Adam Vaughan

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity one last time to remind Canadians that $5.7 billion has been invested by this government. That includes units that have been constructed to the tune of 14,703. It includes 143,684 households that have had their housing repaired and restored to safety. It includes 783,928 households, including households with children, having their subsidies restored and protected. It also includes direct support for 28,864 people who are homeless and need support to stay in housing or to be housed because of the circumstances they are challenged with. That is close to a million different ways in which this government has invested $5.7 billion to make sure Canadians get the housing they need.

We are not done yet. Indigenous housing and the national housing strategy of $40 billion over the next 10 years are additional investments above and beyond what I have just described.

Like with the NDP's plan, there is funding that will come after the next election. We cannot have a 10-year program to accomplish that without its having an impact in that way. I would ask the New Democrats to stop criticizing 10-year plans, when they have a 10-year plan. They should stop criticizing plans that do not come in until after two elections, because half of their money does not come until after two elections. Could they please not recognize—

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member opposite for a very detailed explanation of how the private housing market is moving away from first-time buyers. Government policy has played a role, but inflation and scarcity have played a role. It is a complex issue, but it was a very good dissertation as to what some of the challenges are.

She kind of lost me at the end though when she complained that our government had not made life more affordable for Canadians. She knows that Canadians are $2,000 a year better off now than they were under the previous government. Things like the child benefit, the changes to EI, the GIS improvements, CPP improvement, as well as the 850,000 jobs that have been created, are all creating a sustainable and prosperous way of life for Canadians.

We know that 85% of Canadians get their housing needs met through the private market. That is a good thing, we support it and we have to ensure that market does not collapse. That is why some of the stress tests are there. However, she failed to mention anything about the 15% of Canadians who cannot. I am curious as to what policies are put in place beyond a suite of tax credits that do not apply to people who do not have the income to get tax credits. How is she proposing to support people who are homeless, who cannot afford to even find a place, let alone dream of home ownership?

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, listening to the Conservatives talk housing policy is like the Monty Python sketch with the parrot. They insist it is a housing policy. No, it is not. They say, “Yes, it is.” No, it is not.

If someone says to Conservatives that people are on the street or that people are being de-housed because they have cut subsidies to co-ops, they say, “No, they are not". If we say that they are not building any housing, they say, “Yes, we are.” They are not. It is not funny, but that is the Conservatives' approach to housing.

They do not have a housing program, do not think they need one and do not want one. In fact, over the last 10 years, they actually evicted people and grew the number of homeless people on the street. They grew the backlog of repairs in public housing while they refused to co-operate with provinces, municipalities and indigenous governments to deliver housing programs.

I will give credit to the NDP members. When they talk about housing, they are talking about housing. When the Conservatives talk about housing, they are talking about pipelines. On that issue, they also get their numbers wrong. When more than 700,000 Canadians are subsidized and the affordability of their housing is sustained because they may have disabilities, may not be able to work because of mental health or addiction issues, or may have income issues because they are veterans and are on fixed incomes, which they cut, by the way, and the subsidies are not sustained, which are real dollars helping real people, people are evicted, homelessness is created and affordability is taken away. Are the Conservatives not sorry for cutting the operating subsidies for seniors residences in Alberta, which is one of the biggest cuts they made?

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite talked about generation squeeze, which is an idea that has come from an academic in British Columbia who is particularly focused on the inaccessibility of private housing to first-time buyers on the west coast. The average home price in Vancouver is $1.6 million. That requires a down payment of $320,000. To put that in context, that is more expensive than the condo I own, and I live in Toronto. Quite clearly, there is an impediment to first-time buyers getting into the market.

New Democrats have promised to spend $125 million to subsidize people who have $320,000 to put on a down payment and can carry mortgages of $1.3 million, which is beyond any of our salaries. Their priority for homebuyers in their election promises being made in the by-election is to get an extra $750 into the hands of millionaires as a way of solving the housing crisis.

I am wondering if the member opposite is concerned about generation squeeze. Why would New Democrats spend $125 million on people who have $320,000 in their pockets now to get housing, as opposed to using that $125 million to build housing for people who need it?

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I want to assure members in the House that there is a separate and distinct approach to indigenous housing that is under way with this government, with $1.5 billion in the last budget. It is a specific approach with the Inuit, a specific approach with the ITK, a specific approach with the Assembly of First Nations and a specific approach with the Métis nation.

We also are embarking on a distinction-based approach to indigenous populations living outside the treaty system, outside not just urban centres but also in the north. Members will see work on this in the very near future.

