SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 268 - Dec/14/23

Dec/14/23 1:04:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order, the member's comments are neither on the member's speech nor on the bill. I question the relevance.

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Context: House Hansard - 268 - Dec/14/23

Mr. Pat Kelly (Calgary Rocky Ridge, CPC)

Dec/14/23 6:25:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary on this seemed to doubt that there was any kind of a problem with the billion-dollar green slush fund, wherein members have actually admitted at committee to have voted to give themselves money. I wonder if the member, in whatever time he has left, could ensure the parliamentary secretary does have his facts straight.

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Context: House Hansard - 268 - Dec/14/23

Mr. Pat Kelly (Calgary Rocky Ridge, CPC)

Dec/14/23 6:41:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise. I am not going to speak at length about the report. I move: That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “the first report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, presented on Wednesday, February 2, 2022, be not now concurred in, but that it be recommitted to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food with instruction that it amend the same by adding to Recommendation 5 of the report a call to the government to discontinue the carbon tax, given that over 100 first nations communities have taken the government to court because it is violating the rights of First Nations with the carbon tax on rural and remote people and the recent request from the Premier of the Northwest Territories, who joins other premiers, for an exemption from the carbon tax”.

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Agriculture

Context: House Hansard - 268 - Dec/14/23

Mr. Pat Kelly (Calgary Rocky Ridge, CPC)

Dec/14/23 6:45:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, a few weeks ago, I asked the government when it would rein in its inflationary spending and balance the budget to bring down inflation and give Canadian homeowners interest rate relief. The parliamentary secretary took a cheap shot at the Conservative Party leader, but the main meat of his response needs some unpacking. He referred to his government supposedly working with the City of Calgary, and that point needs correcting. In this case, the minister the parliamentary secretary speaks for wrote a threatening letter to the mayor, demanding that city council take a vote on a specific proposal or lose housing accelerator funding. They were not working with the City of Calgary; they were threatening it. It is a classic “my way or the highway” type of move. Sadly, it is one that they have also undertaken with other municipalities. I would like to contrast that approach with the building homes not bureaucracy act, the housing plan that has already been partly tabled in the House of Commons by the Conservative Party's leader. Under this plan, the federal government would tie municipal funding to outcomes, but not by sticking its nose into municipal government's business. Instead, a Conservative government approach would respect municipal decision-making. It would simply tie national government funding to national policy objectives; increasing the national housing supply is a critical policy imperative. The question that I asked remains unanswered. Under the NDP-Liberal government, interest rates have gone through the roof. Even the government's own experts and all kinds of random Liberals have affirmed without any doubt that the government's spending and borrowing are contributing to inflation. Former Liberal finance ministers, such as Bill Morneau and John Manley, have clearly said that the government is losing the battle against inflation because it keeps pouring gasoline on the inflationary fire. Current and former governors of the Bank of Canada have also weighed in with concern about how the government's spending and deficits make inflation worse. The finance minister herself even admitted earlier this year that her government was going to have to rein in its spending to fight inflation. However, she then tabled a fall economic statement with more spending, taxes, borrowing and deficits, which means more inflation and higher interest rates. Inflation has been called the cruellest tax ever. It robs workers of the value of their wages, it robs savers of the value of their savings and it robs seniors of the value of their pensions. Inflation is crushing Canadians and lower-income retirees with higher interest rates. Moreover, higher interest rates threaten mortgagors and threaten to suppress housing construction. They even threaten the entire financial system because of the weight of mortgage asset balances. Canadians cannot afford the homes they already own, in many cases, because they were forced to buy at peak prices that were bid up by a lack of supply. Now their mortgages are maturing at shockingly high rates. Under the government's watch, some were even forced into fixed-payment variable rate mortgages, because at the very peak of prices, qualifying calculations actually made it more advantageous to do so. People were just trying to put a roof over their head, and they had to take on these riskier mortgages just to get into a home. Now they have negatively amortizing mortgages, where the balance owing is increasing. Thus, they are having to either make giant payments of principal or face huge increases on their payments, but they do not have any extra money. People are desperately worried that they are going to lose their homes, and observers worry that the banking system itself is at risk. Therefore, I ask again. When will the government rein in its deficits, reduce its wasteful spending and get inflation under control so interest rates can come down, Canadians can afford to keep a roof over their own head and builders can afford to build?

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Context: House Hansard - 268 - Dec/14/23

Mr. Pat Kelly

Dec/14/23 6:51:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary still has not answered my question. When are the Liberals going to rein in the spending, rein in their deficits and get inflation under control so that interest rates can come down and Canadians can get on with living their lives and not have to deal with the catastrophic effects of the inflationary and high-interest-rate environment that they have created? People's payments, in some cases, are doubling. It is normal now for a maturing mortgage to add $700, $800 or more a month to people's payments. They cannot afford it. They cannot afford to keep the homes they are in. I did not hear an answer to my question. I heard him tick off a couple of announcements of funding and openings, but that comes amid the need for millions of new housing construction in the years to come. The answer I got is not going to cut it for the needs of Canadian housing and certainly will give no relief to existing Canadian mortgage holders, which is the substance of the question that I had asked.

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