SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 339 - Sep/19/24

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

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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Hon. Mike Lake

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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Ms. Andréanne Larouche (Shefford, BQ)

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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Hon. Mike Lake

Sep/19/24 12:20:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a lot of respect for the hon. member. When we look at the current situation, and we have heard this from members from all parties, we have to acknowledge that the status quo is not working. Certainly the answer cannot be to throw more money at the problem. The amount of record spending that the government has done over the last decade has led us to the fiscal crisis we are in, as well as the inflation crisis, the housing crisis and all of these different things. Again, I would urge Canadians to look at our leader's building homes, not bureaucracy bill. I could read through some of the bullet points, but beyond the measures that talk about transfers through municipalities, one of the areas is to withhold transit and infrastructure funding from cities until sufficient high-density housing around transit stations is built and occupied. Cities will not receive money for transit until there are keys in doors. That is just common sense.

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Ms. Lisa Marie Barron (Nanaimo—Ladysmith, NDP)

Sep/19/24 12:21:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there is so much to say, but I will try to keep it short and simple. I kept thinking about one thing while the member was talking about his time in government under the Harper government. While the Harper government was in power, while the current Leader of the Conservative Party was the housing minister, 800,000 affordable homes were lost. We know that we have lost affordable homes under the Liberal government as well. I do not know if we want to ask who is doing worse here, but we did not get here overnight. It has been consecutive Conservative and Liberal governments that have led us to the position we are in now. My question for the member is as follows. In that plan, does he talk about large corporate greed swooping in and buying up affordable homes?

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Hon. Mike Lake

Sep/19/24 12:22:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, again, the situation we are in right now is infinitely worse than the situation a decade ago. We are sitting in a situation where, in the member's province, run by an NDP government, housing starts in the middle of a housing crisis are down 31% over the last year. We can go back a decade in history, but what is probably more relevant to this conversation is the last three or four years in which the NDP and Liberals have worked together to create the absolute crisis that demands urgent action right now.

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Mr. Dan Albas (Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC)

