Bonita Zarrillo

[Committees of the House, November 20th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I am wondering if the member knows that we are debating the financialization of housing—

[Privilege, November 19th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I am concerned the Conservatives have spent way too much time inside the House of Commons and not enough time in their communities listening to their constituents. In committee today we heard from seasonal workers, fishers who are about to start the lobster season. We heard from a woman who is desperately trying to pay bills and make ends meet. With climate change, the workers are finding it more difficult to find lobster and to make a living.

How do the Conservatives think that people are supposed to make a living when their government is being held hostage by their desire to listen to itself speak instead of getting the documents to committee as the Speaker has said needs to happen?

[Housing, November 7th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, homelessness is growing among seniors for the first time ever. Canadian seniors who live on fixed incomes are being hit hardest by skyrocketing rents, driven by unregulated corporate greed.

The Liberals have sat by while private investors jack up their rents and squeeze our parents, grandparents and veterans out of their homes.

When will the Liberals stop caving to corporate landlords and private long-term care investors to protect seniors?

[Housing, October 31st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, this is always the way with the Liberals: behind-the-scenes, non-transparent gentlemen's agreements. Let us get this out in the open.

Canadian renters are struggling with skyrocketing rents. Tenants are calling on the government to investigate the potential use of AI software by their corporate landlords to hike rents. The same AI software is under investigation by the FBI in the United States, yet the Liberals and the Conservatives have stood by greedy corporate landlords by refusing to investigate.

Will the Liberals support an investigation into the use of AI in rent-fixing and protect Canadians from illegal rent gouging?

[Committees of the House, October 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, will the Conservatives support the NDP amendment that was tabled today and get this rent price-fixing investigated in committee? His colleagues at HUMA are currently shielding the ultra-wealthy corporate landlords from testifying.

[Committees of the House, October 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I have one question for the member. Will the government support the NDP amendment and get rent price-fixing investigated in committee? The member's caucus colleagues at HUMA are currently shielding ultrawealthy corporate landlords from testifying.

[Committees of the House, October 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member across the way there for such an important history of what CMHC was supposed to do. CMHC came to HUMA multiple times. It is a risk management company now. CMHC's very own CEO said that they are not in the business of social housing or supportive housing. She admitted that they do not even know how to do it. They are risk managers. It is terrible.

[Committees of the House, October 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, this is another example of how the government has been told over and over what to do to fix this problem, and it is doing nothing. When I was preparing for this speech today, I was speaking to some of the people who testified at this HUMA committee study on the financialization of housing.

They are asking why the government has done nothing. I absolutely agree that those investments in social housing need to happen. The NDP is calling for it. Now we see the Bloc calling for it. The government is doing nothing, and we know that Conservatives will cut any investments in social housing.

[Committees of the House, October 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, no, I will not. People who are living in an encampment or in their car do not care whose jurisdiction it is, nor do those who are being renovicted and who do not have housing. I am telling the government, right now, that what they are doing is making people homeless. There is no fix for it other than stopping this financialization of housing. People are losing their homes, and the government is behind it. It is involved, and it is encouraging it.

I would ask the member to go take a look at some of the annual reports of some of their investment boards, specifically, the PSP investment board. By the way, the new board chair will not see me and will not take an appointment. There is no transparency and no ability to push back on them. They are making above their guideline profits. The government needs to look inside.

[Committees of the House, October 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie for bringing forward the very important debate today and for showing how members from the NDP continue to work for Canadians while the Conservatives continue to debate themselves.

The promise of the free market was the promise of opportunities for people. People were told that the market would bring competition, but that is not what it brought. What it has brought is corporate collusion, which has made life more expensive for everyday people while corporate CEOs are taking home millions in bonuses. There has been collusion in the grocery industry and now in rental housing.

The Liberals and the Conservatives put all of the housing eggs in the market basket. Forty years ago they walked away from social housing, from purpose-built rental housing and from co-op housing. The market was supposed to build homes for people. It was supposed to create the stable rental housing that 30% of Canadians need. It has not.

Instead, the market has reached peak greed and collusion in rental housing, leading to evictions, displacements, encampments and a growing number of Canadians living rough. Even seniors and persons with disabilities cannot escape the free market and are not protected from corporate greed with the Liberals and Conservatives.

