44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 19, 2024 10:00AM
- Sep/19/24 11:36:06 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is something that bothers me in the debate on housing and that I have heard too often; that is, for the Bloc Québécois, it is always the federal government's fault and, for the Liberals, it is always the Quebec government's fault. We lost three years in the federal-provincial agreement, and Canadians with inadequate housing or no housing at all are paying for it. I do not want to play the game, which the leader of the Conservative Party is also playing by attacking the mayors of Montreal and Quebec City.
Can we please stop pointing fingers and looking for someone to blame? Can we work together to build housing Canadians can afford?
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- Sep/19/24 11:36:43 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to applaud the statement made by my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie. I totally agree with him.
That is similar to the solution the Bloc Québécois is promoting. Oftentimes, there are already agreements and arrangements, whether we are talking about the TECQ, the gas tax and Quebec's contribution program, or infrastructure agreements.
Why can they not just extend the existing agreements, send the money and avoid the endless red tape instead of fighting over jurisdictions, like the federal government always does, sticking its nose where it does not belong?
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- Sep/19/24 11:37:18 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the admirable and extraordinary member for New Westminster—Burnaby. I think he will have some very interesting things to share with us about the reality in his region and in his province.
I will start this intervention by thanking the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities for this motion. I find it interesting that we are having this debate in the House today. In fact, it is as though the committee told the Liberal government that there was a problem, that something was happening and that it has to wake up because there are people living in the street. There are people sleeping outside, in their car, in their trailer, in their truck. There are people sleeping on their friend's sofa or living in a two-bedroom apartment with five people because they can no longer afford housing. People are getting sick staying in bacteria- and fungus-infested apartments where the owners refuse to make the necessary renovations.
This crisis has been growing worse for years. The situation has really become dire. Every July 1 in Montreal, more and more families are ending up on the streets because they do not have a place to live. The rate of homelessness is rising everywhere. People are being forced to live in parks, in tents. We are seeing it in Ottawa, Montreal and across Quebec and Canada. That makes no sense.
Successive Conservative and Liberal governments have allowed this situation to get worse. For years, the leader of the Conservative Party, who used to be the minister responsible for housing, did not build even a single housing unit. In actual fact, he lost 800,000. During their nine years in office, the Conservatives lost 800,000 affordable housing units. The Liberals are no better. They lost nearly 300,000 and they are proposing completely ridiculous definitions of affordable housing.
Three years ago in Montreal, a two-bedroom apartment that cost $2,235 a month was considered affordable housing. Who can afford that? It just does not make sense. This is all because market logic and profit have been allowed to take over the entire real estate sector for years. Successive Conservative and Liberal governments have stopped viewing housing as a fundamental human right. Instead, they see it as a source of profit and returns.
It is fine for real estate to be a source of investment for people, for their retirement, for example, or to bequeath something to their child. I have no problem with that. However, if there is no off-market, social, co-operative, community and student housing, this vicious circle will simply continue. It only serves the interests of big investment companies, the real estate giants that have taken up more and more space in the real estate landscape.
In the 1990s, almost no homes were owned by these real estate giants. Today, these large corporations own more than 20% of the housing stock. They have no human connection to the people on site, to the tenants. They think strictly in terms of profits and returns. That is the crux of the problem. That market logic has taken over the entire housing sector in the past 30 years while the Conservatives and Liberals were on watch.
We can do things differently. We must do things differently, through what we call social housing or non-market housing. It currently represents just 3% of our housing stock here in Canada and a little more in Quebec. That is nothing compared to Finland, where it amounts to 10%, or Denmark, 20%. For years now, every time a piece of land, a house or an apartment comes up for sale in Vienna, Austria, the municipality invests to control the price of the lot, house or apartment. Today, in Vienna, the municipality owns 60% of the housing stock, which is under government control.
There are different ways of doing things. We need to reserve federally-owned land for non-profit organizations that can develop truly affordable housing. Since that is their primary mission, they are in the best position to do it.
Now the federal Liberal government is starting to wake up. I mentioned this earlier. It did nothing about co-op housing for eight years. Now, in the latest budget, it hinted that housing co-ops might be a good solution. Co-ops were a good solution in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. All across Quebec, there are successful housing co-ops where people are happy. People have a new way of thinking about housing. They work together to take care of their housing co-ops. The government needs to build more housing co-ops and take care of existing housing co-ops. Some of them need major work, and the federal government is not stepping up to support them. I think that is an important thing to consider. We need more housing co-ops, but we also need more programs to take care of housing co-ops so they last a long time and so we can control rents and keep them truly affordable.
