- Member of Parliament
- Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada
Leader of the Opposition
- Conservative
- Carleton
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $61,288.13
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, he still will not clearly answer the question, which is doubly concerning because Toronto has been overtaken by crime and chaos since he brought in the catch-and-release policies under Bill C-375, Bill C-5 and Bill C-83. Violent crime is up 40%. We just heard the tragic story on Monday of a liquor store robber crashing into a family, tragically killing grandparents and a precious child. The assailant was out on bail.
Will the Prime Minister repeal catch-and-release?
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- Apr/18/24 11:07:22 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
The same approach that will allow us to unleash energy, abundance and affordability is the approach we will take to build the homes; that is to say getting the government gatekeepers out of the way.
Why do we have the worst housing inflation in the G7 after nine years of the Prime Minister? Why have housing costs risen 40% faster than paycheques? It is by far the worst gap of any G7 country. Why did UBS say Toronto had the worst housing bubble in the world? Vancouver is the third most overpriced when comparing median income to median house price according to Demographia. Why? Because we have the worst bureaucracy when it comes to home building.
After nine years of the Prime Minister, Canada has the second slowest building permits out of nearly 40 OECD countries. These permitting costs add $1.3 million to the cost of every newly built home in Vancouver, and $350,000 to every newly built home in Toronto. Winnipeg blocked 2,000 homes next to a transit station that was built for those homes. The City of Montreal has blocked 25,000 homes in the last seven years. Literally hundreds of thousands of homes are waiting to be built, but are locked up in slow permitting processes.
What do we have as a solution? The Prime Minister has taken the worst immigration minister in our country's history, the guy the Prime Minister blamed for causing out-of-control temporary immigration to balloon housing prices, and put him in charge of housing. Since that time, the minister has said that his housing accelerator fund of $4 billion does not actually build any homes.
Since he has doled out all of this cash to political friends in incompetent city halls across the country, home building has dropped. In fact, home building is down this year and, according to the federal government's housing agency, it will be down next year and again the year after that. That is a housing decelerator not accelerator.
That is what happens when a minister is chosen because he is a media darling and a fast talker, rather than someone who gets things done, as I did when I was housing minister. The rent was only $973 a month for the average family right across the country, and the average house price was roughly $400,000. That is results. There was less talk and less government spending, but far more homes. That is what our common-sense plan will do again.
Our plan will build the homes by requiring municipalities to speed up, permit more land and build faster. They will be required to permit 15% more homes per year as a condition of getting federal funding, and to permit high-rise apartments around every federally funded transit station. We will sell off 6,000 federal buildings and thousands of acres of federal land to build. We will get rid of the carbon tax to lower the cost of building materials.
Finally, we will reward the working people who build homes, because we need more boots, not more suits. We will pass the common-sense Conservative law that allows trade workers to write off the full cost of transportation, food and accommodation to go from one work site to another, so they can build the homes while bringing home paycheques for themselves.
These homes will be in safe neighbourhoods. We will stop the crime by making repeat violent offenders ineligible for bail, parole or house arrest. That will mean no more catch and release. We will repeal Bill C-5, the house arrest law. We will repeal Bill C-75, the catch-and-release law. We will repeal Bill C-83, the cushy living for multiple murderers law that allows Paul Bernardo to enjoy tennis courts and skating rinks that most Canadian taxpaying families can no longer afford outside of prison.
We will bring in jail and not bail for repeat violent offenders. We will repeal the entire catch-and-release criminal justice agenda that the radical Prime Minister, with the help of the loony-left NDP, has brought in. The radical agenda that has turned many of our streets into war zones will be a thing of the past.
We will also stop giving out deadly narcotics. I made a video about the so-called safe supply. I went to the tragic site of yet another homeless encampment in Vancouver, which used to be one of the most beautiful views in the entire world. Now it is unfortunately a place where people live in squalor and die of overdoses. Everyone said it was terrible that I was planning to take away the tax-funded drugs and that all of the claims I made were just a bunch of conspiracy theories, but everything I said then has been proven accurate, every word of it.
I noticed that the Liberals and the pointy-headed professors they relied on for their policies have all gone into hiding as well. Why is that? It is because the facts are now coming out. Even the public health agency in British Columbia, which has been pushing the NDP-Liberal ideology, is admitting that the tax-funded hydromorphone is being diverted. The police in Vancouver said this week that 50% of all the high-powered hydromorphone opioids are paid for with tax dollars and given out by public health agencies supposedly to save lives. Now we know that those very powerful drugs are being resold to children, who are getting hooked on them, and the profits are being used to buy even more dangerous fentanyl, tranq and other drugs that are leaving our people face-first on the pavement, dying of record overdoses.
