Debates of May 2nd, 2023

Opposition Motion—Home Ownership and Renting Affordability

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, the average veteran could buy a house for half of what he or she pays right now. Housing was actually affordable when we were in government.

When I was the responsible minister, people could get a house with half the mortgage payment, or rent an apartment with half the rent, or make half the down payment or spend a third less of their paycheque on monthly payments. That was the reality.

What we have now is a costly coalition of the Liberals and the NDP that protect the privileged by blocking housing construction. That is why the working class, the good, decent working class people who used to support the NDP, are abandoning that party as it has joined with the elitists over in the Liberal Party, and they are now standing for the common-sense Conservatives.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

There is no doubt that there are differing views, but I would ask everybody to be respectful during the debate, especially when someone has the floor.

The hon. member for Parry Sound—Muskoka.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, having a place to call home should not be merely a dream in Canada. It should not be a distant memory from generations past. It must be an achievable reality for all Canadian families. Canada cannot reach its full potential until everyone has a safe bed to sleep in and a welcoming place to come home to at the end of the day.

I have had the privilege of visiting many communities in Canada, and there is a despair that too many Canadians are feeling, an emptiness that many of our fellow citizens are dealing with as the dream of having a home of their own slips further and further away from their grasp. Canada needs leaders who will turn rhetoric and words into real tangible action to get shovels in the ground now.

The housing situation in Canada is in crisis, and times of crisis require bold action and real leadership.

I have spoken in the House before about Kim Doughty. She was the catalyst who motivated her husband Claude and me to get an emergency shelter in Huntsville, six beds of emergency shelter and 10 units of transitional housing. The community rallied to the cause and we got the project built. We were justly proud of the accomplishment. We also knew it was just one step, that much more to be done.

After I was elected as mayor, I met with Kim again, and some of her housing colleagues, and she told me some heartbreaking stories about suffering and struggle. Most of it was in hiding right in our picturesque Muskoka.

What Kim told me that day years ago is the same thing we hear today in our communities all across the country. Housing is more than economics. It is more than shovels, dirt and wood. For too many, it is literally life and death. If the leaders of all levels of government took up the cause of combatting this crisis, we would do more than just make our communities more affordable; we would literally save lives.

At that time, our council and administration set to work to change policies. We made land available to developers to build, and so did the community take up the cause.

The Table Soup Kitchen was working hard at the time to open a shelter for men in Huntsville. It was very near completion when an issue arose over the fire code and access and entry points, so we were not quite ready to open it. In the midst of all of this was a young man named Paul.

Paul had his struggles, but he was a joyful fellow and well-liked in the community. He requested to stay in the shelter one night, but he was turned away because it did not have its occupancy permit yet. Therefore, he stayed in his old beat up Volkswagen van that night. When police later found Paul's van, their investigation concluded that the candle he lit, presumably to create a bit of warmth on that cold November night, had tipped over as he slept.

Huntsville lost Paul that night, and our community was devastated, as was I. I received emails from residents who were shocked and angry, some charging that Paul's blood was on my hands. Paul's father later wrote a letter to our community to thank us for welcoming his son and for making Huntsville the place Paul called home, quite proudly. He assured us that Paul's death was not anyone's fault, that Paul made his own choices and that no one was to blame. Yet, were we not? Was I not, just a little?

What more could I have done to resolve the occupancy dispute? What mental health supports were not there that should have been there? Are any of us in leadership doing enough right now?

Tragically, Paul's story is not unique. It is one that is repeated in every corner of our country.

On average, in Toronto, three homeless people die a week. The vacancy rate for rentals in Canada is 1.9%. That means there is nothing to rent. Rental rates have doubled in the last eight years of the current government. Home prices have doubled in the last eight years under the government. For the 35-year-old living in their parents' basement unable to start a family, the entrepreneur thinking of moving to another country or the company passing off the opportunity to grow in Canada because it simply cannot find a place for their workers to live, the problem is getting worse.