The Minister of Housing just announced 56 locations that have been selected for affordable housing to be built on federal public lands. This is a good thing. The NDP has been calling for this for quite some time. However, we hope that this will not once again be handed over to private developers who just want to make a profit. The project must be assigned to non-profit organizations, or NPOs, and to organizations that can build housing that people can afford.
Let us not forget one very simple rule. People must not spend more than 30% of their income on rent. Paying more than 30% puts people in a precarious situation, sometimes under the poverty line. We need to stop thinking about housing based on the median price in one's region and start thinking about how we can ensure that people do not spend more than 30% of their income on housing.
Housing is not a luxury. Housing is a fundamental right. I welcome the recent reports from the federal housing advocate. She is doing extraordinary work. I think the Liberal government should take a page out of her book.
Too many measures in the Liberal housing strategy focused on private developers. The NDP wants to put a stop to that. One way to do that is to have an acquisition fund. We can take existing federal land, use it for truly affordable or social housing, give those contracts to non-profits, allow them to acquire the land or have a truly affordable lease so that they can build housing that will really help people.
We could also follow the example of Montreal and have an acquisition fund to buy private land or buildings and convert them into social or truly affordable housing. There is a fine example in Rosemont—La Petite‑Patrie: the Bellechasse site. It is public land with community groups, where the community has come together to create a new neighbourhood with a human face, where there will be mixed-income housing, but also social and truly affordable housing with public services, a school, and a park. It will be a nice place to call home. The federal government needs to work with the municipalities and the provinces to be able to complete such projects.
Too many people are just a hair's breadth away from losing their homes and ending up on the streets. We are seeing it more and more, in all our towns and municipalities. Vacancy rates are so low that people no longer have options. They are no longer able to find housing.
The Conservatives' approach of leaving everything to the market and the big corporations will just exacerbate the problem because that is exactly where the problem originated. We cannot move in that ultra-capitalist direction, where everything is seen only in terms of profit, while there are people suffering.
In my constituency, 15% of people spend more than 50% of their income on housing. That is obscene. More than half their income goes to housing. When you look at the cost of groceries on top of that, these people are obviously forced to make absolutely heartbreaking choices, and sometimes go and live in their van, truck or car. Alternatively, the might go and live with friends or relatives, where they will share a room, sleep on the sofa or on the floor, all of which is far from ideal. There is the visible homelessness, but there is plenty of invisible homelessness as well.
That is the result of 20 years of Conservative and Liberal inaction and bad policies.
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- Sep/19/24 11:47:08 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on housing co-ops. I think the oldest co-op happens to be in Winnipeg North, the Willow Park Housing Co-op. Since I left the Canadian Forces back in 1985 or 1986, I have always been a big advocate for housing co-ops. In fact, it was Pierre Elliott Trudeau's administration that brought in the first federal housing co-op program. Interestingly enough, it is his son who is reinstating and building up that program once again.
I wonder if the member can highlight his understanding of the benefits of a housing co-op versus a rental unit. I have always said that people in a housing co-op are residents, not tenants, and that means a great deal. I wonder if he could add some thoughts on that.
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- Sep/19/24 11:48:00 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would remind my colleague that it was under a Liberal government in 1994 that the federal government withdrew, disengaged from social and affordable housing. Co-op housing and social housing help people so much.
Someone told me that having access to social housing gave them back their freedom. The Conservatives often say that government intervention undermines freedom. Not having to worry about being able to pay for housing, not being afraid of losing one's housing and ending up in the street — that gives people freedom. There is a sense of freedom that comes with having a calm spirit, reinvesting in life, taking charge, entering the workforce and helping the community without the constant fear of ending up in the street.
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- Sep/19/24 11:48:55 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the speech of my hon. colleague from the NDP. I found it a little rich, because the NDP has been propping up the government for the last nine years and has been complicit in all of the horrific conditions in our communities.
We have a leader, our Conservative leader, who has said that he will axe the tax and make things more affordable for Canadians. He will fix the budget. He will build the homes and help those experiencing homelessness. He will stop the crime, because as we have seen, our communities look like war zones. Whether it is on safe supply or decriminalization, the NDP has propped the government up. I will remind the member that it is the provincial NDP government that has helped contribute to the way our province is today.
