Debates of Oct. 30th, 2023

Building Homes Not Bureaucracy Act

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

moved that Bill C-356, An Act respecting payments by Canada and requirements in respect of housing and to amend certain other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, the Prime Minister admitted he was not worth the cost. He found out that I was holding a monster rally in a Liberal stronghold, and he panicked. His phones lit up as Atlantic Canadian Liberal MPs, bawling their eyes out, pleaded with him to relent to the pressure that the Leader of the Opposition was mounting to axe the tax.

The Prime Minister said that he was stiff in spine and that he would never back down, and the Liberal MPs from the Atlantic caucus said that they would oust him as leader and he would lose his job. What would that do for his ego? The Prime Minister said, in that case, that they would pull together a press conference that afternoon, try to time it right before the Conservative leader's great rally in Windsor, where a thousand people were scheduled to rise up against the tax, and they would promise to pause the tax until after the election.

Now Atlantic Canadians know that if they elect the Prime Minister, they will get a massive tax hike on their home heating oil. If they elect the common-sense Conservatives, they will have tax-free heat. That is a pretty simple choice. The Prime Minister has just defined the issue of the next election. They can vote for him and have a massive home heating tax, or they vote for common-sense Conservatives and we will axe the tax for everyone and forever. Who would you vote for, Mr. Speaker?

The Prime Minister sent out one of his Newfoundland MPs to say that the reason only some Canadians were getting a pause on the carbon tax was that other Canadians did not vote Liberal. Soon they will have a new income tax rate for provinces that do not elect Liberal MPs, a new sales tax rate and new tax rates everywhere else. The problem with this bloody-minded divide-and-conquer tax strategy is that some Liberals seem to have failed to win over the Prime Minister's heart.

The Liberal MP for Sudbury does not get a carbon tax exemption. The two Liberal MPs in Thunder Bay, a very cold climate, do not get a carbon tax exemption. The Liberal member for Nickel Belt did not get a carbon tax exemption in those harsh, cold northern Ontario communities that use gas and propane. The extremely ineffective Liberal MP for Edmonton Centre did not get a carbon tax exemption. There is the loquacious, loud and never quiet member from Winnipeg, which they call “Winterpeg” because it is cold. The member for Winnipeg North, a man of many words but few actions, has failed to get a carbon tax exemption for Winnipeggers.

Apparently those people are forced to pay higher prices for their heat, because their MPs are so ineffective that they could not mount pressure on the Prime Minister to back down.

It is proven that he is not worth the cost, just like he has not been worth the cost for housing. After eight years, the Prime Minister has doubled mortgage payments, doubled the rent and doubled the needed down payment for a home.

Let us just review the housing hell he has caused since he promised to lower housing costs. It now takes 25 years to save up for a down payment in Toronto. Before the Prime Minister, a person could pay off a mortgage in that time. Families are now stretching out their mortgage terms to 90 years and 120 years, because interest rates on their exorbitant mortgages have stretched out the amortization. People used to pay off an entire mortgage 25 years in and then they could retire mortgage free.

Now, not only will they never be able to pay off their mortgage in their entire lifetime, but even if they hand their house and mortgage to their kids, they might not be able to pay it off in their lifetime. They would then have to hand the house to a third generation that would still inherit a mortgage. So much for the government taking on debt so Canadians do not have to.

Under the Prime Minister, homes cost 50% more than they do in the United States, and a person can buy a castle in Sweden for the price of a two bedroom in Kitchener. Toronto is now ranked the worst housing bubble in the world by UBS Bank. Vancouver is the third-most unaffordable housing market on earth, when we compare housing costs to income, and Toronto is the 10th. Vancouver is now more unaffordable than New York, London, England and Singapore, which is a tiny island with 2,000 times more people per square kilometre than Canada.

Canada should be the cheapest place in the world, because, of course, we have more land per person than all but four countries on the planet. In other words, we have a lot of space, just not a lot of homes. In fact, we have fewer homes per capita than all other G7 countries even though we have by far the most land on which to build. In fact, we have fewer homes per capita today than we did eight years ago when the Prime Minister took office, promising more homes and more affordable homes.

If members want the best all-in-one measurement of the Prime Minister's performance on housing, look at the OECD, which compared housing costs to income, starting in 2015 to present, among all 37 OECD countries. How has the ratio of home prices to family incomes grown in Canada relative to the other 36 OECD countries? We are the second worst. In other words, housing costs outgrew incomes in Canada at a faster pace than in all but one of the other 36 OECD countries. This is a new problem that occurred after the Prime Minister took office and it is a problem that is unique to Canada. He cannot blame some prior government and he cannot blame other countries, because it is worse than Canada has ever been and worse than almost anywhere else in the world.

This is a made-in-Canada problem unique to the Prime Minister. Why? Because he has spent the last eight years building bureaucracy rather than building homes. He brags that he has the most expensive housing programs. He complains that when I was housing minister, my programs did not cost as much, and he is absolutely right about that. I had far more affordable housing programs. In fact, there were far few billions in my housing programs than there are in his programs, but we do not measure the success by how expensive we can be. We measure success by how affordable we can be.

He even made up a fact. He looked at a CBC headline, which is always a dangerous thing to do, and he said that when I was minister we only built 99 homes with $300 million. I thought, “What the heck is he talking about?” I have a mind like a steel trap. I would have remembered if I had announced a $300-million housing project, and so I checked into it. Here is what actually happened.

First, the program was created in 2008, a half decade before I even became the minister. Second, it did not spend any money. The program was designed to encourage private home ownership by first nations. It invested capital of $300 million, but did not spend a penny. Because the money was invested commercially, it actually grew to $380 million. Also, it was not 99 homes; 7,000 homes were built, purchased or renovated for first nations people.

It did not cost any money. It made a profit and it built, renovated and bought 7,000 homes. By the way, the entire thing is run by first nations themselves. No wonder the Liberals do not like any of that, but forget the facts. If I had to deal with the bare body of facts in litigating the housing file, I do not know what I would do. I might have to hallucinate to come up with some other facts too. I might even get desperate enough to read CBC headlines as well.