It is a crisis. It holds our country back from economic opportunity and prosperity. It holds Canadians back from being able to achieve their dreams. It stops us from building communities. In many cases, it is life and death.

The problem is that we do not have enough supply. Years of bad policy have left our country without enough homes for Canadians. We are not building fast enough to keep up with the rising levels of immigration. The result is that too many of the homes we have today are too expensive for too many of the Canadians who live here.

The solution is to get more shovels in the ground and build more homes faster. We must make it easier to build, easier to get permits, easier to source the skilled labour and building materials needed to get the job done. We must make it harder for the NIMBY activists and politicians who hold development up to stop them from doing that.

Unfortunately, what we get from the government is a lot of talk and no real results. We see a Minister of Housing who attends a lot of announcements, but not a lot of ribbon-cuttings, groundbreakings or grand openings. In fact, a few weeks ago, I asked the Minister of Housing if Canada was in a crisis, something his provincial counterparts, economists, housing experts and his own officials agree upon. He rambled on about political talking points and spoke about his government increasing their ambition.

In a crisis, we devote every possible resource to addressing an issue. It means bringing every single partner to the table and taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to face the challenge head on. Not surprisingly, the minister has not done this, because he does not seem to be aware of the magnitude of the problem.

Canadians deserve better than that. They deserve a country where if they work hard and play by the rules, the dream of owning a home will always be in reach. Our country deserves a government that will work hard to get shovels in the ground, as those Canadians who work hard every single day, saving and sacrificing, do their part to build a brighter future for them and their families.

This crisis is real, and the solutions we put forward must be bold. The old way of doing things simply does not work anymore. For years, housing providers from social housing, co-op housing, community groups and market-based developers have found it nearly impossible to access CMHC programs. Its procedures are convoluted, its decisions often do not even make any sense. The Auditor General's has reported that they are not entirely sure if what it is doing is having any impact. Canadians do not need the Auditor General to tell the truth. The fact of the matter is that it is not working.

Just last week, the CMHC raised insurance rates on multi-unit purpose-built rentals. It raised those premiums by almost 200%. The government's out-of-touch housing policies will continue to drive up the rent on the most vulnerable Canadians and further stall the construction of new units.

However, there is good news. The Conservatives are ready to clean up the government's mess. We are going to get the big government inaction out of the way and ensure that the federal government is no longer a barrier to getting more homes built. We are going to make available a minimum of 15% of underutilized government properties and clear the way for homes of all kinds to build on land that the government has not been using.

While we are at it, we will stand up to the NIMBY activists and cowardly politicians who plague our system, the folks who fight tooth and nail against new homes being built in our communities. The Conservatives understand that if we are ever going to ensure that the next generation, that new Canadians and that young families have the same opportunities that every person in the House has had, then we cannot allow the NIMBYs, the naysayers and the critics to stand in the way anymore.

That is why we are going to tie federal funding on all infrastructure projects for municipalities to how quickly they can clean up their act and get homes built faster. We will require that any major transit project to receive federal funding must have the land around that transit ready to go for high-density housing immediately.

Let me be clear that the Conservatives are loudly and proudly saying yes to building more homes in Canada's backyard. The days of municipal councillors being able to hold up projects and vilify homebuilders must come to an end. The days of talk, delays and deferrals must be a thing of the past.

Come the next federal election, the days of having a Minister of Housing who does not even have the courage to admit that Canada is in a housing crisis, let alone take the actions to fix it, will be done too.

As a former mayor, I can tell members that homes do not get built without leaders who have the courage, the fortitude and the conviction to make the tough decisions, some decisions that are not popular but must be made.

From coast to coast to coast, the housing crisis is claiming lives and shattering dreams. Canadians are living out of trailer parks and taking on crippling levels of debt. Sadly, too many are dying in the streets of our communities, big and small. It is time for bold action and tangible results. Working with all levels of government, trade unions, the private sector and community organizations, we will get things built.

