SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Eric Duncan

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry
  • Ontario
  • Voting Attendance: 64%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $135,225.85

  • Government Page
  • 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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  • 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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  • Feb/26/24 6:25:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, tonight the Liberals knew that I was coming to ask a very specific question about the negotiations and transfer of a specific parcel that the federal government owns. People who live in the city of Cornwall, are on council, are staff members or are members of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne are getting caught up in red tape. They cannot get a straight answer. After eight years, they cannot even transfer one single piece of property. I do not think the member could even point Cornwall out on a map, let alone know the intersection or what we are talking about here. The bar was so low for me to come here tonight to just get an update on the timeline and the plans to get this done. The City of Cornwall, Akwesasne and the Federal Bridge Corporation are all on board with the solution. No wonder housing prices have doubled. No wonder there are tent cities. No wonder the number of housing starts are dropping in this country. It was a low bar. I told the government I would come here tonight to ask about this and what the government's plan was. It could not even give a basic update. I will ask one more time, and the government has known for weeks what the question is. What is the plan? What is the update on the specific piece of property and the plan to get it done?
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  • Feb/26/24 6:17:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canada is in a housing crisis. There is not one part of this country that has not been negatively impacted after eight years of this Prime Minister and the NDP-Liberal record. Housing prices have doubled; rents have doubled, and at a time when we need to build more houses, five million homes in the coming years just to meet demand, we are actually seeing housing starts and construction starts drop in Canada year over year. It is a very dangerous trend to begin with, and the numbers ahead only look worse. One of the worst problems we have in this country is with gatekeepers, and I am going to make the argument that the Liberal government, over the course of eight years, has been one of the worst gatekeepers at both a macro and a micro level. At a macro level, we have the Liberals being gatekeepers because they have doubled our national debt, which has resulted in 40-year-high inflation, and now we are seeing interest rates unlike any we have seen in decades. To build a new home in my part of eastern Ontario, whether it be in the united counties of SDG or the city of Cornwall, the cost to build and the cost of a mortgage for any family that desperately needs a place to live are becoming more and more out of reach, not easier. However, the micro level, where the Liberal government is gatekeeping and blocking new homes and units from being built is right in the city of Cornwall by the Liberals' own transport minister and department. Here is a bit of background. For the last eight years, Liberal candidates locally, and numerous ones after that in the Liberal government, have promised to divest a bunch of waterfront lands in Cornwall, and the City of Cornwall and Akwesasne want to return those to local say and local control. For eight years, they have dithered, delayed, done these vague consultations and over and over again spun their wheels, with bureaucrats contradicting each other. It has been an absolute mess. The record is very clear. The Liberals have had eight years, and they have not even moved any of these parcels of land forward an inch to progress. Now it is getting bad, because there is one small parcel, Parcel 6, at the intersection of Water and Brookdale, where the City of Cornwall is reviewing an application to build a private-developer building of 506 units in two towers on Brookdale Avenue, which is a significant investment that is desperately needed to increase supply. We need more places to live, and this gets 506 in the right direction. However, Transport Canada, with lawyers and bureaucrats and back-and-forth, are still dithering and delaying even on getting this one parcel transferred to local control between the City of Cornwall and the Federal Bridge Corporation just south of it, to allow council to know that they own that intersection, that they can put the entrance into it so that the developer can get it under way and council can approve it once it has all the information. Months and months later, the mayor and Akwesasne Grand Chief Abram Benedict are all on record saying that they want to see this parcel transferred. They want to see it come to local ownership so that council has all the tools and information to try to finalize the site plan and approval for this project. However, Transport Canada and the Liberal government are blocking it. I asked my original question on this topic a couple of weeks ago, but I did not get even a semblance of an answer about Cornwall and this project specifically. Now that the Liberal government has had it and knew that I was coming here for this debate tonight on this topic, what is the update from the Liberals on finally getting even this one parcel intersection transferred, so that we can make a decision and try to get more units built in the city of Cornwall?