In the meantime, let us talk about the real common-sense plan to bring in homes Canadians can afford. Let us talk about my bill, the building homes not bureaucracy act.

Principle number one is that it will require cities to boost home completions by 15% per year or they will lose federal infrastructure money. We give them $5 billion a year in direct transfers. They can pretty much do whatever they want with that money. I am saying that this is going to be a housing incentive. We are going to start paying city bureaucrats the way real estate agents get paid, on volume. They get housing completed, they get more money. They do not get it completed, they get less money.

The bureaucrats will have to wake up every morning and think about how they can approve as many permits as quickly as possible so Canadians have a place to live. It is going to be very mathematical. I will require them to hit 15% more home building per year. If they beat that by, say, 10%, they get 10% more money. If they miss it by 10%, they get 10% less money. Maybe then the bureaucrats and the mayors will wake up everyday and think about how they can get it done quickly. Mayors would then be forced to move their offices right into the permitting room, a big open room with big screens. Permitting times would be on one wall showing the number of homes waiting, how many people are on hold right now and how many homes are being held up. Imagine if they had big screens in city hall and all the bureaucrats were busy motoring away, trying to get to a “yes” and getting things done. Would that not be incredible if we actually focused on results, rather than on building more bureaucracy? That is what my bill would incentivize.

Right now, by contrast, the current housing minister has come up with a program that works very simply. He calls up the mayors. He says to them that everyone knows housing is hell after eight years of the Liberal government. He asks if he can go to the town and take credit for homes that it were already going to build. He then will write a big cheque for it if the town does that. He shows up and notes that there was already a subdivision being built. If the town gives the minister credit for that, in exchange he will stroke a big cheque for $40 million with which the government can build more bureaucracy. Then the bureaucrats will be happy, the politicians will be happy and everyone else will be miserable. That is what he has been doing.

We know that this is not leading to more housing construction, because housing starts this year are down 9%. Yes, he can show up and say, “Look at these 24,000 homes, which were already going to be built”, but the overall housing starts, the number of shovels put into ground, is down 9%. Two years after the so-called housing accelerator was created, not a single solitary new house has been completed; a $4-billion housing program that does not build housing. My plan would create a strict, mathematical formula that pays for results.

The second principle is that we will require federally funded transit stations to be surrounded by housing so people can live right next to the bus or train. I have been right across the country and countless stations do not have housing. In fact, in Winnipeg, the gatekeepers actually stepped in to block 2,000 new homes right next to a transit station that was built for those homes. They had to get slapped down in the courts. What did the Liberals do? They gave more money to the incompetent politicians at Winnipeg city hall to block housing for the people who needed it.

I am going to put all the federal funds for transit stations into a trust. The city will not get the money for the transit station until there are apartments occupied all around the station. That way they will have to hurry up and approve the housing if they want to get that money. We will, again, pay for results.

Next, the bill would require that the federal minister of public works do a full inventory and come to the House within months to announce all the buildings that would be sold in order to build housing. The Prime Minister promised that eight years ago. In eight years, with all the 37,000 federal buildings, the 6.2 million square metres of office space, and the thousands of acres, how many homes has he managed to build on that federal land and in those federal buildings? I asked him and he did not know either. It is 13; not 13,000, not 1,300. My bill would make it mandatory by law that the minister come here with a plan to sell off 15% of all federal buildings and thousands of acres of federal land so that we can build on that land that is being used for nothing.

On the fourth principle, federal bureaucrats will have to get their act together as well. I was speaking with a builder who builds beautiful environmentally friendly homes and apartments in Atlantic Canada. He is in the process of building a carbon-neutral building right now. It will be the greenest apartment complex in the world. He had to wait two years for CMHC to approve the financing on that building.

The benchmark is supposed to be 60 days, so here is how life is going to work around here when I am prime minister with what is in this bill. CMHC bureaucrats will have to hit the 60-day target within six months. If they do not, I am cutting their pay in half. If they do not do it within a year, I am firing the entire executive. It is right in the bill. That is life. If a barber does not cut hair well, they get fired. If a mechanic has an engine block fall out, they get fired.

In the real world, when people do not do their job, they do not get bonuses. That is not how life works under the Prime Minister for the senior, six-figure bureaucracy. This bill would put an end to that. We are going to pay for results, not for bureaucracy and the privilege of incompetent bureaucrats who make life miserable and costly for everyone else.

The building homes not bureaucracy act is common sense, the common sense of the common people united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing]

Mr. Speaker, the thing I think the hon. member left out of his speech is that under his watch as the so-called housing minister, there were 800,000 fewer affordable housing units.

Why go to war with mayors over infrastructure? Infrastructure is the key to getting more houses built. Why would he cut that? Inevitably, he will see fewer homes getting built.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this will have to be a case for Unsolved Mysteries. He claims that when I was minister, 800,000 homes went missing. What happened to them? Did aliens from outer space come and just pluck these homes? What has remained? Are the basements still there? Where did they go? These guys are unbelievable. It sounds like the member is having an LSD flashback or something.

Let us talk about when I was housing minister. Rent cost half as much. It cost $950 to rent the average one-bedroom. Now it is about $2,000. The average mortgage payment on a newly purchased average home was $1,400. Now it is $3,500, an increase of 150%. The average down payment was a very modest $20,000. That was my record.

We are not proposing to cut infrastructure money. We are proposing to link dollars for cities to the number of homes their bureaucrats and mayors allow to be completed. It is an incentive. Those who build more homes will get more money. That is the real world. That is common sense. Let us bring it home.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will tell the leader of the Conservatives exactly what happened to those 800,000 units: The rent went up from $750 a month to over $2,000. That is what happened. That is where those 800,000 units went. That is how the Conservatives lost affordable rental apartments for people who needed them.

In the bill the member put forward, there is zero mention of social housing or the need. The Conservative leader talked about Singapore. It has 80% social housing. What does Canada have? It has 3.5%. The Conservatives cut the co-op program and gutted social housing. That is why we have this crisis.

