issue. Houseless folks do not have the capacity to go through tenuous systematic processes of paperwork and waiting, because all of their energy is spent figuring out where their next meal will come from.

Minister, this is the Auditor General, who is describing a very serious fact.

Yes, you can build stock. I believe my colleagues have mentioned some of the realities in relation to housing supply. I know that you're seized with trying to increase that housing supply, so I thank you for your hard work on that.

The biggest problem that I want to address with you today is to bring to light the real consideration that this is an ecosystem. Housing isn't a static thing. We don't have a static houseless population where there are, like in Edmonton, 3,200 houseless folks. The number has increased in the last five years. It's very large and it's continuing to grow.

The Auditor General mentioned the fact that they have distrust and they are unwilling to engage in the bureaucratic system that is CMHC to actually get results, because of that mistrust. That mistrust has also found its way into our systems. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada calls for specific systematic changes to CMHC and to other areas within the Government of Canada that would see the end of what produces houselessness.

Minister Hussen, do you know what produces houselessness in this country?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

There are a number of factors that contribute to homelessness in Canada, yes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Would you agree that some of them are perhaps directly related to the outcomes and the situations that indigenous peoples find themselves in, in particular the trauma they find themselves in because of the sixties scoop, the residential schools?