Evidence of meeting #80 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was communities.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
How many homes have been built as a result of the housing accelerator fund?
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Again, a program that launched a matter of weeks ago won't have completed constructions.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Yes, it was funded. I'm sure you are aware that it was in the city of London last month that we began to roll out that fund. That's already yielding plans from cities that will result in thousands and thousands of homes. However, given that it's been weeks, they are not yet complete.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
What's the estimate, then, for the GST rebate? How many homes is it estimated will be built?
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
The estimates tend to range between 200,000 and 300,000 over the next decade or so from that one policy change.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
How many is the estimate for the housing accelerator fund?
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Over the next three years or so, it's about 100,000, but it will have a permanent impact, given that it changes the way cities build homes every year thereafter as well.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
That's about 400,000 units that you're suggesting as a result of these two policies. Is that correct, approximately?
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
No, it's not, because with regard to the housing accelerator fund, I'm only talking about the next few years. The GST estimate is over the next decade.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
What is it for the next decade for the housing accelerator fund?
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
I don't have a number for you. If you extrapolate the 100,000 over the next three years to 10 years, presumably you could triple it, but it doesn't operate that way. I can't give you a number beyond the three years because it's too hard to predict how zoning changes will result in behavioural change. There are a lot of market forces at play that would change and that are outside of the control of any level of government, frankly.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Even if we took it that way, then that would be about 300,000 units for the housing accelerator fund and approximately 300,000 units for the GST rebate. Am I in the ballpark?
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
You might be, but I can't say that with confidence on the housing accelerator fund because of the explanation I gave you a moment ago.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Last week at HUMA, you stated that this is a housing crisis. That was in your opening statement. Is that correct?
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
What you're saying to me is that these signature programs, which you're touting to Canadians are going to solve the housing crisis as you've described it, will provide about 600,000 units. You're aware that CMHC put out a report that we need to build three million more houses than we normally build. Normally, from now up to 2030, we're going to build two million houses. We need to build three million more than that, and the signature program that you are saying is going to solve the housing crisis is going to provide 600,000 units. How can this program have such an absolute lack of ambition?
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
There are a couple of really important points to understand. First of all, it's about 3.5 million additional homes that we expect we need to build.
The GST removal on apartment construction is an essential ingredient to solving the housing crisis. It won't do it on its own. You've left out, as well, the recent change to the Canada mortgage bonds program, which, in theory, should result in about 300,000 units over the next decade, given that it accounts for about 30,000 additional homes every year.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Here's a key point: No one of these policies is going to solve the housing crisis. We need to pull every lever that we have. There's going to be more to come, but this is also ignoring programs that exist that we've advanced over the past couple of years, such as the national housing strategy.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
You said the housing crisis is now. Why aren't you pulling all the levers now? If the housing crisis is now—and we know it is—why are you saying that we have to pull all the levers, but you haven't pulled them? You, yourself, said it's a crisis.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
By your own analysis, in the past few weeks we are responsible for nearly a million new homes, given the math that you've just laid out before the committee.
If I keep up that rate of productivity, we're going to be able to get there.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
That's your estimate over 10 years. They're hypothetical homes. People can't live in hypothetical homes.
You just said that we need to pull all the levers. How are all the levers the sum total of 900,000 homes, when we need to build 3.5 million?
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
I don't believe we have yet pulled all the levers.
It turns out that when you try to develop a handful of new policies that are going to make a meaningful difference and unlock hundreds of thousands of homes for Canadians, it takes a few days.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
The crisis isn't weeks old. The housing crisis is years old.
Why has it taken you so long to find these levers?