Sep/19/24 12:23:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise on behalf of the good people of Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola. Rents are up, unemployment is up, food bank usage is up and time is up. Who tells us this? The Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, which I have sat on in previous Parliaments, does. In its study on the housing crisis in Canada, it says, “That the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities recognizes that 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”, which is why we are here today discussing this. I am going to cover three areas where I think we need to start looking at this. The word “crisis” actually stems from a Greek word that essentially means to cut away. It means that of all the different choices we have, a crisis is meant to actually cut away from certain choices and stick to other ones. Unfortunately the current government is listless. It talks around the issue of housing. It says that it will create housing, but really the Government of Canada does not create housing. It can help finance it through CMHC insurance. It can use its fiscal power, which the current government knows because it is the only power it seems to want to use. However, the Liberals have not convened the provinces to have big discussions around development cost charges reform or about zoning reform. They have chosen not to. Instead, they have sprinkled money at the problem, and as the previous member who spoke, the member for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, said, they have simply decided that they would do a review of existing lands and try to see whether they could do more to give lands, but they are not telling whom they would give the lands to. It is actually developers who largely provide housing, but as the member previous said, we have seen a drop in places like British Columbia, where I am from, of over 30% in the last year in housing starts when we need them the most. The member is right; the David Eby government has largely failed on this issue since he took office. He had 100 days of action, and unfortunately, like the Prime Minister, he has floundered on the issue. The three areas I am going to talk about are what we need to do a better job on, which is for workers, seniors and youth. First I will talk about workers. I am from the Okanagan. I am very proud to represent three different valleys, but the Okanagan is known not just for its peaches and beaches, great wine or golf courses, but also largely for its retirement communities. There are a significant number of people who retire there for the weather and for the natural beauty. However, the problem I have noticed is that people who have money, especially when they cash out from Calgary, Vancouver, or some other place, often move to the Okanagan to live out their retirement. As we get older, the question we have to ask ourselves in the Okanagan, particularly because there is very much a housing crunch, is this: Who is going to look after people as they age? Where are the younger doctors, nurses, firefighters, police officers and the support staff for many of the services seniors require going to live? People with money always land on their feet, so I have encouraged every council that I know, and every mayor, to work on purpose-built rentals. I have to give the Kelowna multiple councils a big thumbs-up because they have done a lot of purpose-built rentals. However, it is not enough. I hear regularly, from tech employers to others in the industrial area, such as welders, etc., that they cannot keep welders and tech operators because there are very few places to rent. No one wants to stay in a community long-term, even as beautiful as Kelowna can be, or West Kelowna, if they cannot secure a home. Workers are being let down by both the Eby government in British Columbia and the Liberal government here in Ottawa. The other side for workers is because of the problem of gatekeeping in this economy. We know that many municipalities have made it difficult to build. Lots of people want to live in places like Victoria. Where do they end up? They go to places like Langford, where a lot of housing has been built to accommodate the demand. It is the gatekeepers in communities that make it harder. What are they gatekeeping? They are not just gatekeeping the homes that people will eventually live in; they are also gatekeeping the investment of billions of dollars that would be put into our economy and would allow workers to then be able to build homes. It would support the people who work in mills like Aspen Planers or the Weyerhaeuser mill in Princeton and Merritt, respectively. There would be benefits to our economy, such as realtors and lawyers as they do some of the conveyancing. There would be so many knock-off effects in a place like British Columbia. The problem is that the government does not see the economic opportunity, nor does the provincial government see that the skilled trades have a huge opportunity to grow in this area. We are letting existing workers down because they cannot stay in places like Kelowna or West Kelowna, or if they can, they find short-term rentals, with no chance of ownership. We are also letting down seniors. I will give an example because the particularly concurrence report before us speaks to homelessness. There have been renovictions in places like British Columbia. Why is that? It is because property values have gone up and because mortgage rates have gone up. People have bought homes, investing all of their sweat and equity, and rented them, and due to the government's policies, they have seen inflation and interest rates rise. Those go up and down, but we cannot negate the fact that people make economic decisions. Many people have said they cannot afford a variable mortgage or to remortgage, so they sell. One senior did that and was living in her car at Tim Hortons. Someone asked me whether I could help that person. I went to that particular Tim Hortons three times at different times of the day, but I did not see the individual. Eventually, though, I gave information to the senior to help connect her with social services in British Columbia. However, she would have to drive to a place like Penticton because places like Summerland and other areas in the Similkameen Valley and the Nicola Valley do not have the same kinds of supports that are in bigger urban centres like Kelowna or West Kelowna. By governments' not allowing more building, seniors do not have affordable places to rent right now. The NDP likes to say we should get not-for-profits to build more housing, or get government to build more housing, or co-ops or whatnot. However, those take a long time to form, and guess what, they are in the same queue, waiting behind the same people, because everyone is begging under the same bridge, so to speak, to get their approvals to be able to proceed under the gatekeeping economy. The last thing I would like to talk about is youth. Partisanship aside, if we do not show young people in this country that they have the same opportunities that their parents and grandparents had to find a place that they can call home, that they can invest in and raise a family in, they will feel shut out by our economic system. There is a danger in that, because if we do not show that our current system works for young people, that they are not locked out from pride of ownership, then what will they do? They will go to radical voices that will promise them the moon and the stars, and then that will create all sorts of chaos, I believe. This country, yes, feels broken to many, especially young people. The leader of my party, the member for Carleton, has been speaking to them directly, saying that we must do better. Not everyone in the room may like what the member of Parliament for Carleton has to say all the time, but I hope members get the message, because we need to do better, particularly for the next generation of Canadians, so they can have the same opportunities that we had.

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Mr. Ken Hardie (Fleetwood—Port Kells, Lib.)

Sep/19/24 12:32:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, development cost charges, of course, are necessary to pay for water and sewer hookups, and I would not mind the member's reflection on the general policy of municipalities that new pays for new, and whether or not there are some alternatives to that over and above a reasonable ask that development cost charges be lower. One other thing I would not mind the member's reflecting on is speculators. The number of homes in Canada owned by a speculator, an investor, has gone way up. More than that, though, property, land, in municipalities is being brought by speculators. They get upzoning on it and then sit on it, waiting to flip it. That is another area where we should look to the municipalities to put sunset clauses on zoning and do a bunch of other things.

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Mr. Dan Albas

Sep/19/24 12:33:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as a former municipal councillor for the great community of Penticton, I learned that under the Local Government Act, yes, municipalities are authorized to create development cost charges to capture some of the costs for building new. However, let us be remindful of two things. First of all, when a development cost charge is added, without explaining what can be charged and what should be considered a development cost charge, there will always be bureaucratic overreach over a period of time. Things like community art, which should be paid by all taxpayers in a community, are now being jammed into DCCs. I will just be mindful that places like my old community of Penticton, just before the new council took office in the current term, said that Kelowna raised its DCCs and that Penticton should increase them by 50% to play catch-up. This is the problem. People are not asking whether development cost charges are correct or whether they are the right items and at the right costs. They are playing follow-the-leader, and the leader is more expensive. What does that mean? It means young people have less opportunity to own a home, because that is who pays for it.