I ask every Canadian who has ever dreamed of having a place to call his or her own, the single mom working relentlessly to build a better future for her children, the entrepreneur thinking of leaving Canada, the new immigrant dreaming of coming to Canada, the young people locked out of the housing market, the parents with young people still living in their basements, to not lose hope because we hear them loud and clear and help is on the way.

After the next federal election, the Conservative government will hit the ground running and work on day one to ensure that having a place to call home at the end of the day is not just the privilege of a few, but the reality of every single Canadian from every walk of life. A home of one's own in this magnificent Canada must no longer be just a dream; it must be a reality. The Conservatives will get our country building again. The Conservatives will bring it home.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, I come from metro Vancouver, and we have had use planning there for a long time that respects and maintains agricultural land, which of course then constricts the amount of land available for housing.

I would like the hon. member's thoughts on something we saw in our home community of Surrey, where the city rezoned land for multiple-dwelling units instead of single family. The neighbourhood rose up because it was concerned about having adequate space, the schools, the rec centres and the traffic management problems of putting that much more density into what was a single-family neighbourhood. What is the member's thought on that and on how to best resolve that kind of issue.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am a former mayor, and I was a chair of planning for many years before that. I guarantee the vast majority of these complaints come from people who just do not want change. Many, many times in planning committees we would have people come to say they did not like something, it would negatively affect the value of their property or there would be too many people.

The fact of the matter is that municipalities have official plans, governing documents that say how the municipality show grow. There is professional planning staff who recommend in favour of things because it makes sense and is good planning. Then there are the cowardly local politicians, and trust me because I dealt with lots of them, and I chastised many of them many times, would say that the people of the community do not like it. They are worried about getting re-elected.

We need to do what is right, and we need to challenge municipalities that are not doing what is right to get the job done because they are holding things up. They are making it more expensive, and it is harder and harder for young people to get into a home of their own because of their delays and tactics to stall these projects.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague, who said in his speech that he was once the mayor of a municipality. I will build on that.

In today’s motion, it is surprising to see the Conservative Party claiming that the federal government knows more about the housing needs and priorities of Quebec and the provinces than the Quebec government and the municipalities do themselves.

As a former mayor, he is aware of the importance of the municipal level and municipal politicians and how close they are to the people. Would it not be better, rather than cutting ribbons left and right, to trust those who know their citizens’ needs?

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will use a line from President Reagan: “trust, but verify.” If they are not getting the job done, they cannot be trusted. That is all there is to it.

The federal government ties strings to funding all the time. This is a crisis. People say to just trust the municipalities, to not worry about it and that one should not invade in anybody else's space. In a crisis, it is all hands on deck. People who make comments like that do not realize it. One needs to go out in the communities and meet the people who are just desperate for a place to call home.

This is a crisis, and dancing around on the head of a pin worrying about jurisdiction is not what one does in a crisis. We all need to come together to make it happen.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member just made the comment of having “all hands on deck” in a crisis. What is missing, of course, over all these years with the housing crisis is the fact that both Liberal and Conservative governments have given a free pass to corporate landlords.

Real estate investment trusts walked away without paying their fair share of taxes to the tune of $1.7 billion for the seven largest REITs in Canada. Over the next four years, they will walk away with another $300 million. That is almost $2 billion that could be invested into housing, so why did the Conservatives give corporate landlords a free pass? Why did they not put people before profits?

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am a big fan of my colleague who asked the question, and I admire her passion for housing. REITs were a tool used by the previous government with tax treatment to create investment in an aging housing stock. Part of the problem we have in this country is that we stopped building purpose-built rental in the 1970s because the Trudeau government of the time decided it was unfair and was worried about helping private landlords.

The fact of the matter is that, once we stopped that, there was little investment in those purpose-built rentals. We are desperate for more purpose-built rentals, and we are also desperate for the purpose-built rentals to be revitalized. They are tired, and they are old. They need more investments, and REITs have actually done that.

