44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 10, 2024 02:00PM
- Apr/10/24 2:14:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, northern Canadians cannot afford the Prime Minister anymore. Housing starts are at historic lows, according to a recent RBC report, and the trend is only going to get worse under the NDP-Liberals.
Nunavut is deep in this housing crisis, with over 3,000 homes desperately needed, and the number is climbing, with little being done by the Prime Minister. The NDP-Liberal Prime Minister has no plan to fix the housing crisis, according to his own housing department CEO. Making life far worse is the Liberal carbon tax being applied to farmers. A package of hotdogs in Nunavut is $19. One gallon of ice cream is $29, and one kilogram of bacon is $42.
Canadians are tired of being told they are better off under the Prime Minister, because it simply is not true. When will the Prime Minister make life better in the north, axe the tax on farmers and build the homes?
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- Apr/10/24 2:15:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal-NDP Prime Minister, Canadians require 64% of their pre-tax income to afford housing, if they can even find housing. Michelle from Kawartha Lakes found work in Toronto but is couch surfing because she, like nine in 10 Canadians in this country, believes she will never own a home.
We are a G7 country, and it costs over $1,900 for a one-bedroom apartment. Rent has doubled. Mortgage defaults are on the rise. Housing starts are down. Tent cities across this country look like scenes from the Great Depression, and the Prime Minister has the audacity to say that he is doing a great job. He is a failure. His solution is to increase the carbon tax by 23%, which will drive up housing prices even more.
Canadians know better, and so do Conservatives. We will incentivize municipalities to build houses people can afford, and we will axe the tax to make the materials needed to build houses affordably. We will bring it home.
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- Apr/10/24 2:32:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am so happy to answer a second question and give a second example of how we are working very well together.
On the question of housing, two times $900 million equals $1.8 billion. This agreement, which we signed just a few weeks ago, will allow us to build the largest number of affordable housing units ever built in the history of the province of Quebec. This will greatly benefit Quebeckers, especially lower-income residents.
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- Apr/10/24 2:33:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, for decades and decades, Canada has underinvested in indigenous communities, and the Liberal government is putting a stop to that. We have increased funding for housing on first nations by 1,100%. While we know there is a long way to go, I want to thank the AFN for co-writing this report with us. It is very important to understand the size of the gap so that we can work even more quickly to close it together.
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- Apr/10/24 2:41:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, we are investing to build homes in Quebec.
For example, with the housing accelerator fund, we are concluding an agreement worth $1.8 billion with the province of Quebec to build 8,000 affordable housing units across the province. The Conservative Party opposes this investment. That is unbelievable.
We continue to invest in order to make things better and build more affordable housing as quickly as possible.
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- Apr/10/24 2:42:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague the Minister of Housing has already talked about the 8,000 affordable housing units that Quebec municipalities will build in the coming months and years.
We already know about the six affordable housing units that the Conservative leader built during his time as housing minister.
What my colleague may not know is that in his own riding, the Charles IV housing project alone has built 163 affordable housing units in the past few months, which is 25 times more than the number of affordable housing units his Conservative leader had built across the country during his entire mandate.
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- Apr/10/24 2:52:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague will admit that we are investing precisely to help the most vulnerable Canadians across the country. We are also investing in child care and in housing.
Moreover, my colleague knows full well that the best way to stabilize grocery prices in this country is to have more competition. That is exactly what we have done with the biggest competition reform since the law was passed.
Everyone in the House wants to help Canadians. That is exactly what we are doing and what we will continue to do.
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- Apr/10/24 3:00:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are plenty of concrete measures we can take to address the housing crisis. In fact, I proposed 12 of them just this morning. I am willing to discuss them with the Liberals at any time, because the only measures they have proposed so far include imposing ill-conceived conditions on the provinces. If they do not meet those conditions, Ottawa will cut off funding.
The Prime Minister is basically telling any province that refuses to be blackmailed that if they want the government to respect their jurisdictions, they will have to make do without federal money. However, it is our money.
There are no concrete measures, only threats to the provinces and municipalities. Is that the Liberal plan? It sounds like a Conservative plan.
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- Apr/10/24 3:01:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am delighted by my colleague's question because I have taken a close look at the infamous report he spoke about and worked on himself.
Several stakeholders are mentioned in his report. These stakeholders, including FRAPRU, spoke positively about housing rights and hailed the fact that we want to build more housing.
We are not here to write reports. We are here to build housing.