Why are the Conservatives not supporting communities in building social housing and co-op housing?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, people want more homes and more affordable homes; they do not want nationalized, government-controlled homes.

When I was minister, the average rent was $950 and now it is over $2,000 under the NDP-Liberal government. When I was minister, the average mortgage payment on an average newly purchased house was $1,400. Now it is $3,500. Housing was not just affordable; it was cheap when I was minister, and Canadians could afford to buy a house.

Under the NDP government in B.C., B.C. is probably the most unaffordable housing market in the world. The NDP government tried the Soviet-style experiment in the NDP's heartland of B.C. and we know the result. It is pain, it is misery and it is tent cities. We do not need a Soviet-style takeover of housing. We need Canadians to have a chance to own their own homes, and that is what they will have when I am prime minister.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I would like to once again issue a reminder so that we can start the week off right. When the member for Vancouver East has the floor to ask a question, I would ask all members to remain silent so that we can hear her, and I would ask her to do the same when her question is being answered.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to hear what the leader of the official opposition has to say. He seems to have a magic wand this morning. It is funny. We are currently examining a bill that he thinks will fix everything. He found new culprits to blame for the housing crisis: municipalities and mayors. That is the Conservative Party's approach. It is dangerous to accuse people who go to work every morning to try to improve things in their communities.

The Conservatives are talking about bypassing bureaucracy, but what they are proposing would do exactly the opposite. My colleague is talking out of both sides of his mouth. He wants to add new targets and objectives and he wants to make all the rules for municipalities. I would like to remind my colleague from Carleton of the rules. Section 92 of the Constitution—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I do not want to interrupt the member, but his time is almost up. Would he please ask his question so that the Leader of the Opposition has enough time to answer?

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague this. Why does he not respect the Constitution? Why does he not respect provincial autonomy? Why does he want the federal government to dictate the rules of the game when Quebeckers never asked it to?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the law dictates nothing to the municipalities. It does not dictate rules, only results.

The federal government is already giving $5 billion to the municipalities. That means the federal level is already involved, and I simply want to match up those dollars to results. I do not want to pay the mayor of Montreal to prevent the construction of 24,000 homes, as she did. We are not going to give money to municipalities only to have them block housing construction. We are going to encourage them to build affordable and private housing that Quebeckers can afford to buy.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to be here talking about housing. The Conservatives talk a really good game. During question period and during the last 15 minutes, there has been passionate discussion of housing. However, when the rubber meets the road, they are nowhere to be found.

The Leader of the Opposition just glossed over his loss of 800,000 units of housing. When someone questioned him on it, he had the gall to answer with insults. The reality is that there was no action on housing in the decades previous. We find ourselves in a crisis that is decades in the making, but we are ready and are up to the task.

There is something the leader said that I do want to correct. He said that housing starts were down. Housing starts are actually up 4%: 20% in Toronto and 98% in the city of Montreal.

This is fundamentally an important issue for all Canadians, and what does the Leader of the Opposition want to do? He wants to go to war with municipalities. However, municipalities understand the crisis before them. It is one thing to come up here and pound a desk and say they are going to take away infrastructure money from municipalities. That does not work.

We need to work with municipalities. We need to focus on infrastructure, because infrastructure is what is going to get housing built. We cannot just take an empty field and plop houses down on it. The aliens the Leader of the Opposition talks about that took away housing are not going to deliver them on lands, on empty fields. There needs to be sewage. There needs to be water. There needs to be electricity. There need to be all of the services that are required. That is forgotten.

The Conservatives would rather have a big speech, puff up their chests, pound their desks and ignore the reality of getting housing built. It is about rolling up our sleeves. It is about getting the job done. They are not interested in that. They are just interested in slogans.

Their plan is to cut funding to municipalities and increase the tax on rental construction. The Leader of the Opposition spent the first few minutes of his speech talking about taxes. He left out the part where he is going to raise the GST on purpose-built rental construction. It is shocking.

I would like to point to a housing expert, Mike Moffatt, who said of the Conservative plan, “This is a sign that the federal Conservatives don't understand the urgency or scale of the housing crisis.” Again, they pound their fists. They yell. They scream. They jump up and down. They call members names. They heckle. However, they have no plan. They have smug comments and smug heckles, but no plan to actually get the job done.

They can look Canadians in the eye and say they will do it, but they are not going to do anything to do it. They are going to yell at people and cut their salaries and then starve municipalities of infrastructure funds. That is all they have. That is not going to get anything built. Their plan is to do less than what they were doing when they were in government, which is nothing. It is shocking that they want to take steps backwards on this file.

I look to cities across the country. I have met with mayors and municipal officials. I have met with municipal officials in my own community. There are infrastructure challenges. In the city of St. Catharines, sewer upgrades are required to get more housing built. We can approve a permit for a 20-storey building, but if there is no sewer capacity, we cannot build it.

I know it is not fun or sexy to talk about sewer capacity in this place, although some people may think it is very on point to be talking about sewer capacity in the House of Commons, but these are the important things that are required to get housing built. If the leader just wants permits to be approved, maybe that is a great thing, but if infrastructure money is not going to be applied and the federal government is not going to be there, then the Conservatives do not understand the depths of this crisis.

This is fundamentally a crisis not only of housing, but also of infrastructure. We need to do more, and we need to be partners with municipalities and provinces. The more partners we have, the more housing we can get built.

We are ready for this. The housing accelerator fund is already seeing results. We have had partners across the country. We have seen that, in Kelowna, Halifax, London and Hamilton, housing is getting built. We are making more housing legal in this country. The Minister of Housing is accomplishing this with as of right four units housing being built in these municipalities.

This will allow for greater housing built for generations in this community with the housing accelerator fund, and to also fund those infrastructure needs and those bottlenecks. Again, they talk a good game. We can pound our desks, and we can yell and scream, but the member did not mention the bottlenecks in our system and how he is going to accomplish that, apart from going to war with the mayors, which is something I do not think Canadians want us to do. They want us working together. They want us to come up with a plan for more housing and work together.

