Bill C-356

Building Homes Not Bureaucracy Act

An Act respecting payments by Canada and requirements in respect of housing and to amend certain other Acts

This enactment enacts the Building Homes Not Bureaucracy Act in order to
(a) establish a target for the completion of new homes in high-cost cities that increases 15% every year and ties federal infrastructure funding allocated to high-cost cities to that target;
(b) provide for the reallocation of $100 million from the Housing Accelerator Fund to municipalities that greatly exceed housing targets;
(c) require that federal transit funding provided to certain cities be held in trust until high-density residential housing is substantially occupied on available land around federally funded transit projects’ stations; and
(d) make it a condition for certain cities to receive federal infrastructure and transit funding that they not unduly restrict or delay the approval of building permits for housing.
It also amends the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act , the National Housing Act and the Excise Tax Act in order to
(a) eliminate executive bonuses unless housing targets are met and to reduce executive compensation if applications for funding for new housing construction are not treated within an average of 60 days; and
(b) provide a 100% GST rebate on new residential rental property for which the average rent payable is below market rate.
In addition, this enactment requires the Minister of Public Works to table a report on the inventory of federal buildings and land, to identify land suitable for housing construction and to propose a plan to sell at least 15% of any federal buildings and all land that would be appropriate for housing construction, subject to certain exceptions. Finally, it requires the Minister of Public Works to place these properties on the market within 12 months of tabling the report.

Building Homes Not Bureaucracy Act

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was relieved, when this debate began, to hear the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing describe that we are in a housing crisis because, of course, a year ago, the Minister of Housing could not even use the word “crisis”; he could not be brought to do it.

Something obviously happened over the course of the summer, and the Prime Minister's Office woke up and recognized that we are in fact in a housing crisis and that the use of the word “crisis” does make sense. We know we are in a crisis because we see the results of what is going on. Rent has doubled in the last nine years. Mortgages have doubled in the last couple of years. Home prices have doubled. Mortgage rates have skyrocketed. Inflation is out of control. There are too few homes for too many people.

It is absolutely a supply crisis, as the parliamentary secretary mentioned. We see this with young people who are forced to stay at home and live in their parents' basements. They are not starting their lives as they normally would. The number of homeless people in this country continues to grow. We see tent cities in communities large and small all across Canada now. The cost of lodging, rent and mortgages is impacting affordability generally.

On top of that, there is the carbon tax. The carbon tax applies to the materials used to build homes, so the materials for homes are getting more expensive. Buying food and heating those homes are also getting more expensive. More people are struggling to maintain the homes they have.

We know that it is a supply issue, but it is also a housing affordability crisis. We have to think about what impacts the cost of a home. We know those materials I mentioned, like the two-by-fours and those kinds of things, cost more money. The carbon tax is applied to the production of those two-by-fours, to the delivery of materials to job sites and to everything.

There is a shortage of skilled trades and labour right now, which is adding to the problem as well. We need to make sure that we are attracting people to this country who can help us build homes. That is not really happening. The approval processes at the local levels are also slowing things down and are adding costs to the process of building homes. There are also taxes, fees and government charges.

Let us talk about that for a second. Who makes more money on housing than anybody else? The question is rhetorical, but Canadians would be horrified to know that it is not the big, greedy developers I hear the NDP talk about; it is government. In fact, between 2013 and 2023, the costs have gone up dramatically. The land value in this country has gone up about 34%, and that is due to the fact that we have a lot of land. We have a lot of land in this country, and there should be no reason that we have trouble building homes. Construction costs in that 10-year period have gone up 122%. That is the cost of materials. However, what have gone up the most are Government charges and taxes. From 2013 to 2023, government charges have gone up almost 250%. Those are charges at local levels. The HST charge on houses has gone up 221%. That means nobody makes more money on housing than governments. About 33% of the cost of the average home in this country is government.

What makes up those fees? HST is a big part of it; there is no question about that. However, municipalities are absolutely on the front lines of this situation, and they are also one of the biggest culprits of the problem. At the local level, we have infrastructure charges and development charges. Those are charged are per lot, and they can be staggeringly expensive. We have planning approval fees, parkland and parking fees. We often have school charges that are charged by the school board. We have density bonusing fees in some cases, building permit fees, and water and sewer connections fees. There are all kinds of fees.

At the provincial level, there are land transfer taxes when a home gets sold. There are sales taxes, like the GST and the PST. There is mortgage insurance, if someone cannot put down more than 20% on a home. These fees add up to over $200,000 on average. They are all government charges that go right to the bottom line of owning a house. Now we know why house prices just keep getting more expensive; it is that the government makes so much money. The beauty of the Leader of the Opposition's private member's bill, which is actually a very simple bill, is that it tells the municipalities on the front lines of this, which charge the biggest fees, that they just need to get the job done.