The so-called experts always tell us to ignore the bumper stickers and look at the facts. The facts are in. In British Columbia, where this radical and incomparable policy has been most enthusiastically embraced, overdose deaths are up 300%. They have risen in B.C. faster than anywhere else in Canada and possibly anywhere else in North America. The ultraprogressive state of Oregon has reversed decriminalization, recognizing the total chaos, death and destruction the policy has caused.
What does the radical Prime Minister, with the help of his NDP counterpart, do? They look at the death and destruction that has occurred in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver and other communities and say we should have more of that. They took a walk, or better yet, these two politicians probably drove through the Downtown Eastside in their bulletproof limousines. They looked around at the people who were bent over completely tranquilized by fentanyl, saw the people lying face-first on the ground, saw the tents that the police would have pointed out are filled with dangerous guns and drugs, saw all the small businesses that were shuttered by this policy and said that we should have more of that. They want to replicate all the policies that have created it so that we can have tent cities and homeless encampments in every corner of the country.
That is exactly what they have done. In Halifax, there are 35 homeless encampments in one city after nine years of the Prime Minister, his NDP counterpart and the Liberal mayor of Halifax. If we look at every town in this country, we will find homeless encampments that never existed before the last nine years. This policy will go down in infamy as one of the most insane experiments ever carried out on a population. Nowhere else in the world is this being done. The Liberals gaslight us. They love to say that all the civilized people believe that giving out these drugs will save lives, but nowhere else is this being done. When we tell people this is happening, they have a hard time believing that we are giving out heroin-grade drugs for free to addicts and expecting it to save lives.
Now they spill into our hospitals, where nurses are told by the NPD government in B.C. and the Liberal government in Ottawa that they are not allowed to take away crack pipes or knives or guns. They are just supposed to expect that someone is going to consume the drugs, have a massive fit and start slashing up the hospital floor. This is something out of a bad hallucination and a hallucination that will come to an end when I am prime minister. We will end this nightmare.
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- Apr/18/24 10:27:14 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
After nine years, he has doubled the cost of housing, doubled the down payment needed to buy a home and doubled the mortgage payment for an average home. Let us not forget that nine years ago, the average down payment was around $20,000. I remember because I was the minister responsible for housing at the time and it was possible to buy a home with a modest down payment of $20,000. Now, the down payment that is needed has doubled. Roughly 64% of the average monthly income is needed to pay the monthly costs associated with housing. That is nearly double what it was nine years ago. As a result, only the rich, only the children of the wealthy can buy a home right now.
“Do they want to live in a country where we make the investments we need in health care, in housing, in old age pensions, but we lack the political will to pay for them and choose instead to pass a ballooning debt on to our children?” I am quoting the Minister of Finance.
This Prime Minister is the one who doubled our national debt nine years after saying the budget would balance itself. He said he would run three small deficits totalling less than $10 billion. Now he has added nearly $700 billion to the debt, most of which has nothing to do with COVID-19 spending. He continues to rack up deficits of approximately $40 billion, three years after COVID-19. He can no longer say that the dog ate his homework and that the deficits are tied to COVID-19. He is choosing to go deeper and deeper into debt.
I would like to tell the minister that we do not want to live in a country where we leave our children with a growing debt, but that is the country we now live in after nine years under this prime minister.
“Do they want to live in a country where those at the very top live lives of luxury but must do so in gated communities behind ever-higher fences using private health care and private planes because the public sphere is so degraded and the wrath of the vast majority of their less-privileged compatriots burns so hot?” I am again quoting the finance minister.
That is the country that we are living in now after nine years under this Prime Minister. Yes, the wealthy, like him, have private planes. He uses his private plane more than anyone else, while he is forcing single parent mothers who dare to drive their Toyota Corolla to pay a carbon tax. He is spending taxpayers' money to take illegal vacations on private islands. He and his cronies are the ones benefiting from this, while things on our streets and in our neighbourhoods are worse than they have ever been. It is complete chaos. Auto theft has become so commonplace that the police are telling people to leave their keys next to the door so that the thieves will have an easier time of it. That is the country that we are living in after nine years under this Prime Minister.
Minister, do we want to live in a country where we can tell the size of one's paycheque by their smile? No, but that is the country we live in. Do we want kids to go to school hungry? No, but the government says that is the country we live in now. Do we want to live in a country where the only young people who can buy a home are those with rich parents? No, but that is the country we now live in after nine years of this Prime Minister. Do we want to live in a country where our children are saddled with more and more debt year after year? No, but that is the country we now live in after nine years of this Prime Minister. Do we want to live in a country where the rich, like this Prime Minister, can travel around the world in private jets, while the majority live in the chaos and hell of our crime-ridden cities? No, but that is the country we now live in.