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  • Feb/9/24 11:50:26 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what a sad state of affairs with the Liberals. After eight years of dithering, delaying and working with local partners to actually get something done, they do not even know what they are talking about. They could not even acknowledge the local issue after eight years of trying to actually get this done. It is one parcel of land, at the intersection of Brookdale Avenue and Water Street in Cornwall, that everyone is in agreement on. The grand chief of Akwesasne and the mayor of Cornwall are both on board; they want to get this transferred so shovels can get into the ground right away. It is not that hard. Will the Liberals finally get out of the way and transfer the intersection so 500 units of housing can finally get built this year in Cornwall?
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  • Feb/9/24 11:49:06 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal-NDP coalition, Cornwall is no exception to the housing hell Canadians are facing. Rents and housing costs have doubled, and there is a desperate need for new homes and rentals to be built. Here is the worst part: Cornwall is finalizing plans for a 500-unit residential project, but it is being blocked by a gatekeeper, the Liberal government. Transport Canada has dithered for eight years on plans to transfer an intersection that would allow the entrance for this new project to be built. Will the housing minister tell the transport minister to stop blocking this important residential project for Cornwall?
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  • Sep/21/23 2:16:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the current Prime Minister, Canada is in housing hell. He is just not worth the cost. While he simply offers apologies and photo ops, by contrast, our Conservative leader is offering solutions, with the building homes not bureaucracy act to fix what the Liberals and NDP broke. As a former mayor, I can say that this is exactly the type of leadership we need in this country right now. We would reward cities that actually build homes and penalize gatekeepers that block them, remove GST on affordable rentals, sell 15% of surplus federal properties for housing and, finally, force federal executives in housing to meet a 60-day standard by scrapping their bonuses or even their jobs if they do not get it done. It is common sense to give performance bonuses only when someone delivers results. There used to be a deal in Canada that if someone worked hard, they would get a home. The Liberals and NDP have broken that, and Conservatives will be the ones to fix it for them.
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  • Jun/7/23 12:28:40 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a great solution to start: Let us tie performance bonusing to actual performance results. Call me crazy, but at the federal, provincial or municipal level, whatever the level is, far too often we have groups and organizations, like the CMHC, and the federal housing minister making a great big announcement promising more money and more results and the opposite happens. It is like this line: We are here from the government and we are here to help. Canadians do not buy it, and $90 billion later, the problem has never been worse. Regarding the referencing back and forth, rent prices have doubled in Cornwall, in eastern Ontario and in this country. One-third of income is what an average family should budget to spend on housing, but it is now over 60%. The more the Liberals spend, the worse it gets. They do not tie the rhetoric and the announcements to actual performance results. It is not unreasonable to ask that performance results be based on performance.
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  • Jun/7/23 12:20:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are in a housing crisis in this country, plain and simple, and the key figures demonstrate exactly that. Housing prices in this country have doubled to over $700,000; mortgages have doubled to over $3,000 a month; rent has doubled to over $2,000 a month; and the amount needed for a down payment has doubled to over $40,000. The problem is that, because rent has gone up so much, people cannot save for a down payment that has doubled. It is an absolute vicious circle, when it comes to the eight-year record of the Liberals in Ottawa. This is a uniquely Canadian problem. The Liberals would have us believe it is a global challenge, but the perfect example we have in eastern Ontario, when it comes to housing affordability and housing supply, is looking at us across the St. Laurence River. There was a report recently done that talked about the contrast from one side to the other. The median asking price for a home in Watertown, New York right now is $217,000 Canadian. Meanwhile, in Kingston, just a 40-minute drive north here in Canada, the median asking price is $602,000. It is nearly triple the price of a home, between Canada and the United States, from one side of the river to the other. That is despite Canada having more land on which to build houses and the United States having 10 times the population and demand to keep up with new homes. The Liberals have created this housing crisis in this country and, while housing prices have increased around the world, none have to the degree of what we have seen these past few years. It is inflationary spending and it is the printing of new money that has gone in and bloated the prices and bloated the real estate market and that has seen this doubling in the past couple of years. I am zoning my questions in on the federal agency and the federal minister who is responsible for housing. The CMHC continues to get very negative reviews. Members should not take just Conservatives' word for it; I know members from all parties have major frustrations on the performance and operation of this agency that literally has a mandate to make