I would like to know how he reconciles that with his constituents when he is on the doorsteps asking for their vote. He has propped up the government, one of the costliest and worst governments in the history of our country, and one of the most corrupt prime ministers in the history of our country. How does he reconcile that with his constituents?
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- Sep/19/24 11:50:33 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am rather surprised that the member is concerned about what people in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie are going to do, but I look forward to hearing what the Conservative candidate in my riding has to say about that in the next election.
I would remind the House that, after the Liberals made cuts to the construction of social and affordable housing, Stephen Harper's Conservative government did not do any better. It continued to abandon that sector, leaving it all up to the market. It is not true that simply increasing supply will help people find a place to live. If the supply is unaffordable, these people will still not be able to afford an apartment or a house, so that is a false solution. This type of neo-liberal idea of the trickle effect, where the government helps the wealthy and hopes that it trickles down to the poorest members of society, does not work.
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- Sep/19/24 11:51:26 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with most of what my colleague said.
There is one thing that he did not really talk about that I would like him to elaborate on. It is a suggestion that the Bloc Québécois has made many times. My colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert has spoken about it at length. I am talking about the creation of an acquisition fund that would enable non-profit organizations, the community sector, to acquire affordable housing on the private market and then make it available.
What does the member think about that suggestion?
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- Sep/19/24 11:51:48 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is another solution the NDP is proposing.
With regard to an acquisition fund, I mentioned Vienna, which has truly set an example internationally. Montreal increased its fund recently, too. I think we need to do our part and use public land for truly affordable public housing. However, we also need to work together to be able to buy private land in order to break free from this market logic.
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- Sep/19/24 11:52:20 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after the disastrous years of the Harper government, it seems ridiculous to me that the Conservatives claim to be mildly concerned about housing. We remember the huge cuts made to social housing during the grim Harper years. It was appalling. Half of the problems we see today result from the unfortunate fact that the Liberals followed too closely in the Harper government's footsteps. Half of the problems we face today were caused by the Conservatives. Not a single Conservative is prepared to stand up and apologize for all the years when no housing measures were taken. The Conservatives slashed social housing budgets and upheld the Liberal practice of having no national housing program.
I find it a bit ridiculous now to hear the Conservatives talking as if they care about housing when half the problem results from their poor governance during the Harper years. This is evident across the country. As my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie said, it is unfortunate that neither governing Liberals or Conservatives showed concern for social housing or co-operative housing or took an interest in solutions already discussed many times in the House by the NDP.
An NDP government will address the housing crisis and will regard housing as a fundamental principle. All Canadians must have a roof over their heads and have access to affordable housing. We feel confident making that promise because in every province where the NDP has formed government, we have managed to get more social housing built than Conservative and Liberal governments. What is more, NDP governments have invested more to ensure that people are housed.
We have already been through a situation when we had problems with building enough affordable housing for Canadians, and it was during the Second World War. We put everything into the war effort to beat Nazism, that extreme right-wing ideology that devastated Europe. When the women and men who served overseas came back to Canada, we put in place, structurally, a budget in which corporations paid their fair share and we devoted money to housing.
Members will recall that the CCF, the NDP's predecessor party, was leading in the polls in the first postwar election, and the Liberals took the CCF's push for affordable housing and, with the agreement of all parties in the House of Commons at that time, embarked on a massive national affordable housing program.
We as a country succeeded in building three million affordable homes over the course of four years, including my home, where my wife and I live, in New Westminster. In fact, in New Westminster—Burnaby, almost every house from Sixth Avenue to Tenth Avenue was built under that program. They were comfortable, well-built, affordable bungalows that were built throughout the Glenbrooke North neighbourhood.
Right across the country, we see the housing stock that was built at that time. In Toronto and Montreal, in every city in the country and in many rural areas, we succeeded in ensuring that for every single person who served in the Canadian Forces overseas, there was affordable housing available to them when they came back.
We had at that time a fair tax structure. What has changed? What changed, of course, was the intent in the 1990s, which we saw with both Conservative and Liberal governments, to try to change the tax system so wealthy corporations and wealthy Canadians paid less, and this became most apparent during the disastrous Harper government years.
As the Parliamentary Budget Officer tells us, we lose $30 billion each and every year to overseas tax savings, thanks in large part to the famous, or infamous, Harper tax-saving treaties, where the wealthy and privileged in this country, and very profitable corporations, can take their money offshore, pay no tax on it and then bring it back to Canada.
