Senator Martin: The average mortgage and rent payments have almost doubled since the Trudeau government took office. For example, in its 2022 review, CMHC said the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment reached an all-time high last year. At the same time, the number of housing units being built is not nearly enough to meet demand. A forecast released in April by CMHC says they expect new housing construction to decrease this year and remain well below recent levels.

Leader, the Trudeau government has already pushed back its target for building 100,000 homes from 2025 to 2027. What assurances do Canadians have that this target won’t be pushed back even further?

Senator Plett: No, you did not answer it. You did not answer his question about how much the government is spending. You did not answer my question about how Canadians can contact the Special Rapporteur. That wasn’t a degradation of the previous Governor General. It is the Prime Minister who is showing contempt to a wonderful individual, as the Governor General, Mr. Johnston. It’s the Prime Minister who appointed him and said, “This is my good family friend. A member of the Trudeau Foundation, a good family friend, and I’m appointing him as a Special Rapporteur. By the way, if you want to get ahold of him, contact my office.” But he’s independent.

And then you say we have disrespect. You are sitting there and laughing at Canadians, and the Prime Minister is laughing at Canadians. His dad had the famous Western Canadian salute. This Prime Minister is using both hands.

My question now concerns the ArriveCAN app. Let’s see if you can just once answer a question without all of your diatribe about how evil we are. Answer a question.

This app, leader, was never necessary, but if the Trudeau government was so intent on going ahead with it, it could have asked some of the thousands of IT professionals who work for the Government of Canada to develop it. It could even have contracted out the work that this government so loves to do. Instead, this incompetent government chose to pay over $8 million to a two-person company.