housing more affordable in this country. I have just outlined how the absolute opposite has happened and continues to happen. We have a housing minister who shows zero leadership and zero ability to change the performance and quality of work at the CMHC. Every time we ask a Liberal a question about what they are doing for housing, they say they are spending a record amount of money: $90 billion. They have never spent so much money to make a problem so much worse. Members should not take my word for it. As well, the Auditor General of Canada has come out and said many negative things about the performance of the CMHC. In their recent report last year, they said that the CMHC was the lead for the national housing strategy, that $90 billion the government tries to take credit for, in saying houses were often unaffordable for low-income households, when it came to investments in rental housing units, the report said that the CMHC is not directly accountable for any of its actions and it was not working in any coordinated way. The performance standard of the CMHC is terrible. At a time when we need the private sector to increase building houses and getting more shovels in the ground, according to the CMHC's report, they are actually seeing a decrease. My follow-up question is this: What performance measures are Liberals using to determine success at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation?
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  • May/11/23 3:00:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberals, this is where housing is at in Canada: Housing prices, rent and mortgage payments have all doubled. At a time when we need more housing built, the Liberals' own statistics show they are down 32% in housing starts. The Liberal response has been that they are spending record amounts of money, and now we know where that money is going. The housing minister signed off on $51 million in performance bonuses for gatekeepers at the CMHC. Can the Liberals explain why they are giving bonuses to housing gatekeepers who are failing by every possible measure?
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  • Apr/26/22 7:31:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the very reason I am standing in the House talking about affordable housing is that I care. We care about it across the country. I will never challenge the intent of the government and say that it does not care about housing affordability, homelessness or helping first-time homebuyers. This is about the approach it is taking to try to get there. The Liberals have had seven years. They claim they have done a, b, c, d and e, and in that time, housing prices have doubled. More people are walking away. We have more homelessness present in our communities, and we have more people requesting social housing because they cannot afford rent and cannot afford to buy a home. There is a lack of supply, and the challenges go on. My argument continues to be about the direction the government has taken. I will give the Liberals the benefit of doubt that they mean well, but this is about actions and results. I will ask my constituents in Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry and all Canadians to reflect on the past five to seven years under the Liberal government. Is housing more affordable for them? Are they further ahead? The answer is clearly no.
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  • Apr/26/22 7:23:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the line I use very often is that a week is an eternity in politics, and for the past five years it has become increasingly difficult and more stressful for anybody buying a home or looking to rent anywhere. In Cornwall and my riding of SDG, the average price of a home is now $430,000. In the province of Ontario, last month the statistics showed the price was over $1 million on average to purchase a home. It was $800,000 across the country. Those are the average prices. I hear stories repeatedly of how rents are skyrocketing, the supply is low and young people living in their parents' basements are giving up on the idea of ever being able to save up enough money to buy their own home. These stories are heartbreaking, and what has happened over the course of the past few years is extremely frustrating. I have to admit I do not think the Minister of Housing likes me too much. He references me in response in question period quite often because the last time we had this debate on housing a few months ago, I spoke about the Liberals' failed approach when it comes to housing. It is clearly broken when the housing minister sees prices that have doubled in the past five years and claims that the government's plan is working and is a benefit to Canadians. I criticized the shared equity program, but not just for myself. I shared examples from stakeholders and proof from Canadians that they do not support that program. The minister then twisted my words. He could not even get my riding name right, but suggested that I was somehow against homelessness funding or doing anything in that regard. I will be blunt. That is pathetic and desperate. The line I used was “desperate people do desperate things.” The minister is getting increasingly frustrated because Canadians are seeing the frustration they are facing in every single part of this country. It was also revealed in some documents recently that the minister authorized bonuses for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Organization, which has the simple and pure mandate of making housing affordable for Canadians. With all the stats that I just showed and the frustration in the air in every part of this country, the minister deemed in his judgment that it was appropriate to give $40 million in bonuses to an organization and team that is responsible for affordable housing. He did not like that very much, and continues to cite it. I can say that in the city of Cornwall, the challenge of both hidden homelessness, which is