Trying to demonize the private sector is not going to help us in this situation. We need trillions of dollars of investment in housing, and the government cannot get it done, no matter how much it thinks it can.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion (Housing)]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking my colleague from Parry Sound—Muskoka for his motion. It gives me the opportunity to talk about something that is extremely important, not only to me, but to our government. It also gives me the opportunity to point out that we are already taking the measures proposed in the opposition’s motion. However, the party across the aisle has often, if not always, voted against all these measures.

Like my colleague who is a former mayor, I am a former city councillor. I was astonished and shocked by the comments made by the House leader of the official opposition earlier today. He said that he thinks municipalities are incompetent. I invite him to repeat that publicly so we can see the reaction of municipalities across the country. I think that we are all here to work together to provide municipalities with the necessary measures and support in the current housing shortage.

We can see how difficult things are for Canadians across the country. Families are feeling the impact of the rising cost of living, and the high interest rates are hitting them hard. Housing costs are taking a heavy toll. As a result, housing affordability is becoming one of Canadians’ major concerns. It is also one of the concerns we have as a government. As you know, we have made major investments in our recent budgets.

Housing is a basic human need. We have to make sure that all Canadians have a roof over their heads that meets their needs and helps preserve their dignity. This is also an economic development issue. The housing shortage can be felt across the country, not just in the major urban centres. In many regions of Canada, the vacancy rate is as low as 0.1%. That is unprecedented.

It is therefore crucial that we build more housing units, create more supply and make housing more affordable for both homeowners and tenants. That is why we have implemented concrete and ambitious measures to double the construction of new housing units and to meet Canadians’ needs over the next decade.

As we often say, our government adopted the very first national housing strategy. This strategy works across the whole housing supply continuum and seeks to help everyone, from the most vulnerable to those who want to purchase a property. Everyone has a role to play, including provincial governments, private businesses, community organizations and municipalities. Everyone needs to co-operate to accelerate housing construction.

This comprehensive 10-year strategy already includes investments of over $82 billion to give as many Canadians as possible a place to call home. Our government is committed to adopting a housing approach based on increased supply and the protection of human rights. Unfortunately, the Conservatives voted against every measure we presented. According to many of my opposition colleagues, we should do less.

There are no small measures or small projects; every unit we build is necessary to make the right to affordable, safe housing a reality each and every time.

I want to remind the chamber of the different measures we have put in place in the national housing strategy. I think the opposition needs a recap. This strategy is a tool kit that addresses the challenges along the spectrum of housing needs. These initiatives will help build new affordable housing, fund non-profit organizations and provide build capacity to communities. Right now, it is simply too hard to get the housing we need to build, particularly affordable housing.

The system is not working, and we need to accelerate change at the local level. That is why we recently launched the housing accelerator fund, a $4-billion initiative that will provide funding for local governments to fast-track the creation of 100,000 additional homes across the country. This fund will help cities, towns and indigenous governments unlock new housing supply by speeding up the development and approval of housing projects and incenting the development of community housing action plans.

This is a significant step in our plan to double housing construction over the next decade and make housing more affordable for Canadians. I think my colleague from Parry Sound—Muskoka will find that it directly addresses his desire to tackle municipal barriers to allow housing to be built faster.

In addition to this new fund, we are also making historic investments in proven programs that are already benefiting those vulnerable populations who need affordable housing. One such program is the rapid housing initiative. This program was created in the early stages of the pandemic to respond to urgent housing needs of our most vulnerable populations. It has exceeded all expectations. It is quickly creating more than 10,200 new permanent units of affordable housing.

Now we are investing another $1.5 billion over two years to extend this initiative. The new funding is expected to create an additional 4,500 new affordable housing units, with at least 25% of funding going towards women-focused housing projects.

Every Canadian has a right to a safe and affordable place to call home, and it is unacceptable that any Canadian experiences homelessness. That is why we are investing over half a billion dollars to continue doubling annual funding for Reaching Home, Canada's homelessness strategy.