I genuinely look forward to more of these announcements and to see more municipalities step back from NIMBY policies, which have plagued municipalities across this country, and ask how we get more housing built. I know in my hometown, there are many ambitious councillors who want to see that work happen, and I am looking forward to hopefully making announcements there soon.

Over the course of generations, we have seen communities across the countries make decisions that actively restrict the ability of communities to build houses for their residents. It creates challenges for building livable communities, but the Government of Canada has stepped up to directly support more housing. We are actively working with all partners in the government and private sector to solve this generational challenge.

Again, we did not hear from the Leader of the Opposition how we are going to work together on housing. He is just going to yell at bureaucrats. He is going to get into fights with mayors. That is not how we get anything built in this country. I guess that explains his record as the so-called housing minister under the Harper government, when nothing got built and there were 800,000 fewer units of affordable housing when the Conservatives left office.

Through the national housing strategy, we have seen housing get built or repaired. We have had 126,000 units of housing repaired and 113,000 new homes. The Conservatives would tell us that they did not support that and they would not support that. They would already be 200,000 more units behind if they were in charge. Adding that to the list, that would have been a million units fewer of affordable housing if they had continued to be in charge and if the member had continued to be the minister.

Things are changing. There is an understanding. We are going to continue to work with our municipal partners across the board, and that is why we have brought forward legislation to remove the GST on purpose-built rental housing. What are the Conservatives doing on that? A tangible thing they can actually do is help expedite this. They are stalling and delaying, and are not working with the government.

The Conservatives talk a good game, and I am sure there will be many more passionate speeches about how the Conservatives care, but when it comes to tangible things they can do, like voting for the affordability legislation before this Parliament, they are no where to be found. They are silent on the issue, and silent on any effort to actually approve homes. I get that their nature is to want to get into a fight. They want to yell, scream and hurl insults, and come up with slogans. I think their environmental plan is based on recycling slogans, but slogans do not get anything built.

Unfortunately, that is where the Conservatives are. We are ready to stand up and work with municipal and provincial partners. We are going to get housing built. This plan is half-baked at best. It is not going to work. We are going to get the job done.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-356, and I have a lot to say about this bill. In my speech, I will try to address first the Conservative position and then that of the Bloc Québécois. If I have time, I will speak briefly on homelessness.

Bill C-356 reiterates the Conservative leader’s rhetoric on the housing crisis. In his view, the municipalities are responsible for the housing crisis by tying up real estate development in useless red tape. Let us recall that the Conservatives were among the first to play politics on this issue by directly attacking municipal democracy when they stated, during their opposition day on May 2, 2023, that they wanted to penalize municipalities that do not build enough housing.

The Bloc Québécois has long held that those best positioned to know the housing needs in their respective jurisdictions are the provinces, Quebec and the municipalities. The federal government has no business interfering. Moreover, let us keep in mind that housing is the exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. Should our colleagues need a reminder, I invite them to refer to subsections 92(13) and 92(16) of the Constitution, which give the provinces exclusive jurisdiction over property and civil rights as well as matters of a local nature. The federal government therefore has no right to interfere.

Let us keep in mind the importance of municipal policy, the importance of this level of government and its closeness to the people. Municipalities know their areas and the actual needs of their citizens best. They are the ones that provide direct services and organize their living environment and their neighbourhoods.

When the Conservatives say that municipalities and cities are the ones that delay the process, that is nonsense. They call the phenomenon “not in my backyard”. We believe that the Conservatives prefer to dodge public consultations that help obtain social licence by communicating effectively with the neighbours of a given project. Instead, they prefer to give a free pass to real estate developers. To their mind, the public consultations that cities and citizens are calling for are a terrible scourge that harms everyone and blocks the construction of new homes. Nonetheless, the Conservatives should understand why public consultations exist; they exist particularly because we do not build just anything, anywhere, willy-nilly.

When it was elected in 2011, the Conservative government did not see fit to increase the budget to assist households still deemed to be inadequately housed, letting it stagnate at its 2011 level, or $250 million a year. When it introduced its 2015 budget, that government chose not to extend the funding for social housing stock. Bill C-356 blames the entire housing shortage on municipalities, but this crisis would not be nearly as serious as it is now, if, under the Conservatives, the federal government had not withdrawn funding for the construction of social housing.

The bill aims to control municipalities. It is an irresponsible bill that denies any federal responsibility in the matter and confirms that the Conservative Party will do nothing to address the crisis if it comes into power.

It is also a bill that offers no solutions. There are lots of condos on the market at $3,000 a month. What is lacking is housing that people can afford. That is where the government should focus its efforts. This notion, however, is completely absent from the Conservative leader’s vision. Bill C-356 gives developers the keys to the city so they can build more $3,000-a-month condos.

In short, the bill’s solution to the housing crisis is to let the big real estate developers do anything, anywhere, in any way they see fit. The populist solution offered by the bill ignores the fact that people do not only live in housing, but also in neighbourhoods and cities. That means we need infrastructure for water and sewers, for roads, and for public and private services, such as schools and grocery stores. Cities have a duty to impose conditions and to ensure that their citizens are well served.

Bill C-356 is also disrespectful and divisive. Since 1973, under the Robert Bourassa government, the Quebec Act respecting the Ministère du Conseil exécutif has prevented Ottawa from dealing directly with Quebec municipalities. The Canada-Quebec Infrastructure Framework Agreement reflects this reality, stipulating that Ottawa has no right to intervene in establishing priorities.

What Bill C-356 proposes is to tear up this agreement. Considering that the agreement took 27 months to negotiate, Bill-356 promises two years of bickering, during which all projects will be paralyzed. In the middle of the housing crisis, this is downright disastrous.

If housing starts in a city do not increase as required by Ottawa, Bill C‑356 proposes cutting gas tax and public transit transfers by 1% for each percentage point shortfall under the target it unilaterally set. For example, housing starts in Quebec dropped 60% this year instead of increasing 15%. If Bill C‑356 were in place, this would mean a reduction in transfer payments of about 75%.

