- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Dufferin—Caledon
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $136,309.03
- Government Page
- Jan/30/24 2:59:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, all of that leads us to exactly where we are today: nowhere. Rent for a one-bedroom apartment is up 12% to $1,900, and rent for a two-bedroom apartment is up 9.8% to $2,300. Rent is now at a record high across Canada: $2,100, up 8.6%. Why is that? It is because all they have are phony announcements and photo ops.
When will he finally admit they have made the mess that Canadians are suffering through, apologize to people like Donna and apologize to Canadians? It is their mess.
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- Jan/30/24 2:57:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, every day, the housing minister pops up and celebrates his new announcement, his new project or his new scheme, but the sad thing is that the Liberals do not actually build a single house.
Meanwhile, in the real world, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, rents are skyrocketing. In fact, asking rent is now up 22%. Donna's rent in Orangeville is going up again and she cannot afford it.
When will the minister realize that these announcements are doing nothing and that housing is a disaster, and apologize to Donna and to Canadians?
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- Oct/31/23 6:53:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our leader has made very clear what our plan is on housing. It is going to get units built, unlike these announcements the Liberals are making.
The member said he found it hard to take me seriously with my question. What is amazing to me is that he talked about how there are going to be thousands of units built. It is hard to take him and his entire government even remotely seriously, because everyone knows we need 3.5 million homes built by 2030 to address the housing shortage. The Liberal plan comes up with a few thousand.
We had the housing minister at committee. He talked about all the levers he is pulling. When he added up the sum total of housing he thought his plans would build, it is a couple of hundred thousand. I am not great at math. That is why I became a lawyer. However, a couple of hundred thousand units is really far from being 3.5 million units.
The member is saying the Liberals have a great plan when they do not acknowledge how far behind they are. We need 3.5 million units. Their plan for a couple of hundred thousand does nothing for Canadians. They are out of gas and have no plan and no future. They should just apologize to Canadians.
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- Oct/31/23 6:45:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the last time I was here, I asked a question about housing, talking about the Liberal government's absolutely abysmal record on housing. When one looks at the problem with housing, what one sees is that there are actually two elements. There is the building of units, and we know that building starts are down. They have announcements where they say they are going to build something, but no one can actually live in an announcement.
What they actually do at these announcements is find homes that are already going to be built and say that they will partner with the municipality and that the municipality will get a little extra money if it says they somehow contributed.
Their building homes strategy is a big nothing burger. It is an absolute failure.
Let us look at cost because cost is the other part that is making housing so unaffordable. We know that housing prices have doubled under the government, but let us look at interest rates. We know that interest rates are sky-high. The Governor of the Bank of Canada has said, many times, that the government's inflationary spending is like putting the foot on the gas pedal, as the Governor of the Bank of Canada tries to ease inflation by raising interest rates.
Interest rates are at absolute highs and this has tragic consequences for builders; they cannot build the units because interest rates are so high. It makes the cost of building them even higher. It drives up the cost of building and makes it even less affordable for Canadians to buy them.
Let me just give one little example. Right now, we have $186 billion worth of mortgages coming up for renewal in 2024. Let us say that one had a $600,000 mortgage coming up for renewal and an interest rate of 3%, which was not a great interest rate up until recently but is a very good rate compared to now. On a $600,000 mortgage, one's monthly payment until now would have been $2,500. Today, it is almost $4,000. That is a $1,500-a-month increase. These are the kinds of things that are crushing Canadians.
This Liberal government has done the impossible on incompetence. If one does not have a home, one cannot afford a home because the cost of a home has doubled. If one is renting or looking to rent, one cannot afford that either, because rent has doubled. If one has a home and one works so hard to save and actually have a home, when one's mortgage comes up for renewal, one cannot afford to keep one's home.
This government has somehow had the amazing incompetence to do two things: make it impossible for young buyers to buy a home and make it virtually impossible for people who have a home to keep the home. This is stunning incompetence on housing.
What makes it worse is that household debt in Canada is the highest in the G7. Remember that the Prime Minister said that they were taking on borrowing money so that Canadians did not have to? Well, they have had to because their inflationary spending has driven up interest rates so high that Canadians now have to borrow just to survive.