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Ms. Laurel Collins (Victoria, NDP)

Sep/19/24 12:34:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member started off by talking about the Greek word for “crisis” and the words about cutting away choices. I know that people in my community are worried about Conservative cuts. They are worried about seeing the same thing they saw in the Harper government, where there were cuts to health care and investments in housing. We need to invest in building more housing and getting non-profit housing providers the funding and support they need to buy up buildings and protect them from real estate investment trusts and corporate landlords. I am curious whether the member supports the idea of investing in a rental protection fund, investing in building housing and ensuring that we are increasing our housing supply. What I would like to see cut—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Sep/19/24 12:35:55 p.m.
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I do have to allow for one more question after this. The hon. member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola has the floor.

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Mr. Dan Albas

Sep/19/24 12:36:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I believe that the member also served as municipal councillor at one particular point, and I want to let her know that while there are gatekeepers, I am sure she was mindful, when she made her votes at Victoria council, of young people and their opportunities. However, first of all, the Harper government worked with the Campbell government at the time, and instead of having duelling agencies, it gave all the money to the Province of B.C.. I remember that the B.C. government at the time said it was the best way it could invest soundly across the whole country, including in places like Penticton at the Kiwanis housing facility, which I was happy to open with Bill Barisoff. What I would also say to the member is that at the same time, we need to have a government that tries to remove the gatekeepers. We need to have a system that is responsive to youth. While we can point a finger at what happened during the Harper years, we are here to focus on the government and what it has done during its tenure. It has become worse.

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Mr. Marty Morantz (Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, CPC)

Sep/19/24 12:37:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will start off by saying a few things that I know have never been said before in the House: axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Has anyone heard that before? These are not just slogans. These are four lines that capture the real-life struggles of real Canadians, and one of the struggles we are talking about today is about homelessness and housing. I have an announcement to make. After nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, we have a housing crisis in Canada, in case anyone did not know, particularly in the Liberal benches across the way. It is a crisis caused by the worst housing policy ever in Canadian history. I thought I would lay out, for all those watching, some of what I call the Liberals' greatest hits of housing. Let us start way back in 2017, when the Liberals announced to much fanfare that they would reduce chronic homelessness by 50%. That was only seven years ago. Then in 2020, they said they had upped their commitment and declared their focus to be on entirely eliminating homelessness in Canada. Back in 2018, they brought in their national housing strategy and spent $82 billion on housing. What is the result? The result is the worst housing crisis in Canadian history. The cost of housing has doubled. Rent has become so expensive that a woman living in Kingston is spending 100% of her income on rent. It is reported that a man in Abbotsford had to continue living with his separated partner because he could not afford to move out. Mortgage payments have doubled. Canadians are living through a housing hell. The Building Industry and Land Development Association is reporting that 73% of GTA residents are dissatisfied with the availability and affordability of homes. I will just pause for a moment to mention that I will be splitting my time with the great member for Cariboo—Prince George. To get back to the facts, 90% of those living in the GTA believe there is a housing shortage, 83% think affordability is a significant issue and 59% say the cost of living is the most pressing issue. Let us talk about homelessness. In my hometown of Winnipeg, over 1,200 people are homeless. Last week, I had the great privilege of meeting with Jim Steep. Jim Steep is the executive director of Agape Table. Every day, it serves meals to the homeless. It has done this since 1980. I volunteered there several times giving out meals. Agape has been doing this for over 40 years. The day I was there last week, they served 1,010 meals in just the morning, the highest number in its 44-year history. At the finance committee, we have been studying the housing crisis for about a year. Last October, I had the chance to question Cam Guthrie, mayor of Guelph. He was elected in 2014. On the record, I asked him how many homeless encampments were in Guelph in 2015. He said zero. I asked him how many there were today. He said 20. Two million Canadians are now lining up at food banks. One alarming statistic is the increase in the working poor who are visiting food banks. These are people working three jobs, working single mothers having to choose between paying rent and feeding their children. The Liberals have spent $82 billion on their much-vaunted national housing program since 2018, but the PBO reports that since that same year, the number of homeless people has increased by 20% and the number of chronically homeless people has increased by 38%. Something is clearly not working. According to the Homeless Hub, the number of homeless in Canada ranges from 150,000 to 300,000. Then there are the hidden homeless, the couch surfers, estimated to be up to about 900,000 people. The Auditor General says the federal government does not even know if its initiatives aimed at reducing chronic homelessness are working. In Vancouver, homeless services found 4,820 people were homeless this year, compared to 3,634 in 2020, a whopping 32% increase in three years. In 2018, the number was 2,181. In Halifax, the number of homeless jumped from 119 in 2019 to 879 in 2024, an increase of 637%. Let us talk about Toronto encampments. In that city, on March 15, 2023, there were 82 encampments at 24 sites. One year later to the day, March 15, 2024, there were 202 at 72 locations. These are just facts. The Government of Ontario estimates that nearly 250,000 people, roughly three out of every 200 residents, are homeless. In Mississauga, as of May 5 of this year, there were 256 encampments. It has been reported that so many people are homeless that they are being turned away from homeless shelters. It is so bad, that people have resorted to sheltering in ERs in cold weather. ER visits by homeless have skyrocketed by 68%. In Saint John, New Brunswick, the number of homeless has reached 600, according to Fresh Start. In Quebec City, the number of visible homeless increased by 36% between 2018 and 2022. In Sudbury, it is up, from 164 to 237. In Waterloo, it is up 129% since 2020. In Montreal, it is up 33% since 2018. I could go on and on, but the reality is that there is a tsunami of homelessness across this land. I find this debate ironic. Every day, we are privileged to come here to work in the House of Commons, the people's house, but the stark reality is that after nine years of the Liberals, while we work in the people's house, the people do not have a house. It is a catastrophic failure of the Prime Minister. Last year, CMHC came to the finance committee and told us that to get back to housing price equilibrium, Canada would need to build three million additional homes by 2030. In 2023, Canada built 240,267 homes. Three million additional homes by 2030 would mean that, on top of that number, we would need to build an additional 500,000 homes each year. That is not going to happen. We have never built more than 270,000 homes in a single year, yet just last April, the Prime Minister announced to much fanfare that he would build 3.87 million new homes by 2031. It is just not going to happen, like so many of his promises. I remember that they were going to plant two billion trees, reduce cellular costs and balance the budget by 2019. Instead, the Prime Minister doubled the national debt in just nine years. The reality is that Canada's housing inflation is now the worst in the G7 relative to income. I could go on and on, but my time is almost up, so I will just point out that the Conservatives brought forward a common-sense bill, the building homes not bureaucracy act, which would have incentivized municipalities to build more homes. The Liberal-NDP coalition voted it down. The reality is that only common-sense Conservatives would build the homes that Canadians can afford by firing the gatekeepers and tying infrastructure funding to housing starts. Let us build the homes.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Sep/19/24 12:47:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, over the years, the Government of Canada has provided literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in support for dealing with housing and the homeless. We have been working very closely with provincial governments, non-profit organizations and municipalities and we are making a difference. We can contrast the Liberal plan, or the Government of Canada's plan, with the leader of the Conservative Party, who, while he was the minister of housing, did absolutely nothing. There is no doubt about that. No minister has been more of a disaster on the housing file than the current leader of the Conservative Party when he was the minister of housing. That is a plain fact. Why should Canadians believe that the Conservative Party will be able to deal with the issue of housing and will work with the different levels of government and non-profits to—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Sep/19/24 12:48:10 p.m.
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The hon. member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley.

