- Member of Parliament
- Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada
Leader of the Opposition
- Conservative
- Carleton
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 63%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $61,288.13
- Government Page
- May/27/24 2:24:33 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, we know how to cut taxes. That is why we reduced poverty and had affordable homes nine years ago when common-sense Conservatives were in government. Since that time, housing costs have doubled. Mortgage payments have doubled. Rent has doubled. The number of homeless encampments in Canada is up by hundreds per cent. We now have one in four Canadians skipping meals because they cannot afford the cost of food.
Will the government finally stop the policies that make Canadians poor, get off the backs of the working people and let Canadians keep their homes?
97 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Apr/29/24 2:18:57 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the current numbers are tragic: 25% of Quebeckers live below the threshold for a normal standard of living. This poverty is the direct result of the centralizing, inflationary and bureaucratic spending by the Prime Minister. That spending is fully supported by the Bloc Québécois.
When will the Bloc Québécois and the Prime Minister stop impoverishing Quebeckers?
66 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/4/23 3:11:15 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, after eight long miserable years of the Prime Minister, he is not worth the cost of energy.
In Nova Scotia, 2,800 people have had their power cut off, and today, the Nova Scotia government reported that 37% of Nova Scotians now live in energy poverty because of the Prime Minister's carbon tax, which he now wants to quadruple, up to 61¢ a litre.
Will the Prime Minister at least let his Atlantic caucus have a free vote on our motion to axe the tax and bring home lower prices?
94 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/2/23 10:22:09 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Parry Sound—Muskoka.
What we have today, with the Prime Minister's housing crisis, is double trouble. Since the Prime Minister took office and since he promised to make housing affordable, the average cost of a mortgage payment has doubled, from $1,400 a month to over $3,000 a month. The average cost of rent in Canada's 10 biggest cities has doubled, from about $1,100 to over $2,000 every single month. The average required minimum down payment for a house in Canada has doubled, from $22,000 to $45,000. This is all since the Prime Minister became Prime Minister and promised that he was going to make housing affordable.
This is not just an inconvenience. This is not just a case where politicians stand up and say that Canadians are having trouble making ends meet or putting food on the table, as politicians always like to say. This is becoming possibly the single biggest socio-economic crisis in my lifetime, as an entire generation of young people have come to accept, for the first time in Canadian history, that they will not be able to afford a home.
Let me share with members the mathematics of hopelessness. I was speaking to a young lady who is 28 years old and is a CATSA screener at Toronto Pearson Airport. She calculates that, at her current rate of savings, about $5,000 a year, it will take her somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 years to save for a down payment in Toronto. That means she will be well over 40 and unable to have kids. The hopelessness is not that she cannot afford a home; it is that her calculator tells her she will never be able to afford a home.
It would be nice and comforting for the Prime Minister if he could claim that this problem is out of his hands and that it is the result of some crazy global phenomenon that is not in his grasp, and therefore that he is once again just a passive observer in the misery that the Canadian people are living, as he so often tries to portray himself. The stats prove otherwise. This problem does not exist in the vast majority of countries in our peer group around the world. For example, last year, Fortune magazine concluded that the standard home in Canada now costs twice as much as it does in the U.S. Can the Prime Minister explain this? Prices are determined by supply and demand. The U.S. has 10 times the demand because it has 10 times the population. It has a smaller supply because its land mass is more confined and less than ours. It has 10 times the demand and less supply, yet, according to Fortune magazine, the prices in the U.S. are half what they are here in Canada.
Around the world, we see other examples. Vancouver, in NDP British Columbia, is now the third most overpriced housing market in the world according to Demographia. Toronto is the 10th. Both are more unaffordable than Manhattan, Los Angeles, London and even Singapore, an island where there is literally nowhere left to build. All these are places with more money, more people and less land, yet their real estate is more affordable than ours.
The practical consequences of this are that, for example, almost one-third of homeowners with a mortgage will pay off that debt over more than a 30-year period, due to higher interest rates, a significant increase over the once-standard 25-year amortization. The average rent for a spare bedroom, just the bedroom and not the overall housing unit, in a home, condo or apartment in Vancouver was $1,410. Let us put this into perspective. There are now couples who consider it a bargain to move into a townhouse with two other couples, each couple renting a single room, often sharing a bathroom, always sharing a kitchen, and paying $1,500 a month just for that room. Here in Canada, this is true housing poverty, and it has happened after eight years of the Prime Minister's policies.
Why is housing so unaffordable? First, government deficits are driving up interest, which increases the mortgage rates for people with debt. Second, we have the fewest houses per capita in the G7 even though we have the most land to build on. Why is that? The answer is that government gatekeepers block housing construction. It takes up to 10 years to get a building permit. We rank 64th in the world for building permit delays. We rank second-last for the speed at which we approve building permits within the OECD. Every other country but one in that group is faster to deliver permits and allow houses to be build. This blocks construction and prevents Canadians from owning a house. We know this problem is worse in NDP-controlled British Columbia, where hard-left, woke mayors who stand up for the wealthy mansion owners in leafy, ritzy neighbourhoods block the poor, the immigrants and the working class from ever owning homes. Therefore, we do not have enough homes, and that is why Canadians do not have a place to live.