Bill C‑356 goes even further, proposing that financing for urban transit be withheld if cities do not meet the 15% target it unilaterally set. This policy would result in a greater use of automobiles, since transit would only be built after the fact, not in conjunction with new housing developments.

Furthermore, the Bloc Québécois already has a wide range of proposals for solutions to deal with the housing crisis across Quebec and Canada. First, we welcomed the Canada-Quebec housing agreement signed in 2020. This agreement is valued at $3.7 billion, half of which comes from the federal government. However, we lamented the fact that negotiations for this agreement spanned three years. Funds that should have gone to Quebec were frozen until the two levels of government found common ground. The Bloc deplores the federal government's constant need to dictate how Quebec spends its money. Quebec wants its piece of the pie, no strings attached. If it had gotten it in 2017, Quebec could have started the construction and renovation of several housing projects, including social housing, three years sooner. This definitely would have eased the current housing crisis.

Unconditional transfers would greatly simplify the funding process. The multitude of different agreements creates more red tape and delays the actual payment of the sums in question. The Bloc also reiterated how important it is that federal funding address first and foremost the needs for social and deeply affordable housing, which are the most critical. Here is what we proposed during the last election:

The Bloc Québécois proposes that Ottawa gradually reinvest in social, community and deeply affordable housing until it reaches 1% of its total annual revenue and implement a consistent and predictable funding stream instead of ad hoc agreements.

The Bloc Québécois proposes that federal surplus properties be repurposed for social, community and deeply affordable housing as a priority in an effort to address the housing crisis.

The Bloc Québécois will propose a tax on real estate speculation to counter artificial overheating of the housing market.

The Bloc Québécois will propose a reform of the home buyers' plan to account for the many different realities and family situations of Quebec households.

The Bloc Québécois proposes that the federal government undertake a financial restructuring of programs under the national housing strategy to create an acquisition fund. This fund would enable co-ops and non-profits to purchase housing buildings that are already on the market, ensure they remain affordable and turn them into social, community and deeply affordable housing.

The Bloc Québécois will ensure that Quebec receives its fair share of funding, without conditions, from federal programs to combat homelessness, while also calling for the funding released in the past year during the pandemic to be made permanent.

In fact, I floated these ideas during the last election campaign in a regional debate in the Eastern Townships. The groups really liked the Bloc's recommendations. However, they lamented the fact that both the Conservatives and the Liberals did not attend the debate. Their absence did not go unnoticed. When parties say they want to make housing a priority but do not show up for the debates, what message does that send?

I am going to take a few moments to quickly talk about homelessness, a phenomenon that is on the rise throughout Quebec and Canada. We are now seeing that homelessness is becoming regionalized. In 2018, 80% of homeless people were in Montreal, compared to 60% in 2022. I am seeing the effects of this in Granby, which is in Shefford, the riding I represent. It is having an impact. The increase in homelessness is caused by issues stemming from the financialization of housing and real estate speculation. All of that reduces the availability of affordable housing.

In conclusion, the Bloc Québécois will be voting against Bill C-356.

I would like to add one last thing. Families and seniors affected by the housing crisis need realistic solutions for social, community and deeply affordable housing that meets their needs. Granby and the broader Shefford community are already concerned about social housing and certainly do not need to be hit with another example of Conservative misinformation. Our communities are capable enough to handle this themselves.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Canada is faced with a housing crisis. The crisis did not happen overnight. In fact, it began 30 years ago. People cannot afford to buy or rent a home. Canadians are living in cars, and homeless encampments are popping up in communities big and small throughout the country. In Vancouver East, we have a permanent encampment. Earlier this month, the metro Vancouver homelessness count showed a 32% increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness since 2020, with 33% of those people being indigenous. Rent has skyrocketed. Young people have no hope of ever owning their home.

Predictably, the Conservatives are suggesting that helping wealthy investors and developers would solve the housing crisis for Canadians who cannot afford to buy or rent the very homes that these wealthy investors are putting on the market. It is no joke: The Leader of the Opposition talks about the elite and the gatekeepers; he should look in the mirror and at those around him. Half of those on the Conservatives' national council are lobbyists for big pharma, big tech, oil, anti-union corporations and, we can guess what else, real estate companies. The Conservative leader is the ultimate lackey for wealthy CEOs, whose main job is to help perpetuate corporate greed.

The Conservative leader is not who he says he is. He wants people to believe that he cares about the housing crisis, people and their families and what they are faced with. If that is the case, why is he completely silent about the wealthy investors who are displacing renters by renovicting them so that they can jack up rent? The Conservative leader's housing bill does not even mention the very people who are in desperate need of a home that they can afford. The bill offers no solutions to those who are being renovicted so that wealthy investors can jack up rent and increase their profits.

As part of the Harper government, the Conservative leader had an influential role in the administration. He sat at the cabinet table. He was even the minister of housing. What happened during that time? Not only did the Conservatives gut housing programs, but they also cancelled the national co-op housing program; in addition, right under his nose, Canada lost 800,000 units of rental apartments that cost $750 a month. While tenants were displaced, wealthy investors and corporate landlords stuffed their pockets.

What did the Conservative leader do? He cheered on the private sector: the people who are benefiting from Canada's housing crisis. He celebrated the fact that the Liberals gave special tax treatments to real estate investment trusts, whose business model is just to maximize profit. Even now, there is mounting evidence that wealthy investors are displacing tenants and jacking up rent. The Conservatives are still on the side of wealthy investors. We can talk about gatekeepers; it is gatekeeping for wealthy investors.

As Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” This is just another Conservative plan to line the pockets of their friends and insiders. While they do it, they also plan to kick municipalities in the shins by slashing funding that communities need. This is just what the Conservatives did before: They cut funding to housing programs, downloaded housing to local governments and then blamed them for not delivering the homes that people need. We should make no mistake: It was the Conservatives who cancelled the national co-op housing program and cut funding for social housing in 1993.

