44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 12, 2023 10:00AM
- Dec/12/23 5:18:43 p.m.
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We have another point of order from the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.
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- Dec/12/23 5:18:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I asked whether the leader of the Conservative Party was trying to run and hide from the Q and A, but I did not get an answer. Will he be leaving time for us to ask him questions about his dissertation?
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- Dec/12/23 5:18:55 p.m.
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That is not a point of order, but we know that we will be moving on to the next item at about 5:42 p.m., so the hon. member does have unlimited time.
The hon. leader of the official opposition.
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- 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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- Dec/12/23 5:23:16 p.m.
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I have a point of order from the hon. member for Milton.
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- Dec/12/23 5:23:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am also eager to ask questions, but I am also eager to point out that it was a $1-billion CMHC loan, the largest ever from the federal government, to the Squamish Nation.
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- Dec/12/23 5:23:30 p.m.
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We are falling into debate. Do not forget that once the member is finished, there will be an opportunity for questions and answers.
The hon. leader of the official opposition.
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- Dec/12/23 5:23:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I love how when the first nations people do extraordinary things, Liberals show up to take all the credit. The member reminds me of the rooster who thought that just because he crowed when the sun came up, he made the sun come up. He did not make the sun come up; he just crowed about it. It is actually the first nations people who are building this project, and it is a shame that Liberals try to take credit for it.
If we could just get the Liberals and the government out of the way, we could do many more great things because we know that, prior to the current government, housing was affordable in this country, taking a fraction out of a family paycheque to afford a home. The good thing is that housing was not like this before this Prime Minister and it will not be like this after he is gone.
The second cause of the housing hell, which I pointed out in my documentary, was the rampant money printing that the government unleashed. While it was technically done by the Bank of Canada, it was clearly in total collaboration with the elected government and with the total support and the lack of discipline from the government to print $600 billion. The government has created 32% more cash in a period of time when the economy has grown by 4%. In other words, the cash is growing eight times faster than the stuff the cash buys.
The Liberals did this through a program called quantitative easing, where the government sells bonds to the private sector and the Bank of Canada buys them right back at a higher price, profiting the financial institutions, freeing up easy money for government to spend, but also flooding the financial markets with easy cash that is lent out to wealthy investors.
In my documentary, I use a Bank of Canada graph demonstrating the total liftoff in the number of homes bought by investors that happened exactly—
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- Dec/12/23 5:25:51 p.m.
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I believe we have a point of order from the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona, and I am hoping that it is a point of order.
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- Dec/12/23 5:25:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to give an opportunity to the member. I thought that somebody trying to be prime minister might want an opportunity to answer questions, but I see instead he is practising avoiding answering them.
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- Dec/12/23 5:26:10 p.m.
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That is not a point of order. The hon. member has unlimited time on this.
The hon. member for Jonquière.
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- Dec/12/23 5:26:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am sad to see what is happening with my NDP colleagues.
I want to hear the leader of the official opposition tell us about cryptocurrencies. I would like to hear his thoughts on that. Cryptocurrency is very interesting. It is probably in this documentary.
I would like him to share his simplistic reasoning—
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- Dec/12/23 5:26:34 p.m.
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That is also a matter of debate.
The hon. Leader of the Opposition has unlimited time to make his presentation. At 5:42 p.m. we will proceed to the next item.
The hon. Leader of the Opposition.
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- Dec/12/23 5:26:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is no limit to my speaking time, just like there is no limit to Canada's potential, if only we had some common sense.
The reality is that when we create $600 billion of cash and we flood it into the financial system, that money is then lent out to those who have connections to that system, and those people bid up the cost for everybody else. That is why, in the early months of the pandemic when everything was crashing, the billionaires were suddenly getting richer.
Why were they getting richer? The economy was crashing. Well, of course, all of their asset values were being inflated by insane money printing supported by every party in the House except for ours. Ours was the only one that worried that this crazy money printing would do exactly what it has done every single time it has been tried.
When I produced the evidence of this in the documentary, all of the “bought and paid for” media said, “Oh, this is an outrageous explanation”, but they have not once provided a shred of evidence that it is not true. Look at the graphs the Bank of Canada itself produced. It demonstrates there was a massive flooding of cash into the real estate market through the vector of the same financial institutions that had profited off of quantitative easing.
I find it interesting that the NDP, which claims to be so concerned about the gap between rich and poor, saw absolutely no problem with the government creating all of this cash and pumping it into a select group of financial institutions, which happen to have the privilege of being members of Payments Canada. They had been eligible to receive the cash before anyone else and before it lost its value, and saw all of their net worth explode all of the stock values artificially pumped up. Then the resulting consumer price inflation chewed up the paycheques of the working poor. It was a direct transfer of wealth from the have-nots to the have-yachts, and the NDP supported it 100%.
NDP members talk about these little, itty-bitty wealth taxes that they claim to want to bring in that amount to $100 million here and $1 billion there when we are talking about $600 billion that was flooded into the financial system to the benefit of the wealthiest—
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- Dec/12/23 5:29:31 p.m.
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There is a point of order from the hon. member for Kings—Hants.
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- Dec/12/23 5:29:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am looking for some clarification. I have sat here intently, hoping to ask the leader of the official opposition a question.
I will get to the point. There has been a lot of actual points of order that have delayed the time for the leader of the official opposition to continue his unlimited time. However, does that time continue and extend out? When does Private Members' Business actually start?
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- Dec/12/23 5:29:57 p.m.
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As I said before, at 5:42 p.m., Private Members' Business will start, but the length of speeches pursuant to Standing Orders 43 and 74 have the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition with unlimited time.
The hon. leader of the official opposition.
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- Dec/12/23 5:30:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, every time I get interrupted, I think of something else to say. It just prolongs my remarks. In fairness, maybe that is the goal of the members across the way who seem to be, in fairness and I appreciate it, quite enjoying the presentation. I thank them for being part of this today.
As I was saying, I find it incredible that the NDP, which claims always to be so concerned about the gap between rich and poor, has expressed zero concern with the central bank ballooning the asset values and the net worth of the super-rich by creating cash and burning the purchasing power of our working-class people. Taking money from wage earners to give to billionaire asset owners is not exactly what we would expect in the name of a working-class party.
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- Dec/12/23 5:31:08 p.m.
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We have a point of order from the hon. member for Mirabel.
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- Dec/12/23 5:31:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on the point of order, we know that Private Members' Business will begin at 5:42 p.m. If the leader of the official opposition continues until 5:42 p.m., I would like to know if he could come back tomorrow morning to answer questions.
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