That $30-billion fiscal hole was created by Conservatives. No Canadians wanted to thank them for that. In fact, it is one of the principal reasons the Harper government was thrown out in 2015. That fiscal hole meant we have seen little or no investment in social housing and co-operative housing that could make a difference for so many Canadians.
Why? Co-operative housing, social housing, is based on 30% of income, which is affordable for all. When we have a co-operative housing sector with clean, well-built, affordable homes, people can live their lives there. At 30% of their income, they are no longer struggling to put food on the table, to make ends meet or to skimp on their medication to try to pay their rent.
It allows Canadians to live with the quality of life that is important, especially when it comes to people with disabilities. In this country, about 50% of those on our streets who are unable to find affordable housing are people with disabilities. This is catastrophic, yet the government has done very little to address it.
On the housing front, the NDP has forced investments, and we are going to see, I think, in the coming months, more of that affordable housing built. The government was not willing to do it on its own. It was the NDP forcing the government to make those investments that has started to make a difference.
What we really need is something on the size and scale of the undertaking after the Second World War, when we said we would make sure every Canadian was housed and we built millions of units of affordable housing. It stimulated the economy and created many jobs for tradespeople; it made a difference.
The disastrous previous Harper government was the worst government in Canadian history and the most corrupt government. We have never gotten to the bottom of the scandals that occurred during that time, because committees were completely shut down during the Harper majority. We could not get to the bottom of the ETS scandal, with its nearly half a billion dollars in misspending, because Conservatives shut down parliamentary institutions.
A cutback in the Auditor General's department ensured that independent officers of Parliament were starved of funds. The disastrous Harper government was the worst government in Canadian history in terms of fiscal management and, of course, in terms of oversight. Not a single Conservative has ever apologized for that disastrous period of time when the Auditor General and the PBO were starved of funds and we saw record deficits each and every year.
The Conservatives did take care of two groups. Billionaires and big corporations got their $30-billion-a-year tax break; they could take their money to overseas tax havens, thanks to Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. The other group was the banks; $116 billion in liquidity supports was given to them in a heartbeat.
Of the $116 billion in liquidity supports, tens of billions of dollars came from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. There is a sad irony in both Liberal and Conservative housing policies. They are willing to use the CMHC to prop up the banks; both Liberals and Conservatives have done that. The NDP is willing to use the CMHC to build affordable housing and not willing to use the CMHC funding now given to corporate landlords to say they have to cap rents.
There is no doubt we could be doing so much more in housing. The member for Burnaby South and the entire NDP caucus have raised these issues repeatedly, and we are looking forward to a time when an NDP government could ensure that affordable housing is built across this country. Every Canadian deserves to have an affordable roof over their head at night and the NDP will continue to work to that end.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate some of the comments the member has put on the record this afternoon. We are now into day two of the fall session. On the first day we were debating the citizenship bill, which I understand a majority of members of Parliament want to see go to committee. In fact, the member's own party had a member stand up for unanimous consent to get it to committee, but it was frustrated in part because of a concurrence motion.
Today, we are interrupting Bill C-66, which deals with sexual assaults and violence in the Canadian military, and with an option. All political parties support that legislation, and yet instead of having that debate, we are now debating another motion for concurrence. I am wondering if my colleague across the way can provide his thoughts. It is not to take away from the importance of the issues, but, relatively speaking, what about important legislation that does need to proceed at some point?
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- Sep/19/24 12:03:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have said this in the House before: There are two bloc parties in the House of Commons, the Bloc Québécois and the "block everything" party. What the Conservatives have done by blocking everything is block measures that would actually bring support to their constituents.
The NDP dental care plan that the NDP forced through the House of Commons with the support of the Liberals has now served 700,000 Canadians across the country. On average, for every Conservative riding, 2,000 of their constituents have benefited from dental care, and Conservatives blocked that. They have blocked pharmacare. They have blocked every measure the NDP has been pushing through to actually help their constituents. I think their constituents will judge the Conservatives on that in the next election.
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- Sep/19/24 12:04:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have to say that I found the member's speech rather interesting. He criticized the Harper government of nine or 10 years ago, in which his version of history is definitely different from what most Canadians remember. The member then went on to criticize the Liberal government, which he was a part of. Now, because the New Democrats have ripped up the agreement, the member says he is no longer a part of it. He does not take any responsibility for when he supported the Liberals in their actions on housing.
