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Mr. Chair, again, the member should direct those questions to the appropriate minister; they are not related to the department.
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Mr. Chair, across the country, we need to be able to see rents come down for Canadians. I am sure that is the case in Hamilton, as it is in many cities across Canada.
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Mr. Chair, that is not affordable to many Canadians. That is why we need to build more affordable housing and look for the support from the members opposite.
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Mr. Chair, I would say, whether it is Hamilton or Vancouver, we need to bring the overall cost of housing down and do that by building affordable housing.
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Mr. Chair, that is not part of the current estimates, the budget estimates we are discussing here today. That is a commitment going forward that the government will tackle, and it hopes to have support on it from the members opposite.
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Mr. Chair, as said, we need to use every tool we can that is available to us. Certainly, federal land is an opportunity, working with partners.
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Mr. Chair, I am not clear how this has anything to do with the Housing and Infrastructure department.
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Mr. Chair, the BC Ferries investment is not part of the ministry's estimates.
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Mr. Chair, housing prices are historically high in Canada, and incomes need to be increased with a stronger economy.
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Mr. Chair, the member is asking questions he already knows the answer to, but it has been Liberal governments for three terms.
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Mr. Chair, again, the members opposite are asking questions that they have prepared and know the answers to.
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Mr. Chair, I believe that the member has the answer to that question, so he can answer it for himself.
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Mr. Chair, home prices have skyrocketed, and that is why we need to be building affordable housing across Canada.
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Mr. Chair, I welcome the member. Infrastructure investments in the department are typically through provinces and territories, and their priorities are part of where that spending goes. Some of that is into roads. It is into all sorts of different infrastructure: water, waste water and transportation infrastructure.
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Mr. Chair, transportation infrastructure is a part of the housing infrastructure investment that happens through the department, working in partnership with provinces, territories and local governments that lay out the planning in the community scale.
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Mr. Chair, with reference to roads and highways that have received funding over the past decade, more than 58,000 kilometres of roads and highways have received funding from the department.
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Mr. Chair, there have been many more homes than that built across Canada, in part with funding from the department.
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Mr. Chair, the department has funded, through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, hundreds of thousands of homes in these recent years. The scale is significant, and it needs to double from here.
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Mr. Chair, the department funds provinces, territories and local governments to help them in the process of building. The government is not directly building, but we should be in the business of that going forward to make sure affordable housing is getting built.
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Mr. Chair, Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada utilizes different funding models to meet specific goals and outcomes. While, in some cases, there are allocations that are based on population, the department also deploys competitive and merit-based models, or even combined funding models, depending on what outcomes are sought. Needs for the different types of infrastructure vary across t…
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Mr. Chair, I neglected to congratulate the member on her election and her constituents for electing her here to do the good work on behalf of Oakville. As with me, she is new in the House. The federal government has a responsibility to taxpayers to ensure that their money produces results, and that means we work with the provinces, territories, local governments and third parties directly, dependi…
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Mr. Chair, Canada is grappling with significant housing challenges. Housing needs vary across the country, depending on province, territory or neighbourhoods, and they are very distinct to those local needs. A collaborative approach is needed to address the current housing crisis where all the levels of government are participating. Housing and infrastructure are intertwined. They go hand in hand.…
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Mr. Chair, resilient infrastructure does not just make good economic sense, it is critical to keeping Canadians and our communities safe. That is why we have committed almost $4 billion, through programs such as the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, the infrastructure Canada investment program and the national infrastructure fund, to help mitigate and adapt infrastructure to the impacts of …
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Mr. Chair, Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada acknowledges the infrastructure gap in many indigenous communities that needs to be addressed. To help address that, we have many supports in our programming to ensure that indigenous communities can benefit from our programs. For example, programs have funding minimums that are dedicated to indigenous communities: higher cost shares, somet…
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Mr. Chair, the department has several programs that will benefit rural, remote and indigenous communities and organizations that consider their unique needs. Examples are programs that integrate flexibilities, such as rolling intakes for smaller communities, and flexibility for indigenous recipients. Our program officials work very closely with the potential recipients to provide application suppo…
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Mr. Chair, I thank the member for his question. I will answer in English. In terms of how many we are building, currently, 220,000 homes a year, approximately, is the pace.
