Mr. Speaker, today I will be sharing my time with the member for Sarnia—Lambton.
I am pleased to stand to debate this NDP motion. For all the viewers, I am going to read it into the record so that they know what we are debating today.
It states:
That, given that a housing crisis is raging in Canada and that 90% of the funding for the government's national housing strategy will only flow after the next election—
This is key:
—and that much of the funding depends on collaboration with provincial governments and the private sector, the House call on the government to: (a) recognize the right to housing as a human right; and (b) bring forward 50% of the strategy’s funding before the next election to invest in...housing for Indigenous communities...the construction of new affordable housing, new social housing units and new co-ops units...a plan to end homelessness...the renovation of existing social housing and old housing stock...the expansion of rent supplements...the administration of programs that meet the special needs of seniors and persons with reduced mobility.
To begin, I will address the first portion of this motion, which is something that has been widely debated with the NDP. It is housing as a human right. We have different philosophies on this, and we have all wondered which is the best.
We in the Conservative caucus have sat down to discuss this. We have talked about the housing continuum. To be honest, one of my concerns with the housing continuum is when we start talking about the legal and judicial system. Is that the right thing to do? We should actually be addressing homelessness and housing issues one way, and I am fearful any time we try to put that into the judicial system. A good plan and a good program is what we need first.
The second portion of this motion is about spending the money and bringing 50% of it forward as allocated in the first year of the 11-year program. As I indicated, we are talking about a program that has been brought forward from after the next federal election. As a reminder, we have had a majority government since 2015, and this is basically its platform. I thank the government for giving us its national housing strategy, which is part of its 2019 platform. However, unless the work is actually getting done, that is all I see this as being.
I want to go back to something else we are discussing. We are asking the government to start spending money and to start getting things done. Unfortunately, I have to remind the House and the member that this is a government that has not built pipelines, nor held judicial nominations. We have problems with trade negotiations, if anyone watched the updates from yesterday. We have immigration backlogs. We can name one thing after another. That is what we are seeing here. We have even talked about the money that Veterans Affairs has left on the table, an amount of over $300 million. Therefore, asking a government that cannot get the job done to get the job done is like blowing in the wind. I just do not know if that is going to really do it.
I started to review what we are doing, how money is being left on the table, what has been done for indigenous communities, where new affordable housing is being built, what the impact on homelessness has been, the current housing stocks and looking at the needs of seniors. These are all things that we need to look at, and they are all very important.
Therefore, by no means am I trying to say this is not an important issue. I look at housing as part of that. In first year psychology one studies Maslow and the principle that basic shelter is one of the key things. However, as Conservatives, we have a different philosophy on how we get there.
For me, a strong economy will allow for stronger programs. When I hear the NDP saying we should put the cart before the horse, I say let us put the horse before the cart. We need to have strong economic policies and a strong economic engine to drive these social programs and make sure that all Canadians have their essential needs. The cost of housing also comes into that.
Therefore, we should begin by looking at a simple business plan when we are looking at the business model of housing. It is like owning a retail store: the higher the demand, the greater the need and potentially the greater the cost if supply is low. In the case where there is too much supply, we know the costs can go down. It is one of those simple business philosophies.
Since the Liberal government has been in place, it has talked about all it has done. However, looking at the data from CMHC, we see that for a bachelor or a three-bedroom apartment there has been absolutely no change since 2015 on these figures. There have been no vacancy changes. Those rates continue. The government talks about how much it is working on affordable housing. We have seen absolutely no change in three years of data.
However, if we are looking at one- or two-bedroom apartments, we have seen that the vacancy rates for those are on the decrease. It is a 2.5% or a 2.7% vacancy rate.
I spoke to a person in the city of London who deals with affordable housing. It was an organization that was basically setting up a housing bank. We recognize that there are many ways of finding housing now. Some people go onto Kijiji, some people go into the CMHC organizations and look for things like that, or they look on social networks within their communities.
However, in the city of London this summer, only 11 affordable places were available for a population of almost 400,000. There we see the issue. It is a supply issue, so we need to get shovels in the ground. We know that.
We also know there are issues when we start talking to CREA, the Canadian Real Estate Association. We talk about the new stress test that the current government has applied for mortgages. It is not just affecting first-time homebuyers, but also the people who are trying to get in and move from that first home into a larger home. We know their hands are tied right now as well.
We have different philosophies on how that should work, but CREA president Barb Sukkau has said, “The degree to which the stress-test continues to sideline home buyers varies depending on location, housing type and price range. All real estate is local, and realtors remain your best source.” I go back to the realtors and ask them what they are seeing. We know we have seen skyrocketing prices. We know there was a high demand and we saw some things explode almost 75% over five years, with the cost of a house going up by 75%. We saw that in some of our regions.
I live in St. Thomas, Ontario and I could watch the cost of housing go up. For people in the city of Toronto, the next thing they know it is hitting Richmond Hill. Then it is hitting Guelph, then Kitchener, then London, and now it has hit Port Stanley. We saw this cycle happen, but we have to talk about what we can do about this.
We know the average price, but when we put the greater Vancouver area and the greater Toronto area into the calculations we cannot sit there and say the average cost of houses in Canada is x number of dollars. The cost of a house in Vancouver is over $1 million, and in the city of Toronto it is greater than $750,000 as well. We have to see what is affordable.
That is one thing we have really lost. What is affordable? There is not really a benchmark anymore. Is it affordable to go and buy a house for the first time that is $300,000? Possibly it is not. There may be some families who have that opportunity, but many families, many first-time homebuyers, many parents and many families who are trying to get in there with their newborn child cannot afford a $300,000 home.
Therefore, this is the housing market issue that we have here, but this is also about the continuum of housing. We have to talk about what this does. When we talk about affordability, we have to look at housing as being an entire thing. How does it all strategize together?
I know a young woman who has two jobs and three young children, and is also going to school. She has left her husband and is currently living in second-stage housing. Her goal is to find a proper affordable house. There is nothing available for her. This is an issue. She would like to move on with her family. She would like to have a new life, but none of these things are happening because we know the shovels are not getting in the ground.
After three years of the current Liberal government, we do not see anything happening. It is story after story of people trying to get into housing.
What the government needs to focus on is how we can get our economy rolling so we can make sure developers are able to go out there and develop, so that people who want to buy a house can get out there and buy a house. We know that 50% of Torontonians are now renting. This has changed the way things are going, and the whole idea of having a house as part of people's retirement plan has kind of gone out the door. People are living differently. People are living paycheque to paycheque. We know that Canadians have greater debt. A whole bunch of things are happening here.
However, when it comes down to having a strong economy, this is where the government is absolutely failing, and that is what is concerning me. We can have strong housing, but if we cannot afford to purchase those houses because we have no jobs, it does not matter. What we are going to see is the housing continuum go out of whack. We are going to see that we need more social housing because people do not have jobs. For the people who may have been in those really expensive homes, we are going to see those homes decrease in value because people are losing their homes.
The current government needs to get back on track and try to actually negotiate deals like NAFTA. It needs to stop losing our manufacturing to the United States. Manufacturing makes up about 10% of our economy, so we have to think of these things. I live in a community where NAFTA is the number one issue right now, but that has not been addressed. I could carry on and share with members some of the stories I heard when I visited a place in London. We talk about shelters being 40% over capacity. The capacity is 65 people and the shelter has 85 people.
This policy and all of the policies the government has put forward are the problems in our housing continuum. I thank the member for putting forward the motion, but the government needs to do better and make sure the economy is hand in hand with housing as well.