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- Apr/10/24 3:02:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the conditions set by Ottawa are not speeding up housing construction. They are slowing it down. Instead of getting the money out now, so that Quebec can get to work, the Liberals are picking a fight that will last until 2025.
The money they are holding back is meant for infrastructure, like water systems. However, that is only the first step, unless the Liberals want homes without drinking water built on vacant land. Imagine, we are no further ahead than installing running water. We have not even started talking about constructing buildings and already the federal government is slowing everyone down.
Why not just transfer the money now so that we can tackle the housing crisis now?
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- Apr/10/24 3:02:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, to me, the dark blue or light blue rhetoric is all the same.
Honestly, a person cannot claim to want to help others and then turn around and vote against all the measures that we announced this week. Incidentally, the measure that my colleague just mentioned was part of last week's announcements.
We announced a fund specifically to support housing infrastructure. We announced a fund to protect renters' rights. We announced a fund to ensure the creation of an industrial catalogue to speed up construction.
On this side of the House, we do not write reports; we build houses.
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- Apr/10/24 3:04:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are pleased to do so with the co‑operation of Quebec municipalities, including the City of Lévis, and the Government of Quebec. There will be 8,000 affordable housing units in the coming months. This is the largest number of affordable housing units built by Quebeckers in one go in the history of the province of Quebec. That is because we are working in partnership with the Government of Quebec.
We talk about competence, but I think we have forgotten the person who is perhaps the least competent of the gang: the Conservative leader. He built six affordable housing units during his tenure as housing minister.
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- Apr/10/24 4:54:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would remind the member for Kingston and the Islands that he has not been mayor for over 10 years. For the last 10 years, he has been part of the Liberal government that has created the housing crisis we are seeing in every community across this country, including in his own.
I am not advocating that all military bases have enough housing for all members who currently live there. A lot of them want to live in communities. The problem is that, for those in Esquimalt, in Halifax, in Toronto and even here in Ottawa, they cannot find the homes they can afford to raise their families in. That is the problem. That is because of the government's inability to get homes built.
The number of houses getting built in this country continues to decline. We are building fewer homes this year than we did back in 1970 under the Liberals. That is because there is not the money, the regulation or the commitment to ensure that life can be more affordable and that houses can be more affordable for Canadian families, including those who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces.
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- Apr/10/24 4:56:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will remind the member that, as the shadow minister for national defence for the Conservatives and vice-chair of the Standing Committee on National Defence, we are debating a motion now that came from the Standing Committee on National Defence. This is important. We are talking about how the housing crisis is impacting our troops. We are talking about a rate hike. The Liberals jacked up the rental rates on our troops, and that deserves to be debated here as well.
Although the committee is meeting right now and talking about housing, I thought it was important today, pretty much our first opportunity since April 1, to raise this issue and make sure that the government has an eye on the crisis that is currently grabbing hold in the Canadian Armed Forces. Our troops deserve better than that. I know the troops appreciated that, when we were in government, we bought brand new C-17s, we bought brand new Hercules aircraft and we bought brand new Leopard tanks. We were able to support them throughout the war in Afghanistan and, when that war ended, there were actually some savings, which enabled us to fix the budget.
I can say that, as much as everybody always talks about where the Conservatives were on the percentage of GDP, we did not use creative accounting by adding in things like the pensions of veterans, the Coast Guard and border services to falsely inflate the GDP numbers.
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- Apr/10/24 4:58:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a real honour to stand in the House of Commons today to speak to such an important committee report. For folks watching and paying attention at home, this is with respect to the eighth report of the Standing Committee on National Defence, entitled “Increase in Rental Housing Costs for Canadian Military Personnel”. It reads:
Given that, rent for Canadian military personnel living on bases is increasing this April, and at a time when the military is struggling to recruit and retain personnel, the committee report to the House, that the government immediately cancel all plans to increase rent on military accommodations used by the Department of National Defence.
As my colleague, the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, who spoke before me, eloquently stated, this is a pretty serious thing.
I want to tell members a story about what happened recently. I travelled to New Brunswick and went to the Oromocto food bank. The Oromocto food bank is run by incredible volunteers, like most food banks across this country, and like most has seen historic high usage.
If we could, in the House, give a round of applause for the people and volunteers who are feeding Canadians across this country, I think that would be amazing.
Some hon. members: Hear, hear!
Ms. Michelle Ferreri: Madam Speaker, when I got to the Oromocto food bank, I walked in with my colleague, the member for Tobique—Mactaquac. He is an incredible man, and there were two incredible humans there, Elizabeth and Jane.