The Liberals, of course, are no better. After promising during the election that they would restore the cut funding, they then went and cancelled the national affordable housing program. Much to the glee of the wealthy investors and corporate landlords, both Liberal and Conservative governments let the private sector run the show for 30 years. Both parties relied on the private market to deliver the housing Canadians need, and we can see where it got us. Rents are up to $2,600 a month in Toronto and to almost $3,000 in Vancouver. Hundreds and thousands of people experience homelessness annually. Shelters are underfunded and over capacity.

I have met schoolchildren who are worried about their housing situation and women fleeing domestic violence who have to return to abusers because they are locked out of the market and the housing supports are not there for them. I have worked with families whose children were apprehended, just because they could not meet their housing needs; they could not afford the rent.

The wealthy investors and developers that the Conservatives want to give a blank cheque to are the same people who created a housing market that not even the middle class can afford to compete in. When the Leader of the Opposition said people were living in a shack, it was actually regular housing that people live in. Across the country, financialized landlords are pursuing aggressive rent increases and displacing long-time tenants, including seniors on fixed incomes, as a business tactic.

Enough is enough. More for-profit solutions are not going to change the course. There is a glaring absence of any measures to ensure that homes built are actually affordable to everyday people in the Conservative leader's bill. There is zero mention of the need to build up Canada's social and co-op housing stock in the Conservative leader's blueprint to fix Canada's housing crisis. He wants us to believe that the wealthy investors will suddenly wake up and decide that they are not driven by profit anymore.

It is a delusional fantasy. It will not happen in a million years. There is zero common sense in that belief.

We have seen the results of the trickle-down theory of boosting for-profit housing over the last 30 years. The 30 years of underinvestment from Liberal and Conservative governments has resulted in the loss of over 500,000 units of affordable housing that would otherwise have been built today.

Conservatives and Liberals slashed programs that built and protected affordable housing in 1993, and the next Conservative government lost 800,000 units of low-cost rental apartments priced at $750 a month. They allowed wealthy investors to buy up the low-cost rental apartments and jack up the rent to maximize profit.

The result is that Canadians are locked out of neighbourhoods they love, where their family, friends and jobs are. To be clear, housing prices also went up, not down, under the Conservative government. There is no question: The Liberals are no better. Canadians have lost another 250,000 homes under the Liberals. That is over one million homes lost while both the Liberals and Conservatives were at the helm. Neither party will even acknowledge the need to stop the loss of existing low-cost rental apartments to wealthy investors and corporate landlords.

Steve Pomeroy found that, on average, we have been losing 15 affordable homes to rent erosion for every one unit built. Hamilton is losing 26 affordable homes for every new one created. The NDP takes a different view. We believe in investing in people. We believe in putting people before profits. We are saying that we should keep the private sector's hands off public lands.

Doug Ford promised to deliver housing. He made backroom deals to carve up the Greenbelt, to make his developer friends even richer. He bulldozed local planning, only to backtrack months later. What does he have to show for it? He has three cabinet resignations, a criminal investigation by the RCMP and no affordable housing.

Unused federal buildings should be leased to non-profits to provide housing for people in perpetuity. It needs to stay in public hands. Instead of privatizing Canada's federal lands for wealthy investors and corporate landlords, they should be returned to the first nations, Inuit and Métis people that they were taken from. The legacy of colonialism has led to drastic overrepresentation of first nations, Inuit and Métis people experiencing chronic homelessness and living in tent encampments.

This has to stop. Lands should either be returned to indigenous peoples, the first peoples, or they should be kept in public hands through non-profits so that we can get that housing built for people. In terms of suggesting that we could rely on the market to address the housing crisis, we have already seen that play before. This is what the Conservative leader is advocating. Just now, he suggested that, oh my goodness, building social housing and co-op housing is a Soviet-style model. He should give his head a shake. He should actually go into the communities and check out the social housing and the co-op housing. They are models that are to be envied. That is what we have to do address the housing crisis, not just strictly rely on the market.

It is time for action, not more of the same.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Carleton, our next prime minister, for sharing his time with me on proposing his important private member's bill.

Those watching at home today will probably be familiar with our interventions during question period. Every day, our Conservative team stands up on behalf of everyday Canadians who are suffering after eight years of the Liberal-NDP government. Our job, of course, is to hold ministers to account and try—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

The hon. member for Vancouver East is rising on a point of order.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was here for the speech by the Leader of the Opposition. He did not mention, at any point in time, that he was sharing his slot with anyone, so I seek—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I thank the hon. member for Vancouver East for her intervention. However, I would like to reassure her that the member for Carleton is not sharing his time with anyone. It is this member's turn in the debate schedule for this bill.

The hon. member for Thornhill.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our job here in the House of Commons is to hold ministers to account and to try to get answers to why so many things have gone wrong here in Canada. However, every day, members on the other side of the House get up and insist that Canadians have never had it so good, and that things are going so well in this country. It is as if they do not talk to anyone at home. To make their point, they bring meaningless, manufactured statistics that are supposed to show how great they really are. In fact, the statistics show how out of touch and clueless they truly are.

One of Liberals' favourite tactics is to talk about the global forces, other countries and wars in distant lands, to pass the buck from Ottawa to someone else, to somewhere else and to something else. We are talking about housing today, like we have been for many months and even years, but the Liberals still do not seem to get the message that the cost of a home in this country is just too high for anyone. Therefore, I am going to try to put it in terms that they would understand, showing exactly how out of control our housing crisis has become. I am going to take some prices and see what someone can buy here and what they can buy elsewhere, which has the added benefit of showing Canadians that this is a uniquely Canadian problem, at least in scope.

I will start in Toronto. A two-bedroom house covered in graffiti, in the Kensington Market neighbourhood, is on the market for $2.8 million. The very same amount of money can buy a 20-bedroom castle on five acres in Scotland. It has 45 rooms, a movie theatre, a botanical garden, a pond and even a private beach, and it has the added bonus of being in a country with no carbon tax. If someone does not want to live in the big smoke, I can understand. In fact, I do not really understand why people do not want to live there, but I can understand why they would have their preferences. In Kitchener, there is another two-bedroom home up for a steal, $1.8 million. Here is a spoiler alert: It is not a steal at all. It is a tiny property with a little backyard and hardly enough room to raise a family. It costs $1.8 million, and if someone wants a bit more breathing room, maybe they could consider spending that $1.8 million on a lake-facing castle on a four-acre property in Sweden. There would be much more space for everyone.