It is time for the member to put up or shut up. Is he going to vote with the Conservatives next week, have no confidence in the government, and go to the polls and take his ideas to Canadian voters so they can decide?
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- Sep/19/24 12:05:04 p.m.
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It is very rich, Madam Speaker. The Conservatives say, “Oh yeah, we are really concerned about housing”, but they have not asked a single question about housing through this debate, which shows the hypocrisy of the Conservative Party. They say they want to have a debate on housing but they do not really want to have a debate on housing because their record was absolutely abysmal.
The member pointed out that the NDP has forced the Liberals to actually invest in affordable housing again and he is right on that point. Yes, the NDP has succeeded in the first investments in 20 years. However, my point back to the member is this: Why did the Conservatives do such an abysmal job on housing and why will they not take responsibility for the fact that many people who are homeless today are homeless because of the cuts in social housing that the Harper government forced on Canadians when it was in power?
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- Sep/19/24 12:06:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we in the Bloc Québécois completely agree with the expression used by my colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby. In fact, it was my colleague, the member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, who talked about a sort of Marshall plan, a wartime-style effort to invest in housing.
My colleague spoke at length about investments in housing. I think it is important to recognize that, when it comes to housing, what the federal government can do is invest. It must not withhold funding based on any conditions. His party supported the federal government while it was withholding the $900 million owed to Quebec. Then again, it is no better if cities' jurisdictions are not respected and if Quebec's municipalities are punished, like the Conservatives want to do, despite the fact that many, like Granby, have great plans.
What we need to do now is support the cities that have plans, not punish them and withhold federal money. That money needs to flow to Quebec and the provinces. I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.
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- Sep/19/24 12:06:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I could not agree more. The federal government should support municipalities and cities like Granby, New Westminster, Montreal and every other city in Canada. That money should be flowing.
The NDP managed to get billions of dollars out the door to build new housing. I hope we can reach a consensus in the House to keep increasing funding for affordable housing so that everyone in this country can have a roof over their head.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to take part in the debate today. I will be splitting my time with the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.
I find this to be a fascinating debate. We are debating concurrence in a committee report that says that the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities recognizes Canada is in a housing crisis that requires urgent action by the federal government to end homelessness and that this motion be reported to the House. We are talking about it being a crisis that requires urgent action.
It was interesting to hear the exchange between the Liberal member and the NDP earlier. The Liberal member for Winnipeg North in particular was complaining about the fact that we were discussing this today. He consistently complains about these things. He referred to Bill C-66 and made an urgent call for us to get back to that. I know all parties support the bill. It has been before the House for over 180 days. We sat until midnight virtually every night in the spring and the government did not bring the bill forward. We did not have the conversation, so it was not urgent at that point in time. Our shadow minister has signalled that we support this. We recognize that there are some things all parties in the House support, and that bill is one of them. Hopefully it will be a priority for the government and will pass very soon.
I believe this report also passed unanimously, recognizing the crisis situation and the urgent need to have conversations.
The wording and type of language is very familiar. In the Liberal 2015 platform, close to a decade ago, the Liberals said:
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 in communities where there is a pressing need.
About a decade ago, and recognizing the similarity in wording, the Liberals promised to make this a priority and recognized that there was a “pressing need”.
Nine years later, in the 2024 budget, the Liberals almost used identical wording. They talked about the federal government conducting a “rapid review” of its entire federal land portfolio to identify more land for housing. That was an active sentence, that the federal government is conducting a rapid review. I guess “rapid”, by the Liberal definition, is nine years for something urgent, and the situation has only become worse.
I found it really interesting to listen to the NDP interventions on this, particularly that of the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, who talked about the current government and how terrible it was, forgetting the fact that up until two weeks ago he was, for all intents and purposes, a part of the Liberal government through the Liberal-NDP coalition. I will note that, as terrible a fiscal situation as we were in in 2021, when the NDP joined the Liberal Party, things only got dramatically worse for Canadians after it joined the then completely incompetent Liberal government. We are sitting in a situation right now where rents, down payments and mortgage payments have doubled. Canadians who have mortgages coming due right now, after five years, are going to, without a corresponding increase in their income and their ability to pay, be paying hundreds of dollars, in some cases over $1,000 more, in their monthly mortgage payments without any increase in their income. The NDP members have supported the situation that has gotten us to this place, this predicament right now, every single step of the way for the last three years.