Our historic investments in tackling chronic homelessness are already paying off. We have prevented over 62,000 from experiencing homelessness and placed 32,000 people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing. We will continue to work with all levels of government and community partners to put an end to chronic homelessness across the country once and for all.

We know that it is getting harder for many Canadians to afford increased rent or to even find housing they can afford. That is why we are making investments to rapidly increase the supply of affordable rental housing. We are also providing direct financial assistance with the cost of rent to tens of thousands of Canadians across the country through the ongoing Canada housing benefit. which is delivered by the provinces and territories, and the federal Canada housing benefit top-up of $500.

The national housing co-investment fund is another program that has helped us build or renovate more than 300,000 rental units for the most vulnerable Canadians. Our government advanced $2.9 billion under this fund for this purpose. We also want to make the fund more flexible and more easily accessible. We could then accelerate the creation and renovation of some 21,000 rental units for Canadians who need them the most.

Our government is also determined to protect and develop high-quality, affordable co-operative housing units. I myself lived for several years in a co-op, and I helped create three co-ops. With my mother and my brother in a wheelchair on the third floor, we could plainly see that the housing supply was almost non-existent, especially for persons with reduced mobility.

That is why our government made a major, historic investment in co-op housing. We have not seen an investment of that magnitude for 30 years. It includes $500 million to launch a new co-op housing development program to increase the number of co-op housing units in Canada, and $1 billion in loans that will be reallocated to the rental construction financing initiative to support co-op housing projects.

These measures are in addition to our $4.3-billion federal community housing initiative, which is already helping protect and build community housing for some 330,000 households in Canada.

So far, the measures I mentioned focus solely on the challenge of increasing the housing supply. Of course, as we have seen, and as we know, it is currently very difficult for Canadians to fulfill their dream of buying a house.

That is why we launched a tax-free first home savings account, where Canadians can save up to $40,000. As with an RRSP, contributions will be tax-deductible and withdrawals to purchase a first home will be non-taxable, as is the case with a TFSA. It will be tax-free in, tax-free out.

We will also continue to improve the first-time home buyer incentive so that even more Canadians can have access to it, since we need to narrow the intergenerational gap.

We have relaunched the successful affordable housing innovation fund, with a new five-year rent-to-own funding stream. This will help housing providers develop and test rent-to-own models and projects to help Canadian families across the country find a new way to transition from renting to owning a home.

We are also moving forward on a homebuyers' bill of rights, which would protect homeowners from unfair practices like blind bidding or asking them to waive their right to a home inspection.

Our new legislation to ensure housing is owned by Canadians recently came into effect. The Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act, better known as the foreign buyers act, prohibits foreign commercial enterprises and people who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents from purchasing homes in Canada for a period of two years.

Lastly, I think that every member in the House can agree that one of our society’s greatest failures is the housing situation of indigenous peoples. They live in overcrowded houses that are ill adapted to the climate and their communities’ culture.

Our government is working in close collaboration with first nations, Inuit and Métis organizations to jointly develop a distinction-based housing strategy. We must do more, and that is exactly what we are doing with our indigenous partners.

In the 2023 budget, our government introduced a series of measures representing $6.3 billion in funding over seven years. This includes a $300-million investment for developing, together with our indigenous partners, an urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy built and drafted by and for indigenous peoples.

In the 2023 budget, we committed to paying $4 billion over seven years to roll out this strategy. Indigenous peoples are conducting and leading a national engagement campaign to inform the strategy, which will complement the three distinctions-based housing strategies already developed jointly with first nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

All the initiatives I have mentioned build on Canada’s first-ever national housing strategy, our 10-year plan to give more Canadians a place to call home. I can say that we are nearly halfway through the strategy's 10-year timeline, and we are on track to meet very ambitious goals.