We also have invested and changed the way in which the homeless partnership strategy, now called “Reaching Home”, reaches into indigenous communities and the north. Robert Byers, who was an indigenous housing provider in Saskatchewan, has said that there is no reconciliation without housing, and we take that wise counsel seriously.

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, in the most humble way possible, I would like to thank the member for the words delivered in her language. They communicate to us not just the elegance and the beauty of her culture, but also the importance of the issue we are debating today. I am proud to stand in the House and in a country that has moved toward accepting those words with that voice in the House. It makes us all better.

As someone who has clearly not chosen their words in their own native tongue this week very well and who struggles with French, saying meegwetch would be just the beginning of the way to say thanks to the member, but it is chi-meegwetch in the language of part of the country I represent.

I know the member is a fierce advocate for her people and for her riding because of the question she asked on the floor of the House just before we rose in December. The question was about getting supportive housing and a housing project for women, who were fleeing very difficult circumstances, built, supported and installed. We worked together to get that money. People should not have to ask questions in the House of Commons to get housing or funding. Governments need to provide those dollars systematically, fairly and equitably across the country.

The question I have for the member opposite is a simple one. There is no specific carve out for indigenous housing in the NDP motion. Could we expect a better promise from the NDP than in the last campaign where it only put $25 million into indigenous infrastructure on an annual basis? Could we expect a comprehensive approach to indigenous housing on and off reserve in remote and urban settings before the next election so we can all understand, from the member's perspective, how we can do better?

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, this housing program embraces just that kind of collaboration and co-operation.

There is a great co-housing movement that we are talking to as part of the process moving forward. It does that work of matching people together to create co-housing solutions when people need companionship as well as housing in order to thrive in their housing. The co-op housing sector does it as well, as do other organizations that provide support to tenant groups. That is also included in the complexity and all-encompassing reach this housing strategy has put in place.

The co-investment fund also brings together and rewards collaboration. We look for those partnerships in particular with municipal governments and service providers.

We have a great program for veterans coming out of Bala, where a Legion surrendered its parking lot to a housing program. It is building units of affordable housing for seniors, and also accessible housing for injured vets. The Legion is volunteering time for service, the city is waiving development fees, and we are providing financing and a grant to get that project going.

It is exactly the kind of collaboration that was unavailable to housing providers under the Conservatives, who did not like co-operation and collaboration. In fact, they would pull CMHC funding if there was veterans' funding on the site. That was their approach. We are rewarding that approach and making sure it happens.

I want to take this one opportunity to tell the leader of the Green Party that she failed to mention the environment. I am shocked.

One of the ways to making housing more affordable is to make it so that it reduces its greenhouse gas emissions and consumption of energy. We have a great program in Nanaimo that saw 36 units of passive housing built under the innovation fund by an indigenous friendship centre, outside the indigenous housing program but as part of our program. That particular housing program has supportive housing for youth and aging out of care. It has places for elders to live and families to live, with common rooms and supports, in a community setting. It is beautifully designed in the west plank tradition, but get this: Because it is passive housing, the heating and cooling costs are $20 a month. It is better housing, cheaper housing, and it is reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

When we embrace complexity, we get brilliant solutions. When we open up the housing policy to everybody, including indigenous partners, who have some brilliant ideas, we get the best housing this country has ever produced. That has come out of the national housing strategy.

If the member for Durham would like to come and visit some housing programs as opposed to talking about the language I used, I can show him projects from coast to coast to coast that would take his breath away and maybe even make him decide to reinvest in housing if he ever got back into government, which is not going to happen soon.

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, what is clear is $5.7 billion since we took office and $40 billion over the next 10 years. The $5.7 billion has been invested in such a way that one million housing units across this country have been affected by our support for people living in those units. The numbers are very specific, and I will come back to those numbers and give great detail on them.

We have built 14,703 units, and new ones are being added to that list every day. There are 143,684 households that have had their units repaired and restored to livability.

We also have 783,928 subsidies that have been delivered to unique and specific addresses. On top of that, 28,864 households have received support from this government.

In other words, and I want to be clear about this, more than a million Canadians have been impacted by our investments. That is because households do not have just one person each. When we add up those individual investments, yes, some of them are multi-layered, but most of them have multiple family members. Therefore, we have overachieved when we say a million.

The rhetoric I used was to describe the language, not the figures. The figures are facts. The figures are real. We have helped real people stay housed, get housed and remain in housing. We are very proud of the statistical truth of that statement.

