Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-20, an act that seeks to establish the Build Canada Homes bureaucracy, at third reading.
As I mentioned during the debate at second reading, this bill is the latest attempt by the Liberals to solve a problem they created. Unfortunately, their solution is to create yet another Crown corporation, which they promise will deal with their housing issue. It is their third Crown corporation, no less.
Over the last 10 years, our young people have watched rents and the prices of homes double. Inflation has soared and swallowed up their ability to save for the future, and the prospect of owning a home has slipped away.
We all remember the promise the Prime Minister made during the last election to build at speeds not seen in a generation. This generation is losing out. He has invoked grand speeches since, reminding Canadians that for much of our history, our country was able to build vital projects and the housing it needed. I am deliberately saying “for much of our history”, because over the past 10 years under the Liberals, companies have been forced to downsize and lay off workers, businesses have had to shut their doors and our builders have been unable to build because of increasing costs and regulatory burdens.
After promising to deliver 500,000 new homes every year, the PBO estimates that Canada's housing completions will average only 222,000 per year, which is well below the number needed and the number promised. However, rather than delivering on their promise to build these homes, the Liberals are building yet another bureaucracy. This makes it their fourth attempt at using bureaucracy to try to fix the housing crisis they have created.
While the Liberal government continues to tell young Canadians that solutions are on their way, it is going to deliver and all it needs is more time, our young people are waking up each morning with less hope of making a down payment on a home, landing a career that will meet their needs or starting a family. After 10 years of getting it wrong, just how much time do the Liberals need to get it right?
Now we find out that their grand plan is to build yet another bureaucracy. It is completely out of touch to believe that doing the same thing over and again will somehow produce a different result. Rather than repeal overburdensome regulations or legislation, the Liberals' plan is to create yet another massive, multi-billion dollar Crown corporation to do what the private sector already does, except it would move slower, cost more and require more red tape.
The Liberals' record of overseeing Crown corporations is not stellar either. Let us consider Canada Post. This Crown corporation became insolvent under the government and has received not one but two $1-billion loans that taxpayers are on the hook for. This is all because the Liberals failed to act and approve its strategic plan for five years.
The Canada Infrastructure Bank, which is another Crown corporation, handed out a $1-billion loan to a Chinese shipbuilding company, instead of giving that work to capable, hard-working Canadians in B.C.
As for the Canada Lands Company, its responsibility to develop federal properties and convert them into housing units will now become the responsibility of Build Canada Homes. The six projects that were announced, as my colleague pointed out earlier, had already been approved and development was well under way. Only 49% of federal land commitments from the Canada Lands Company will be built by 2028. According to the Auditor General, federal property disposals take six to eight years per property. These delays are not one-off incidents. They are slow, repeat failures that demonstrate a true lack of will to address the issue in a meaningful way. There is no reason to believe that by transferring these properties to the new bureaucracy, things will speed up or be any more effective.
Reorganizing is not reform. Still, that does not seem to resonate. Believing that giving paycheques to policy advisers on bureaucratic boards will deliver results is a failure of imagination and a failure to recognize that a change in approach is needed.
Getting back into the business of building cannot mean being in the business of hiring consultants or layering on more delays. A new board of directors would not fix the supply crisis the Liberals have created. What builders need is for the cost of building to come down, and that means bringing the cost of government down. It means recognizing that the cost of government is more than just the development charges and it is more than the cost of GST on the sale of a home. It is the cost hidden in the complex rules that present the first barrier to a shovel hitting the dirt. These rules drive away competition, slow progress and gradually increase cost.
We do not catalyze an industry by competing with it, using $13 billion of its own tax dollars. We do not build homes by adding more process to the country's system that already has far too much of it. For greater clarity, the OECD has identified restrictive zoning permitting and fragmented approval systems across levels of government as a principal constraint on housing supply in Canada. Build Canada Homes will not fix this, and there is a real human cost to all of this.
Young Canadians are being forced to work longer in the hopes of entering the housing market later in life. We must also acknowledge the lost potential to our economy as construction workers are laid off and home builders stop building at a time when housing starts, job creation and affordability are needed the most.
Building has become complex. The regulatory burden has become expansive. It is not Canadians who need to be reminded of a time when we used to build here in Canada. It is the government here in Ottawa that needs reminding that there was a time when it did not stand in the way of letting people build. If the Liberal government is serious about wanting to tackle the housing crisis our country is facing, it needs to stop blaming outside factors and rather look inward to determine a new approach, which is needed in our capital. A new approach would deliver the results Canadians need.
The new is often uncomfortable. This would mean a departure from an “Ottawa knows best” mindset and a return to common sense, wherein young people are free to innovate, businesses are able to adapt and the market drives demand for growth. The government, as a customer, cannot drive demand forever, create the jobs we will need nor house every Canadian, and it should not want to. Canadians are the most capable people in the world, and the government needs to remember that.
Young Canadians should not be asked to sacrifice more than they already have. They deserve a fair chance to work hard and build the homes, lives and families they choose. The 500,000 homes a year that are needed to solve this housing crisis will not be built by a fourth housing bureaucracy with red tape that prevents shovels from hitting the dirt. Boardrooms have never built homes. Builders and capable workers do.
Canadians do not have to settle for a $13-billion project that will build just 5,000 homes a year. Better is possible, but it requires a change, not more of the same. The bill we are debating today is just more of the same.