what we call it, and also visible homelessness has shaken our community in the past couple of years. We actually have homeless encampments now near the port of entry under the international bridge going to Cornwall Island and into the United States. The approach from the government needs to change. The shared equity program is broken. Members do not need to take my word for it. Mortgage Professionals Canada, which represents mortgage brokers, lenders and insurance and service providers, said last month that the federal government has failed to address Canada's housing affordability problem. When it came to the first-time homebuyers' incentive program, it said that it is “simply failing”. That is the part that needs to end. The spokesperson said that “almost all clients dislike the idea of becoming a co-homeowner with the government, if they can avoid it.” That says it all. The fact that we are at a point now where the government believes it needs to put out money to help people contribute toward the equity in their homes speaks volumes about how our system and housing system are broken. My question to the parliamentary secretary is this. Will the government finally change course?
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  • Apr/5/22 2:44:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the minister has to keep reusing the same recycled talking points and twisting people's words because he is embarrassed, and rightfully so, of his record as minister. He claims to have a plan that would help make housing more affordable, but under his watch, we have seen housing prices double and rent become more unaffordable than ever before. More and more people are looking at the situation and saying that they are giving up on ever buying a home. He should finally admit that his plan for first-time homebuyers is not working. It is only actually driving prices up. Will the minister acknowledge his record of failure, change course and actually make housing more affordable for Canadians, and not just use the same talking points?
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  • Mar/30/22 2:12:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is unbelievable how tone-deaf and out of touch the Minister of Housing is when it comes to the realities the average Canadian faces. He tries to brag about how well the government's housing plan has been working over the last five years while the average housing price in the country doubled under his watch. Rents are skyrocketing with no end in sight, and a record number of Canadians are giving up on the idea of ever owning their own home. The government's first-time homebuyer shared equity program is a failure and needs to be scrapped in favour of a new approach, but here is the biggest sign of disrespect: It was recently revealed that the minister rewarded staff at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation with $40 million in performance bonuses, when literally the single reason they exist is to make housing more affordable for everyone in Canada. Instead of being petty and trying to suggest that anybody who questions his failed record does not care about homelessness or affordability, he should self-reflect. After all, Canadians have 40 million reasons to question his judgment.
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  • Mar/28/22 12:35:07 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-8 
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from the Bloc Québécois for his question and his intervention. In this section, there is a 1% tax on vacated homes. I would use as an example, in the province of Quebec, perhaps the city of Montreal, where housing prices are in the millions of dollars. With no disrespect to the 1%, that could be into the tens of thousands of dollars. I would argue that it does not disincentivize some people, if they are those who can afford to spend $3 million or $4 million to buy a home and leave it vacant. We have asked at different committees what that correlation would actually do to cool the market. It remains to be seen. What I will offer is an alternative, and I will agree with my colleague. Working with provinces and municipalities, we need to look at banning foreign buyers who are in it for profit and investment from getting into the system. I believe that tool, which is not included, could actually cool the market more than what is being proposed in this legislation.
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  • Mar/21/22 6:53:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the reply, and I will summarize again what I said in my intervention. We are five years in and halfway through the $72 billion that was promised. The Auditor General said that the Liberals actually did not spend what they said they were going to. Actually, I am kind of glad about that, because if they had spent more than they already have, we would be further in debt, and I think housing prices might be even higher. We need to stop printing money and debt and giving it to people, which is inflating the market. The national housing plan is not working. Here are some ideas that the Conservatives are proposing: ban foreign buyers, which the government had an opportunity to do through a committee but refused to do; tackle money laundering; make changes to encourage building more apartments and rental housing; and look at mortgage and lending rules and incentives. We need to invest urgently, in my view, in infrastructure for water and sewer, which presents an issue in my riding. We can talk to the mayors of my riding in Glen Walter, Winchester and Ingleside for examples of where that challenge is. Habitat for Humanity is a wonderful organization and social housing is helpful in our community, but we need more action and we need more resolve. Again, clearly, the direction with five years in of a 10-year plan has failed to date, and my riding of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry is a good example of that, unfortunately.
