44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 22, 2023 01:00PM
- Mar/22/23 2:23:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, eight years ago, the Prime Minister promised, and I quote, that he was going to “make it easier for Canadians to find an affordable place to call home”. On the day he made that promise, the average mortgage payment was $1,400.
How much is it today?
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- Mar/22/23 2:24:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the question was about what he promised in 2015: “We will make it easier for Canadians to find an affordable place to call home.” When he made that promise, the average monthly payment for a mortgage in Canada was a modest $1,400. What is it today?
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- Mar/22/23 2:25:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, he wants to compare that with the Conservative record. I gave him a chance. I told him that when the Conservatives left office, the average monthly payment on a new house was $1,400. I asked him to tell us what it is today, and either he does not know or he is too afraid to admit that it has gone up to over $3,100. That is over a 100% increase.
When the Prime Minister took office, a two-bedroom apartment in Canada's 10 biggest cities, on average, was $1,100. How much is it today?
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- Mar/22/23 2:26:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, he would have us believe that Canadians have never had it so good. Let us ask the nine in 10 young people who believe they will never own a home, or the 35-year-olds living in their parents' basements because they cannot afford the new doubling of the average down payment, mortgage payment or rental cost.
Speaking of paycheques, when he took office, someone only needed 39% of the average paycheque to make monthly payments on the average house. That number has risen to 62%.
By every objective measurement, things are more expensive and Canadians are taking home less. How did he spend so much to achieve so little?
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- Mar/22/23 2:27:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is trying to talk about everything but the housing questions I asked. It is easy to understand why. When he took office, housing was affordable, and now it is impossibly expensive. In fact, it is much more expensive than around the rest of the world. Vancouver is now the third most overpriced housing market, and Toronto the 10th worst, in the world. They are worse than Manhattan, Singapore, London and countless other places with more people, more money and less land. In fact, the average house price last year in the United States was almost half less than it is here in Canada.
Why is housing so much more expensive here than elsewhere in the world?
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- Mar/22/23 2:34:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I asked the Prime Minister why mortgage payments have doubled under his eight years, why rent payments have doubled under his eight years and why Canadian house prices are about 72% more expensive than their American counterparts, even though it has 10 times the population on even less land. He could not answer any of these question.
The answer, according to Scotiabank, is that “Canada has the lowest number of housing units per 1,000 residents of any G7 country. The number of housing units per 1,000 Canadians has been falling since 2016”, right when the Prime Minister took office.
Why has the Prime Minister continually given billions of dollars to municipal government gatekeepers but blocked the construction of Canadian homes?
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- Mar/22/23 2:36:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, no, actually the disagreement is that under our government housing was affordable, but under this government it is eye-poppingly expensive. That is the disagreement.
Let us just look at the facts. Canada has the fewest houses per capita of any country in the G7, even though we have the most land to build on. Why? We rank 64th in the OECD in the time it takes to get a building permit. Government red tape adds as much as $650,000 to each house in some cities, and the Prime Minister has made it worse by giving gatekeepers that block building more money. Why?
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- Mar/22/23 2:37:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we do not have to imagine what prices would have been were I making the decisions, because when I was the housing minister, the average mortgage payment and the average rent payment were half of what they are now. We do not have to imagine that; it is called history.
The Prime Minister's solution is to continue to spend billions of dollars. He spent $89 billion on housing affordability to double mortgage payments, double rental costs and double the needed down payment. How did he spend so much to achieve so little?
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- Mar/22/23 2:39:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when we look at his promise to make it easier for Canadians to get homes, since that time, the payments have actually doubled. We listen to him rattle off the billions he has spent to achieve that failure, and he kind of reminds me of that shady contractor who promises he will build a brand new home, but the cost just keeps going up and up, and the house never actually gets built. That is exactly where young people are today, stuck in their parents' basements, their dreams crushed because they cannot get themselves homes and start families.
Instead of siding with the gatekeepers and sending billions of dollars more to those bureaucracies, why will he not get them out of the way to bring the homes Canadians can afford?
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- Mar/22/23 2:40:28 p.m.
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In other words, Mr. Speaker, we should forgive him for failing because he fails expensively.
What we propose is actually to incentivize home building. Why does the government not link the number of federal infrastructure dollars a big city gets to the number of houses that actually get completed? That would incentivize them to get the gatekeepers out of the way. We could bring in penalties for big-city bureaucrats who block construction and boost infrastructure dollars for those who get out of the way.
Why will he not pay for results instead of paying for failure?
