Mr. Speaker, in April 1910, Teddy Roosevelt arrived in Paris on the heels of his Smithsonian-sponsored, year-long scientific expedition to East Africa. While he was there, he delivered his famous “Citizenship in a Republic” speech at the Sorbonne, made famous largely because of that stirring “man in the arena” passage. However, in his speech about the importance and the value of public participation in our democracy, there is actually another line from that speech that I am thinking about today, which would be this line: “The gravest wrong upon his country is inflicted by that man...who seeks to make his countrymen divide primarily on the line that separates class from class”.
Today, in Canada, we have a housing system that has become a division, class from class, between those who have and those who have not. In our housing system, the lines have quite clearly been drawn. While Teddy Roosevelt was clearly not talking about housing that spring in Paris, his words ring true today here in Canada in an uneven housing system of over-regulation, painfully long approval processes and skyrocketing government charges, taxes and fees on housing.
Seniors, on the one hand, are counting on the equity in their homes to retire; young people, on the other, are saving every penny, hoping that they can one day buy a home. There are young people who know for sure that the bank of mom and dad will be there when they go to buy a house, and then there are other young people who are not too sure how they are going to make the rent payment next month. Tradespeople are sitting at home, waiting for that phone to ring to get back to work to build more homes; meanwhile, housing starts are plummeting in this country at a time when we are desperate for millions of new homes.
For over 10 years, we have heard about Liberal promises with respect to housing. We heard Justin Trudeau tell young people in 2017 that his national housing strategy was going to be “transformational” and “life-changing”. Many young Canadians thought this was the first time that the government was going to take housing seriously in their lifetime. Maybe, just maybe, they were going to be able to afford to buy a home, as the generations before them did. However, we know that this is not what happened. Since then, rents have doubled, prices have doubled, down payments have doubled and mortgages have doubled.
Some think this is when the national housing crisis began, when the national housing strategy actually turned out to be a bureaucracy-building strategy. While the Liberals have made things exponentially worse, the genesis of our current mess actually began with the first Prime Minister Trudeau. Back in the 1960s, there was a period of significant expansion of social housing. The federal government, through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, partnered with provinces and municipalities to build large-scale public housing projects, for example, Regent Park in Toronto, Bayers Road in Halifax and Churchill Park in St. John's. The government's aim was to address housing shortages with a focus on integrating public housing into existing communities, thereby making complete communities. The first Prime Minister Trudeau also brought in a special tax program to incentivize the private sector to build rental units. It was called the MURB program. It was wildly successful. It worked, so he cancelled it.
In the 1980s, the federal government began engaging more, and more directly, with the provinces, and it began to reduce its own leadership role. Recessions and budget constraints led to a slowdown in new social housing development. The focus began shifting away from building new units to maintaining the existing stock. By the early 1990s, the federal government withdrew completely from funding new social housing, transferring responsibility to provinces and municipalities.
By the 2000s, Prime Minister Harper, to his credit, saw this crisis coming. He recognized that there was a growing homeless population all across the country. His government's housing first policy aimed to focus on just that. Non-profit organizations and community groups had funds available for housing, and those organizations actually committed to getting it built.
Then came the second Trudeau era. Before Justin Trudeau, it took 25 years to pay off one's mortgage. Now it takes 25 years just to save up for the down payment. Taxes, charges and fees make up almost 30%, on average, of the cost of every new home. Cities and towns have planning departments that have slowed the approvals process by adding layers of reports and processes and new and ever-more-complicated zoning regulations. All new homes are subject to the high cost of red tape, reports and studies by experts, as well as studies of those studies by other experts. The cost of approvals has skyrocketed.
On top of all those layers of bureaucracy, many cities also use a tool called development charges, a tool designed to help municipalities offset the cost of new housing infrastructure, all related to growth. It has been fairly abused by a lot of municipalities to pay for pet projects and overpriced infrastructure under the mantra that growth will pay for growth. Municipalities in Ontario alone sit on development charge reserve funds of over $12 billion. Housing-enabling infrastructure is not getting built, and development charges continue to rise, in many cases to over $200,000 per home, which just sits in these cities' bank accounts.
Here we are with a crisis that is quickly becoming a catastrophe. We know what the housing problem young people are facing in this country is. Industry stakeholders and housing experts and advocates have been abundantly clear that the cost and burden of government make it too expensive to build.
The national price of a home today is 58% higher than it was in October 2015. We know what the solutions are. We must cut the cost of building by getting the government out of the way on market housing. We must incentivize the private sector to build affordable units. We must focus scarce public dollars on social and supportive housing for the most vulnerable in our society.
The last thing we or young Canadians need is yet another bureaucratic report for the minister to review and update the House on, yet here we are. We have a proposal from a very well-meaning and earnest new Liberal MP who wants to make a difference, and I applaud that. The problem is that his proposal is to offer more studies, analysis and reporting back to the House of Commons about what the federal government intends to do to solve a problem that has become a national crisis under its watch and national strategies.
They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. While the Liberals build more bureaucracy and engage in further studies, the Conservatives just want to get more homes built. To all the people who accuse nasty Conservatives of only criticizing the government, I want to be very clear that while we criticize on housing, we have also proposed many great ideas and solutions, such as cutting the GST on all new homes under $1.3 million, which would get homes built; tying federal infrastructure dollars for municipalities not to promises on hopes and dreams of being better, but to real results; cutting local taxes, charges and fees on housing, something the Liberals promised in their election campaign and have not done anything about yet, to make homes less expensive; and cutting the capital gains tax on reinvestments into new housing to attract more capital and investment and get more homes built.
These are proposals supported by industry, housing advocates and housing experts that will restore the dream of home ownership once again to the millions of young people in this country who are tired of being patronized with Liberal promises and spin.
Owing a home is an important source of stability in our lives. For generations, owning a home has formed the foundation for building a life. I want to speak directly to the millions of young Canadians who see that foundation slipping further away.
To the young people who have been told by older generations that it was hard for them to buy a home too and that if they work a little harder, they can buy a house, Conservatives know that it is not just a matter of working a bit harder or sacrificing even more. The deck is literally stacked against them. Fifty years ago, $50,000 could get someone a beautiful home. It was a great start. After inflation, that is about $300,000 today. The problem is that the average cost of a home today is $700,000.
The desire of young people to become homeowners has not changed. Young people are willing to compromise to make it a reality, and facing the new reality, young Canadians are adapting their expectations. For 60% of first-time homebuyers, this means compromising on the size, location or type of home. Young Canadians are willing to change; they see home ownership as a core part of their identity and aspirations. It remains central to how people define progress, belonging and fairness in this country.
Bill C-227 seeks to assess the current state of housing for youth, but we know the problem is bad. We do not need another national strategy to solve it because we also know the solutions. The crisis is today, not years from now, and it is time for results today.
Young people in this country deserve a home. They deserve the promise of Canada that previous generations have enjoyed. They need a government committed to removing the lines that divide us, class by class, into those who have homes and those who are giving up hope of ever owning a home.
To all young Canadians holding out hope for one day owning a home of their own, do not give up hope. There are solutions, and there is a path for them to own a home. Our Conservative team will never stop until those solutions are implemented and we restore the dream of home ownership to every single one of them.