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I understand the urgency and the exasperation in the voice of the member opposite from Saskatchewan. I appreciate and understand the need to work with and listen to indigenous leadership on housing issues, because lived experience drives the right answer to the finish line.

However, let us be clear. The motion in front of us does not talk about indigenous housing. It does not talk about the investments, which are above and beyond the $40 billion. There was $2.5 billion in the last budget, of which $1.5 billion was directly assigned to the national indigenous organizations to start to address the issues and lay the groundwork for an indigenous housing strategy, which we need.

Also, the missing part, and what I would love to see the NDP push us even harder on, because believe me it is the issue that keeps me up at night, is the indigenous urban housing strategy across the country.

Our policy is open to all indigenous groups to apply. That is part of the way we make sure all Canadians can profit from it. However, until we get to an indigenous-led, indigenous-designed and indigenous-delivered program in urban centres, this country will not have a true national housing strategy. I have said that everywhere, across the country. Based on exactly the lessons the member just gave me, and I thank her for them, we have to listen to indigenous leadership if we are going to solve the problem.

[Business of Supply, January 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, let me assure you, it is not the first time a Conservative is confused as to what constitutes good housing policy or facts and figures in the House.

Let me then move on to what the problem is with the NDP motion before us. First of all, it is akin to the way Doug Ford campaigns. It is like the buck-a-beer promise. It is real easy to make, but when we start asking New Democrats to explain it, it begins to get a little fuzzy as to how they are going to deliver it. For example, one of their biggest criticisms is that we are delivering our money after the next election. Ten-year programs in four-year mandates happen to work out that way mathematically, especially if one back-end loads them intelligently and grows the system as one grows the size of the housing program.

When new housing systems are added to existing ones, and new units to existing units, the subsidies grow over time and the repair bill grows over time. If a program is not back-end loaded, housing providers are put in an incredibly difficult spot. That is what the co-op sector has been telling us right across the country. We funded the co-ops at the start, and then the subsidies started to disappear under Conservative rule overnight and all of a sudden they could not do repairs and could not sustain affordability.

Front-end loading housing systems puts people in extraordinarily difficult circumstances and does not help housing providers grow and sustain a system. It actually shrinks a system over time. Therefore, we reject front-end loading of housing programs. In fact, so does the NDP. Its campaign platform last time was $500 million for new housing, for the entire country I might add. That was the way it addressed the problem in its platform. That $500 million was zero dollars in the second year, zero dollars in the third year and zero dollars in the fourth year. That would have failed as a housing program.

Now the NDP has produced a 10-year program, saying half of it is going to be withheld until five years from now. Check the elections cycle. There will be two elections, minimum, between now and the end of the five-year term in its housing program. This means half the money comes after not one election but two elections. It is the same with ours. Long-term sustainable funding cannot be done within a single election cycle. As well, one-term funding and building a comprehensive approach to housing in this country cannot be done. It will not work. That is why the co-op agreements were 25 years in length.

Now, we have changed the co-op agreements and that approach to subsidies because they were previously tied to mortgages. Many of those co-ops no longer have mortgages. They also expired one by one as those mortgages were basically assigned to these projects, so they were expiring overnight one by one and disappearing. We are putting the whole system on a single timetable so that never again will a federal government be able to walk away from those subsidy programs. As well, we are going to create political clout within the housing system to make sure we comprehensively address and politically support housing providers, in particular, co-ops. It is a good program. The co-op sector is thrilled. All one has to do is ask the presidents. They will say that it is a good program.

The other thing that just astonishes me are two comments. One was made by the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, who referred to repairs to housing systems as not housing people. The city I come from has a $3-billion housing repair backlog, started by the NDP at Queen's Park I might add. In the middle of a recession, it chose to defer maintenance and lean into building and did not provide long-term funding for maintenance. When Mike Harris downloaded it to cities, he downloaded it with the deferred maintenance the NDP thought was a good idea.

The member for New Westminster—Burnaby stood here and criticized the Prime Minister for repairing a 150,000 units of housing that would have been lost to the system if they were not properly repaired, the very thing the NDP talks about with indigenous housing. It is a lack of repair budgets that de-houses people, not the existence of four walls and a roof.

