Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-26, at 10:33 p.m. This will be the last time members of Parliament will get to debate the bill because the government has brought down the guillotine to shut down debate. What is this bill? It is an act to authorize certain payments to be made out of the consolidated revenue fund for the purpose of improving housing supply. That sounds good. At the outset, let me say this clearly. Canada is not just facing a housing crisis; it is facing a housing affordability crisis. It is not a future housing crisis but a housing affordability crisis right now, which has only gotten worse on the government’s watch. Across the country, people are working harder than ever and falling further behind. Young people who have done everything society has asked them to do, studied hard, gotten a job and saved money, are wondering if they will ever be able to afford a home. Families are spending larger and larger portions of their income on rent. Seniors are being priced out of the communities they helped build. Students are sleeping on couches and living in overcrowded housing. More Canadians are finding themselves on the brink of homelessness. In cities and towns across this country, homelessness continues to rise. This is the reality. This is the crisis. It demands serious action. New Democrats believe government has an obligation to act. We believe public investment has a role to play. We believe Canada must build more housing. We believe governments must be ambitious, but ambition alone is not enough. Public money must achieve public outcomes, including affordability. That is where this bill, Bill C-26, fails. This legislation would authorize the expenditure of $1.713 billion of public funds, yet despite spending more than $1.7 billion, the bill itself contains almost no meaningful safeguards, no measurable affordability requirements and no clear accountability mechanisms. There are no requirements for affordable housing. There are no requirements for non-market housing. There are no requirements for co-operative housing. There are no requirements for public housing. There are no requirements for indigenous housing. There are no requirements for accessible housing. There are no requirements for rental affordability. There are no requirements that any homes created as a result of this funding remain affordable for future generations. There are none whatsoever. Instead, Parliament would be asked to authorize $1.713 billion dollars and then hand enormous discretion to the Minister of Finance to determine where the money goes and under what conditions. This is not accountability. This is centralization. Parliament would be asked to write a cheque and hope for the best. New Democrats do not believe that is good enough. If Canadians are investing $1.7 billion, Canadians deserve to know what they are getting in return. Would rents become more affordable? Would homelessness decline? Would social housing waiting lists shrink? Would more co-op housing be built? Would more affordable homes be available to workers, seniors and young families? The bill does not answer any of these questions. This is because Bill C-26 reveals something important about how the Prime Minister understands the housing crisis. The government says this bill is about supply, but Canadians are not suffering from a shortage of supply. They are suffering from a shortage of affordable supply. These are not the same thing. A luxury condominium counts as supply. A speculative investment property counts as supply. An empty condominium tower counts as supply. None of those things necessarily creates affordability. The question is not whether units are being built. The question is who those units are being built for. The question is whether ordinary people can afford them. The question is whether housing is being treated as a home or as a financial asset. If members read the government’s own background documents, something very revealing emerges. The government is concerned about inventory. The government is concerned about sales. The government is concerned about construction activity. The government is concerned about market conditions. The government is concerned about what might happen if inventories increase and housing markets slow down. Those are all legitimate matters for economists to discuss, but where in the government’s framework do we see the issue of affordability or the issue of homelessness? Where do we see social housing wait-lists? Where do we see renter poverty? Where do we see overcrowding? Where do we see indigenous housing needs? Where do we see housing insecurity? Where do we see affordability outcomes? What we see instead is a framework built around market indicators. That tells us something important: that the government is measuring market distress. New Democrats are measuring human distress. Those are very different things. Canadians deserve honesty from this House. The concern reflected in Bill C-26 is not simply that people cannot find housing. The concern reflected in Bill C-26 is that inventories are rising. The concern reflected in Bill C-26 is that sales are slowing. The concern reflected in Bill C-26 is that construction activity may decline. The concern reflected in Bill C-26 is that housing markets are cooling. Those are not the same thing. A family facing eviction is experiencing a housing crisis. A senior who cannot afford rent is experiencing a housing crisis. A young worker paying half their income to a landlord is experiencing a housing crisis. A worker sleeping in their car is experiencing a housing crisis. A student sleeping in their car is experiencing a housing crisis. A student couch surfing is experiencing a housing crisis. A developer sitting on unsold luxury condominiums is experiencing a market problem. Those are not the same thing, yet this legislation increasingly treats them as though they are. This is the central flaw of Bill C-26. The government has confused the health of the housing market with the well-being of the people who depend upon housing. Canadians have seen this movie before. For years, Canadians have been told that if we support the market, affordability will follow. When housing became increasingly financialized and profiteering became the name of the game, we were told affordability would follow. When corporate investors expanded their presence in housing, we were told affordability would follow. When housing prices skyrocketed, we were told affordability would follow. When rents exploded, we were told affordability would follow. When an entire generation found itself locked out of home ownership, we were told affordability would follow. Today, Canadians are hearing the same message once again: Trust the market, support the market, subsidize the market, and somehow affordability will follow. Canadians have waited long enough. The evidence is in: That experiment has failed. It has failed young people. It has failed renters. It has failed workers. It has failed seniors. It has failed communities across Canada. The private market builds housing where profits are highest. The private market does not automatically build housing where the need is the greatest. That is why we can have luxury towers sitting empty while homelessness rises. That is why we can have speculative investment