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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 304

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 29, 2024 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 304 - Apr/29/24
Mr. Eric Duncan (Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, CPC)
  • Apr/29/24 8:15:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, it is just not worth the cost. Canadians know that and, sadly, they know that in many ways. The housing hell that the Liberals and NDP have created under their watch is being seen in every part of this country. Cornwall and SD&G are no exception to this chaos and this burden. I want to talk about some stats here to frame the context for we know nationally and what has happened locally here in eastern Ontario. The Cornwall and District Real Estate Board says that the average house price in 2015, the year the Prime Minister came into office, was $179,900. Today, the average house price in SD&G and Cornwall is $422,000, which is a 135% increase. The down payment needed used to be $9,000, nine years ago, and it is now $21,000. Also, in this country, it used to take 25 years to pay a mortgage off, and now the stats show it takes 25 years just to save up for a home. The average mortgage payment needed to buy this average residential house in SD&G and Cornwall, using a conventional five-year, fixed average, as per Stats Canada, in 2015 would have been $895. Now it is $2,600, which is nearly triple the mortgage payment for somebody buying a new home in our part of eastern Ontario. It is no wonder food bank use is skyrocketing at the House of Lazarus, the Agapè Centre, Saint Vincent de Paul, the Salvation Army, and the list goes on. Rentals.ca talks about rent, which has gone up 107% in this country. In Ontario, the average now is up 8.8% in the last year alone. The average rental cost is nearly $2,200 a month in the province of Ontario. It is broken. The problem framing the seriousness of this is that its cause is the continued failure of the government. The Liberals promise but just do not deliver on anything they say they are going to do. They bragged about a $90-billion national housing strategy. I went back and looked at the announcement. The Prime Minister literally said that it is going to be “life-changing”. It was life-changing all right, in completely the wrong way. The more the Liberals and NDP spend on housing, the worse it gets. They add red tape. They add layers. At a time now when we need to pick up the pace of housing starts to keep up with demand, we are actually seeing, right in the city of Cornwall as well, and the Cornwall year-in-review chart showed it last year, that residential starts and permit values collapsed last year, at a time when we actually need them to increase. We are building the same number of houses today as we did in the 1970s when the population was half the size. It is time to get rid of the red tape. It is time to get rid of the broken promises. I will follow up, because it was the Liberal platform in 2015 that said that the Liberals were going to conduct an inventory of all available federal lands and buildings that could be repurposed. Nine years later, they have not fulfilled that yet. In the budget, they now promise a rapid review of the entirety of federal lands. After nine years, there are zero results and just a promise to do a rapid review. We have seen that in Cornwall with the Transport Canada lands that are blocking housing. Will the government smarten up, get out of the way and allow more housing to be built in Cornwall?
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Context: House Hansard - 304 - Apr/29/24
Mr. Eric Duncan
  • Apr/29/24 8:21:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, after nine years, the Liberals have doubled housing costs and down payments. They have tripled mortgage payments in our part of the country alone, when we do the math. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Our solution, many Canadians would say, is common sense. The Liberals must stop promising to give money to cities and instead give money when they show results and complete houses. We are going to require cities to increase their permits by 15% to get federal infrastructure dollars. If they do not keep their promises, they do not get paid. A real estate agent gets paid when they sell a house. A home builder gets paid when they build a house. Municipalities and big cities should be paid when they permit housing. At a time when we need to increase the supply to meet the demand, the Liberal record is a decrease. I will ask again: In Cornwall, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry and right across the country—
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