There has been a lot of talk about the Harper years. I was a part of that government from 2006 to 2015. I had the privilege of serving on the cabinet subcommittee that looked at ways to get the budget back to balance, which we did by 2015.
However, I would go back to the situation in 2014. There was a pretty interesting conversation going on, driven by the New York Times and some international research institutes. They found that in 2014-15, Canada had the richest middle class in the world. I am sure there were challenges for some Canadians, but, by and large, we were in a better fiscal situation than any country in the world. Even people like Hillary Clinton were lamenting this in conversations in some of the articles that were written at the time. Experts from around the world were pointing to Canada as an example of how to deal with a difficult financial situation coming out of the global meltdown. That was in 2014.
Let us fast forward 10 years to 2024. We are no longer the richest middle class in the world. Our middle class is, as a percentage of our population, by all measures, contracting. Regular people, people who never, ever even contemplated the fact that they would need to use a food bank, are now lining up at food banks with their kids in cities across Canada.
Let us look at the situation we are in again, and listen to the NDP talk about the housing crisis and where we are right now relative to the past. This crisis did not exist in the same way in 2015. Let us look at cities across the country. Housing starts in August were down 13%. At this time, when we need to be building houses, housing starts are down 13% across the country.
I would note that in the Liberal member's city of Winnipeg, housing starts are down 16% from August 2023. In B.C., under the provincial NDP government, housing starts are down an astonishing 31%. In Vancouver, which is very close to New Westminster, where the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby is from and represents, housing starts are down 34%. In Toronto, under the leadership of a former NDP member of Parliament, Olivia Chow, housing starts are down 48% over the last year. Those are just astonishing drops in housing starts across the country.
We have a real crisis. I think all parties have recognized that this is a crisis and that we need to deal with it urgently now.
One member of Parliament in the House has been dealing with this issue right from the start. That member of Parliament is our Conservative leader. In 2021, at the start of the pandemic and the explosive additional spending by the Liberal government, which was eventually propped up by the NDP, he brought up the effect of the increase in interest rates over and over again. He was mocked for bringing it up by the finance minister and by the Prime Minister on a regular basis.
A year ago tomorrow, we were talking about a private member's bill that our leader had put forward, a bill that would deal with the housing crisis in an urgent way, in a common-sense way. I will not have time to read all the highlights of that bill, entitled the “Building Homes, Not Bureaucracy Act”. Canadians can look that up on ourcommons.ca. However, I will point out that when we put out this common-sense, good-faith bill to get more houses built in Canada, every non-Conservative member of the House, Liberal members, along with members from the Bloc and NDP, voted against that private member's bill that would have created significant action toward housing over the last year.
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- Sep/19/24 12:17:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is truly amazing. The member even admitted that he was a part of the Harper government when the leader of the Conservative-Reform party today was then the minister of housing.
The minister of housing at that time, today's current leader of the Conservative Party, was an absolute and total disaster. He did absolutely nothing about housing. In fact, because of his incompetence back then, he has added to the problem we have today with respect to housing. To try to champion him as some sort of a leader on this file is absolutely ridiculous.
My question for the member, who was there supporting the minister of housing at the time, is this. Why does he believe his current leader has any credibility at all when it comes to housing?
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- Sep/19/24 12:18:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that hon. member lives in a fantasy world that I can only imagine visiting one day.
If we look at the facts around that time, our Conservative government took on a global economic disaster and we set out a plan to get back to a balanced budget by 2015. In 2014, Canada had the richest middle class in the world.
Fast forward 10 years and we are running unthinkable record deficits. The cost of housing, mortgage payments, down payments and rent is double what it was when our current leader was the housing minister.
Prices have doubled in that time, yet that member has the audacity to celebrate in the House the imagined success of his Liberal government. That is ridiculous.
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- Sep/19/24 12:19:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, but after hearing what he had to say, I have some questions.
I would like to know what the Conservatives plan to do about housing, other than the Conservative leader 's bill, which would basically impose conditions on cities and punish them. It completely ignores cities' existing development and environmental protection plans. That is not productive.
Cities already have their plans. They already have ideas for housing. We put forward a 12-point plan. What cities need now is cash transfers so they can put their plans into action. They do not need additional conditions that will just slow them down.
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