Madam Speaker, before I begin, I just want to take a moment at the top to acknowledge the good folks of Parry Sound—Muskoka, particularly on the south end of Muskoka, who have endured a pretty brutal welcome to winter. It is my first opportunity to do this in this place. Not last week, but the weekend before, the area of Gravenhurst received just over five feet of snow in two days. It was a pretty tough time. Highway 11 is the main corridor in and out of the eastern side of Muskoka, and it was closed both northbound and southbound for more than 24 hours.
I just want to take a moment to thank all those frontline workers. We had Muskoka paramedics, the OPP, the fire department, Hydro One workers and municipal operations crews, who were all on the front lines. We did not lose a soul, which is amazing. The mayor, Heidi Lorenz, had to declare a state of emergency in Gravenhurst. They got through it. It is still snowing a bit, but it is a little more manageable now. I think we are going to get through it. I just wanted to give that quick shout-out to all those frontline workers. I know we appreciate them in all of our ridings; they can quite literally save lives. They certainly did over the last few days in Parry Sound—Muskoka.
During this study on indigenous peoples, indigenous people shared some pretty alarming experiences related to housing in their communities. They emphasized the housing shortage. Its effects are well known. Numerous studies have been conducted and we keep studying the issue, even though the situation is one in which we need action. This is a pretty common theme with the government, really. After nine years under the Prime Minister, housing problems are fairly well known, not just on first nations but also across the country. Rents, mortgages and house prices have doubled, and indigenous peoples are still suffering from inadequate housing. We see it all over the place. Here we are: Let us have another study and see how bad the situation is.
I do not think we need any more studies. We need action. I think back to the good folks in Muskoka and just imagine if, in the face of those horrible weather events, we decided to do a study instead of acting. This is a crisis. In crises, we act, but we are not acting. We need action on housing.
In March, the Auditor General released a report covering housing in first nations communities. They found that, overall, since 2018, the government has supported only 4,379 completed housing units. That is about 700 per year. Here are some headlines, some real key quotes from the report: “Indigenous Services Canada and the [CMHC] had not provided the [housing] support needed by First Nations” and “Indigenous Services Canada and the [CMHC] have made little progress in improving housing conditions in First Nations communities.” Here is another one: “The department and the corporation were not on track to meet the government's commitment to close the housing gap by 2030.” Another finding was that indigenous services and the CMHC have made little progress in supporting first nations to improve housing conditions in their community.
This sounds awfully familiar in terms of what we have been hearing at our HUMA committee over the last little while, as well as from MPs all over the country. We have heard back that the CMHC is really difficult to work with. It is a broken institution. It is a lot of paperwork and a lot of bureaucracy, and it takes forever to get responses. In many cases, particularly for smaller community groups that have their ducks in a row, they go to the CMHC and just give up. In many cases, the CMHC seems to be the place where projects go to die. We heard that the government does not have a strategy.
Another quote from the report said, “We found that Indigenous Services Canada and the [CMHC] accepted the Assembly of First Nations' 2021 estimate of the housing gap. However, the department and the corporation did not have a strategy to support First Nations in closing the housing gap by 2030.”
There was a lack of collaboration between the department and the CMHC. We heard from this report that there are 13 programs at the CMHC alone and that this cumbersome application process continues to be a problem. This is not only for the small community groups we hear from in our ridings but also, certainly, for first nations. Another quote from the report says, “We found that a significant challenge for First Nations communities in general was navigating the different application and reporting requirements of the many programs”.
This is a pattern with the government. The bureaucracy put in place by the government has been expanded dramatically. It obstructs homebuilding.
Many MPs have heard from organizations in their communities that are trying to get housing built. It is often impossible to get an answer. There is so much red tape and bureaucracy that they often give up, and it is no different in first nations communities. The CMHC has also created a whole new consulting class, it seems, of high-priced consultants who are hired to fill out these applications. People need a degree in filling out government applications to get answers. Sometimes, organizations spend years stuck at the CMHC, waiting for an answer to their applications; sometimes, the rules change partway through the process.
Conservatives have a different approach. We will reform the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation from a bureaucracy of policy, paperwork and painfully slow approaches to a “get homes built” corporation. We will do it by putting executive bonuses and salaries on the chopping block unless a 60-day response requirement is met. People will get a response in 60 days.
Another thing we heard about in this report was that housing on reserve may not be built according to building codes. Here is another important bit of information: “Indigenous Services Canada and the [CMHC] did not have assurance that all housing units built and repaired with the support of their funding programs met applicable building code standards.”
This is another interesting one. We have heard at HUMA as well that, in some cases, CMHC forces builders, community groups and housing providers to go above and beyond the national and provincial building codes. This often comes in the form of additional energy efficiency requirements. The cost can be as high as $30,000 per door. Of course, this means Canadians are paying that price. In this case, the housing that was constructed may not have met the current building codes, never mind going beyond.
There can be no doubt that we need building code reform in this country. Our building code has been developed over decades without any consideration of affordability. However, at the same time as we need that reform, we have to be sure that the homes Canadians live in are safe. That is certainly true for first nations communities as well. Indigenous communities have incredible potential to really drive the change that they need to see. Indigenous people are the leaders in their community, and they know what they need.
I have met with Justin Marchand, the CEO of Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services. He has become a good friend, and we have met a number of times. Just recently, we met in my office, and he was telling me that OAHS has expanded; it now manages 3,000 units. That is an asset base of about $320 million. This makes it one of the premier indigenous housing providers in this country. When Mr. Marchand was in my office the other day with one of his other team members, we talked about how burdensome and painful the red tape at the federal level can be in terms of getting housing built. Interestingly enough, he also spoke quite favourably about the Conservative plan to make available 15% of the federal real estate portfolio to get housing built and get it built quickly.
He pointed out that his group would prefer, instead of some kind of lease, to own the land. There are a couple of reasons for that. The first one is that, as he pointed out, indigenous people do not need some bureaucrat here in Ottawa to tell them how to do things and get things done, and all the red tape and conditions are the last things they need. The other point is that if the OAHS owns the land, then it can use the asset to leverage the asset and leverage the projects it builds to get the next ones built. It could actually get more units built, which makes complete sense. Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services has demonstrated it can do that and do it very well. Mr. Marchand pointed out that, in some cases, the best thing for aboriginal people is to get the government out of the way. We really see that across the country; there are lots of statistics and data about what is going on. What we see in this report is a mirror of what is going on in the rest of the country; of course, in many ways, it is worse.
We have talked a lot about housing. The government members have talked a lot about their national housing strategy. It is an $80-billion strategy that, in the end, has had precisely the opposite effect of what we needed to have. It cannot be this way any longer. It takes Canadians too much of their hard-earned money to buy or rent a home. When 30% of the cost of every new home in this country is government, that is a problem. Nobody makes more money on housing than governments. One of the most effective ways we can get the cost of housing down is to get government out of the way. Conservatives would actually do that by reforming the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation; however, most importantly, we would eliminate the federal sales tax on the sale of homes under $1 million, which could save Canadians $50,000.
