Status of Women Committee on Feb. 21st, 2019

[Charles MacArthur]

I think that we have the tools that we have. One of the tenets of the co-investment fund, for example, is to work with others. It's based on partnerships to try to leverage the funding that is available to us so that we can do more with what we have. We try to work with the province, municipality, private sector, public sector and community sector to leverage the resources that we have at our disposal. By trying to weave together partnerships, we try to increase what we're able to do. The need is quite large, for sure.

[Irene Mathyssen]

One thing that troubles me is that dependence on partnering. Municipalities, for example, are struggling in many cases.

I wonder about capacity. I'm ancient. When I first started out in this business, there were all kinds of community-based organizations, non-profits, that were there to assist in creating or facilitating really successful non-profit co-ops and the kind of housing we hope to see across the country. It seems that they have disappeared over the last 20 years. Are they still there? Can we revitalize them? What kind of hope do we have in that regard?

[Charles MacArthur]

For sure. We work with the groups that are there.

I'll talk about two things.

As part of the national housing strategy, there's the technical resource centre, which is a $70-million program for the sector by the sector. We're working with some proponents at the moment to try to finalize a contract with them so they will be able to service that capacity for the sector by the sector. That's one tool.

For individual groups that may have lost...or may not have done something for a while, coming in to get a loan or get a grant, there's work to be done. At CMHC, we've revamped some of our old tools to align them with the national housing strategy. If there's a group out there that's trying to figure out how to go about it, our seed funding program may be available for them to do the initial thinking that could help them put together their proposal, eventually, but look at the need, look at what is possible in the city.

Even municipalities have some significant tools. We met with one northern municipality yesterday. We were talking with the mayor and the city manager about the speed of approval for affordable.... That can make a significant difference, or abatement, or foregoing the tax. Cities can do that.

The reason for the partnership is that we don't want to do something that doesn't work in the community. London knows better than I know in Ottawa what projects should be there.

The other thing I would say is to talk to our folks on the ground. They will help the groups navigate. They will help the groups find the tools. The groups don't need to navigate that by themselves. We have folks out there who can say, “I know who's in London” or “I know who's in Brampton” or “I know who's in Saskatoon”, and they can help bring the projects to realization.

[Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you.

Ms. Holden, I have a couple of questions.

You talked about the new measurement being the market basket measure. There's been some profound concern expressed about how it differs from the old measurement. I understand that there was a variation in terms of where you were in Canada. But the concern is that the market basket measure...automatically takes people out of poverty, when they really remain in poverty. It's not an accurate measure. I wonder if you could respond to that.

I have another question, about aging in the community, but I'll let you speak first.

[Jackie Holden]

I'm afraid I'm not an expert on the market basket measure specifically. Perhaps I'll ask Karen Hall to speak more specifically to that issue.

[Karen Hall, Director General, Social Policy Directorate, Strategic and Service Policy Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.

I am responsible for the poverty reduction strategy at ESDC. The introduction of Canada's official poverty line, as measured by the market basket measure, was a key feature of the poverty reduction strategy.

There are a number of ways to measure poverty. For example, there's the low-income measure, which is a relative measure of distribution. There is the low-income cut-off, which is a measure that's permanently grounded in the nineties but has been brought up to date. Then there is the market basket measure. The market basket measure provides the cost of a given basket of goods in 50 different regions across the country. It is quite regionally sensitive.

As part of the work for the poverty reduction strategy, there was funding, $12.1 million, going to Statistics Canada to update, refresh and review the MBM to ensure that the basket remains relevant and that we're able to have the coverage all across the country, including in the north. Those efforts are under way at StatsCan right now, and we're looking forward to the results of that work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent.

Your time is up, Irene.

[Irene Mathyssen]

You're so cruel, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm sorry.

We're now going to pass it on to Sonia Sidhu.

You have seven minutes.

[Sonia Sidhu, Brampton South, Lib.]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you all for being here.

My first question is for CMHC.

Mr. MacArthur, you said that 27% of senior women living on their own need core housing. I know our government is doing a great job on the housing strategy. Is there anything specific you are doing with the housing for women with disabilities when making the units, the townhouses or apartments?

[Charles MacArthur]

We are. The new housing that's being built, we're renovating it so...if it's renovation. Now, there are urgent situations when somebody comes in and we look at it as an urgency. But if there's time, we're strongly encouraging people to make at least 20% of the units and the common areas accessible—and we're getting that at the moment—so that when we move forward to the future....

We're building the housing for the future, which is why I talk about universal design. That allows it to meet the market needs right now, and as the population ages, or as we age, it's very simple. The holds are put in place; the cabinets are put in place, and the studs are put in place behind the washroom. That is acceptable as well. We're really trying to push, and if you're doing that, you're rewarded for it in terms of selection.

[Sonia Sidhu]

What about wheelchair accessibility?

[Charles MacArthur]

We're truly accessible, trying to get 20% of the units accessible. It's more difficult in the renovation of a 1970s building. We work with groups that have multiple buildings in the same town and the same community, and they say, “We can make this one 80% accessible. For this one over here, we can only get 10%.” We're looking at it in a practical way with groups as well, because we want to make sure the need is there. What we don't want to do is create ghettos where it's just folks over there; we want to integrate folks and be inclusive in the community.

