Bill No. 149 - Financial Measures (2022) Act. - 2nd Reading

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : I want to rise and speak to something about housing that isn't in the Financial Measures (2022) Act, but maybe ought to be, and that has to do with Airbnbs.

A number of people have raised this issue that, rather than the approach to taxing housing that has come forward in this budget, we might ought to have focused on Airbnbs. There is a bill on the floor of the House about Airbnbs, but I would submit that it does nothing to impact housing supply. We may want to understand where the Airbnbs are in our province. That makes sense, but people who rent out a room in their home were left out of the original amendment to the legislation, the Tourism Accommodation Act, for a reason. We supported it.

It's even more true now. That's because, who can afford to buy a house in Nova Scotia right now? Nobody. If you're lucky enough to be able to buy a house, and you need to support yourself by renting out a room, that's fine with us. I think that makes sense. What's much more challenging and deleterious to our housing supply across the province are, essentially, ghost hotels set up by people who buy properties and then immediately convert them into Airbnb rentals. This is happening across the province. My guess is that this is a huge number of the properties that are changing hands right now.

There are registration fees. They've been waived for COVID-19. I would suggest that that's curious to me. I don't know why, if you're running rental properties at this point, which we know are still being rented and which impact our housing supply directly, you wouldn't at least charge those nominal rental fees. Further, what we raised when those amendments to the Tourist Accommodations Act first came in is that there's no enforcement.

In fact, we actually still don't know where all those ghost hotels are because no one's checking up on it. Mr. Speaker. I just want to flag that. We will also speak to that bill when it comes forward, which I don't think is going to be tonight. If we're talking about action on housing, this is the missing piece.

I know that the government wants to say that they are bringing legislation about Airbnbs, but with respect, that legislation while arguably necessary doesn't in fact impact the housing market. This bill is purporting to impact that housing market.

Further, I would say that a number of the legislative pieces that have come forward connected to the Financial Measures (2022) Act and connected to the budget that are carrying out the government's program in the budget rely on this notion of consultation - we've spoken to people, we will speak to people.

I want to again reiterate my colleague's point that as of tonight, the legislation coming forward - people have less than 12 hours if they want to opine on our energy system, if they want to opine on our official languages, if they want to talk about the Boat Harbour Act and what may be a massive financial liability for Nova Scotia taxpayers.

This government is giving them less than 12 hours to even register. Nobody will come forward. It's, in fact, a muzzling of the public and a refusal to allow the public to have their say on these bills.

I don't know if there's a reason that the government wants to do that with these particular bills - if it's just sloppy housekeeping. I don't know what it is. I think that it is a true, true subversion of democracy and I'm very upset to see it happen.