Adam Vaughan

[Economic Action Plan 2015 Act No. 1, May 15th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to what is called the 2015 budget. However, to my perspective, it is actually the 2017 budget because none of the money for cities will arrive for two years.

We will hear in conversations from the other side about how the Conservatives have put all kinds of money into cities through the gas tax. I would remind everybody here that this was a Paul Martin Liberal Party initiative. To take credit for it is to give us credit for forward thinking.

However, the budget has been described by the minister on the other side continually in question period as having three Ts, and I agree with him. There are three Ts. This budget is totally useless, totally unnecessary and totally unfair. For cities, nothing highlights this more than the housing promises.

There is a provision in the budget bill to forgive mortgages held by CMHC taken out by public housing providers and to put a fund in place to pay off the penalties for discharging mortgages and refinancing, and that is taking up a second mortgage with a second, private sector lender. What is not detailed, but has now come out through questioning, is that when public housing providers take advantage of this so-called opportunity, they lose their subsidies for the rent-geared-to-income units in those buildings. In other words, they would give up a mortgage, take on a new mortgage and somehow, magically, would be expected to finance subsidies for low-income seniors, people with disabilities and other individuals who need assistance. They would actually end up spending more money, relieving the federal government's obligation to people who need housing.

That is the most cynical bait and switch I have ever seen on the housing file. What it ends up situating is one of two opportunities. Either low-income Canadians are subsidizing the government so it can provide tax cuts for affluent Canadians, literally Robin Hood in reverse; or else, the housing providers are given an opportunity to refinance the housing, but in doing so they send the poorest in the housing sector out onto the streets. Out west in Manitoba, where the minister resides, most of those people, close to 5,000 of them, are seniors on fixed incomes. Putting those people at risk is unfair. The fund is totally useless and the response to the needs of the housing sector is totally unreal.

However, it is not just that. There is a promise of $1.7 billion being spent every year as a result of provincial and federal agreements. The Conservatives said that would be continued, that there would be no cuts to this program. They know damn well that those funds actually shrink year after year as subsidies disappear and as mortgages expire. The suggestion is that because they would have no mortgage, they could somehow have a poor neighbour subsidize a less affluent, even poorer neighbour. That is just not fair.

What is really cruel about this is that the assumption is that because housing providers have retired their mortgage they can finally find sums to pay for the subsidy. The truth of the matter is that the funds that are needed when these mortgages retire are there for state of good repair. Because there is no federal capital funding to repair old and aging housing stock, the money that suddenly becomes available to housing providers is dedicated for that, not for subsidies for other poor people. It is the most regressive way of running a housing program we have ever seen.

We have a housing policy, and that policy is more than a plan to have a plan. It involves partnering with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and funding directly, through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, to create supportive housing programs with an endowment. The second part of that is to renew the co-op and housing agreements and to step back into the housing market, but then also to take those savings as they accrue to the department and reinvest them once again in sustaining and building more co-op and affordable housing across the country.

The final piece of this is that with a shrinking CMHC and pulling CMHC out of the housing market, we also need to ensure we do not just focus on affordable housing but housing affordability. That housing affordability is critical in places like Calgary, Saskatoon and Edmonton where, because of the drop in commodity prices, the housing market has suddenly become very fragile. We need a federal government that protects middle-class homeowners, access to rental housing and access to the market for first-time buyers. Instead, what we get is some sort of laissez-faire attitude that says “do what you will”. We have not indexed, for example, the tax breaks for first-time homebuyers, so it is still stuck in the 1980s model as opposed to being updated annually and making housing accessible to everyone who wants to gain that opportunity.

These programs need to arrive. The government on the other side has no program other than to pull money out fo the public housing sector and use it to subsidize tax breaks to the affluent.

The NDP, to its credit, has a plan but it is only a plan to have a plan. If we read Bill C-400, we see it is to have a big meeting. There are no actual specifics as to how to solve the housing crisis in the country.

