Debates of Dec. 8th, 2021

Supplementary Estimates (B), 2021-22

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Chair, how many from Saudi Arabia?

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Chair, our government has been committed to getting TMX built.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Chair, how many from the United States?

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Chair, I am a proponent of TMX and will continue to be.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Chair, will TMX take oil from the member's province to the Saint John refinery?

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Chair, TMX will bring oil to the west coast.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Chair, will oil tankers still be coming from the Middle East to the Saint John refinery?

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Chair, we will support the energy sector in this country as we always have.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Chair, the answer is, no, we will keep importing foreign oil.

Did the minister support the Prime Minister's veto of the northern gateway pipeline, yes or no?

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Chair, I think it is important for the hon. member to know that business confidence is back, 106% of jobs have been recovered—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

The member for Carleton.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Chair, did the member support vetoing northern gateway, yes or no?

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Chair, following a steep decline of 27% in the first half of 2020, corporate profits have rebounded to 61% above pre-pandemic levels.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Yes or no?

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Chair, nine million people were helped on CERB.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Chair, I would like to thank you for allowing me to participate in this session of the committee of the whole of the House of Commons.

In the recent federal election, Canadians made it clear: Housing affordability is one of their top issues.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted and worsened Canada's serious housing challenges. Far too many Canadians cannot afford an adequate and affordable place to call home. This puts at risk the well-being of Canadian families, our communities and also our economic recovery.

It is why our government continues to strengthen and extend the national housing strategy, our 10-year, $72-billion plan to give more Canadians a place to call their home.

Today I am pleased to have the opportunity to demonstrate how investments in two important programs under the national housing strategy will benefit Canadians. I will discuss these programs and how, with additional funding, they will ensure that more Canadians have an affordable home where they can safely get through this pandemic and plan for a better future.

One program provides much-needed rental housing for middle-income Canadians in cities with some of the most expensive rents. We all know them. The other serves more vulnerable Canadians, ensuring they have safe, well-maintained housing with subsidies, to help them make ends meet at the end of every month.

Let us start with the rental construction financing initiative. This program has seen incredible uptake since it was launched five years ago, and it is making a real difference for middle-income Canadians and people in my riding of Hull—Aylmer.

It is a well-known fact that there is a shortage of purpose-built rental supply in Canada. Many of our cities have extremely low vacancy rates. This has driven up prices to the point where the very people who make our cities run, like nurses, shopkeepers and teachers, can no longer afford to live in them. We just cannot keep pushing the middle class to the suburbs if we want vibrant, inclusive and inspiring cities that meet our climate goals.

One of the barriers to more rental supply is that many developers feel there are too many financial risks and obstacles to building rental projects. Simply put, they have told us these types of projects are not economically feasible.

The rental construction financing initiative, delivered by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, addresses this problem. It gives developers low-cost loans during the most risky phases of construction. This helps developers to better predict costs, and they are more incentivized to build rental projects, all while meeting important criteria in terms of affordability, accessibility and energy efficiency.

I had the privilege of taking part in two announcements in Hull—Aylmer, one at the Zibi island development and the other in the village of Aylmer with the British Square, where precisely we are looking to incentivize builders to build affordable rental housing as part of their larger rental stock.

From the beginning, the program generated great interest from the housing sector. To meet growing demand, we increased our investments to $13.75 billion. Already, as of just the end of September of this year, over $12 billion has been committed to create more than 34,000 rental homes. This will make a huge difference for so many Canadian families.

As uptake of the program continued, we saw a need to make further investments in it. We committed an additional $12 billion over seven years, and we will use $300 million specifically to help the conversion of vacant commercial property into housing. The funding requested this year represents the first part of this new commitment.

It is estimated that when the rental construction financing initiative comes to an end in 2028, the $26 billion invested will have created more than 71,000 new rental housing units across the country. In other words, 71,000 more middle-income families will be able to find housing they can afford in the cities in which they live.

This is a win-win-win for Canadian families, and it is a win for our cities. It makes them more inclusive, cuts down on transportation-related costs and emissions, and attracts more employers.

I would now like to draw the committee's attention to the second program that I want to address during this discussion, the federal community housing initiative. While the previous program I mentioned focused on the needs of middle-income Canadians, this one supports some of our most vulnerable populations. Currently, thousands of low‑income Canadians across the country live in federally administered community housing. They receive rent subsidies to help them make ends meet at the end of the month.