We do not want that kind of country. That is exactly why we need an election to elect a new common-sense government, a government that will deliver the country we love for all Canadians.
Just for a minute, let us talk about the myth that they are very rich. Nine years ago, members will recall, the Prime Minister said that he was going to spend, spend, spend, that it would not cost anyone a cent, and that some rich guy on a hill was going to pay all the bills. Where is he?
After nine years of this government, the rich are paying less than ever. After nine years of this Prime Minister, and for the first time in our history, owning a home is beyond the reach of an entire generation. After nine years of this Prime Minister's promises to help the so-called middle class, the middle class no longer exists. The middle class is poor.
If anyone thinks I am exaggerating, I have one simple question: Can a middle-class person afford to buy a house today? It is mathematically impossible for a middle-class person to buy an average home. I am not the one saying it. According to the Royal Bank of Canada, it takes 63% of the average family's pre-tax income to pay the average costs of a home today. It is a mathematical impossibility. Nine years ago, it took 38% of a monthly paycheque to pay the mortgage. Now, it takes twice as much.
If someone cannot buy a house, they are not part of the middle class. One in four families cannot feed their own children—one in four, and that is from the government's own statistics. That family is not part of the middle class either.
Yesterday's budget tabled by the Finance Minister was a major admission of failure. She admitted that after nine years of her government, life is hell for the so-called middle class. Middle-class Canadians have become Canada's poor. This Prime Minister has presided over the worst decline in middle-class quality of life in the history of our country. Things may even be worse than during the Great Depression. That is not me saying this, that is the minister herself and the Prime Minister.
When the Prime Minister talks about the condition this country is in, he describes it as a living hell for the poor and for workers. He describes a hell for the children who do not have enough food to eat. He describes a country where the elderly cannot pay their bills.
It is as though he has not been Prime Minister for a decade. Waving a magic wand, he tries to convince us that this is his first day on the job. After nine years, the Prime Minister is right: Life is hell for the middle class, and it is because we have a Prime Minister who is not worth the cost.
Fortunately, it was not like that before this Prime Minister and it will not be like that after this Prime Minister. We will replace him with a common-sense government that will lower taxes, build housing, fix the budget and stop the crime. I will explain how we will do this.
First, Canadians pay more in tax than they spend on food, housing and clothing. That is how things are after nine years of this costly government. That is why the trend must be reversed. Spending must be brought under control so that taxes can be lowered and Canadians' paycheques can go farther. Workers, businesspeople and seniors must be allowed to keep more of their hard-earned money.
Second, more housing must be built. After nine years of this Prime Minister, we have less housing per capita than any other G7 country. That is because we have the worst bureaucracy. Our bureaucracy prevents housing construction, adds hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of each home and causes years-long delays. Among OECD countries, Canada is the second slowest to issue building permits. This adds $1.3 million to the price of each new home in Vancouver and $350,000 in Toronto. The City of Montreal prevented the construction of 25,000 homes. The City of Winnipeg prevented the construction of 2,000 homes next to a public transit station built specifically for these future houses. That is absurd. The federal government should not be sending $5 billion to municipal governments for them to build bureaucracies that prevent home building.
On the contrary, we must begin to encourage municipalities to allow more construction by freeing up land and authorizing construction more rapidly. Real estate companies are paid for each house sold. Builders are paid for each house built. We should pay municipalities for each housing unit approved. My common sense plan will require municipalities to allow 15% more construction per year and authorize the construction of high rise apartment buildings near transit stations funded by the federal government. That will be the condition to meet to receive this money.
We will do this by entering into agreements with the provinces, fully respecting their areas of jurisdiction and allowing them to achieve these results as they see fit, without federal interference. Then we are going to sell 6,000 buildings and thousands of acres of federal land to allow for more construction. We will also reduce taxes on housing construction to accelerate construction. This is a common-sense plan to return to a situation where housing is affordable, as it was nine years ago, when I was the minister responsible for housing.
Third, we are going to fix the budget by imposing a dollar-for-dollar rule. For each new dollar spent, my government will find a dollar of savings somewhere else. That is how we cap the cost of government to allow taxpayers and the economy to grow and reduce the size of the government relative to the country.
It is a decentralizing and responsible approach. This is how we will eventually balance the budget, reduce interest rates and bring down inflation.
I find it very ironic that the Bloc Québécois has voted more than once to increase the size of the federal government. It voted in favour of $500 billion in centralizing, inflationary and discretionary spending by the current Prime Minister. I am talking about the kind of spending that increased the size of the government and the number of federal employees by 40%. The Bloc Québécois voted to double spending for external consultants, who now cost $21 billion, in other words, $1,400 in taxes for each Quebec family just for consultants.