The NDP says that it is not a system of housing, and then the member for Elmwood—Transcona dismisses it as a fetish to fix housing because that is part of the complexity the Liberals like to explain their policies with. I can assure the House that repairing housing is the most urgent need in Toronto. Adding to housing is the second most urgent need in Toronto. However, providing supports, which are just as critical to get homeless people into long-term sustainable housing situations, is also fundamentally important. All of that has to be done. We have to build, repair, subsidize and support. The national housing strategy does just that.

We have also remodelled programs the Conservatives had in place. One of the members of the NDP said they liked the housing first approach, and the Conservatives often stand and say that it worked. It worked for some, but it will work better under the Canada housing benefit because it is a much bigger program. It does not require someone to wait six months and live on the street before they qualify, and it does not only have to be spent in the private sector. It can also be spent in public housing, which means shallower subsidies can be used and more people can be housed. We also have taken away the arbitrary requirement that 65% of the funding be spent on rents and nothing but rents.

Individuals on the street can still acquire rent subsidies through housing first, but what we have heard in Quebec is that with the very strong provincial program around rent subsidies, the real missing piece of the equation is meal programs, counselling for addiction and mental health services, visits and socialization, and help and support in transferring people from core housing need to self-sufficiency.

This is what we heard as we consulted and talked to housing providers across the country, and homelessness and front-line workers in particular. If we do not have the full range of supports and if there are not people there to support vulnerable populations as they re-house themselves and stay housed, those people cycle in and out of the housing first program and we do not solve the problem.

Most specifically, housing first used to require that people be classified as chronically homeless before they could get support, and that they be in that state for six months before a penny of rent would be paid. That put children and youth in this country in harm's way in a way that no other government ever has or ever should. Youth aging out of care, who are the most vulnerable kids in our communities, were told by the former government that they would not get any help with rent unless they lived on the street or in an emergency shelter for six months. That is appalling. We changed that rule.

We also know that youth aging out of care need more than just to be given a set of keys and a roof over their heads. They need support in their circumstances to thrive. In other words, they need support with things like income. They need support with things like budgeting and how to live independently, because they have been effectively housed in provincial housing systems that have not afforded many of them that capacity.

We know that when kids aging out of care simply get warehoused in a motel and stuffed into single-room occupancy motels, hotels and inns in places like Vancouver, we end up with people like Tina Fontaine on the front page of the news. Tina lived in a housing program in which a five-year-old child was living alone. Let us think about that. The other teenagers were asked to volunteer time to check in on the kid.

If there is a lack of supports, in particular for vulnerable youth, they do not thrive. They do not succeed in housing even if they have a roof over their heads. If they are denied rent for six months, God help them, because that is the only person looking after them.

In terms of the other programs we put in place as a government to alleviate poverty and address core housing need, such as the Canada child benefit, the change to the GIS, the improvements to EI, the changes we made to CPP, and the reduction in taxes, there has been an across-the-board effort by this government to alleviate poverty. We have lifted 650,000 people out of poverty, close to half of whom are children.

That is also one of the ways to address core housing need. A person can pay the rent with a rent supplement cheque or with their Canada child benefit, but what we need to do is to make sure dollars arrive in those households to meet all of the needs of Canadians: transit, food, housing and health care. Pharmacare will keep people housed. Transit investments will keep people housed. The Canada child benefit will keep people housed. The Canada summer jobs program will keep people housed.

Therefore, yes, our approach to housing is a $40-billion program, largely being spent on construction and repairs. Yes, the majority is going to subsidies, because good housing programs build, repair and subsidize affordability. We have put this in place for the next 10 years. That is the profile of the next phase of investments. However, the first phase of investments, the $5.7 billion, is hard at work in communities right across the country: in Nanaimo, in Victoria, in Toronto and in Winnipeg.

We have heard today that even the NDP members, in a good moment, will say thanks sometimes. The member for downtown Vancouver East pretended that there have been no housing investments in her riding, yet her riding has received some of the most important investments to help people in the most dire situations.

The mayor of Vancouver sat in an office with the minister and me this week as part of the big city mayors visit to Ottawa. The mayor of Vancouver, Kennedy Stewart, who used to sit on the opposition side of this House, admitted to me that when he was on that side, he used to give me criticism. That was his job. He got the lines. He hammered us, and that's what he did. He said, though, that as the mayor of Vancouver he was now receiving support from the federal government, and he had to say the Liberals' program is pretty good. He wanted to know how he could get more, because it is fantastic.

As he stands there and talks about the housing initiatives that have gone in, and as we think and start to talk about solving the situation with indigenous urban populations, and as we talk about the Burrard Street Bridge project, we are there to help.