The most frightening stat I have seen just came out: 31% of Canadian households are having to find extra income just to make ends meet.
Look at what is going on in this country after eight years of this absolutely incompetent Liberal government. One cannot buy a home. One cannot keep one's home. One cannot make ends meet. People are actually having to take on side hustles to pay the bills. This is the catastrophic record of a tired, corrupt Liberal government after eight years.
I do not have time to get into the corruption. That would be an entire other late show, but let me say that housing and affordability is a disaster.
The government is responsible. Why does it not, instead of puffing up its chest and saying what a great job it has done, just apologize to Canadians for the mess it has made?
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- Oct/19/23 2:44:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' answer to the housing crisis is that we should support more of their failed policies. That is their answer. It is a special kind of incompetence. If people do not have a house, they cannot afford it. If they have a house, they cannot afford to keep it because interest rates are so high from the Liberals' inflationary deficits, yet they keep spending and spending, interest rates go up and up, and Canadians are at risk of losing their homes.
Will the Liberals get these inflationary deficits under control so Canadians actually do not lose their homes?
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- Oct/19/23 2:43:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, Canadians are literally in housing hell. If a Canadian couple with a 6,300-square-foot mansion on 37 acres in France sold it, the couple could not afford to move back to Fergus, Ontario.
The NDP-Liberal government is not worth the cost, and yet every day members stand, puff up their chests and tell Canadians what a great job they have done.
Why do the Liberals not stop gaslighting Canadians and admit they have broken housing in Canada?
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Mr. Speaker, I am going to talk today about Bill C-56, which is the Liberal-NDP government's attempt at dealing with the affordability issue.
To talk about the legislation itself, we first need to look at where we are in this country, and it is not a very pretty picture. If we look at where we are right now, mortgage payments over the last eight years have virtually doubled in this country from coast to coast to coast. We have a similar issue now with rent all across the country. If we look at the average rents being paid now, that amount has also virtually doubled. This is the track record of the Liberal government, which now suddenly seems to be concerned about affordability for Canadians.
However, the bad news for Canadians does not stop there. It used to take 25 years to pay off one's mortgage. Now it takes the average Canadian 25 years to save for their mortgage. Think about what the difference between those is. Some people might say that is not their problem and that this is a young person's problem when they are trying to get into the market. It is bad enough if it is a young person's problem, but it is also affecting average Canadians right here and right now.
I was recently informed about a person whose mortgage has come up for renewal. Their mortgage was coming from that nice, low fixed interest rate. People will remember those low interest rates the Prime Minister said were going to be there for a very long time, the interest rates the Governor of the Bank of Canada said were going to stay low for a very long time. Based on that, many people took mortgages with a very low interest rate because it allowed them to have a mortgage payment they could afford. However, as mortgage rates have continued to go up, as the Bank of Canada has continued to raise interest rates in order to fight inflation, average Canadians now have to pay the bill as a result of this.
In this particular circumstance, this family has said that it can hold on for about another six months with this increased mortgage payment. They can dig into savings and they can further borrow for about six months, and then they are not going to be able to make the mortgage payments on their home. That is the consequence of eight years of the Liberal government.
Inflation is out of control. I hear it all the time in my riding of Dufferin—Caledon. People come up to me in the grocery store and say to me that they now have to only go to the grocery store to shop bargains. They do not actually have a grocery list, because they can buy only what is on sale. This is all they can afford. After eight years of the Liberal government, this is what people are saying to me in the grocery store. It is a shocking turnaround for Canadians. They are having trouble paying their mortgages. They are having trouble buying groceries. They are having trouble heating their homes as a result of the carbon tax. All of these things are making life more expensive for Canadians.
There is a simple solution. There are actually two very simple solutions the government could implement right away. Number one is that it could cut the carbon tax. We know that would have an immediate impact, because, as has been said by Conservatives in the House of Commons over and over again, the farmers are taxed on farm produce. As they produce it, they are taxed with the carbon tax. Whether that is for drying the grain, driving the combines or whatever, they are paying a carbon tax. When that crop is harvested, the driver of the truck that comes to pick it up is going to pay the carbon tax. When it goes to be processed, there is a carbon tax. When a truck picks it up to take it to the grocery store, there is a carbon tax. At the grocery store, the carbon tax is heating the grocery store; therefore, the store owner is paying a carbon tax as well.