The government wants to bring in half a million people per year, which is a million people over the next two years, and it has no plan to build the houses to go along with that. In fact, since the current Prime Minister took office, we have fewer houses per capita than we did eight years ago. In other words, this problem is metastasizing and worsening every single day. The only party with a common-sense plan to fix it is the Conservative Party, and this is the plan.
The government has put $89 billion into housing programs. Government housing is not the solution. It is not working because, if there is a confined space of permitted land to build on, we could pour as much money as we want into it and we are not going to get more housing; we are going to get more expensive housing. Worse still, the Prime Minister has announced $4 billion more, not for housing, but for the gatekeepers. The money is literally going to go to the zoning and permitting departments of the big cities that are blocking the construction in the first place. In other words, it is a big, fat reward for those same bureaucrats who are blocking our youth from having homes, and that will build out the bureaucracy and slow down the construction.
Here is my common-sense plan. We will link the number of dollars big cities get for infrastructure to the number of houses that actually get built. Those who block construction will be fined. I will cut back their infrastructure. Those who speed up and lower the cost of permits to build more will get a building bonus from my government because incentives work. I will require every federally funded transit station to have high-density housing on all the available land around and even on top of the station. We will sell off 6,000 federal buildings to convert them into affordable housing for our young people to live in. We will speed up immigration for building trades. We will shift more of our education dollars over to the trades, rather than just to the white-collar professions.
We have seen the way. We can look at what the Squamish people have done in the city of Vancouver. They have their own land and do not have to follow the rules of the gatekeepers. They are building 6,000 units of housing on 10 acres of land. The Squamish have shown what can happen when we get the gatekeepers out of the way. That is exactly what we are going to do right across the country. We will clear the gatekeepers. We will remove the privileged class inside the castle walls and open the gates of opportunity up to anyone who is prepared to work hard. If people work hard in this country, the rules should allow that they have a decent home where they can start a family and raise kids. It is common sense, the common sense of the common people united for our common home, their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
1413 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/22/23 2:41:50 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister says that Canadians should not worry about the fact that our young people are living in homeless shelters while they go to school or that they are condemned to tent cities or their parents' basements, because all the politicians are getting along and that is what is important. As long as we go along, get along and have wonderful meetings and conversations, he believes we should not worry about the poverty the gatekeeping policies are causing.
Why will the Prime Minister not link federal infrastructure dollars for cities to the number of houses they allow to be built, fine those gatekeepers who block and give bonuses to those who build, so that we can have more affordable homes for our young people?
127 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/14/22 2:25:23 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, all his promises are not working.
We wish everyone a merry Christmas, but it will not be merry for a lot of people. One in five Canadians are skipping meals. There is a 20% increase in the cost of a turkey dinner for the average family. One Ontario food bank CEO said, “clients...are telling us they're considering medically assisted death or suicide because they can't live in grinding poverty anymore.”
This is after seven years of the Prime Minister. He can promise whatever he wants, but these are the results he has actually delivered.
How does he justify the $4.6 billion of waste when people cannot afford to eat?
117 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/5/22 2:21:26 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the same report demonstrated that by 2030, a farm with 5,000 acres, an average farm, would pay $150,000 in carbon taxes, taxes that are already driving up the cost of food because they get passed onto the consumer.
Food prices are expected to be up $1,000 for the average family to $16,000 a year to feed the average family. That is an incredible sum. In fact, the Mississauga Food Bank reports that some people have even said that the poverty is so grinding that they are asking for help with medical assistance in dying. We need to feed our people.
Why does the government not reverse its inflationary policy so people can afford to eat and live?
123 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/21/22 2:21:52 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, if they had the most comprehensive plan in the world, why are they ranked 58th out of 63 in terms of performance on that plan?
What they have, actually, is a tax, a tax to drive up the cost of home heating, gas, groceries and everything else. They want to triple that tax.
We are now going into the winter, and families are facing a doubling of their home heating bills right across the country. Forty percent of Atlantic Canadians already live in energy poverty. They cannot afford to pay any more.
Instead of spending more inflationary money to try to solve the problem they caused, why do the Liberals not just get rid of the problem itself, by getting rid of the tax?
126 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/6/22 11:19:48 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, CEOs should pay their fair share and pay what they owe, as the motion says. We believe in tax enforcement and we believe the government has done a terrible job cracking down on those who hide their money in offshore accounts and refuse to pay what they owe. The Conservatives do support that, to clearly answer the member's question.
What we do not support is forcing working-class people to pay higher taxes. We do not support higher energy costs. We do not believe that consumers in Vancouver should pay more than $2.40 a litre. We do not support the plan to triple the carbon tax on home-heating oil for Newfoundlanders and to further drive the people of eastern Canada, 40% of whom are in energy poverty, into more poverty still.
We believe that life should be affordable for all of them, and that is why this has not gone far enough.
157 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/5/22 2:52:26 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, it is not working. He has not hit a single, solitary climate target since he brought in this tax. According to the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland, rural families will have seen an 80% increase in their home heating costs when the carbon tax kicks in there. Forty per cent of Atlantic Canadians live in energy poverty. The Prime Minister can insult these people and call them polluters while he jets around in his private jet, or he can recognize that heating one's home in January in rural Newfoundland is a basic necessity.
How much will he impose in extra costs on those families when he—
109 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