When we speak about it and folks criticize an earlier government, they are fine to go off and build a time machine, and go back and prosecute that election. It is time to start building housing in the country and the Liberal plan would do that. This budget does not address one iota of that.

On transit, it is even sillier. There is no money for two years and then it comes in dribs and drabs. The program the government has proposed is too big for small cities and too small for big cities, and it will not get transit built in a timely way. Cities need that money now, and not just for new projects. The state of good repair in places like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver is a critical issue facing urban centres. Without additional dollars, not earmarked for ribbon-cutting exercises but earmarked for the development and sustaining of existing transit systems, those transit systems will fail.

Stepping in and providing that revenue is critically important today, not in two or three years' time. If it arrives in two or three years' time, the new transit does not arrive for five to ten years, and that is not a response to gridlock. In fact, what the Conservative government is saying with this budget is, “Wait at the side of the road. Wait for the bus for two or three more years. Wait, wait, wait, we'll get to you at some point”, because right now it is more important not to provide the assistance to cities for which they have asked.

Finally on infrastructure, two years ago there was a 90% cut. Last year, there were zero dollars in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, and small communities and small towns right across the country. The odd dollar arrived, but the bulk of the program, once again, is back-end loaded for 10 years. For critical infrastructure, to build strong cities, in which close to 82% of Canadians live, there is no new money in this budget. There is not a new timetable. It is absolutely unacceptable, and the cities know this.

This budget has to change, and it has to change to support those very programs I just mentioned. If it does not change, cities will not grow, our country will stagnate, and 82% of all Canadians will see their cities fail as the government promises tax cuts that, quite frankly, do not even address the socio-economic needs of the people who live in those cities. This is a huge problem and it needs to change and it needs to change with a go-forward argument, not a debate about what happened 25 years ago.

[Economic Action Plan 2015 Act No. 1, May 15th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard reference to an NDP plan for housing and I welcome a look at it, but so far I have not seen details much beyond a plan to have a plan. It is important that we know how the money would flow, both to provinces and to municipalities, which sections of the housing community it would support, and how it would arrive and create construction.

I also have a question about the state of the repair budget. It is not just a question of the waiting lists; state of good repair is a significant issue in many cities. How is that issue going to be addressed?

Finally, there is the issue of the subsidies. Are the subsidies and the commitment to co-ops and affordable housing going to continue? The agreements are expiring.

It is a three-part question. I would like to know what the plan is from the NDP, beyond just having a plan to have a plan.

[Infrastructure, May 14th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know what it is about the House, but when one asks a question about housing, one never gets a response on housing.

The question I asked was bloody specific. The government has not increased by one penny money available to housing providers to house people on housing wait-lists. The program it has put in place in this year's budget that is supposed to help housing providers refinance actually punishes them by removing the subsidy they used to support seniors and people with disabilities on low incomes who are housed in those very same complexes.

The question is very specific, and I would love a specific answer instead of talk about the gas tax, which was former prime minister Paul Martin's idea, not a Conservative government idea, by the way. I would love to hear an answer about this. Why, when they renew their mortgage under this new budget program do they lose their subsidies? Why does that happen, and how does that help people who need those subsidies to afford the housing they live in?

[Infrastructure, May 14th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to discuss a question I first raised not too long ago, on January 30, in which I talked about the wait list in Toronto—92,000 families and close to 200,000 people—and the fact that the government has recently signed agreements with provinces. However, in the case of Ontario, the Government of Ontario does not provide housing anymore. That was downloaded to municipalities. So, when the minister responded by saying that the provincial minister for housing was happy, yes, he was happy that the agreement was renewed, but the housing providers in Ontario were furious. They are the ones who receive this money, and they are saying that the status quo is not good enough. The status quo is sustaining a waiting list in Toronto of close to 1,500 years. This money would only deliver to the City of Toronto, the largest housing provider in the country, the ability to add 60 new units per year, for the next five years.

I remind the House that there is a waiting list of 92,000 families looking for affordable housing in Toronto, and the government has put no new money on the table.