We understand why this Liberal centralist government would want to do that, but we do not understand why a so-called sovereigntist party would vote for such an increase and concentration of powers and money at the federal level. It makes no sense. It is because the Bloc Québécois does not want to free Quebeckers from federal costs. It wants to implement a leftist ideology born on the Plateau Mont-Royal. It just wants a bigger role for government, whether federal, provincial or municipal. The Bloc Québécois's leader is obsessed with more government, more costs for workers. We Conservatives want a smaller federal government for a bigger Quebec. We want less control by Ottawa and more power for Quebeckers. A smaller federal government for a bigger Quebec is simple common sense. We are the only party that will be able to do it.
At the same time, we need to eliminate inflation, which widens the gap between the rich and the poor. A monetary system of printing money naturally favours the wealthy. It is something the Prime Minister borrowed from the United States. The United States' monetary policy causes inflation year after year to inflate Washington's spending and to inflate shares on Wall Street. It is an alliance between Wall Street and Washington, between big companies and big government. Of course, it favours the wealthy. The people who live in Manhattan and Washington are the richest people in the country. This is due in part to the fact that the United States prints a lot of money to help both groups.
Here in Canada, for the first time, a Prime Minister tried to copy and paste that approach by printing $600 billion to finance his own spending. It caused the worst inflation since the time of his father, who did the same thing. What are the consequences? Those who have shares or investments in land that is ripe for speculation, in gold, or in exclusive luxury wines get richer. The value of their assets is inflated. Conversely, people who rely on a paycheque or pension get poorer. The value of their paycheque diminishes. It is a transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest, and it is a benefit that often goes untaxed.
It is a benefit the Prime Minister keeps adding to day after day, causing this inflation. I would add that the people who receive these big financial gifts from governments often pay no taxes at all because they never sell their assets. They borrow money by using their assets as collateral to purchase more assets, whose value swells more with inflation, and then they use those assets to purchase even more assets, and so on. Wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of the infamous 1% or 0.1% of the population. This trend has been accelerating since the Prime Minister came to power, because it helps the wealthiest Canadians and also allows his government to indulge in uncontrolled spending. Both sides get what they want. The Prime Minister can spend the money he prints out of thin air, and the wealthiest benefit from the inflation of the value of their assets and their wealth. It is always the working class that ends up footing the bill for this irresponsible approach.
I will put an end to that. I will restore the Bank of Canada's mandate, which is to keep inflation low and the dollar higher. We will make sure that we do not print money just to spend it, because that is an inflation tax. It is an unjust and amoral tax. I will axe the inflation tax by fixing the budget. I want people to bring home more powerful paycheques.
Speaking of home, home is more dangerous after nine years of this Prime Minister, who automatically releases criminals on bail or allows them to be sentenced to house arrest, the “Netflix sentences” that he implemented with bills C-5, C-75 and C-83. These laws have allowed people to be released mere hours after their arrest so that they could commit more crimes. That is why street crime is surging all across Canada.
Yesterday we heard reports of a major shootout in downtown Montreal. There has been a more than 100% increase in the number of car thefts in Montreal, Toronto and other major cities. My common-sense plan will keep the most dangerous criminals in prison by making those with dozens of convictions ineligible for bail, getting rid of “Netflix sentences,” forcing car thieves to serve their sentences in prison, and not going after our hunters and sport shooters. If someone has a gun they bought legally after going through an RCMP background check, receiving training and passing tests to prove that they are a safe, responsible person, they will be able to keep it. However, if they are criminals, we will stop them from having guns. We will strengthen the border and our ports. We will scan containers to make sure that no weapons or drugs enter the country and that no stolen vehicles leave. That is the common sense needed to stop the crime and make our communities safe again.
We are going to implement a common-sense plan that will rebuild the country that we want, a country that is the opposite of what the Minister of Finance described in her speech. It will be a country where it pays to work, where everyone who works hard can afford to buy a home and put food on the table in a safe neighbourhood. That is what Canadians are entitled to and deserve, and that is what they will have with a common-sense government.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Jun/21/23 3:14:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the only thing the Prime Minister has done is free Paul Bernardo from a maximum-security penitentiary into relative freedom in a place where he can have access to other people and where he has more comforts and can put guards in danger.
The Prime Minister interfered with Corrections Canada's decisions by introducing Bill C-83, which allowed this kind of transfer to go ahead. The Minister of Public Safety knew of the transfer, or his office knew at least, for three months while he claimed that they could not walk down the hallway and tell him.
He is incompetent. Will the Prime Minister fire him, yes or no?
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