We have committed nearly 50% of the strategy’s funding. With that funding, we have supported the repair of over 298,000 homes, just shy of the target of 300,000. We have maintained the affordability status of 234,000 community housing units, which represents 60% of the target so far. We have supported the creation of nearly 120,000 new housing units out of the targeted 160,000. Those are big numbers, and there is no small project and no small unit.

I want to give a couple of examples. This morning, my colleague, the Leader of the Opposition, talked about the Squamish Nation. It was the biggest investment of the national housing strategy, with $1.4 billion for 3,000 homes and units. When he criticizes the national housing strategy, would he have said not to invest in this project?

La Résidence des Ateliers provides 200 housing units for seniors. At Chez Doris, 19 women found a place to stay, as well as support to get them off the streets.

Toronto Community Housing repaired 58,000 units for the most vulnerable people. Thunderbird House got 22 tiny houses. Saint John's Rose House got 12 units.

Every project counts, because there are people behind it. These are a lot of numbers, but they mean nothing if we are not helping people like Neela, a young Métis woman living in Kamloops.

When she aged out of the child welfare system, culturally specific co-housing with elders helped her gain a support network. Her new home, made possible with federal funding, gave her more than just a roof and four walls. It helped her to connect with her culture and develop her spirituality, sense of purpose and self-confidence.

There are people like Ken, from Sudbury. He is now on the road to recovery after suffering a catastrophic brain injury. His mother credits his incredible turnaround to the support he received at Wade Hampton House, an affordable assisted living community for people with an acquired brain injury. Again, this was made possible through the national housing strategy.

Here is the last of many examples: I could talk about Molly from Toronto. Over several years, Molly saw her community of Milliken Co-op start to deteriorate. New renovations and upgrades have made the co-op more accessible and climate-friendly. Just as important, they have restored community pride.

Unfortunately, this motion makes it very clear that the Conservatives are simply not serious when it comes to housing. If they were, they would know that we are already taking unprecedented action to speed up municipal housing approvals, tie infrastructure investments to housing, and convert federal lands to affordable housing. All of the measures in my colleague's motion, we are already doing those things. There is not a serious plan from the Conservatives. There are buzzwords and gimmicks.

I am going to be honest with members. When the Leader of the Opposition was minister of housing, I was actually working on a whole project. If the Leader of the Opposition, the minister of housing at that time, had just done a little bit more, maybe we would not be in this situation right now. It is easy for him to criticize, but he was minister of housing. Maybe 5% of our budget right now is what he actually managed as the minister of housing. He has no lesson to give to anybody.

The only reason we made a co-op possible when I was, at that time, a city councillor, is that provinces stepped up. We, as a federal government, came back to housing with a national housing strategy. We have no lessons to take from opposition Conservatives. They have a leader who, when he was in government, had every means to do more for every single vulnerable Canadian of this country and for indigenous communities, and he did nothing.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was very disappointed to hear the hon. member spend most of her time attacking the previous Conservative government. She did not mention that her government, her Liberal government, has been in power for eight years and has spent and spent and spent. In fact, it has spent somewhere in the order of half a trillion dollars. She talked about how much money her government has spent on housing, affordable housing. The problem is that it is not about how much one spends. In fact, spending has driven much of the inflation in the housing market that we see today.

I would like to ask her to explain how it is that her government has been in place for eight years and has spent a historic amount, not only on affordable housing but on many other things, yet housing in Canada has not become more affordable. It has become more and more expensive. It has doubled in price. Rents have gone up. Down payments have gone up—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Madam Speaker, that is the difference between the opposition and this government. The member talks about spending. We talk about investments in people and in their homes, and making sure that we are supporting the increase of supply of units of housing in the country, for the most vulnerable people and for the ones who want to buy a home. Contrary to my colleague here, we actually invest in people. We do not just spend money. It is easy for them to talk about spending.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned the importance of municipalities several times.