If people are still not convinced, let us go to Vancouver, where the member opposite is from, where a three-bedroom house sells for $4.6 million. A buyer would also get to pay the highest gas prices in Canada and some of the highest taxes. They would get to drive to work in an open-air, government-supplied drug market, which the NDP-Liberal government supports. It is absolutely stunning. If they prefer more peace and quiet or maybe want a bit of a deal, there is an 11th-century castle in England up for sale for $4.4 million. It comes with 32 acres of land and 22,000 square feet of living space, including 17 bedrooms. It is “an idyllic retreat” with farmland and even its own creek, with fishing rights included.

I could go on and on: France, Honduras, Argentina or Wisconsin. The fact of the matter is that Canada's housing market is so broken, and the Liberals are the ones who broke it, with the help of the NDP, of course. Housing prices have doubled in just eight years. A mortgage payment has doubled. The average income needed to buy a home in Ontario is over $175,000, which is much more than the average salary, as we all know. No amount of partisan spin can minimize the fact that it is now cheaper to buy a castle in Europe than a family home in Canada. If that does not convince the Liberals that home prices are unattainable to the average Canadian, I do not know what would. We have to ask, what are people supposed to do?

Nine in 10 of the young people looking to break into the market, pay off their student loans, start a job and maybe start a family do not believe they will ever own a home in this country. There are newcomers looking to Canada for opportunity and a life better than the one they left, like my parents did 48 years ago. Everyone else is struggling under repeated, double-digit increases in the cost of rent; it has doubled too in just eight years. It used to take 25 years to pay off a mortgage. In Toronto, it now takes 25 year to save up for a down payment on a single-family home.

The answer, of course, is that they cannot do anything, because affordability is too far out of reach. Despite working 50, 60 or 70 hours a week at multiple jobs and cutting back on the things they want, people are getting left behind. They are losing hope and giving up on the Canadian dream that was on offer even eight years ago. Things were not like this eight years ago, and they are not going to be like this when the Liberals are gone.

Our mission is to bring that back: to ensure that one can get a good home in a safe neighbourhood through hard work, dedication and savings, which is the way it always was in Canada, and to make Canada the place where we do not have to compare the price of an average home to that of a luxurious castle in Europe to make the point.

It is going to take a new government with a new vision to do that. We cannot and should not trust the same people who got us into this mess to get us out of it. Specifically, we should not trust the same people who paid $54 million for a useless border app to companies that did not even do the work on the app, who lost track of nearly a million people, who have students living under bridges and in tents, who cannot bring themselves to put repeat violent offenders behind bars and who cannot do anything close to competently. Our party is the only one with a common-sense plan to put Canadians back in control of their own lives and return the promise of Canada that always was—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I am sorry to have to interrupt the hon. member for Thornhill, but the time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.

The hon. member will have three minutes the next time this matter is before the House.

The House resumed from October 26 consideration of Bill C-34, An Act to amend the Investment Canada Act, as reported (with amendments) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a government that is incapable of destroying non-state coercive actors is as harmful to the cause of freedom as is a coercive state. We live in a time when our friends and our enemies are becoming more clear, our strategic resources and assets are under more threat to be taken over by foreign entities, and at a time when refining our future, growth, potential and lack of industrial policy will threaten Canada's economic future. Safeguarding the resources we have that will also attract good investments has become paramount not only to the success of our country but also to the success of our children.

After eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, numerous foreign state-owned enterprises have acquired interest and control in many Canadian companies, our IP, intangible assets and data. Billions of dollars of Canadian natural resources, ideas, IP, land and farms have left Canada and are being controlled by foreign entities. It reminds me of the story of the The Giving Tree, which I sometimes read to my children. After eight years, the Prime Minister and the industry minister have been like the giving tree, giving of Canada's industry, IP and land. In the story, there is a little boy who comes to a tree and asks for its leaves, and the tree gives him its leaves. Of course, in January 2022, the industry minister failed to follow his own guidelines when he fast-tracked the takeover of a Canadian lithium company, Neo Lithium Corp., by Chinese state-owned Zijin Mining Group without a national security review. Of course, we lost those leaves. It was one of the only companies in Canada that produced lithium, which is critical for producing batteries.

Huawei, a state-owned enterprise that feeds intelligence directly to China, was still working with many Canadian universities as of the summer. This is just like the boy who asked for the trunk of the tree and was given it. The government has also made commitments of billions of dollars to Volkswagen, Stellantis and other battery plants with literally all of the mined material composing the batteries coming from state-owned Chinese companies and not Canadian-owned critical minerals or mines. As we see, these are the branches of the tree, and the industry minister came to Canada with these branch plants. Taxpayer-funded dollars at Dalhousie University are funding Tesla IP and research, and the IP is all going back to California. As members can see, this is the stump of the tree.

As at the end of The Giving Tree story, when the little boy had asked for all of these items: the branches, leaves, trunk and stump, Canadians are left with nothing as all of these companies, foreign-owned and foreign-controlled, have left Canada, and we are left with only the roots. As Canada loses literally billions of dollars, IP and resources, the government and the giving tree of a Prime Minister are literally not worth the cost; these investments go elsewhere, and Canadians do not benefit from the outcomes. The future of our country, Canada, is in protecting our sovereignty, land, farms, natural resources, technological assets in IP while simultaneously attracting foreign investment that benefits Canadians and this country. It is imperative that we demand transparency and accountability from our government regarding foreign ownership and its consequences.

We must advocate policies that strike a balance between attracting international investment and safeguarding our national interests. We need regulations that prevent the unchecked outflow of intellectual property and ensure that our economic landscapes remain robust and sustainable for generations to come. We must be able to produce the stuff in Canada, getting international investment benefiting Canada and Canadians, creating powerful paycheques and GDP right here in this nation. With a new Indo-Pacific strategy aimed at countering a disruptive China, which includes military, domestic security and cybersecurity enhancements, we must ensure that we restrict the involvement of foreign-state-owned firms in some of our most critical sectors, including Canada's critical mineral sectors.

