Finance committee  In simple terms, it just allows you to lower your monthly payments and also, of course, it enables you to have a little bit more buying power out in the marketplace, because you're spreading your amortization over 30 years instead of 25. It's particularly important for first-time

Finance committee  You're exactly right that the act has been around for a long time, and as a result of the wording of that act, we are much more focused on five-year terms for mortgages. Reviewing that act and providing more flexibility to enable financial institutions to more easily move to seve

Finance committee  Yes. That's certainly been one of our recommendations when we look at the stress test. If you wanted to step it down, how do you reduce the risk, since the stress test is about addressing risk? The longer people have a locked-in term instead of having to renew in seven and 10 yea

Finance committee  Okay. Will do. Before any measures are introduced for insured mortgages, there should be a thorough review of the existing mortgage system through a lens of fairness and access for first-time home buyers. Other adjustments, like longer-term seven-year or 10-year mortgages, as en

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. For the residential construction sector, building back better is something we do every day. As we look towards recovery from COVID, several things are clear. A home is more important than ever to Canadians, and we've seen that through the extensiv

Finance committee  There's no question that it would have a negative impact on the recovery. Certainly our recommendations are quite different from that. Changing rules like total debt service ratio, gross debt service ratio, is the equivalent of adding on top of the stress test, which would serve

Finance committee  Well, certainly the way things have gone with CMHC in recent times, there's been a very different tack taken by CMHC with respect to home ownership and moving forward on a great many things with respect to that, so there hasn't been a lot of dialogue. We've relied much more heavi

Finance committee  Well, certainly there have been a variety of challenges with getting employees back once they've been disconnected, hence our real recommendation to fix that wage subsidy. One challenge, too, is that people might not be coming back for health reasons, health concerns. They might

Finance committee  Those are the types of recommendations we have been making. We have submissions on those. Obviously, times are tricky as we also try to figure out the current crisis and work to fix and deal with the current programs that are in place. As the government turns its mind to how we d

Finance committee  Thanks for the question. Yes, absolutely. With all the liquidity that's been injected through the programming, it's really important that the financial institutions do in fact go ahead and make those lending amounts available. At this stage, it's really about new development. I

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. As you know, CHBA represents 9,000 member companies across Canada and an industry with over 1.3 million jobs and $142 billion in economic activity—under normal circumstances. While the sector has been operating through the pandemic in some capaci

Finance committee  There was a lot going on there. Definitely a shortage of supply was and continues to be the main driver of house prices there, but there were many elements going on. There was also quite a bit of speculation going on. There was definitely a certain element of foreign investment.

Finance committee  Yes, really you haven't actually reduced demand in that instance; you've just tried to suppress it artificially. Those people are still looking to become homeowners but can't right now. It's not that the demand is gone; it's just that they cannot. The problem is that you haven'

Finance committee  Absolutely. You don't want to have financial institutions with captive customers. You need to be able to shop around to provide a competitive marketplace. It only makes sense.

Finance committee  Yes, of course. They are the lowest risk of any cohort, and yet we're telling them they're the ones who shouldn't be getting into the housing market as homeowners.