The other response we have been hearing lately from the government is that it has unveiled $150 billion in the new budget process and that this process of allowing housing providers to renegotiate their mortgages is suddenly going to provide them with no new mortgage.

The reality is that they still have a mortgage, because they are renewing a mortgage, and this money does not actually deliver the capacity to do anything other than the refinance. The refinancing is there so that they can reinvest in the state of good repair but, at the end of the day, there is no new money for the subsidies. What we have heard from the minister is that when they renegotiate, they lose their subsidies.

What the current government claims to be doing is investing in housing, but it is not. It is maintaining the status quo, and the status quo is failing, and when it made changes, it was a bait-and-switch. The provisions it put into the budget actually hurt affordable housing providers, which would make the waiting list even longer and push more people onto the waiting list because affordability would disappear with the refinance scheme.

This is appalling. We have a situation in Toronto that is intolerable, requires a national program to step back up, for a federal government to reinvest in housing, to re-mandate CMHC, and to ensure that housing providers do three things: build new housing; repair existing housing; and sustain subsidies so that those people living in housing do not lose their affordability.

Please, could someone on the government side say that their status quo is not good enough and please stop telling us it is good enough when it is failing people? It is not unique to Toronto. I have yet to find a city without a wait list, and I have yet to find a city without a wait list that is growing.

If the renewal of the agreement is meant to solve a problem, why is the problem getting worse; and if the budget provisions are meant to help providers, why is it that they get punished for participating? Why is it that providers actually end up losing money if they take advantage of a government program, and why would the government seek to put seniors and people with disabilities in harm's way, under some sort of a claim that refinancing would make one mortgage free when it won't, and not tell people that when they do it they lose their subsidies?

How is that a housing program that anybody in this country can support?

[National Urban Workers Strategy, May 14th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my colleague, a member from a neighbouring riding. This is a critically important conversation, and he deserves a lot of credit for sparking it and for framing it in a way that makes sense for Torontonians and for people living not just in urban areas but anywhere in this precarious form of employment that is particularly tied to the cultural sector and to the social sector.

We know there are organizations that exist from grant to grant, from cycle to cycle, and we know that often they find themselves almost taking themselves apart before they can put themselves back together. The individuals working in those areas have a very difficult time stringing together the salaries and the contracts and the stability that are required to be able to produce and contribute to a better community.

One of the challenges that they also have is that they are effectively a group of employees, and they get contracted out to employers. What is the relationship between organized labour and this informal pool of labour? How do we bring those two groups into harmony, when quite often one prevents the other from proceeding in clear solidarity?

[The Economy, May 13th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, every step the member just outlined has actually made it more difficult to own a home in Calgary. That is one of the things the Canadian Home Builders' Association in Calgary is complaining about. The borrowing requirements become so laborious for homeowners, in particular, first-time homebuyers, that the government has made the housing crisis not just one of affordable housing but housing affordability. To remove regulatory power and oversight from CHMC as a stated goal is insane.

I have one last question for the member. In the budget, CMHC announced $150 million for relief of penalties when public housing is refinanced in this country. The specific question that has not been answered by anybody in the department is this.

When people refinance their mortgages, do they have to surrender the subsidy agreements that are tied to the mortgage agreements, yes or no? When people refinance and subscribe to the fund that is there to pay off the penalty for renegotiating, do they have to surrender the subsidy agreements tied to the mortgage agreements, yes or no?

[The Economy, May 13th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I last rose back on March 10. It was so long ago that the Minister of Finance actually used to answer the questions asked of him. It has been a while, though. It is now as difficult to get an answer from him as it is to find a Tory in Alberta. It is a frustrating experience at times.

The question centred on the economy in Alberta. It was at the beginning of the crisis with the drop in oil prices, which has had a devastating impact on the local economy, and there are challenges that many of us are now being made aware of. I had a visit yesterday from the Canadian Home Builders' Association and a representative from Calgary, who gave me an extraordinarily detailed profile of what has happened to the housing market.