[Sonia Sidhu]

You talked about the national housing co-investment fund, and you said that you're taking applications. I represent Brampton, a mostly ethnic community where people are affected by the language barrier. How can you reach them? Do they know about the applications that are being taken?

[Charles MacArthur]

Of course, we have folks, and with our workforce we try to reflect the communities in which we're working. Our folks are out there in the community, promoting, working with partners and working with groups. We know many of the groups across the country. If there is a language issue, we will have somebody on staff who can help.

I lived in B.C. for a while. We had 27 different languages in the office. We were able to do that. In our Toronto office, I don't know what the diversity is, but I'm quite sure that language wouldn't become the barrier. We could bridge the cultural divide, for sure, if that's the barrier we needed to overcome.

[Sonia Sidhu]

Okay.

To Catherine or Jackie, regarding the new horizons for seniors program, how are you addressing the seniors isolation part?

[Catherine Scott, Director General, Community Development and Homelessness Partnerships Directorate, Income Security and Social Development Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development]

The new horizons for seniors program is a grants and contributions program that really works to enhance the quality of life for seniors and their engagement and participation in the community, with a real focus on reducing social isolation. There are two parts to that program. There's the community-based grant aspect of it, which is the majority of the funding in the program, at about $35 million annually. That is for small, community-based grants of up to $25,000. Those can be used by community organizations to initiate projects that engage seniors in their community.

About $9 million of the program is what we call pan-Canadian funding. We've been using that to do collective impact projects in communities. That's been quite an innovation. We've had that in place since late 2015. Those projects bring together not-for-profit organizations working with seniors to develop common objectives that they want to achieve. For example, in Edmonton we have a project with seven or eight not-for-profit organizations working with seniors. Their focus is really on reaching out to “multi-barriered” or isolated seniors, in particular those who may not speak English or who are recent immigrants. Some of those projects might focus on providing additional language skills or transportation for seniors going to appointments or to community activities.

A number of initiatives within the program are focused on that, and those initiatives all come from the community.

[Sonia Sidhu]

I'd like to add something to what Pam said about the program in Toronto that's the municipality's responsibility. Can we not start a program where students can live with seniors and get benefits from that?

[Catherine Scott]

I'm not aware specifically, through the new horizons for seniors program, of a project that looks at that. But through our collective impact projects, if there was an element that looked at experimenting or testing approaches, that is something that could probably be considered as part of the program.

[Sonia Sidhu]

Thank you.

I want to come back to Mr. MacArthur.

In Peel, every day, seniors are getting ripped off by fraud. Can we not start a helpline for that?

[Charles MacArthur]

In the housing area, in terms of our programs, and particularly our insurance products, we have some sophisticated modelling that helps us identify fraud. If it's somebody who came through for a mortgage loan or a mortgage product, we have some very sophisticated algorithms and methodologies to identify fraud in the early stages. We work with the industry as a whole. It's not just CMHC; we work with our commercial competitors and the banks, because we're all interested in eliminating fraud to the extent that we can.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent. Thank you very much.

We're now moving on to our second round, which is five minutes. We'll give the floor to Phil McColeman.

Phil, you have five minutes.

[Phil McColeman, Brantford—Brant, CPC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. MacArthur, are you aware of what the tax load is per door of a unit? I mean the cumulative tax cost. You're talking about affordability here and an aspiration of making a house affordable for every Canadian by 2030. What do you propose to do regarding the fact that right now, according to the building community in this country, from the time they start a project to the time they hand the key to the new owner of that unit, or the tenant, whichever, the tax load is almost half the price of the house?

So for a $300,000 unit, $150,000 is going through the approvals process, going through the financing costs, going through the taxation level at the municipality, mainly for development charges and things like that, mainly through HST. That's almost half of the price of the house—it's not quite there yet—depending on the jurisdiction across the country. We talk about affordability. Are you addressing the overtaxation of housing?

[Charles MacArthur]

We work with our municipal partners, as I said, to try to speed up the process, because time is money, for sure. We work with them on the affordability side, and what they can bring to the table for the national housing strategy. For the overall tax policy, I'd have to defer to my colleagues at the Department of Finance.

[Phil McColeman]

That's okay. That's fine.

I guess I'm trying to drive a point—and you'll sense my bias as I go through this, as a past president of Ontario Home Builders' Association—which is the fact that right now it takes seven to 10 years for the approvals process of a greenfield site to the time the first person moves in. If your goal is 2030, the applications of people who want to take their property and develop it are going to take from seven to 10 years to get through the process, with all the carrying costs of that.

Frankly, this has to be part of the equation of affordability. I had many dealings with CMHC in the 1980s and 1990s, and I know you say the organization is modernizing and restructuring itself. How much of your initiative going forward to make housing affordable should be at the...? I'm not talking about the price of sticks and bricks, the actual cost of building a house; I'm talking here about the loads that all levels of government are putting on housing.