I know that she worked at the municipal level. The government says that municipalities are very important, that they are close to the people and that we need to encourage them to build social housing units, for example. How is it then that the current Liberal government is dipping into property taxes, especially with its tax on new housing under foreign ownership?

Why is the Liberal government dipping into funds that should be used to build social housing? Is that not counterproductive?

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to remind my colleague that the federal government, which introduced the first national housing strategy, is putting municipalities at the heart of the solution. The housing accelerator that we want to implement will enable us to support the structures of municipalities so that they can build more housing.

Municipalities receive far more money from us than they currently give. That is what we want to do. They need to be true partners, and we need to give them the means to do that.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, I liked my colleague's speech, but I do not like the Liberal Party's record on affordable housing. The national housing plan was slashed by the Martin government several years ago.

The Liberals have been very slow to make the investments, which are so important. Of course, core funding is absolutely critical to building housing. The Liberals said they were serious about starting to provide adequate funding to indigenous communities in a few years. Given the crisis and the many communities that lack affordable housing, the delay is unacceptable.

My question is quite simple. Why have the Liberals not made the investments that are needed now to address this crisis and to ensure that everyone in Canada can have a roof over their head?

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Madam Speaker, one thing my colleague and I agree on is that there is much more to do. Although the investments we are making right now are huge and historic, it is quite obvious that we have a lot more to do to address this shortage of affordable housing and to ensure that all Canadians across the country have a roof over their heads.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would ask my colleague to tell Canadians and particularly our friends on the other side about the important projects that this government has achieved for Canadians, particularly with day care, helping the middle class, fighting climate change, infrastructure projects and helping refugees. Those are things that Canadians must know this government has done for Canadians in general.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is important to remember two things. The first is that we have lifted over 2.7 million people out of poverty. Unlike my colleagues in the opposition, this government does not view spending as a burden when it helps the most vulnerable and the families who need it most.

This government is investing in people and those who need it most. That is exactly what we are doing.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is disappointing to me that today's motion speaks nothing of one of the largest root causes of the housing crisis we are in, and that is the financialization of housing. As I mentioned to the parliamentary secretary last night, and she knows it well, for every one new affordable unit being added to the market, we are losing 15 affordable units in the private sector. I would like to hear more from her on what she and her party are going to do to move urgently to address the financialization of housing.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague did ask me about this yesterday evening.

What I can tell him is that we all have a responsibility to ensure that more housing and more affordable housing is built. His question also relates to the whole issue of housing rights. There is also the question of the registry of owners, which is needed to curb speculation in the market in order to protect tenants' right to have reasonable rent and a decent, safe and, above all, affordable place to live.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will bring the member to a question that I asked the Minister of Northern Affairs in committee several months ago, about how many houses were built with the rapid housing initiative and all the bluster from the Liberals about all the houses that are supposedly getting built.

A lot of money has been spent, as my colleague for Abbotsford has said, but guess how many houses were built in Yukon last year? Zero. When I asked the minister if he knew how many houses, he said he did not know. We officially asked the ministry, and their answer back to us was that they did not know either because they do not track the information.

How can we trust the government that is spending billions of dollars on housing when it does not even track the information?

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague on the issue of homelessness. We need to ensure that we are tracking the information and that the programs we put in place are exactly what is needed.

My colleague asked a question about Yukon. I would be pleased to sit down with him and look at that. It is important to remember that the federal government is not a project proponent. We are there to support communities with their project needs. If the territory in question did not submit a project, then I would be happy to go and do a round table to tell people that they have access to programs and that they have to apply to get the funding they need.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary has good reason to criticize the Conservatives' policies, but I think that she needs to remove her rose-coloured glasses when it comes to the Liberal government's national housing strategy, and particularly the urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy.

Even though there is currently a policy in place, we know that the results have not been at all compelling. I would like to know what the government intends to do. This strategy was studied extensively by the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, but it is not working.

What—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I must interrupt the hon. member because we do not have much time left.

The hon. parliamentary secretary for a brief response.