Gord Johns

“Mr. Speaker, I am happy to join this debate on Bill C‑20, Build Canada Homes, which was a promise the Liberals made in the 2025 campaign. I cannot remember the name of the Liberal guy I ran against, but he was very excited about this, saying that he was going to get these homes built and that this was going to be a great policy. I remember thinking, from a Saskatchewan point of view, that we are home to many Crown corporations. I know how Crown corporations work. I have been in government in Saskatchewan. I cannot recall a lot of situations when Crown corporations were involved and became more streamlined or development happened faster and things got done more quickly. That was not really the case when Crown corporations get involved with development on a local scale. However, I do have a couple of points I want to make during this speech. I will read testimony from actual experts in homebuilding. Mike Moffatt, from the Missing Middle Initiative, said, “BCH lacks a clear goal, lacks targets and lacks key performance indicators and accountability measures. The public has not been told how many homes the program will complete, what types of homes, what the rents and prices will be, or over what time frame.” At HUMA, David Wilkes, Building Industry and Land Development Association, said, “To put that [housing] crisis into perspective, in 2025 just over 5,000 new homes were sold in the GTA, the lowest level since we began tracking in 1981. That is an 80% decline from the 10‑year average and follows similarly weak years in 2024 and 2023.” He also said, “It is important to note that 95% of the housing in Canada, both ownership and rental, is delivered through the private market.” At HUMA, Scott Andison, Ontario Home Builders’ Association, said, “When new home construction slows, the impact extends beyond the housing industry alone. Communities lose jobs, government loses revenue and fewer homes are being built for families to create memories.” He also said, “As the industry association representing home builders across Ontario, we know that builders are the experts and the ones who are best suited to construct the homes we need, not the government.” I will be honoured to share my time with my colleague, the member for Calgary Centre. That got me thinking back to when I was in government with the Saskatchewan Party in Saskatchewan. In 2011, we brought forward the Saskatchewan advantage housing plan. Most Liberals will not believe this, but we actually put numbers and targets in this housing plan so that people knew what we wanted to accomplish. We had five programs during that housing initiative called head start on a home, affordable home ownership, rental construction incentive, $35 million for rental housing, and habitat for humanity partnership. The numbers actually coalesced with the programs. We wanted 1,100 units for head start on a home, 600 units for affordable home ownership, 2,900 units for rental construction, 160 for rental housing and 30 for habitat for humanity, so a total of 4,690 homes. Can colleagues imagine a government bringing forward a program with the actual targets of what it wanted to build so that citizens knew what they were voting for? That is my problem with the Build Canada Homes program. My problem is that the government threw $13 billion into a pot to create a whole new bureaucracy. I would love it if one of my Liberal colleagues would tell me how much of that $13 million is going to go into bonuses for executives. How much is going to go into actually paying bureaucrats to sit in Ottawa and not put shovels in the ground? We did just get a lot of numbers related to bonuses for Crown executives this past year. What was the total payment for Crown executives? I think millions and millions of dollars went to executives of Crown companies who did not provide any results. My fear with Bill C‑20 is that there are going to be a lot of bonuses for executives and hardly any homes for Canadians.”