We walked into the office. I believe the woman's name in the office was Dolores. They were working, and Jane was standing in front of a map of the area that they serve. We could see that it is a rural kind of area. She was talking about the record usage that they had seen since they opened, which was 13 years ago. It has just steadily gone up. They serve about 450 families a month, which is a shocking number.
While Jane was talking and was telling me this number, I happened to look behind her. The map behind her had this big patch on the map for CFB Gagetown. For people who know the Canadian Forces, CFB Gagetown is Canada's largest training facility. Most military personnel go there to train. It is a phenomenal facility. For all of our men and women who have served in uniform, most of them have at some point served in Gagetown. It is incredible.
I do not know why, but I asked, “You wouldn't be serving anyone from Gagetown here at the Oromocto food bank, right, Jane?” What she said next shocked me. She said they were serving about 40 to 50 families a month from CFB Gagetown. I said, “Pardon, what did you just say?” She said, “Yes, we are.” I asked if the general public knew about this, and she said she did not know.
People who are the front lines of the defence of our country are relying on a food bank. I was gobsmacked hearing that information. It was like talking about doctors or nurses. The people who work to keep us safe are having to use a food bank in Canada, a G7 country. I said to Jane that she had to be kidding me, but she was not kidding. I could barely hear the rest of what she told me.
We went further into the food bank. Then she told me that I should also know that most of these military families have their homes heated by gas or oil and they pay a carbon tax. I asked her if she thought the carbon tax has an impact on military families accessing food banks. She said that it has an impact on everything, because the cost of food has skyrocketed and because the cost of housing has skyrocketed.
To build houses they need materials and they need fuel to get the materials. It is a really common-sense concept that the cult on the other side of the House has doubled down on to say they are going to fight this. It is actually the most frustrating thing for Canadians to witness.
There is a motion before us. Canadian military families will now suffer even further because the government will increase their rent. Why is it raising their rent? These are always the things I challenge everyone at home to say. Why does the government need to increase their rent? It is because it spends like a maniac and has to make up for it. That is why. We have to ask why in every single thing we see come through the House. Why would it increase their rent? That makes no sense. These are our frontline men and women.
I would note that it is April. Do members know that April is the Month of the Military Child? I am the shadow minister for families, children and social development. Children are our most precious resource in this country. Teen suicide is at an all-time high in this country. Military families already have an abnormal amount of stress in their life. Families are separated. Children of military families have to have an extreme amount of resilience.
Do members know what military members cannot do for their family? They cannot be present when they are worried about paying their bills, or even worse how to feed them, when they have to decide, sitting like most common-sense Canadians are doing in this country every night, asking themselves whether they have enough money for this or that. These are not luxuries but basic necessities.
The Department of National Defence wants to increase rent for military families, when we have record-low recruitment and retention rates. We are short 16,000 military personnel. A quote I read was just shocking:
The military’s chaplain-general says morale among troops is the lowest it’s been in recent memory as many soldiers struggle with the cost of living.
In a briefing note sent to the chief of the defence staff, Gen. Wayne Eyre, chaplains say more Armed Forces members have been asking for help to make ends meet.
I wonder why nobody wants to join the Canadian Forces. If they come work for the military, they will get to use a food bank and will not be able to afford housing. There are organizations, such as Homes for Heroes, that are out on the front lines trying to ensure that veterans are housed. There are veterans' claims coming through the office of every MP of the House that are not being met; they are being disregarded.
How we treat the people who protect us says so much about our country. I was very fortunate, in my former career, to have spent time with families of the military, of the Canadian Forces. These people serve something bigger than themselves, and this is how the government treats them. We can do better. We have to do better. I encourage every member of the House to recognize their service, because when the day comes that we need someone to stand in front and protect us, we had better hope that person is there, because that is what they do. That is what the Canadian Forces is.
The common-sense Conservatives stand with them. We will fight with them. We will ensure that there is freedom for them to be able to afford to eat and to heat, and to house themselves.
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- Apr/10/24 5:12:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we know that, back in the day, the time under Jean Chrétien and the Liberals was called the decade of darkness. I had a veteran tell me here the other day that, under the current Liberals, this has been a decade of disaster. When we were in government, never did anyone complain about housing, being unhoused or having to use food banks; that all happened under the Liberals' watch.
Does my colleague believe that the Minister of National Defence should actually roll back this rent increase on our troops, properly support them and house their families?
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