- 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
- May/29/24 2:50:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is announcing a catalogue. Come on, give him a round of applause. People cannot afford a home, they might end up in a tent and their rent has doubled, but they have a brand new catalogue.
Will the Prime Minister build 550,000 new homes, yes or no?
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- May/29/24 2:49:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the question was not how quickly the Prime Minister could read off talking points written for him by his staff. The question was whether he is going to break yet another housing promise. Remember, he promised he would lower housing costs; he doubled them. He promised he would double the number of homes built; they went down.
Now the Prime Minister is promising 3.9 million new homes by 2031. That means 550,000 new homes this and every year. Will he keep that promise, yes or no?
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- May/29/24 2:47:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that was a wonderful history lesson, except it did not answer the question.
The Prime Minister promised he would lower housing costs in 2015; he doubled them. He promised he would double homebuilding; it actually went down and is still dropping. Now he is promising 3.9 million brand new homes by 2031. That means he would have to build 550,000 this year and every year.
Once again, will the Prime Minister keep his promise to build 550,000 homes this year, yes or no?
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- May/29/24 2:46:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, “Not a chance” is what the president of the Residential Construction Council said when asked if the Prime Minister would keep his promise to build 3.9 million homes by 2031.
Let us hear it from the Prime Minister. To reach that target, he would have to build 550,000 homes per year, so will the Prime Minister hit the target of 550,000 homes this year, yes or no?
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- May/28/24 2:25:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when I was housing minister, we built 200,000 homes in one year, rent was only $900 and mortgage payments were half of what they are today.
Fast-forward to the present, and the Prime Minister has given half a billion dollars to Toronto City Hall to jack up new taxes on homebuilding. It is no wonder. When the president of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, Richard Lyall, was asked whether the Prime Minister would keep his promise for 3.9 million new homes by the end of the decade, he said, “Not a chance.”
Why does the Prime Minister not stop funding bureaucracy so that we can get out of the way and build homes?
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- May/28/24 2:23:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, because of the incompetence of the Prime Minister and the Liberal City Hall in Toronto, rent there has more than doubled over the last nine years. What is worse is that the Prime Minister's so-called housing accelerator fund has given half a billion dollars to Toronto, and only months later, the politicians in that city hiked up homebuilding taxes by 20%. Now 30% of all homebuilding costs are government taxes alone.
Why does the Prime Minister keep sending our money to build bureaucracies that block homes?
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- May/27/24 11:56:36 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, after nine years, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost of housing, which has doubled since he took office. It is hard to believe, but on my last day as housing minister, in November 2015, the average rent in Canada's 10 biggest cities for a one-bedroom was $973. Can members believe that? It is now $1,893.
The average down payment needed for a new home then was $22,000; it is almost quaint. Now it is almost $50,000. The average mortgage payment needed on a brand new home was just $1,400. It is now almost $3,500. It took about 39% of the average family paycheque to make monthly payments on the average home. That number has now risen to 64%, a record-smashing total, meaning that one would not be able to eat, clothe oneself, own a vehicle or do anything other than pay taxes and one's mortgage if one is the average family buying the average home.
The Prime Minister did not care much about any of this until he started crashing in the polls, and then he panicked and appointed a big-talking housing minister to take the helm of the ministry of housing. This minister had already, according to Liberal admission, caused immigration to run out of control. Since that time, we have seen a flurry of photo ops and new government programs designed to generate media headlines. However, predictably, these headlines have not reduced housing costs or increased home building. Home building is down this year. The federal housing agency says that it will be down next year and the year after that. Rent and mortgage payments continue to rise.
That is because the government, under the Prime Minister, is building bureaucracy rather than homes. My common-sense plan is the building homes, not bureaucracies act. It seeks to provide exactly what it says: less bureaucracy, more homebuilding.
In a nutshell, here is my common-sense plan to build the homes: First, we would require municipalities to permit 15% more homebuilding as a condition of getting their federal funds; second, we would sell off thousands of acres of federal land and buildings, so they can be used to build homes; and third, we would axe taxes on homebuilding. In this plan, we would get rid of the carbon tax, the sales tax and other taxes that block homebuilding.
This is a fundamentally different approach than what we see from the current Liberal government. What it currently does with its so-called housing accelerator program is to fund box-ticking. It puts together a bunch of boxes that municipalities have to tick for procedural and bureaucratic reforms. Once the boxes are ticked, the money is sent and we move on. The problem is that, even if those are the right boxes to tick and the municipality ultimately ticks them, when the feds turn their backs, the city can then put in place a bunch of new obstacles. For example, municipalities such as Ottawa and Toronto have actually jacked up development charges after getting federal housing accelerator funds. The City of Winnipeg got federal funding and then blocked 2,000 homes right next to a federal transit station.
That is why trying to manage process will get one nowhere. When one pays for bureaucratic box-ticking, that is what one gets. However, people cannot live in a box ticked by a bureaucrat; they have to live in a home. That is why my plan would pay for results. It simply requires that municipalities permit 15% more homes per year. If they hit the target, they keep their federal money. If they beat the target, they get a bonus. If they miss the target, they pay a fine. They are paid on a per completion basis, just as a realtor or a home builder is paid per home built. We want to pay for keys in doors and families sitting in a beautiful new kitchen, enjoying their dinner. We want families to be housed, healthy and safe, with money in the bank. That is the result we are going to pay for. Now let us bring it home.
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- Apr/18/24 11:33:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, there will be no conditions. There will be results. I will simply tell the municipalities that they will be paid for the number of homes built. That is not interference. That is results.
The Bloc Québécois agrees that the government should make housing transfers. We simply disagree on the formula. The Bloc Québécois is proposing that money just be injected in building up local bureaucracies. I am proposing to pay the municipalities for the number of homes that they allow to be built. They can do that in several ways: fast-tracking permits, selling land, using any strategy that works for them.