The Liberals are happy to talk about their housing accelerator fund, which I am happy to take a moment to talk about right now. The parliamentary secretary was hopeful that I would learn something from it. I have learned something from it. It is a joke. That is the truth. It is a $4 billion fund in the context of a government that is borrowing money. This $4 billion is borrowed money that it is giving to municipalities based on the promise that those municipalities will be better.

I asked to see the agreements between the municipalities and the federal government several months ago. I did not get them. The best I could come up with was searching through each of these municipalities' staff reports to council and some of the media reports, which have been very interesting. All of them have language such as “we will do this” or “we will do that”. They say that they will permit higher density, will look at ways to improve the process or will think about things. There is nothing definitive in any of the staff reports to council. They have been adopted, but not much of it has actually been done.

I will focus on something very specific. The Minister of Housing is incredibly proud of this housing accelerator fund. He is proud because he is focused very much on allowing four residential units as of right in any zone across the city. That means you could turn your single-family home into a fourplex without having to go to the municipality to get approval to do it. He thinks this is some kind of silver bullet, I guess, because the City of Windsor said it was not going to do that, but it had a proposal to do higher density around transit, where it made sense. It had a proposal to permit fourplexes around the university, for example, and things like that. It would have permitted thousands of units, but that was not good enough because the government wants fourplexes as of right.

The City of Toronto has had this rule in place now for just over a year, having fourplexes as of right. This is the great panacea the Minister of Housing is so proud of, having fourplexes as of right everywhere. Since May last year, when the government adopted this, there have been 74 applications in the City of Toronto, so clearly that is not the silver bullet the Minister of Housing thought it was. However, the Liberals sure have gone all over the country doing photo ops and press releases, being so proud of the $4 billion they are going to spend on the promise of doing better, when they are not getting the job done.

On top of the affordability issues we face, the housing accelerator fund money is going to cities that are increasing their charges. Can members imagine, in an affordability crisis, that the Liberals are sending money to cities that are increasing charges? Case in point, the City of Ottawa is going to get $178 million. It just approved an increase to its development charges by 11%. It will now cost an extra $55,000 on a house in Ottawa. The City of Toronto got $471 million. It increased its development charges this year by 21%. It is making housing more expensive in a housing affordability crisis, and what it got out of the Liberal government is a cheerleading squad.

The Leader of the Opposition is not proposing to tell the cities how to plan what kind of housing they need, nor how to do their municipal zoning and approvals process; rather, Conservatives are saying that government needs to get out of the way. We will deliver that kind of result by tying federal infrastructure money to cities with results. It is the fundamental difference between a government that is long on photo ops, talking points and being proud of its parade, and a government in waiting that would deliver results and would pay for those results. There would be no more promises. Canadians deserve results; they are tired of the photo ops and the vacuous grandstanding. They need results. If the Leader of the Opposition becomes prime minister, they would get them.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is a bit much, listening to the member. He was the mayor of Huntsville, and he is talking about the costs and the percentage increases in terms of government costs. When he was the mayor, development charges went up 20%.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

That is a lie. That is not true. We cut them.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it will be interesting to see. The member says it is not true, but that is the number I have been provided with. We will find out what is the truth. It might upset him, and justifiably so.

Let us take a look at the bill itself. Imagine the leader of the Conservative Party is trying to give the false impression that he actually cares about housing in Canada. What did he do when he was the minister responsible for housing in Canada, when we lost literally hundreds of thousands of housing units that went from low-income affordable to much more expensive? It was hundreds of thousands of rental units. When he was the minister of housing, and I need two hands on which to count this, he actually built six low-income housing units, and it cost him millions and millions of dollars to do that.

Now he comes in today as if he is going to be the one who fixes the housing issues in the Canada. He has to be kidding. How is that possible? Let us take a look at the record of the Conservative Party. Not only was the leader of Conservative Party a disaster when he was the minister of housing, but the Conservative Party also abandoned housing.

Contrasting that to today, there is a Prime Minister and a government that are working with municipalities and provinces, recognizing the importance of housing and investing not only time but also hundreds of millions, going into billions, of dollars into housing. We understand it is an issue of fairness. We must think about the millennials and generation X, and ensure that the housing dreams of Canadians will be there and alive into the future.

We have a government that cares about housing, in contrast to a government under Harper and the former minister of housing who is today's leader of the Conservative Party that did not care about the housing in our country. The facts are there. That is the history. Let us contrast that to the billions of dollars when the Prime Minister came up with the first-ever national housing strategy years ago, and the types of financial assistance we are providing to non-profit housing, whether the habitats or the infill homes, as well as supporting housing co-ops and non-profits. These are the type of investments we are putting into housing. That is not to mention working with provinces and municipalities.

