Remarks by the Deputy Prime Minister on measures to help Canadians buy or rent a home

October 10, 2024 – Scarborough, Ontario

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Good afternoon.

I would first like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the traditional territories of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat Peoples.

I would like to thank the wonderful family, the wonderful couple who have hosted me here today in their home, Faten Salloum and Samer Ghazi.

I really want to thank you for your warm welcome. I want to thank you for the contributions you make to Canada every single day and it was really a pleasure for me to see the beautiful home you live in with your three wonderful daughters.

Faten and Samer used a First Home Savings Account to save up some money to buy their very first home and they also used the Home Buyers’ Plan to withdraw some money from other savings accounts.

It’s really heartwarming for me to meet a family that is taking advantage of some of the programs we’ve put in place to buy their first home.

I would like to begin by briefly talking about the Canadian economy. Canada leads the G7 by achieving a soft landing following the COVID recession.

Inflation eased to 2% in August and Canada’s inflation remained in the Bank of Canada’s target range for eight consecutive months. Canada was the first G7 country to reduce the overnight rate for the first time. Canada was the first G7 country to reduce the policy interest rate for a second time and Canada was the first G7 country to reduce the overnight rate for a third time. 

The economy is on the right track. This is good news for Canadians, for Canadian families like Faten and Samer’s family. Wages exceeded inflation for 19 consecutive months, and this is significant news because it means that people’s wages, cheques, have more buying power.

Now I’d like to talk for a moment about the new measures we’ve been putting in place over the past several weeks, including a new measure we announced just a couple of days ago to help even more families buy a home, to help families expand that home.

We announced 30-year mortgage amortizations, for all first-time home buyers, for families like Samer and Faten’s and for all Canadians buying a newly built home.

We announced the level for insured mortgages will be increased to $1.5 million and those measures will come into force on December 15^th.

This week we announced some measures we’ve put in place to help families who want to add a secondary suite to their home. This is something I’m excited about because we all know that Canada needs to build more homes faster. We know an important way to do that is to have gentle density in our cities, in our neighbourhoods.

We put measures in place last year to encourage big developers to build more homes faster, particularly when it comes to purpose-built rentals. There’s a gap in the market and that’s important.

The measures we announced this week will allow regular Canadian families to expand their homes, make it easier for them to expand their homes.

We think that sort of gentle density is a good way to allow Canadian families to participate in this great national project of increasing housing supply. So, what have we done?

We have said if you are building a secondary suite, adding it to your home, whether it’s a basement apartment, a garden suite, laneway housing, you can refinance your mortgage and have a 30-year amortization. You can access up to 90 % of the value of your home including the value added by the secondary suite and in the insured market you will be eligible for these terms for a value of up to $2 million, including the value that the secondary suite adds.

Those changes are going to be effective January 15^th. I know I talked to a lot of Canadian families who are keen to add that space to their home, have a family member be able to live with them. This is going to allow them to do that and more generally add that gentle density, add that supply for all of us.

We also announced in the budget that if you have an insured mortgage, you do not have to requalify with a new stress test to switch lenders.

The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions announced recently that if you have an uninsured mortgage and you just want to do a straight switch to a different lender, you do not have to requalify. I want to emphasize those two announcements because together what they mean is if you have a mortgage and it’s coming up for renewal, you do not have to pass a stress test again to switch lenders. It’s important for me because I have talked to a lot of Canadians who are concerned about the mortgage renewal that’s coming up.

Today you can shop around. You can get the best deal for yourself and your family. I think that is a really valuable benefit.

We have an ambitious plan to build more homes faster, to get 4 million homes built by 2031. Key elements of that plan are to increase supply. Increasing supply by removing the GST on purpose-built rentals, increasing supply by providing even more concessional financing from CMHC to get those purpose-built rental apartments built.

Increasing supply by working through our Housing Accelerator Fund with municipalities to get them cut the red tape so it is possible to build more homes faster and increasing supply by looking at the stuff the federal government owns and liberating federal lands. We call it “lazy land”. Let’s liberate that so that it is used to build homes for more Canadian families.

We’re focused on ensuring that young families like this one are able to buy their first home.

I want to conclude by emphasizing really good news we have had this week. Rents are coming down in Toronto and in the GTA. In Toronto, the rent for a one-bedroom apartment is down more than 1 per cent month over month and more than 8 per cent year over year. For a two-bedroom apartment it is down 0.8 per cent month over month and 8.2 per cent year over year. We’ve seen reductions in rent month over month and year over year in communities across the GTA. In Mississauga, Oakville, North York, Etobicoke, Burlington and Brampton. I emphasize that because I know that since the COVID recession, things have been hard for Canadians and rent has been a real challenge for a lot of Canadian families. The fact that rents are coming down is good news.

Thank you for listening. I would one last time like to thank Faten and Samer, congratulate them on their beautiful house and beautiful family, thank them for their warm welcome today.