SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 266

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 12, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 266 - Dec/12/23
Hon. Pierre Poilievre
  • Dec/12/23 5:19:07 p.m.
  • Watch
Mr. Speaker, not only would I be prepared to answer that member's questions, but I would also like to up the ante. I am prepared to put partisanship aside and put on a multi-party screening of my documentary, “Housing hell: How we got here and how we get out”. I know that I have offered that before, but what I am prepared to do is up the offer and make myself available for an hour of questions and answers after the screening is done so the member could come and enjoy. I have only an hour. I am very busy, but I would be happy to have the member come and enjoy the documentary. We will be showing it in both official languages, of course. We will show it in both official languages. The members from the Bloc Québécois can come. I know that they are allergic to common sense. It is going to be tough. We do not want them to get an allergic reaction to the common sense in the documentary, but we will be inviting them all to join in the spirit of camaraderie as we build homes and reverse the housing hell that this Prime Minister, with the help of the NDP, has caused Canadians. They cannot say that I never did anything for them. The facts of this documentary continued as we went through it to demonstrate that Canada has really no excuse to have a housing crisis. We have the second-biggest land mass in the world. We have by far, by many orders of magnitude, the most land per capita of any country in the G7 and the sixth-biggest supply, give or take, in the world per capita. If we spread Canadians out evenly, we would have something like 33 NFL-sized football fields for every single Canadian. It would be the perfect place to be a hermit. People would never see another person because we have so much land. Obviously, critics will say, “Well of course we have all this land that is far away and nobody can live there.” That is nonsense. We have land all around and even inside our big cities. We have land right along the strip of the Canada-U.S. border. People can take a drive around Ottawa and see all of the land that is undeveloped, or the tiny government buildings on thousands of square metres of land that is unused, which could be used for housing if the federal government would unlock it. There is no excuse. The only thing stopping the construction of housing is the government. By the way, if members doubt this, they can explain this to me. The United States has most of its population concentrated in large metropolis centres like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, etc., and yet somehow, housing is 25% to 45% cheaper there. How is it that housing in Tokyo is more affordable than it is in Vancouver, if the issue were just that we are all crunched into small metropolitan spaces? That is totally false. It is yet another excuse that government-funded media makes for government failure. We know it is a failure that can be fixed, because look at the incredible work of the Squamish people. Because they did not have to worry about the bureaucracy at Vancouver City Hall, they were able to approve and begin building 6,000 apartments on 10 acres of land. That is 600 units per acre. If they had to go through city hall, it never would have happened, and those 6,000 wonderful families and couples would not have those homes. They have demonstrated that if they get the government out of the way and let builders build, then they have more apartments. Unfortunately, that is exactly the opposite of what this—
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Context: House Hansard - 266 - Dec/12/23
Mr. Mario Simard
  • Dec/12/23 5:41:29 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, I do not know if there is a problem with the interpretation, but this is very confusing. The member is talking about a documentary and a carbon tax that does not apply. I do not know whether it is a problem with the interpretation, but perhaps the Leader of the Opposition could speak a little more slowly. It is difficult for the francophones to understand what he is talking about.
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