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Mr. Chair, certainly we are looking forward to leveraging federal lands, going forward, to get a lot more housing built across Canada. Part of “build Canada homes” is to use federal lands. In this case, most of those units under development currently will be delivered in the years ahead.
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Mr. Chair, I am certainly looking forward to speeding this process up. The idea with “build Canada homes” is that all the different departments and agencies of government are working in unison to deliver affordable housing across the country, leveraging federal land.
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Mr. Chair, I am buoyed by this interest in “build Canada homes”. Certainly, on this side of the House, we want to make sure this effort is quick and nimble. We are focused on building these affordable homes as soon as possible, using all the tools of government.
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Mr. Chair, yes, I am aware of Canada Lands, its different functions and the assets that are held for Canadians.
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Mr. Chair, I think there is an opportunity to build affordable housing across the country, and there are many different tools needed to do that. Certainly, Canada Lands Company manages an inventory of lands and does some building activity there. CMHC does a lot of finance and mortgage work, but there remain gaps in the system to scale up the affordable housing we need to deliver.
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Mr. Chair, we are going to be focused on building in partnership with all levels of government, and with the public and private sectors and non-profit developers as well. We need a broad set of partnerships here. I am not talking about more bureaucracy; I am talking about great partnerships and more support for affordable housing.
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Mr. Chair, I think we have seen good success now with the housing accelerator fund and giving incentives to local governments, mayors and their councils to—
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Mr. Chair, we have housing accelerator fund agreements with over 200 communities in cities across Canada, and we are working on advancing those partnerships to deliver results.
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Mr. Chair, I think Canadians generally agree on the definition of affordable housing as being less than 30% of one's income, but there are certainly more specific affordability targets built into various programs that CMHC and the department have that are very focused on what those programs can deliver.
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Mr. Chair, it is really about the cost of housing, the household operations, relative to household income. That does change depending on the projects and the programs. That is why there are some different definitions depending on the projects or the programs.
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Mr. Chair, I am clear that the members opposite have not supported any of these affordable housing programs in recent years. I hope, based on these questions, that there is going to be a change of approach here, and the members opposite will support scaling up these investments in affordable housing.
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Mr. Chair, I have outlined the scale of investment that is happening through this department. We are talking about $16 billion of hard-working Canadians' money that is being invested in affordable housing and infrastructure. We hope to have the member's support for that.
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Mr. Chair, I appreciate the member's pointing out the critical importance of the infrastructure in the Fraser Valley on the south coast of B.C. and how important it is to the rest of Canada.
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Mr. Chair, on this side of the House, we are very committed to transparency. We will be tracking and working with the local governments to see how they are progressing on delivering the housing units they are rezoning for.
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Mr. Chair, the housing accelerator fund has invested $4.4 billion to eliminate the barriers to development and build homes faster.
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Mr. Chair, the housing accelerator has agreements with over 200 communities across Canada that will unlock over 800,000 homes in the future.
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Mr. Chair, it all depends on people's income, but for most Canadians, that is a challenge. That is why I hope the member will support us with our new housing plan.
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Mr. Chair, CMHC has been very successful in rolling out programs, particularly over the past 12 months, with very expedited funding for affordable housing across Canada.
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Mr. Chair, as far as I know, this is not an inflationary program.
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Mr. Chair, on the MLI select program, I can get the member some detailed information about those questions. I would be happy to do that.
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Mr. Chair, I just outlined that the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund is for the prevention of these disasters and there is more resilient infrastructure to prevent future problems.
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Mr. Chair, I think we can all agree that communities affected across Canada, including Abbotsford and the Fraser Valley—
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