Perspectives: A Canadian Journal of Political Economy and Social Democracy - Competition and Co-ops: MP Daniel Blaikie on Bill C-56, the Affordable Housing and Groceries Act

Competition and Co-ops: MP Daniel Blaikie on Bill C-56, the Affordable Housing and Groceries Act

12/22/23 • 33 min

Perspectives: A Canadian Journal of Political Economy and Social Democracy

Earlier this fall, the federal Liberal government tabled Bill C-56, the Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, with the aim of jump starting construction of purpose built rental homes with a GST rebate on these kinds of projects, and increasing competition in the grocery industry by strengthening the federal Competition Bureau, upgrading its ability to investigate companies and closing loopholes in the merger approval process that may contribute to rising prices and profits.

The federal NDP doesn't think this bill has gone far enough and have requested a number of amendments to the first draft to include more non-market housing and removing political influence on the Competition Bureau, among a list of other measures, in order to pass the House.

What will this amended piece of legislation do for ordinary, working-class Canadians to make groceries affordable again, and does it go far enough? How has market concentration contributed to higher grocery receipts? Why should incentives for building more co-op housing be included in the final version of the bill?

Social democratic commentator and columnist Tom Parkin spoke to Daniel Blaikie, Member of Parliament for Elmwood—Transcona and NDP finance critic, about Bill C-56, grocery competition, and building non-market housing.

Show Note Links

Bill C-56, Affordable Housing and Groceries Act (Government House Bill)
Bill C-352, Lowering Prices for Canadians Act (Private Member's Bill introduced by MP Jagmeet Singh)
Beyond Simply Building More: Policy Options for Combatting the Financialization of Housing in Ontario, (March 2023) - Broadbent Institute analysis on the contributing factors behind the housing affordability crisis, by Tsahai Carter.
Canadian Grocery Profitability: Inflation, Wages and Financialization, (September 2023) - Broadbent Institute analysis of the Canadian grocery retail industry in the context of the "seller's inflation" economic phenomena, by Alex Purdye.
'Growing Grocery Profits, Shrinking Pay Cheques', Opinion by Clement Nocos in Perspectives Journal from October 12, 2023.

Show Note Links

Bill C-56, Affordable Housing and Groceries Act (Government House Bill)
Bill C-352, Lowering Prices for Canadians Act (Private Member's Bill introduced by MP Jagmeet Singh)
Beyond Simply Building More: Policy Options for Combatting the Financialization of Housing in Ontario, (March 2023) - Broadbent Institute analysis on the contributing factors behind the housing affordability crisis, by Tsahai Carter.
Canadian Grocery Profitability: Inflation, Wages and Financialization, (September 2023) - Broadbent Institute analysis of the Canadian grocery retail industry in the context of the "seller's inflation" economic phenomena, by Alex Purdye.
'Growing Grocery Profits, Shrinking Pay Cheques', Opinion by Clement Nocos in Perspectives Journal from October 12, 2023.

Previous Episode

What Progressives Are Getting Wrong (and Right!) About Affordable Housing with Professor Carolyn Whitzman

Perspectives Journal sat down with Professor Carolyn Whitzman to dive deeper into her Globe and Mail article published last August entitled Canada’s progressive parties have lost the plot on the housing crisis. This was a response to Prime Minister Trudeau’s earlier blunt statement that “housing is not federal responsibility” while ordinary Canadians experience an unprecedented housing crisis.
In her piece, she asked:
What’s with the silence from allegedly more progressive parties on the doubling of the quantum of non-market housing, a policy that has been recommended by everyone from the industry body for community housing to one of Canada’s big banks?
Why not talk about housing in terms of industrial strategy (something we love to talk about here at Perspectives Journal) and the role of government in building more housing supply, instead of trying to outflank Pierre Poilievre’s inconsistent policy slogans from the right wing?
Since then, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has stated that “governments should get out of home building,” even after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau already confirmed that, so clearly that hasn’t solved anything.
And meanwhile, progressives have yet to propose big plans to get government back into housing while 2/3rds of Canadians surveyed by Leger in early December wanted the federal government to spend more money on its Housing Strategy.
But in recent months, a number of new spending announcements and policy changes have come from social democratic administrations in BC and Toronto, talking about big spends and policy changes to jump start building out the supply for decommodified, non-market housing.
Is this even close to enough, and what exactly are progressives getting wrong, and right, about housing affordability?
From Singapore to Sweden, and British Columbia to Toronto, we talk about what other countries have been doing to build non-market housing, and how governments can get back into the business of home building.
Carolyn Whitzman is a housing and social policy consultant, expert adviser to the Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART) project at the University of British Columbia, and adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa.
Show note links:
The Globe and Mail - 'Canada’s progressive parties have lost the plot on the housing crisis', by Carolyn Whitzman, 18 August 2023.
Housing Assessment Resource Tools project at the University of British Columbia.
YouTube explainer by Uytae Lee - 'The Non-capitalist Solution to the Housing Crisis'

Next Episode

Democracy, Participation and Capitalist Crisis: An Interview with Nancy Fraser

This conversation with Nancy Fraser explores her work on the crises of capitalism, democracy, and participation. She is interviewed by Nick Vlahos, Deputy Director at the Center for Democracy Innovation, and Adrian Bua, Marie Curie-Sklodowska Fellow at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ahead of their forthcoming co-edited special volume of the journal Democratic Theory on "How to Democratize the Economy" that seeks to establish a closer conversation between the fields of democratic theory and critical political economy.

Fraser has argued that much scholarship in political science and democratic theory on these issues is hampered by “politicism”: an inclination to view the political in separation from other social spheres, which fails to appreciate the structural nature of contemporary crises. Fraser argues that the political arena is important because it is here that collective regulatory powers are exercised, however it needs to be situated within a broader understanding of the social totality to understand how it is affected by crisis dynamics in other spheres and how it might contribute to attenuating, or resolving, these.
The conversation begins by exploring these arguments in relation to Fraser's recent work on the critique of capitalism, and then traces how this relates to her work on the public sphere, participatory parity, and utopian thought.
Works Cited

Brown, Wendy. 2019. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. Columbia University Press.
Crouch, Colin. 2017. Can Neoliberalism be Saved from Itself? Social Europe Edition
Fraser, Nancy. 1995. “Recognition or redistribution? A critical reading of Iris Young’s justice and the politics of difference.” Journal of Political Philosophy 3 (2): 166-180
Fraser, Nancy. 1997. “A Rejoinder to Iris Young.” New Left Review 1, 223, May-June
Fraser, Nancy. 1997. Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Post-Socialist Condition. Abingdon: Routledge
Fraser, Nancy. 2012. “On Justice: lessons from Plato, Rawls and Ishiguro.” New Left Review 74.
Fraser, Nancy. 2014. “Behind Marx’s Hidden Abode.” New Left Review 86, March-April.
Fraser, N. 2022. Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care and The Planet. Verso
Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation. Farrar & Reinhardt.
Streeck, Wolfgang. 2014. “How Will Capitalism End?” New Left Review, 87, May-June.
Streeck, Wolfgang. 2016. How will Capitalism End? London: Verso.
Streeck, Wolfgang. 2017. Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Verso.
Young, Iris Marion. 1997. “Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser’s Dual Systems Theory.” New Left Review 1, 223, March-April.