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Mr. Tako Van Popta (Langley—Aldergrove, CPC)

Mar/28/22 1:56:11 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the government's fall economic and fiscal update. To better understand the economic pressures that Canadians are facing, we need to look at the data. We have the highest rate of inflation that we have had in a generation. My children are all adults now and do not know what inflation is. It is at 5.7% at the moment, and that means that, on average, everything is going to cost every Canadian citizen almost 6% more today than it did a year ago. If we look at industry-specific statistics, it is much more challenging than that. For any young families in my riding of Langley—Aldergrove, part of metro Vancouver, who are prospective first-time buyers, the news is not good at all. Single family houses are up 42%, condos are up 39% and townhouses are up 35%. Frankly, it is becoming unrealistic for young families to even believe they are ever going to own a house. I was talking to Alison in my riding just the other day. She and her husband are both earning quite a bit of money. They have managed to save up a really good down payment. They pre-qualified for a mortgage. They are doing everything right. About a year or a year a half ago, they got into the market to bid on a townhouse. They lost out to a higher bidder. They tried again on a second townhouse. The same thing happened, and they lost out to a higher bidder. They did that 10 times in a row. The tenth time, they bid way over asking price thinking that they would for sure get it. Again, they were outbid by a higher bidder. I was talking to Alison and she asked what they were doing wrong. I said that she was not doing anything wrong and that she was doing everything right, but that there were economic forces at play that were beyond the ability of ordinary Canadians to deal with. This is what the Vancouver Sun said just this weekend about this topic: Young, educated, urban Canadians have [many reasons] to be angry...with Ottawa for the ways it has worsened the housing crisis. [The Liberal government] has three times campaigned, with apparent earnest emotion, on promises to provide affordable housing. And each time, [it] has reneged. Canadian housing is now 100 per cent more expensive than when [the Liberals] first took office in 2015. That is the legacy of the Liberal government, that housing prices have doubled in the time it has held office. One of the failed programs of the Liberal government is the first-time homebuyers incentive. That is the program that says the government would own a piece of the equity stake in the home of any first-time homebuyers who use the program. Happily, very few people have actually used the program. I was talking to a mortgage broker who works in my neighbourhood, and he explained to me why the program is a failure. It just does not work, certainly not in my riding where houses are as expensive as they are. Mortgage Professionals Canada, a very credible organization, has said this about the housing affordability crisis: “If we had historically equally considered the demand-side and supply-side policies, we probably would be in a far better position”. I would just summarize this part by saying this: Is it not a fresh idea that we are going to look at basic economic principles? That is where the government has failed.

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