There was a time when all political parties did not support housing, whether they were New Democrats, Liberals or Conservatives, in the early 1990s. We would have to go back generations before we found a prime minister and a government that have invested so much energy in ensuring that the federal government plays an important role in housing. We are demonstrating that and have been doing so ever since we tabled the national housing strategy years ago. The housing strategy is more than just paper; we have invested hundreds of millions, going into billions, of dollars.

We are working with governments at all levels, and non-profits, to ensure that affordable housing will continue to be a reality for Canadians. That is something we are doing in a tangible way. That is why I am totally amazed that today's leader of the Conservative Party is trying to give the impression he is.

The leader of the Conservative Party goes around Canada talking about how Canada is broken. He amplifies the fears and anxieties of people in regard to housing. Yes, it is a serious issue. While the leader of the Conservative Party goes around speaking to the extreme right, the Prime Minister has been working with the federal minister, along with the provinces and municipalities. A good example of that happened not long ago, maybe two months or eight weeks ago, when the Prime Minister was in the city of Winnipeg.

In Winnipeg, the Premier of Manitoba, the provincial minister, the federal minister, the Prime Minister and the Mayor of Winnipeg talked about how Manitoba is moving forward in dealing with the issue of affordable housing. The Mayor of Winnipeg, along with me and others, last December, talked about how the federal government is investing and encouraging municipalities to build more homes, not only encouraging but also providing financial support. We have seen cooperation in the province of Manitoba.

It is not just governments but also organizations. I often make reference to Habitat for Humanity, which across Canada does phenomenal work in ensuring that homes are affordable. Individuals who would otherwise never get the opportunity to have a home are getting a home. Over the years in Manitoba alone, we are talking about 600 homes. The contributions it has made to Winnipeg North, I would suggest, are very significant. From a non-profit point of view, they are probably second to no other.

The current government has not just opened its eyes, as the Conservative leader has said, on the issue of housing. We have been dealing with housing for years now, recognizing that it is not just Ottawa's responsibility. Ottawa has a responsibility to lead and be there, to assist where we can and provide resources where we can. We have been doing just that.

Contrast that to the attitudes that come from the leader of the Conservative Party or from the Conservative Party in general and the extreme right. What do they talk about? Conservatives criticize the municipalities. They argue in terms of having money and being prepared to give money, but such-and-such things must be done, and if they are not done, then there will not be any money given. There is no sense of cooperation coming from the Conservative Party, none whatsoever. It is either the Conservative way or the highway when it comes to the development of housing.

It is only in the last two years that I have actually started to hear Conservatives talk about housing, unlike the government, which has been talking about housing in terms of the housing accelerator fund for purpose-built apartments. Conservatives oppose that fund. Talking about the GST, the Conservatives would like to get rid of it. Some provinces like the federal policy so much that they are doing the same thing with the provincial sales tax. The Conservatives do not believe that the GST is a good policy either. Conservatives talk about the federal lands, but we have been talking about the federal lands for years. We have actually taken actions on that.

Think of Kapyong Barracks as an example, in the city of Winnipeg. With respect to development charges, we are funding literally billions of dollars to support provinces and cities while ensuring that the price of housing remains lower than it would be without that sort of fund. Again, we are looking for cooperation. There is $250 million in the budget towards fighting homelessness; of course, the Conservatives are voting against that also.

The Conservatives seem to believe they have a nice shiny plan tied up in the bill before us. Welcome to the game. However, the Conservative Party has no credibility on the issue of housing, and that is the bottom line. As the Liberal government continues to demonstrate that it genuinely cares, the Conservative Party focuses on cuts. That is the difference: Liberals care; Conservatives cut.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-356 reiterates the Conservative leader's talking points about the housing crisis.

According to him, the municipalities are responsible for the housing crisis by tying up real estate development projects in supposedly needless red tape. One of the Conservatives' proposals is to set a target for increasing the number of housing starts. Beginning on April 1, 2024, the target would increase by 15% each year.

Bill C-356 places the entire blame for the housing shortage on the municipalities, even though the current crisis would not have been this severe had Ottawa not pulled out of funding for social housing under the Harper government.

Bill C-356 would in effect put municipalities under outside control by preventing them from taking measures to ensure a minimum of social housing or from protecting their built heritage, under penalty of having their funding reduced—including funding for the development of public transit.

In my riding of La Pointe-de-l'Île, I have met met many times with seniors, families and community associations and that has helped me realize the enormity of this tragedy. Expensive condos are already largely available on the market. What is sorely lacking is affordable housing. The resulting mad scramble for rentals betrays people's growing sense of despair. They feel that the government is doing nothing to help them.

