Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure and honour to rise in this most honourable of House to speak to something very important: Bill C-56, the affordable housing and groceries act.
I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, who will rise after I speak.
With that, let me first say that as an individual, I love capitalism, as I believe many others here in the House do. I love the free markets and creating wealth. Why do I encourage those things? I do so because this is what creates jobs and futures. At the same time, we need government and our regulatory bodies, including the Competition Bureau, to play a role to ensure that there is competition in the marketplace. Everybody likes the free markets and capitalism, but we also need competition to ensure that innovation occurs, that prices become lower, and that the standard of living for all Canadians and for people literally across the world improves.
I am so happy to see that there are a number of items here with regard to the Competition Bureau that will strengthen its role in markets across this country. Getting rid of the efficiencies defence is one thing that I applaud the minister and his team for putting in, as well as the industry committee and other committees that have looked at these issues. It is just so important.
Bill C-56 puts forward legislation to encourage the construction of much-needed new rental housing. We are proposing to eliminate the goods and services tax, the GST, on the construction of new rental apartment buildings. This is one more tool to create the conditions necessary to build the kinds of housing Canadians need and families want to live in.
With this bill, we are also moving forward with immediate actions to enhance competition across the Canadian economy, with a focus on the grocery sector. By doing so, we are helping to drive down costs for middle-class Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
Bill C-56 includes a set of legislative amendments to the Competition Act that would do the following: provide the Competition Bureau with powers to compel the production of information to conduct effective and complete market studies; remove the efficiencies defence, which I spoke to earlier, that currently allows anti-competitive mergers to survive challenges if corporate efficiencies offset the harm to competition, even when Canadian consumers would pay higher prices and have fewer choices; and empower the Competition Bureau to take action against collaborations that stifle competition and consumer choice, particularly in situations where large grocers prevent smaller competitors from establishing operations nearby.
Our government is taking concrete actions to help stabilize food prices and improve competition in Canada. However, the industry also needs to step up with meaningful solutions. Canadians can be assured that the government will continue to work day in and day out to bring them much-needed relief.
Our government is well aware that the economic situation is still difficult for many families. Many are struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table. However, inflation has fallen from a peak of 8.1% in June 2022 to 4% in August this year. There are now almost 1 million more Canadians in the workforce than before the pandemic. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development predicts that, next year, Canada will experience the strongest economic growth among G7 countries.
However, we know that the past three years have been really hard for Canadians. COVID took its toll on our mental health and on the economy. Thankfully, we are past that. We have gone through COVID, the COVID recession, Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine, supply chain snarls, wildfires and hurricanes. We continue to see high global inflation and are now enduring elevated interest rates.
Our government will do everything we can to help Canadians get through these challenging times and to build an economy with strong and steady growth, stable prices and abundant, well-paying middle-class jobs for hard-working Canadians. Our government has always believed in investing in Canadians, restoring middle-class prosperity and building a country where everyone has a chance to succeed and prosper.
There were 2.3 million Canadians lifted out of poverty between 2015 and 2021. In 2015, 14.5% of Canadians were living in poverty. Today, that is down to 7.4 %; this is real progress for Canadians across this beautiful country.
Our Canada-wide system of early learning and child care is making life more affordable for hard-working families, saving families in Ontario up to $8,500 this year per child after tax; pre-tax, that is over $10,000. With a record 85.7% labour force participation rate in July for prime-working-age women, it is helping to address labour shortages and grow our economy at the same time.
From enhancing the Canada workers benefit to creating the Canada child benefit and a new Canadian dental care plan, we have strengthened the social safety net that millions of Canadians can count on and depend on. All the while, we have ensured that Canada maintains the lowest deficit and net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7.
On the housing front, we have been active. We created the tax-free home savings account and doubled the first-time homebuyers tax credit, which will in turn help Canadians afford the home they deserve in the future.
With Bill C-56, we are proposing to do even more by eliminating the GST on the construction of new apartment buildings.
Our goal with this legislation is to temporarily change the economic equation so that builders who are dealing with higher construction costs as a result of global inflation get financial incentives to build projects that otherwise would not get built. The removal of the GST will encourage builders to build more housing in communities across the country, which will lower the cost of rent for Canadians.
Our objective is very clear. We want to eliminate the obstacles to building a larger number of housing units more quickly to reduce the cost of those units. Of course, we will also need the co-operation of our partners.
Our government is calling on all provinces that currently apply provincial sales taxes or the provincial portion of the harmonized sales tax to rental housing to join us by matching our rebate for new rental housing. I would like to say that organizations such as RESCON, the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, and its members that build high, low and medium housing have come out in favour of the removal of GST on new purpose-built rental housing. It is something for which I have called for a long time. It was in our platform, and I am glad we are having it done now.
We would also require local governments to end inclusionary zoning and encourage building apartments near public transit in order to have their housing accelerator fund applications approved. Canadians need support when it comes to accessing housing. We need all levels of government to come together in this effort.
In conclusion, there is a lot of work ahead of us to do. As global inflation and the cost of housing continue to impact Canadians, we must continue to take real action to make life more affordable and build an economy that works for all Canadians. With this legislation, we are leading the charge on housing, to create the necessary conditions and build the types of housing we need and that families want to live in.
Since 2015, our priority has been to build a strong middle class to offer everyone the chance to succeed, but there is still some work to be done.
The measures we are proposing in Bill C‑56 line up with this goal by making it possible to build more of the housing units that Canadians need and to work on lowering the price of groceries.
I invite my colleagues to support this important bill.
I am so glad to see Bill C-56 come to the floor of the House of Commons for debate. I encourage the House to get this bill to committee as soon as possible so the finance committee, or whichever committee will be looking at it, can debate it and even look at amendments to strengthen it. There are many things that are good for the economy in this bill. They are good for the housing sector, for the Competition Bureau and for helping our businesses, as we have done with the Canadian emergency business loan, which put in place during COVID and helped hundreds of thousands of businesses survive in our country.
Let us all work together in the House to get this bill approved for all our businesses, for our stakeholders and, most important, for every single Canadian in this beautiful country.