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Mr. Marty Morantz

Sep/19/24 12:48:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will note that my colleague from Winnipeg said in his question that the Liberals' policies made a difference, and he is absolutely right. Their policies made it far worse. I went through the litany of statistics proving that they made it far worse. I was not here back when the next prime minister of Canada was the housing minister, but I have heard him speak eloquently in this House about his formidable record of low housing costs, low interest rates, low mortgage payments and low rent. That is a pretty good record.

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

Sep/19/24 12:49:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it seems to me, from what I understand, that the Conservative idea for housing is to build more houses. As I said in an earlier intervention, it is a simplistic approach that would not work and is not working. In Penticton, my hometown, we are building more homes every day than we have ever built. There are new big buildings going up with new condos and apartments. Every day in Penticton, according to the housing experts there, we have fewer affordable homes because all those new homes are being built by clearing out affordable homes and creating investment opportunities for investors who can afford them. None of the people needing a home in my hometown can afford these new homes, and the new homes the Conservatives want to build would be unaffordable.

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Mr. Marty Morantz

Sep/19/24 12:50:11 p.m.
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We heard it here, Madam Speaker. The Conservative slogan is “build the homes”, and the NDP's new slogan is “build fewer homes”. It is hard to believe that they are the folks who were allowed to run the country for the last two years. Thank heavens, after we win the non-confidence vote next week, they will be gone.

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Mr. John Brassard (Barrie—Innisfil, CPC)

Sep/19/24 12:50:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we talk a lot about the need for housing affordability and housing attainability, but there is another crisis looming, and that is the mortgage renewal crisis. Right now, there are moms across this country who are worried about renewing their mortgages and the impact that is going to have on overall costs and the ability to put food on the table to take care of the future for their families. I am wondering if the hon. member can speak about that.

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Mr. Marty Morantz

Sep/19/24 12:51:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the mortgage crisis, despite what the Liberals will tell us, was caused by them. They allowed the bank governor to jack up the money supply by 23%, and the $600 billion in cash printed spiked inflation. It was not the war in Ukraine that caused inflation. It was not supply chains. It was the watering down of the value of our currency that spiked inflation, which directly led to this mortgage crisis. Now, on top of the affordability problems and on top of everything else, we will start to see people lose their homes. It is catastrophic and very sad.

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