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- Mar/22/23 2:41:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister says that Canadians should not worry about the fact that our young people are living in homeless shelters while they go to school or that they are condemned to tent cities or their parents' basements, because all the politicians are getting along and that is what is important. As long as we go along, get along and have wonderful meetings and conversations, he believes we should not worry about the poverty the gatekeeping policies are causing.
Why will the Prime Minister not link federal infrastructure dollars for cities to the number of houses they allow to be built, fine those gatekeepers who block and give bonuses to those who build, so that we can have more affordable homes for our young people?
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- Mar/22/23 2:45:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has failed to make housing affordable, even after $89 billion, precious tax dollars, have been spent on that failure. I have suggested to him that we should link the number of dollars a big city gets to the number of houses it allows to be built, in order to incentivize more building. He does not like that idea. He does not like results.
Here is another idea: We build transit stations with federal money. In the most successful transit and housing jurisdictions on earth, there are apartments next to those stations.
Will the Prime Minister require that every federally funded transit station have high-density apartments so that our seniors and young people can live right next to the bus or train?
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- Mar/22/23 2:47:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the difference is that, like housing, we actually got it built. What I am proposing is not to dream about housing around transit, but to actually require every single federally funded transit station be pre-approved for high-density housing so our young people and our seniors can live right next to the bus and train.
He does not like that idea, but how about this one? He has 37,000 buildings, many of them largely empty, big, ugly buildings. Why does he not sell off 15% of them so we can convert those into affordable housing for our young people?
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- Mar/22/23 2:48:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' very first infrastructure project was to install a doorknob in the Prime Minister's Office when they took office.
Speaking of housing—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Mar/22/23 2:49:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am sorry, but sometimes I even crack myself up here.
The Prime Minister is presiding over a 37,000-building empire with these big, ugly, largely empty buildings. Why does he not sell off 15%, which is 6,000 buildings, so we can convert them into affordable housing for our young people so they can actually have a roof over their head and a place to call home?
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- Mar/22/23 2:50:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the only ideas the Prime Minister has put forward on housing are to double the rent, double the mortgage costs and double the down payments on the backs of hard-working Canadians who are paying more tax than ever.
On April 1, he wants to raise the cost of housing even more by increasing the cost of home heating, a monthly expense that goes with owning a home. This is at a time when seniors are already choosing, making the heartbreaking decision, between eating and heating. He wants to triple the carbon tax.
Will he cancel his plan to raise taxes on our seniors, our workers and our farmers and get his hands out of their pockets?
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- Mar/22/23 2:55:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's carbon tax costs families more than they get back in rebates in every single province it applies in, according to his own Parliamentary Budget Officer. Now we learn from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business that “Despite collecting billions in carbon tax revenues, the federal government has returned less than 1% of the promised proceeds to small businesses”. This job-killing tax is driving up the costs on small local businesses that support communities right across the country.
Will the Prime Minister tell us how much an average corner store owned by a ma and pa would get back in rebates for all the carbon tax they are going to pay on their heat?
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- Mar/22/23 2:57:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, from corner stores to car mechanics, they have to pay this carbon tax. I asked the Prime Minister how much they get back. He would not answer because, of course, the answer is zero. It is a gigantic tax grab. It is also a tax on food. When one taxes the farmers who make the food and the truckers who transport it, one taxes the people who eat it at the end of the supply chain.
Carleton Mushroom Farms, just half an hour south of here, employs 100 people. Their carbon tax bill for the month of July was $9,000. Does the government they expect them to put that on customer's food bills?
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- Mar/22/23 2:58:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is not a climate plan. It is a tax plan. He has not met a single emissions target since he became Prime Minister. All he has managed to do is suck more money out of the pockets of Canadians. It is enough to make a man drink, but he is taxing that too.
I have in my hands a letter from Canadian breweries workers. These are union workers who say Canada is experiencing the highest cost-of-living increases in a generation. This is squeezing family budgets and making workers in the brewery sector nervous about their jobs. They are calling on the Prime Minister to cancel his planned tax increase on beer and spirits. Will he listen to these union workers and cancel the tax hike?
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- Mar/22/23 2:59:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, he is raising taxes on gasoline, heating, electricity, food, family income, on all sorts of things, and now he is raising taxes again, this time on beer and alcohol.
The unions that represent the workers who produce these alcoholic beverages in Canada say that this will impact their jobs, their wages and the cost of living of all Canadians.
Will he finally listen to the unionized workers and announce that he will cancel this tax hike for Canadians?
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