SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 266

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 12, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 266 - Dec/12/23
Ms. Andréanne Larouche (Shefford, BQ)
  • Dec/12/23 4:10:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her speech and her years of service. I see that she, like me, has a passion for karaoke. Maybe we could go do karaoke together sometime and have some fun. I will take her advice about high heels to heart. In fact, I lost one of mine on the stairs earlier. We can chat about that later too. On a more serious note, I would like to congratulate her on her years of service. I was not very old in 1997 either, but if not for the women who came before me in politics, I would not be here today. There are still so many glass ceilings to break in this boys' club. I also see that we also share an obsession with democracy. I look forward to seeing what she does next. Maybe, in response to my question, she can tell me a bit more about how she perceives the issue of disinformation in our time. I would like her to tell us how this contributes to diminishing democracy, how social media and online hate sometimes contribute to deterring women from entering politics, and how excessive partisanship and petty politics can put women off a career in politics. We have a vision that is much less partisan and much more collaborative. Perhaps she can advise us on how women can make a greater contribution to our democracy. She may also be able to tell me how, as parliamentarians, we can help halt the further erosion of democracy. What is happening now is very worrisome.
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Context: House Hansard - 266 - Dec/12/23
Hon. Pierre Poilievre
  • Dec/12/23 5:19:07 p.m.
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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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