Mr. Speaker, I rise today to request an emergency debate on the growing crisis of housing affordability across Canada.
An estimated 1.8 million Canadian households spend more than the affordability threshold of 30% of their income on rent, and 80% of those households spend more than 50%. An estimated 2.4 million Canadian households experienced core housing needs in 2020. Hundreds of thousands are on the verge of becoming homeless and joining the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are already homeless.
The affordable housing crisis in Canada is a result of structural problems that cannot be fixed by spending taxpayers' dollars alone. It requires regulation and an all-of-government approach.
Canadian real estate was identified as a major vehicle for money laundering and as a tax haven for the world's ultra-wealthy. This has driven up the price of real estate in major cities, and the ripple effect is part of the cause of an affordability crisis across the country. At the same time, real estate investment trusts, which receive a massive tax exemption, and other big investors are using predatory practices, raising rents by huge amounts with little notice or using “renovictions” to empty buildings and jack up rents. Some investors even leave units empty, because empty units increase demand and rental prices, and real estate values continue to rise regardless.
Low-wage workers, people who lost work due to COVID-19 restrictions and people living on fixed incomes are finding themselves in a precarious situation in communities across Canada. Those evicted are facing substantial rent increases, have serious problems finding reasonable rents and face potential homelessness.
Last week, Vancouver City Council passed a motion to communicate to the federal government its concerns about the impact that real estate investment trusts and big investors are having on the human right to housing, the commodification of housing, housing security and affordability for Vancouver residents. It intends to ask the government to protect and invest in existing rental stock for acquisition by non-profits and co-operatives. Like many communities, Vancouver is in the midst of an affordable housing emergency.
Existing government programs are oversubscribed and insufficient to meet demands. Investment companies are flipping rental units and removing them from affordable housing stock faster than new subsidized units can be built.
This Parliament needs to address housing affordability and homelessness as twin emergency national crises. Holding an emergency debate will allow members of the House to discuss the crisis in their communities and assist in identifying options for lasting solutions to the housing affordability crisis. Those solutions might include such things as ensuring that the loopholes that allow residential real estate to be used for money laundering and tax evasion are properly closed, creating national standards for rental and vacancy controls, instituting empty-home taxes on buildings and units left vacant by foreign and corporate residential property owners, regulation of foreign investment in residential real estate and removing tax exemptions for real estate investment trusts.
It is unreasonable to ask Canadians to pour billions of tax dollars into affordable housing while foreign investors and corporate interests are able to continue using predatory practices to destroy the Canadian housing market. The housing policy of the Government of Canada recognizes that housing is a fundamental human right as defined by international human rights law. This Parliament must do more to protect these rights.