The housing market has gone soft in Calgary. Prices have stagnated and sales have virtually come to a standstill. This is having a huge impact on the financial security of a lot of middle-class families, who are now wondering if their major investment is going to grow with the economy or fall behind. They are very worried and are looking for action from the government, which they helped to elect, in standing up to protect housing prices in Calgary. In particular, they are looking to the CMHC.

I would remind the government that the first “C” stands for “Canada”. There is a national housing agenda and program that the government is responsible for. People are looking for the CMHC to do a couple of things. The first is to restore stability to the market.

The question that I asked at the time flowed from an International Monetary Fund report that highlighted problems in Canada's mortgage market, problems in the housing market, and, particularly, problems in Calgary. It talked about the fact that we have a fractured market, diminishing oversight, and a department that has seen cutbacks in the last year that are removing staff, removing capacity, and removing regulatory ability to stabilize the housing market. What we are seeing is that even though CMHC is generating a surplus and providing revenue to the government, the government is walking away from programming in this area.

We are seeing the government walk away from stabilizing the private housing market and walking away from sustaining housing affordability and viability. At the same time, it is also walking away from affordable housing responsibilities by allowing operating agreements to expire and allowing dollars that low-income Canadians are paying into the system to flow out of the housing portfolio and fund things like tax cuts for affluent Canadians. Literally, low-income Canadians are subsidizing high-income Canadians as part of this government policy. All the while, we are seeing the housing market start to disappear.

The question for the government is this: when is it going to re-engage on the housing file? When is it going to stop pretending that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is not a national institution with national responsibilities? Particularly in Calgary, when is it going to listen to the Canadian Home Builders' Association and do things like remove the federal sales tax from development charges, which means that people are literally paying a tax upon a tax?

When is the government going to do things to stabilize the housing market by utilizing CMHC? When is it going to take action to protect housing affordability and, in particular, protect the investments that Canadians have made in their homes?

[Infrastructure, May 12th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about water. He may want to flush those talking points down the train.

The budget is only balanced because the Conservative government is not spending money this year. The other problem is that when it does somehow promise to spend money there is no actual way to apply for the funds. There are no rules in place. The government is literally making it up as it goes along.

On housing, it promised to let operators renegotiate cheaper mortgages, but CMHC has no idea what this actually means for the operating agreements, which are critical to affordable housing. I have a simple question. If the providers renegotiate their mortgages do their operating agreements continue, or will the subsidies disappear? Yes or no? It is a simple question.

[Infrastructure, May 12th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, getting rid of jobs is not a tax cut. It is a job loss.

Ten days ago, I was in St-Pierre-Jolys and I was talking to the mayor there. Her town has an opportunity to add 300 new homes to the community, but new federal water standards mean that she has to change the configuration of her water plant; to add those homes she also has to build a new and bigger one. She is not getting any help from the infrastructure program. There is not a dollar in this budget.

This town cannot do it alone. Building that water plant would not only create jobs building a water plant, but the 300 homes would also create new jobs in this town in Manitoba. Why is there not one single new dollar for new water plants in the infrastructure budget this year?

[Safe and Accountable Rail Act, May 12th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I met with members of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and with firefighters who were on the Hill recently, talking about this very specific issue. The federation continues to be very concerned about the issue of disclosure. Firefighters, in particular, are also concerned. They are not getting advance disclosure; the reason being there is some sort of proprietary interest, there is some sort of national security interest at play here. The firefighters need this information for two reasons. One is that established firefighters inside cities with full-time firefighting forces need to know ahead of time what kinds of disasters they are confronting and need the information in a timely way. In rural municipalities, where they have volunteer firefighters, there is no capacity for training, there is no capacity for advance warning. Assembling the firefighting crew when a disaster occurs is the priority, not finding out exactly what the nature of the fire is.

Why will the government not provide advance disclosure of dangerous goods being shipped through urban and rural areas? Why is it relying upon notification after the fact or in real time when real time is not necessarily effective?