At the end of the day, Canadians cannot afford to pay for food, and they end up saying that they do not even have a grocery list and just go to the grocery store and buy whatever is on sale. If we would have said this to Canadians eight years ago, they would have said that this was not possible. In a country like Canada, food is abundant. We feed the world because we have the best farmers in the world, who are great stewards of the land. If we had said eight years ago that Canadians would only be able to go to the grocery store and shop bargains, that would have been an inconceivable thought, but here we are.
After eight years of the Liberal government, that is the sad situation that Canadians find themselves in. It is very difficult to pay the mortgage, very difficult to buy groceries, very difficult to pay rent and very difficult to buy a house. That is the Liberals' record. That is the context that we look at when they bring in this bill.
This is not a new problem. Conservatives have been talking about this problem for the last number of years. In fact, the Conservative leader, many years ago, said that the inflationary spending caused by the government was going to drive up inflation, which would then drive up interest rates. He is looking more and more like Nostradamus with that prediction. As for me, 18 months ago, I rose to speak about the impact of the carbon tax on food production. I said that it was going to cause a massive increase in the cost of food, and here we are. The Liberal government cannot therefore claim that somehow this is a new problem, that it was unaware of the problem. It was well aware. It was well forewarned and did absolutely nothing about it.
When we look at this particular bill, what is amazing to me is that Liberal members will get up in this House during debate and during question period and talk about how, as a result of tabling this legislation, one developer has said it is now going to build 5,000 rental units. They puff out their chests and say to look at them, look at the amazing things they have accomplished. Well, let us put that into context.
According to the CMHC, we will need to build three million more homes between now and 2030 than are planned or scheduled to be built. The plan is that we will build two million homes. We will have to build three million more than that in order to get back some affordability.
As I have said a few times in this chamber, I went to law school because I was not good at math. However, what I did before I prepared for this speech is decided to get out my calculator and look at this. I saw that 5,000 units out of the three million we need is 0.0016%. If I had a child come home with a bad grade, and the teacher not only put an F on there but said that my son got 0.0016% on the test, I would not be a proud father. However, somehow these members walk around like they have discovered fire with this plan to build such a small number of houses.
It is even worse. To even come up with some of their plan, they had to take from the Conservative leader's plan. With grocery affordability, again, the best thing they could do is cut the carbon tax, which they repeatedly vote against. We know that this would bring the most relief. They also decided they are going to bring in some Competition Act changes, which they also stole from a Conservative member of Parliament's private member's bill. When a government is completely out of ideas, affordability has gone off the scale and Canadians are deeply hurting, what does the government, the brain trust and all of the political advisers they have come up with? Well, they just take what the Conservatives said they were going to do.
They have only taken some of it. What we have here is a plan that is not going to do anything to address the affordability crisis that is going on across the country, and there is a real consequence. I spoke about this in question period. For example, there is Paula in B.C., 71, who is retired. She is now saying that she might have to move out of her house because the landlord is going to sell it. She is also facing a 75% increase in rent as a result of that. That is their record. They have not provided solutions quickly or ones that are going to address the concerns of Canadians.
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- Oct/3/23 3:50:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is amazing, with a government that has accomplished so little, for the minister to be so proud. What he talks about is 5,000 units that are going to be built. CMHC says we need to build three million more units than we normally build. That 5,000 works out to 0.0016%, and he stands here bragging like he has accomplished something. The Liberals' lack of action has consequences and they are not worth the cost. Paula from B.C. is 71 and retired, and she is saying she is facing a 75% increase in rent.
If Liberals cannot actually do anything to fix it, will they get out of the way so the Conservative leader can fix what is broken?
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- Oct/3/23 3:49:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of this Liberal government, the average house price has doubled. The Prime Minister said, “it wasn't me”. After eight years of this Liberal government, the cost of rent has doubled. This Liberal Prime Minister said, "it wasn't me”. After eight years of this Liberal government, it now takes 25 years to save for a down payment for a home. This Liberal Prime Minister said, “it wasn't me”.
This Liberal Prime Minister is not worth the cost. If he is not responsible for anything, will he just get out of the way so that Conservatives can fix what he broke?
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