The member from Edmonton talked about the need to try to figure out what people in mobile homes or modular housing are dealing with, as they cannot get mortgages. That is an important issue. That is a great topic to have a discussion about. We are here to help, and the complexity of our problem happens to address that.

We do not always have to build a house to house somebody. Housing is not just four walls and a roof. Housing is a system and a process that delivers support to people to make their lives secure and gives them the capacity to participate and make contributions across the full array of areas in which citizens can make their participation and contributions known.

I am very proud of the $40 billion. I am very proud of the million households we have helped. I am very proud of the real housing we have handed to real people with real money being invested in real communities right across this country. I am very proud of the fact that we renewed the co-op agreements and gave hope to those people, in particular seniors, who were being systematically de-housed by the Conservatives.

I will address the issue of this notion that rhetoric is somehow the problem in this conversation. When we live by the sword, we die by the sword. When we live in a political world and use words, sometimes our words are not the perfectly chosen words we want them to be, but at the end of the day I could not care less about the argument, and I could not care less about the words.

I care about the numbers and getting the number of homeless people in this country eliminated as a figure and a dataset. I care about the waiting lists from coast to coast to coast in cities and rural communities. I care about the people in core housing need, and I am focused on the dollars and the figures and the numbers. They have to be strong, and they are; they have to be better, and they must be. We are working hard to make new investments, and we have to make sure that Canadians from coast to coast to coast get housed.

It does not matter what words I use. What matters is what dollars we invest. The dollars are real and they are helping real people. They are building housing, they are repairing housing, they are subsidizing housing, they are supporting people with core housing needs, and they have been opened up to be blended with other government programs: veterans programs, mental health programs, addiction services, and immigration and resettlement services.

They have been opened up to work even more effectively in collaboration with other programs, and I do not consider that double counting. I consider that layering in the appropriate needs in the appropriate way, to model support into people's lives so their housing needs are no longer their big concern and they can dream about other things and other challenges to address in their lives.

I will also say that the complexity of the Liberal program is its sophistication, and the strength of the Liberal program is the duration of the investment and its consistency and reliability. Municipalities, indigenous governments, housing providers, provincial and territorial governments, and federal agencies can rely on that long-term investment.

However, the other thing that is critically important is that it grows over time, because as we build a housing system, that housing system needs to grow and accommodate complex needs in Canadians' lives, which change over the time they are tenants in public housing.

If we do not back-end load our money, we de-house people. If we do not back-end load our housing, we leave people with disabilities that are acquired through aging at the side of the corridor. If we do not back-end load our money, inflation takes away the rent subsidy. If we do not back-end load our money, repairs are not done. Hundreds of Canadians, thousands in Toronto, are being de-housed because of decisions made not to repair public housing, and that is as bad as not funding new housing. Our system grows. It is long term. It extends past the election, and thank God it does. It also is housing real people right now.

The NDP may laugh that we have a long-term commitment to Canadians to alleviate poverty, and they may laugh that our investments are working because it shames them into understanding why their housing policy is so deficient.

I will leave New Democrats with one last thought. Part of the complexity of the housing system is indigenous people. I have read the NDP motion, and indigenous people are not mentioned. There is not a single word to address the housing needs of indigenous people on or off reserve, inside or outside of the treaty system.

Something else that is not mentioned in the motion is homelessness. There is nothing for homeless people, not a penny for the homeless, just new housing units that they can hopefully afford. When one builds housing, one buys land in the market, sources materials in the market and pays for labour in the market, which incidentally is often 20% above what the private sector pays for labour. It is a real issue in the housing sector.

When one competes in the market that way, housing cannot be brought in at 30% of income. There need to be subsidies. Homeless people are quite often divorced from the supports they deserve. If there is no subsidy, if we do not provide a targeted and focused approach to solving homelessness in this country, and if all people think they have to do is show them a house and give them the keys, they are fooling themselves. More importantly, they are letting the homeless down.

I know that the NDP members know that, because I know they have told people who have criticized the program, “Don't worry, there's more to come.” I am glad there is more to come, and I am glad the member pushes us to work harder and faster. It is absolutely necessary. It is fundamental to solving this problem.

We do not always get it right. I certainly did not choose my words right this week, but I will be certain to make sure Canadians understand that the money is real, the housing is real, the repairs are real, the supports are real, the subsidies are real and our commitment is real. We have fulfilled our promise, but we are working twice as hard to do even better because, as the Prime Minister so proudly says, and rightfully so, “Better is always possible.”