properties while families struggle to find housing. That is why we can have thousands of vacant units and thousands of unhoused people in the same city at the same time. This is not a natural phenomenon. This is a policy choice. It is the predictable outcome of treating housing as an asset class instead of a human right. Let us consider what is happening in metro Vancouver. According to publicly reported figures, approximately 2,500 completed condominiums are currently sitting vacant and unsold. The number has doubled compared with the previous year. Analysts estimate that it could rise significantly further. Think about what that means. Thousands of homes already exist, thousands of homes have already been built, yet people cannot afford them. At the same time, homelessness remains a serious challenge, renters are struggling and working families are being priced out. The problem is not simply a lack of units; it is affordability. The problem is that housing is increasingly being built as an investment product rather than a social necessity, and that housing has become financialized. Unless we address the financialization, we will continue to produce housing outcomes that fail ordinary Canadians. There is another example that deserves attention. A major residential tower development in Vancouver recently entered receivership after significant financial difficulties and a loan default involving more than $100 million. An institutional lender stepped in, receivers were appointed and creditors moved to recover their investment. Now, I want to be clear, I am not criticizing construction workers, pension beneficiaries or workers whose retirement savings are invested through pension funds. However, this is an example that reveals something important. Parts of the housing development sector are experiencing financial distress. Sales are slowing, inventories are rising, financing is becoming more difficult, projects are becoming riskier, and Canadians have every right to ask a simple question: Is Bill C‑26 designed to solve the housing crisis Canadians face, or is it designed to stabilize a development model facing increasing financial pressure? When I read the government’s own rationale, I see repeated concerns about inventory, market conditions and construction activity. What I do not see is an equal concern for affordability, and that should concern every member of this House. There is another problem with this bill: the allocation formula itself. Ontario received $875 million, Quebec received $320 million, B.C. received $284 million, meanwhile, Manitoba received $10 million, Saskatchewan received $10 million, New Brunswick received $10 million, and Newfoundland and Labrador received $10 million. The government has chosen to distribute funding based largely on housing market indicators. Imagine if we allocated funding based on need, homelessness or renters’ needs. Imagine if we allocated funding based on social housing wait-lists, housing insecurity, indigenous housing needs or renter distress. The results would almost certainly look different. This formula is not built around human need; it is built around market conditions. This is an ideological choice, and New Democrats disagree with it. There is a larger issue at stake. For decades, governments of different political stripes have steadily reduced Canada’s commitment to non-market housing. When I say different political stripes, I mean Liberals and Conservatives. The result is that Canada has one of the smallest non-market housing sectors across many developed countries. We sold the idea that private markets would deliver affordability. Instead, we got speculation, financialization, corporate concentration, rising rents, rising home prices and a housing crisis. Surely the lesson is obvious. We cannot solve a housing crisis created by excessive reliance on the market by relying even more heavily on the market. We need a different approach. We need a major expansion of non-market housing and co-op housing. We need public housing construction, acquisition funds to preserve existing affordable housing, indigenous-led housing solutions and stronger tenant protections. We need affordability requirements attached to public funding, and we need to ensure that every public dollar creates a lasting public benefit. At the end of the day, this debate comes down to a simple question: Who is the government supposed to work for? When renters are struggling, government should stand with renters. When young people are locked out of home ownership, government should stand with young people. When seniors are worried about keeping a roof over their heads, government should stand with seniors. When families cannot afford housing, governments should stand with families. That should be the test; not whether inventories are optimized, not whether markets are stabilized and not whether investors are reassured. Whether people can afford a place to live is the key. Government programs should not be designed to bail out big developers. That is the test, and Bill C-26 fails it. This bill tells us how much money would be spent. This bill tells us where some of that money would go. However, it never tells Canadians what they would receive in return. There would be no affordability guarantees, no social housing targets, no public ownership requirements and no measurable affordability outcomes, nothing. It is just $1.7 billion and a promise that the market would somehow work things out. We have heard that promise before, and after decades of hearing it, Canada now faces the worst housing affordability crisis in generations. When a former central banker designs housing policy, it looks like Bill C-26 and it clearly misses the mark. It misses the human impact of housing affordability. New Democrats believe that there is a better path. We believe that housing is a basic human right. We believe that public money should serve public purposes. We believe that housing policy should be judged by outcomes for people, not outcomes for investors. We believe that if taxpayers assume the risk, they deserve affordability in return. We believe that if public money is invested, the public should own part of that outcome. We believe that if government is serious about housing affordability, then affordability cannot be optional. There are two ways to spend $1.7 billion. We can spend it protecting the housing market or we can spend it protecting Canadians from the housing market. Bill C-26 chooses the first path. New Democrats believe parliamentarians should choose the second, always putting people before profits. That is what we are here to talk about with respect to this bill. Somehow, the government misses the mark. Before this bill came to this critical stage where the government is bringing forward a guillotine motion to ram through the bill without proper debate in the House, I had a briefing with officials. I asked the officials, “What is the funding allocation? What is the formula? How did they determine who gets how much money?” At that briefing, they said that they could not provide that information to me. They were actually not going to share that information. What they really wanted was for me, for the New Democrats and for members of the House to agree on a unanimous consent motion to pass through all the stages—