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  • Mar/21/22 6:46:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise tonight to follow up on my question period topic from a few weeks ago on the issue of housing and the crisis our country finds itself in. Having only 35 seconds to ask a question in question period is not the easiest to summarize a major national issue. I hope this 10-minute back and forth tonight will be a bit more helpful. I hear repeatedly across my riding, whether in the city of Cornwall, the united counties of SDG or in Akwesasne, from a number of people who are struggling when it comes to housing and, equally as important, the rental market in our region. I know our region is not unique. Frankly, it is a national crisis we find ourselves in today. As opposition MPs, we are not on the government side. I wish we were, and I aspire to get there some day. One of the things I want to address is that part of our job as the opposition is to propose ideas, and I have a few that I will suggest later. It is also to scrutinize and ask tough questions about what the government has proposed. In this case it is to address housing, to present some facts and figures of the reality of what has happened in the past few years, and to bring a local context here to the floor of the House of Commons. Sadly, I can do that, again between Cornwall, SDG and Akwesasne, because the stats and figures paint a very bleak picture when it comes to housing affordability for Canadians. The Cornwall and District Real Estate Board and its president, Troy Vaillancourt, recently gave the February statistics of where the housing situation was in our region. The average price of homes sold in February 2022 was a record $434,000. That was up 28.5% from last February. If we go back five years, housing prices in Cornwall and area have doubled since that time. Active listing supply is a major challenge on this problem. Active listings were down 65% below the five-year average, and 81% below the 10-year average for the month of February. As we talk about this, we are likely going to hear, in the response from my colleague across the way, the Liberals trying to tout their national housing plan. It is a 10-year plan that was introduced in 2017. Simple math would tell us that it is halfway through. We are going to hear a sunny ways picture of the billions here and the billions there that they are spending to help the housing market. Five years in, I would encourage the Liberals to pull back on that plan because it is clearly not working. If the plan is to make housing more affordable and to get younger people to realize their dream of home ownership, it is absolutely not working. In my region, housing prices have doubled in five years. Rent is skyrocketing. If we talk to local real estate agents or the Canadian Real Estate Association, it is scheduled to get no better. We need a change of course. I asked the government about this printing money and adding to debt. Even its shared equity program is absolutely flawed, and we need to make sure that it never comes back again. All that giving new homeowners interest-free money to buy new houses is doing is raising prices further. More and more people are realizing they can borrow more interest-free loans, and it is making the market even worse. I will ask the government a question again in my comments, and in my rebuttal I will give some ideas. Will the government acknowledge that its housing plan has been a failure five years in? What could it do differently to finally make home ownership more affordable and make renting more affordable in this country?
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  • Feb/15/22 3:57:05 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-12 
Madam Speaker, as the member for the Green Party mentioned in his comments today, there has been support for this legislation going through. There have been some issues of process, which have been the challenge and making sure that Parliament has the appropriate time to discuss and debate exactly what he spoke about today. This is to fix a problem we should have fixed a very long time ago. I think of my constituency office where we saw some of these programs announced at the beginning of the pandemic and how red flags were raised then. Here we are now two years later correcting a problem and the government is saying we need to do this right away. I agree with the member completely that housing for seniors and rent is a big issue as well as the cost of living. Having the proper time for these bills and to discuss the issues that seniors face in general is something we need to do. I wonder if the member could comment on the process and why we need to rush these things all the time as opposed to having debates on the substantive issues that people in Kitchener and the country are facing.
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