Conservatives looked at Bill C-34 and submitted amendments, including an amendment to reduce the threshold that would trigger a national security review from $512 million to zero dollars for all state-owned enterprises, and I am glad the amendment went through. We ensured that the items reviewable under the national security review process would include acquisitions of any assets by a state-owned enterprise. Finally, we believe that decisions need to be made that would allow cabinet, not one minister alone, to make those important decisions as to what should be reviewed and what should not. No power should reside in one just minister. As famously said by Kanye West:

No one man should have all that power
The clock's ticking, I just count the hours.

The one thing that the Americans and the U.K. do differently with national security reviews is utilize all of their federal departments in the process. The U.S.A. uses CFIUS, an international committee authorized to review certain transactions involving foreign investment. The U.S.A. gives the criteria that CFIUS considers, oftentimes directed by the President of the United States. In Canada, under the current bill, that power would be delineated to the INDU committee and the public safety ministers instead of making sure, at the very least, it is a cabinet decision.

That would severely hamper our national security. Why? In 2017, the Liberal government allowed a telecom company from B.C. called Norsat to be acquired by a company called Hytera, which is a Chinese-based, state-owned company. Hytera does not make any money. The Conservatives demanded, at the time, a full national security review. The Liberal minister of the day refused to do one and approved the acquisition.

Lo and behold, in 2022, Hytera was charged with 21 counts of espionage in the United States and was banned from doing business there. Only eight months later, the RCMP in Canada, shockingly, bought telecommunications equipment from Hytera to put in its communications system. The government says the change would streamline the process and give security and intelligence agencies more time to complete their reviews, but, as it currently stands, if the public safety minister only is responsible for those reviews, they would miss the mark, as they did with Hytera.

I have another example, more hypothetically. What if the industry minister was from Ontario and the public safety minister was from Manitoba and they were about to make a decision about a security review in Quebec? Would Quebec cabinet ministers not want to be guaranteed feedback and a say in cabinet? If we give that power to just one minister and take away the power of cabinet, ministers across the whole country would potentially lose providing their input into something as important as national security.

I have shared with my colleagues the satisfaction of seeing intangible assets included under this review. I wanted to mention this today because it is very important. There are alarming statistics about how much of our intellectual property leaves this country. The University of Waterloo said that 75% of its software engineering grads are being pilfered and leave Canada to go elsewhere. The U.S. has 169 times the IP production of Canada. Canada produces $39 billion worth of IP a year, but the U.S. produces $6.6 trillion. Not only do we need to develop and commercialize the IP, but through this legislation we also need to protect it. It is very important, as the economy of tomorrow is intangible and full of ideas, that we do all we can to ensure we protect the ideas that come out of Canada, and not lose them.

We have the largest gaps in the world. The OECD has forecasted that Canada will have one of the worst-performing economies in the developed world in the next 25 years. Canada has not been able to keep up with the world when it comes to IP and a knowledge-based economy. Canadian policy is still firmly grounded in industrial-era concepts and is failing to develop national strategies for IP and data.

China developed 30,000 patents just last year in Al. Canada has developed fewer than 30,000 patents in all of our industries across all sectors.

The future of Canada needs to be protected in the airwaves, blockchain, Al, quantum computing, the sky overhead and the Arctic. It needs to be protected in our farms, food-processing plants, genomics, oceans and fisheries, as well as in developing Canadian LNG, which the world is desperately screaming for.

Going back to The Giving Tree story, unlike the government, figuratively and literally, the Conservatives would just plant more trees and protect those trees. When we give the world what Canada makes, Canadians make paycheques and Canadians benefit.

Let us agree to support this bill with the Conservative amendment to remove the power from one minister and make sure it stays in cabinet. Of course, in the future, a Conservative government will not only protect Canadian investment but build Canadian companies and attract investment to grow them.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, the legislation would modernize the act. There has been so much change over the last 12 to 14 years that it dictates the government needs to do something, recognizing technological advances to AI and the importance of international interference.

What surprises me is that the Conservatives seem to be buckling down on the whole idea of not allowing the minister to have the authority. I am wondering if they would apply that principle to other areas of responsibility. What specifically is it? A consultation does take place with what I believe are other public safety ministers, though I am not 100% sure of that, but why is it the Conservatives do not want to see robust legislation that would enable a minister to take the action necessary in order to protect Canadian interests?

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is quite obvious: the minister has failed in the past and the minister is going to fail again. When it comes to national security reviews, we need to ensure we have all actors or all members who can participate in that review process be part of that process. I imagine the example of having a minister from Ontario, a safety minister from Manitoba and an industry in Quebec being looked at. I am not sure why the member would not want a Quebec minister or member of cabinet also being part of that conversation.

More importantly, in the past the minister has given away these resources. Neo Lithium is one example of when we gave away resources to make batteries. That was one minister's decision. We need to make sure it is the cabinet because we can have bad ministers.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, one of our amendments that Conservatives put forward at committee was voted down at committee. I wanted to ask my colleague about it. It was the amendment that called for the modification of the definition of state-owned enterprise to include any company or entity headquartered in an authoritarian state like China, for instance. It was voted down.

I wonder if he could comment on the importance of that amendment and why it should have passed.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, not only at the industry committee, but also at the ethics committee, we have had CSIS and other organizations talk about just what state-owned companies do in Canada. One of the witnesses said:

Chinese law requires that all companies and individuals co-operate with their intelligence establishment and hide that co-operation [under state-owned law in China]. That, combined with the Chinese regime's unrelenting cyber and human-source spying on our Parliament, political parties, government departments, universities and businesses, is reason enough to conclude that foreign investment from China must be subject to the most stringent national security test, regardless of what sector or industry the proposed investment may target.

We are in a new world now. We talked about the importance of identifying and ensuring a review of all state-owned Chinese corporations' involvement in Canadian companies. It is of utmost importance. I wish the other parties would take that matter as seriously as we do.