The pressing issue is not to continue encouraging big real estate developers to participate in this frantic race, but rather to address the housing shortage affecting most low-income people. The Bloc Québécois has already made a wide range of proposals and interventions. For example, it is proposing that the federal government reorganize its funding for the various programs under the national housing strategy to create an acquisition fund. This kind of fund would enable co-operatives and non-profit organizations to acquire apartment buildings currently available on the private market, keep them affordable and convert them into social, community or deeply affordable housing units. For example, in my riding of La Pointe-de-l'Île, Corporation Mainbourg, in association with the Quebec government and the City of Montreal, acquired Domaine La Rousselière. This is a 720-unit complex that will be protected from the speculative market to ensure its long-term affordability will be maintained.

The Bloc Québécois has long said that the provinces and municipalities are in the best position to know the housing needs on their territory. It is not the federal government's place to interfere. I would remind members that housing is exclusively under the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. Since 1973, Quebec law has prevented the federal government from negotiating directly with municipalities, and Bill C-356 would tear up that agreement. It would create a series of conflicts. It took two years to reach the agreement, and we cannot afford another two-year delay that will bring all projects to a halt. All of the interference brought in by Bill C-356 means that this irresponsible bill would create a breach that would foster sustained conflict and certainly paralyze every project, right in the middle of a housing crisis.

I would remind members that we welcomed the $3.7-billion Canada-Quebec housing agreement signed in 2020. Half of that money came from the federal government, but the negotiations took three years. The funding that was supposed to go to Quebec was blocked until the two levels of government came to an agreement. Had that happened in 2017, Quebec could have built and renovated many social and affordable housing projects since then, which would have helped mitigate the current housing crisis.

In closing, the Bloc Québécois deplores the federal government's constant need to spend its money, interfere in Quebec's jurisdictions and tell Quebec how to spend its money. We are asking that the federal government transfer its share with no strings attached. That is why we will be voting against Bill C-356.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. Leader of the Opposition has five minutes for his right of reply.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Madam Speaker, after nine years, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost of housing, which has doubled since he took office. It is hard to believe, but on my last day as housing minister, in November 2015, the average rent in Canada's 10 biggest cities for a one-bedroom was $973. Can members believe that? It is now $1,893.

The average down payment needed for a new home then was $22,000; it is almost quaint. Now it is almost $50,000. The average mortgage payment needed on a brand new home was just $1,400. It is now almost $3,500. It took about 39% of the average family paycheque to make monthly payments on the average home. That number has now risen to 64%, a record-smashing total, meaning that one would not be able to eat, clothe oneself, own a vehicle or do anything other than pay taxes and one's mortgage if one is the average family buying the average home.

The Prime Minister did not care much about any of this until he started crashing in the polls, and then he panicked and appointed a big-talking housing minister to take the helm of the ministry of housing. This minister had already, according to Liberal admission, caused immigration to run out of control. Since that time, we have seen a flurry of photo ops and new government programs designed to generate media headlines. However, predictably, these headlines have not reduced housing costs or increased home building. Home building is down this year. The federal housing agency says that it will be down next year and the year after that. Rent and mortgage payments continue to rise.

That is because the government, under the Prime Minister, is building bureaucracy rather than homes. My common-sense plan is the building homes, not bureaucracies act. It seeks to provide exactly what it says: less bureaucracy, more homebuilding.

In a nutshell, here is my common-sense plan to build the homes: First, we would require municipalities to permit 15% more homebuilding as a condition of getting their federal funds; second, we would sell off thousands of acres of federal land and buildings, so they can be used to build homes; and third, we would axe taxes on homebuilding. In this plan, we would get rid of the carbon tax, the sales tax and other taxes that block homebuilding.

This is a fundamentally different approach than what we see from the current Liberal government. What it currently does with its so-called housing accelerator program is to fund box-ticking. It puts together a bunch of boxes that municipalities have to tick for procedural and bureaucratic reforms. Once the boxes are ticked, the money is sent and we move on. The problem is that, even if those are the right boxes to tick and the municipality ultimately ticks them, when the feds turn their backs, the city can then put in place a bunch of new obstacles. For example, municipalities such as Ottawa and Toronto have actually jacked up development charges after getting federal housing accelerator funds. The City of Winnipeg got federal funding and then blocked 2,000 homes right next to a federal transit station.

That is why trying to manage process will get one nowhere. When one pays for bureaucratic box-ticking, that is what one gets. However, people cannot live in a box ticked by a bureaucrat; they have to live in a home. That is why my plan would pay for results. It simply requires that municipalities permit 15% more homes per year. If they hit the target, they keep their federal money. If they beat the target, they get a bonus. If they miss the target, they pay a fine. They are paid on a per completion basis, just as a realtor or a home builder is paid per home built. We want to pay for keys in doors and families sitting in a beautiful new kitchen, enjoying their dinner. We want families to be housed, healthy and safe, with money in the bank. That is the result we are going to pay for. Now let us bring it home.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The question is on the motion.

If a member participating in person wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, I request a recorded division.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Pursuant to Standing Order 93, the division stands deferred until Wednesday, May 29, at the expiry of the time provided for oral questions.