Thanks to the NDP member for Vancouver East, the financialization of housing in Canada was brought to the forefront, including through the study we are debating today from HUMA. The financialization of housing is the largest driver of housing unaffordability and homelessness in this country. Investors are turning homes for Canadians into financial assets that are pushing ordinary people out of the housing market and only profiting rich, real estate CEOs.

One-third of what should be stable and affordable rental housing for people has been purchased in recent years by private investors. In some cities this problem gets even larger, with nearly half of all purpose-built rentals being owned by wealthy investors. The committee heard from the federal housing advocate and leading researchers like Martine August how the financialization of housing is reshaping our communities and undermining the very fabric of our society as more and more people cannot afford a home. We are seeing this manifest in encampments across this country.

Housing is increasingly being treated as a commodity and a financial asset rather than as the fundamental human right that it is. When housing becomes a vehicle for profit maximization for the few, it harms the majority. The Liberal government, and the Conservatives before it, stopped focusing on providing safe, secure and affordable homes for Canadians. They have purposely laid the groundwork for the largest corporations and landlords to drive up their profit margins on the backs of Canadians.

New Democrats have raised the alarm about this. There is endless proof that financialized landlords raise rents faster and higher than other landlords, and they file for more evictions than any other landlord type. This practice has become so prevalent that my NDP colleagues, the members for Windsor West and for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, have written to the Competition Bureau to investigate collusion on rent-fixing.

Landlords are now at the point where they are suing their tenants for libel when tenants speak out on unfair rental practices. Who is protecting those tenants from lawsuits? It is not the Liberals nor the Conservatives. It is only the New Democrats who are standing up for Canadians and not for the wealthy CEOs who are taking away their homes.

The problem is magnified when the Liberals and the Conservatives continue to team up in committee to protect corporate landlords by not agreeing to NDP motions to have landlords come to committee to talk about their unfair tactics. Shame on the Liberals and the Conservatives for putting wealthy CEOs ahead of people and their homes.

The government led the financialization of housing, and it led its pension fund investments' doing exactly the same thing. The Liberals are heavily involved in the financialization of housing, whether it is through the CPP or the public service pension fund. Canadian pension plans are increasingly investing in and buying up affordable housing and then partnering with corporate landlords like Starlight to extract maximum profits.

An access to information request found that PSP Investments owns rental housing and has hired a corporate landlord to raise rents above guidelines, evict tenants and kick them out on the street. The Liberal government is doing that. Tenants have been forced to organize rent strikes to fight back against these unfair practices. I wonder whether the government will sue them as well.

Now, to make it even more unfair, the Liberal government has okayed the use of AI rental collusion software by its asset managers. The same algorithmic pricing tools that are part of an antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. for allegedly being used to price-fix are now being used by the same asset managers the government has hired: firms that go after tenants. AI software like YieldStar and Yardi are working with the Canadian government through corporate landlords.

AI in the marketplace is like all technology: a promise. When used correctly, it can make our lives easier, healthier and better, but it can also be used by bad-faith actors to crush competition and hurt renters. AI poses new challenges that make the potential scale of price-fixing something we have never seen. As more and more industries use AI to optimize their prices, we are only going to see the problem more and more.

The technology has the power to undermine the very foundation of fair competition in the rental market by simply creating an AI-central planning that serves only the wealthy, and it is already happening. The federal housing advocate told our committee about how the financialization of housing is a serious human rights issue that must be addressed, and now with the introduction of tools like AI, human rights are pushed even further behind. It has the greatest potential to cause harm to indigenous and disadvantaged groups, such as vulnerable seniors, low-income tenants, people with disabilities, recent immigrants, refugees and lone-parent families.

The financialization of housing does not have to be an inevitable fate; it is a choice of Liberals and Conservatives. The Liberals have the power to prioritize the well-being of people and ensure that every Canadian can find a place to call home.

The report we are discussing today sheds light on the consequences of financialization. It points to alarming rates of evictions, skyrocketing rental prices and the increasing prevalence of precarious housing for Canadians, but the recommendations in the report are minimal. That is why the NDP filed a dissenting report outlining the actions the government could take to make housing a human right. The government has to act now. That is why I am going to move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, presented on Thursday, October 26, 2023, be not now concurred in, but that it be recommitted to the committee for further consideration, with a view to consider the role of financialized landlords on rising costs in Canada's rental market, including how the use of algorithmic pricing tools is contributing to rent increases and how pervasive this practice is across the Canadian rental market.”