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Context: House Hansard - 243 - Oct/31/23

Oct/31/23 11:43:32 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely imperative that we build more homes in Canada. What we support is actually a private member's bill that we have by the Conservative leader right now: the building homes not bureaucracy act. This bill would help to build more homes so new Canadians and Canadians who are already here can move into homes. We need more homes in Canada. We need to work with municipalities to ensure that they remove the gatekeepers, remove the red tape and build more homes for Canadians to move into.

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Context: House Hansard - 243 - Oct/31/23

Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

Oct/31/23 5:19:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned housing, because that is one of the core issues we are facing today with immigration. I know he knows of my riding in the South Okanagan, how beautiful and attractive it is and how people want to move there. People go there for tourism, but it is almost impossible for people to find housing there. That is because, even though we are building more housing units every day in, for example, my hometown of Penticton than we have ever built before, every day we have fewer housing units that are affordable, because all those housing units being built are being bought by investors. People like immigrants cannot afford them, so there are hotels buying motels to house their workers. There are wineries buying big houses to house their workers. I am wondering whether the member can comment on what we can do as a government to discourage housing as an investment and make sure that housing is built for people who can afford to live in that housing, such as immigrants.

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Context: House Hansard - 243 - Oct/31/23

Mr. Kyle Seeback (Dufferin—Caledon, CPC)

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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