When our government began its first term, many of the subsidy agreements were about to expire, which would have been disastrous for the families affected. That is why, in 2017, we launched the federal community housing initiative, a program that provides $500 million over 10 years to protect tenants and stabilize the operations of more than 55,000 units of federally administered community housing projects.

During phase one of the initiative, we gave community housing providers a two‑year funding extension so that they could continue to provide much‑needed subsidies to their tenants. This phase, which ended in September 2020, supported over 26,700 households with a total investment of over $42 million.

We are now in phase two of the program, which makes rental assistance available to community housing providers for their tenants. By September 2021, we had already provided over $29 million in rental assistance to nearly 6,000 low-income households for over 27,000 units across the country.

The additional funding requested for 2021 started with a top-up of $105 million over seven years proposed in budget 2021. This top-up will help community housing providers offer an additional 2,700 units to low-income households. Again, this has a big impact for Canadians.

The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly had a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable families. I should mention that some of those families belong to minority communities across Canada. They are the most vulnerable when we take an intersectional approach. Now more than ever, they need access to affordable housing. That is how they will get through this pandemic safely, and it is essential if they are to be part of an economic recovery that gives everyone in Canada the chance to thrive and prosper.

At the same time, with the skyrocketing cost of home ownership, we also need to provide low-income Canadians with affordable rental options. Instead of building apartments only in the outer suburbs, we need to ensure that people are able to live close to work, school and the centre where they spend their time. This will keep our cities resilient and better able to recover from the pandemic.

Canadians have sent us a message that could not be any clearer. They care deeply about housing affordability. They want us to work together to provide them with affordable options, no matter what their housing status is.

Since I am almost out of time, I would like to conclude with the issue of affordability and the other forms of financial support we have provided to Canadians, such as the Canada emergency response benefit and the Canada emergency wage subsidy.

The rental construction financing initiative and the federal community housing initiative are proven, safe and reliable programs, programs that are consistent, programs that have helped Canadians, especially the most vulnerable. They are delivering results. They have made a real difference and will continue to do so. With additional investments, they can benefit even more families across this great country of Canada.

Before I ask our Minister of Tourism a question, I think it is very important to say that the range of support measures that were put in place to help Canadians get through the pandemic was extraordinary. As the minister mentioned in his last exchange with a member of the opposition, Canadians have been counting a lot on their government, which reflects the Canadian population.

The government is a reflection of the people. We know that Canada is a northern country, a country where the strongest, richest person cannot survive alone with our long, hard winters. We have to work together. This attitude has been part of the Canadian spirit for centuries. It certainly began with indigenous people welcoming the Europeans who came to Canada. They clearly demonstrated the importance of working together to survive our long winters. Generation after generation of immigrants to Canada have learned the same lesson.

That is why it was only natural for the Canadian government to come up with support programs when we were backed into a corner when the pandemic first emerged in March 2020.

Mr. Chair, could you let me know if I can ask the minister my question now?

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

There is about one minute and 20 seconds left. If you want to ask your question, please do it as quickly as possible.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I think it is important in my riding of Hull—Aylmer. It was very clear that we needed to make sure that businesses were able to keep their doors open and that the government had their back. We said we would do anything necessary to do that.

Opposition members have said they would not have supported Canadians through this pandemic. I find that very troubling, because programs like the CRB, the CERB and the CEWS were lifelines for millions of Canadians, and certainly to businesses and individuals in my riding.

Could the minister expand on why it is so important for our government and why the government was so insistent on providing support to Canadian workers and businesses during the pandemic?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Chair, first, the hon. member for Hull-Aylmer is my member of Parliament, and I really like him. Second, he was a page, like me, many years ago, and third, he is an excellent speaker.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Chair, we did not get much in the way of finance, so I will ask the Minister of Tourism a question.

The U.S. has tightened travel restriction rules for foreign nationals, including Canadians, further complicating travel and holidays for Canadians going there. That means they need a different type of test and they follow a different type of testing time frame.

Does this concern the minister at all?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Chair, obviously we are all very concerned with all of what is happening with the new variant, omicron. That is why we work with our partners outside of Canada and do the right thing inside Canada.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Chair, did the minister speak to the U.S. at all or anyone in the travel industry?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Mr. Chair, we obviously speak to everyone involved in and affected by the travel restrictions on both sides of the border.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Chair, does the minister think the federal government should take further action to promote increased use of antigen tests, just like the U.S.?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Mr. Chair, that is a great question, but there is too little time to answer. There is a big difference between rapid antigen tests and molecular tests.