What we want to fund is the result. For its part, the Bloc Québécois wants to fund bureaucracy, especially the federal bureaucracy that it voted for in order to finance the spending of this Prime Minister's centralist government.
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- Apr/18/24 11:31:01 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is the same housing minister who lost track of one million immigrants when he was the immigration minister. This is the same housing minister who unleashed absolute out-of-control chaos in our immigration system, not according to me but according to his Liberal successor and the Prime Minister, so the member opposite should stop using that source. If you want to know, Madam Speaker, how many affordable homes were built when I was the minister, we completed 92,782 apartments, and the average rent was $973.
Can anyone tell me where we can find $973 per month rent after nine years of the Liberals?
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- Apr/17/24 2:44:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister blamed immigration for housing costs and the immigration minister who caused it all. Then he made that minister responsible for housing. Since that time, the minister has had a $4-billion housing accelerator program that he admits will not build any specific homes. In fact, since it began, housing starts have gone down this year, and his housing agency says they will go down next year and the year after that.
How is it that the Prime Minister can spend $4 billion on a housing accelerator program that decelerates homebuilding?
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- Apr/17/24 2:43:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is going to turn public buildings and land into housing. I wonder where he got that idea.
Let me quote, “We will conduct an inventory of all available federal lands and buildings that could be repurposed, and make some of these lands available at low cost for affordable housing”. That is from his 2015 platform.
Now, nine years later, he can only point to 13 homes on those public lands. Yesterday, he promised a “rapid review” of all the federal land portfolios. How rapid, another nine years?
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- Feb/28/24 2:58:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister brags that there is a housing crisis after he has been in power for eight long years. He quotes the same failed Liberal academics who gave him the advice that helped him double the price in the first place.
The Conservatives' common-sense plan will incentivize cities to speed up and to lower the cost of building by requiring that they permit 15% more homes as a condition of getting the money. The more they build, they more they get; the less they build, the less they get. We pay builders based on the number of homes they build and realtors for the number that they sell. We should pay municipalities based on the number they permit.
Is that not common sense?
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- Feb/28/24 2:57:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister pretends he has not been in government for the last eight years. He acts like this is his first day on the job. The fact that he has to read off notes would suggest it is his first day on the job.
The reality is that housing costs have doubled since he promised to lower them. Yes, he has created massive programs with wonderful new agreements and beautiful photo ops, where politicians pat each other on the backs and smile while they cut ribbons. The problem is that after eight years, nothing is getting built.
Why will the Prime Minister not get out of the way and cut the bureaucracy so that we can build the homes?
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- Feb/28/24 2:55:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our common-sense plan will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has doubled housing costs since he promised to bring them down. A National Bank report, out Thursday, revealed that in Victoria and Toronto, it now takes an astonishing 25 years for the average family to save for a down payment. In Vancouver, it would take 29 years. This is after he has created $80 billion of new housing spending that has been vaporized by bureaucracy.
Will the Prime Minister finally follow our common-sense plan to cut the bureaucracy and build the homes?
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- Feb/15/24 2:31:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, they are working together with municipal politicians to block housing. In fact, the housing minister, when he was immigration minister, was warned his policies would lead to a massive shortage, yet he went ahead with them anyway. He made some incredible admissions yesterday at finance committee. He said, first, that his $4-billion accelerator fund has not completed any homes, and second, “It doesn't actually lead to the construction of specific homes.”
Why does he not instead follow my common-sense plan to link municipal funding to housing construction so we can build homes and not bureaucracy?
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- Feb/15/24 2:23:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, speaking of partisanship, yesterday the Minister of Housing unleashed a vicious attack on himself. He said the Liberal government is presiding over what he called a “generational, moral failure”, because so many people cannot find a place to live. There are a record number of 30 different homeless encampments in Halifax alone, his home province, after his Prime Minister doubled housing costs.
Given that they admit they have caused this moral failure, will they reverse the policies that caused it and start building homes instead of bureaucracy?
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- Feb/14/24 3:10:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have seen $4 billion, 35 photo ops, one minister and zero homes.
The minister not only says the program does not build homes, but he also says it does not lead to the construction of homes. He could not point to one development that had actually been completed.
The Liberals have been in power for eight years and they cannot get anything built. When will they get the bureaucracy and the taxes out of the way so we can build the homes?
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- Feb/14/24 3:09:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we were the ones who proposed taking the tax off home building, the one good idea that he finally copied. However, the Prime Minister talks about slogans. One is the housing accelerator fund, the $4-billion program that was supposed to speed up housing. We asked the housing minister yesterday in committee how many homes it had completed, and the answer is zero, nada and nothing. He said, “It doesn't actually lead to the construction of specific homes.”
It cost $4 billion to build zero homes. How much would it cost to build one?
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- Feb/14/24 3:08:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost of housing, which has doubled as he has built bureaucracies that block homes. In January, according data out today, rent was up 10% year over year to $2,196, an astonishing increase in a very short time. In fact, it is up about 20% in the last two years alone, and it has been accelerating ever since he recently named his incompetent housing minister.
Will the Prime Minister follow our common-sense plan to cut the bureaucracy and build the homes?
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- Feb/7/24 3:13:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the results speak for themselves. When I was the housing minister, rent was $950. It is now over $2,000. When I was the housing minister, the average mortgage payment on a newly purchased home was $1,400. It is now over $3,500.
My common-sense plan would require cities to permit 15% more homebuilding as a condition of getting federal money. It would require that they build housing around transit stations rather than having empty fields there. It would require the sale of 6,000 federal buildings and thousands of acres of federal land to build.
Why will the Prime Minister not build homes instead of building bureaucracy?
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