Remarks by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance on Making Housing More Affordable

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Good afternoon, everyone.

First, I’d like to start by saying how sad I was to hear that a number of tenants have been displaced and injured after a fire yesterday at one of Atira’s sites. These shelters house some of the most vulnerable people in this community, and I know all of us are so sorry to hear about that fire. I really hope that everyone who has been injured recovers quickly and fully.

I’d like to acknowledge that the land we are meeting on is the shared and unceded traditional territory of the Katzie, Semiahmoo, Kwantlen and other Coast Salish Peoples.

And of course, I’d like to thank the woman who is behind all of this, Janice Abbott. And the entire team with the Atira Women’s Resource Society for showing us this incredible site, which will soon be a safe space for so many women here in Surrey.

This project really is very inspiring. I’ve been so glad to see these rooms where some of the most vulnerable women in our country, in our community, will have a safe space, will have their own little kitchen, will have a bathroom, will have a door they can close and lock.

It is concrete proof of what we can achieve when we work together.

Housing is a basic human need, and we need to ensure that everyone in Canada has a safe place to call home.

But we have a serious problem in our country, and a very serious problem here in BC: We do not have enough homes. We need more of them, fast.

And that is why the Budget I tabled last week represents the most ambitious plan Canada has ever put forward to solve this fundamental challenge.

Over the next ten years, we will double the number of new homes we build in Canada.

We know that this is not something for the federal government to do alone. This has to be a national effort, and it will demand a new spirit of collaboration across all levels of government— the federal government, municipalities, provinces and territories, as well as with the private sector and not-for-profits, like Atira—to build the homes that Canadians need.

We will be extending the Rapid Housing Initiative, which has helped to build remarkable sites like this one, and we’ll hear from Janice just how quickly the Rapid Housing Initiative is allowing safe spaces like these to be constructed. At least a quarter of the funding for the Rapid Housing Initiative will be going towards projects for women.

We’re also launching a new Housing Accelerator Fund that will give cities incentives to build more homes and create denser, more sustainable neighbourhoods to increase housing supply. Crucially, the Housing Accelerator Fund is going to be about figuring out where the roadblocks are to getting more homes built and clearing those roadblocks.

And we are going to introduce a new Multigenerational Home Renovation Tax Credit to help families build a secondary suite for a loved one—something that I know so many families here in Surrey have been doing for years. This is going to help those families and so many other families across the country.

And, of course, we also need Canadians to be able to afford to buy new homes.

We will help Canadians save up for and buy their first home by doubling the First-Time Home Buyers’ Tax Credit and creating a new Tax-Free First Home Savings Account—an account that will allow Canadians to save up to $40,000 towards a down payment. It will be tax-free in, and it will be tax-free out.

We are going to support rent-to-own projects. We will move forward on the Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights and we will ban blind bidding.

And we are going to stop foreign investors from parking their money in Canada by buying up properties. Homes should be used for Canadian families to live in—not as a speculative financial asset class.

One important step our government is taking is banning foreign investors from purchasing homes in Canada for the next two years.

Combined with the Underused Housing Tax that comes into effect this year, which puts a 1-per-cent annual tax on vacant properties owned by non-residents, we will ensure that homes in our country are used for Canadian families to live in—not as a speculative financial asset class.

And to ensure profits from flipping properties are taxed fully and fairly, we will introduce new rules so that any person who sells a property they have held for less than a year would be subject to full taxation on their profits as business income.

These are timely and important steps. They are designed to address one of the biggest challenges we are facing in Canada today: housing. But we also know there is no one silver bullet that will allow every Canadian to own a home in a neighbourhood where they want to live tomorrow. We know we are going to need to work together. We are going to need to keep on investing, year after year after year, and keep on working hard to build the new homes that a growing country needs today and will need tomorrow.

And that is what we are going to do.

I will now turn it back to Randeep.