Mr. Speaker, it is nice to see you in the chair this evening.
After the last election, the Prime Minister said in this House on numerous occasions that “the Conservatives' plan on housing...was to give tax breaks to wealthy landlords”. He typecast all landlords as wealthy crooks, while ignoring key barriers to building new and affordable rental units. When the current government was elected in 2015, the Liberals promised to scrap the GST on purpose-built new rental housing. Was their definition of a landlord a little different back then?
For months, housing experts, home builders and Conservatives have been sounding the alarm and calling on the government to finally follow through and do something to address the housing crisis. Unfortunately, it took a massive tank in the poll numbers for the government to finally do the right thing and announce that it is removing the GST on purpose-built rentals. I wonder if the Liberals will actually keep this promise.
After eight years of the current government, housing costs have more than doubled. A recent C.D. Howe study determined that in Vancouver nearly $1.3 million on the price of an average home comes from unnecessary red tape added by government bureaucracy. In many parts of the world, that kind of money would buy someone multiple houses or a mansion, but in Vancouver it would get them about 60% of the average home, just enough to pay for taxes, delays, fees, regulations and the high-priced consultants who were involved in building it.
In my community of Abbotsford, the city needs to nearly double its housing starts over last year just to reach the new targets set by the province. Nobody wants to build new homes in Abbotsford because of all the hurdles they would have to jump through, and my city is far from alone. According to Rentals.ca, the average monthly rent in Canada hit a record of $2,100. A recent graduate in an entry-level job who is paying back tens of thousands of dollars in student loans cannot afford that. A senior on a fixed income who has to move, who is already struggling to pay the bills, cannot afford that. A young single mother working two jobs for her kids cannot afford that. It has just gotten so bad.
I believe there is consensus in the House of Commons now that we need to do much more on housing. Will the government commit to linking infrastructure funding to housing completions so that big-city gatekeepers will finally start approving more housing developments? Will the government commit to linking transit funding to housing completions so that our students and seniors can live close to public transit? Will the government penalize Nimbyism, which is stopping certain developments from taking place where housing costs are very high? Will the government commit to providing more money to communities, like a bonus, when they decide to build more homes so people can afford to have a place to live? Will the government commit to offloading federal assets to build more affordable homes?
In April, I asked the former minister of housing if he would allow the hard-working home builders, many of whom are small business owners, to get back to work to build the homes Canadians need. I will ask the parliamentary secretary the same: Is his government prepared to act, get out of the way and let home builders finally build homes, and no longer label them as tax cheats?