Hansard
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Add search criteria
Results: 16 - 30 of 346
View Ahmed Hussen Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Ahmed Hussen Profile
2021-06-15 15:04 [p.8471]
Mr. Speaker, fake outrage without real action and real policies is not a strategy.
Since coming into office, we have invested over $27.4 billion in affordable housing. What is the Conservative record? It is $250 million a year. Those are the facts.
It is really interesting to see a party that voted against the Canada housing benefit, that votes against the national housing co-investment fund and that votes against the rental construction financing initiative get up and fake outrage. Canadians can see through that. It is a joke of a policy. Get serious, Conservative Party.
View Doug Shipley Profile
CPC (ON)
Mr. Speaker, the cost to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Barrie now averages $1,530 per month, the fifth-highest rental rate in Canada. In May, the average home price was $720,000, a 38% increase from last year. Everyone, especially first-time buyers and renters, is finding these prices out of reach. Last week’s Conservative opposition day motion had a tangible solution to address affordable housing in Canada, but the Liberals voted against it.
It is clear that the Liberal housing plan is not working. Why is the Prime Minister ignoring the housing needs of Canadians?
View Ahmed Hussen Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Ahmed Hussen Profile
2021-06-14 15:07 [p.8340]
Mr. Speaker, we are investing more money than ever before in affordable housing, including reallocating money from the rental construction financing initiative to turn commercial buildings into affordable housing.
What are the Conservatives doing about that? They are voting against that. Their plan had no real solutions that even came close to the progress we have made and the strong foundation that we are building on the national housing strategy. They spent meagre amounts of money during their time in office. They had no leadership, no strategy, and now they are faking outrage and actually voting against real measures to help Canadians—
View Leona Alleslev Profile
CPC (ON)
Mr. Speaker, Canada has a national housing crisis, and it is getting worse.
With the lowest per capita housing supply in the G7, Canada simply does not have enough houses. In my GTA riding, housing prices have skyrocketed by over 25% in the last year, with the average price now over $1 million. Canadians cannot find places to live and they are losing hope they will ever own a home.
When will the government take real action to help Canadians achieve a more secure housing future?
View Adam Vaughan Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Adam Vaughan Profile
2021-06-11 11:41 [p.8277]
Mr. Speaker, I will note that the Conservative member who asked that question has proposed taxing primary residences and changing the capital gains tax. That was alerted to the House in debate earlier this week. It is an astonishing reversal of position for the Conservatives.
We have done a number of different things, for example, the tax on vacant homes and offshore ownership, in terms of beneficial ownership and new rules around disclosure to help fight money laundering, as well as our $72 billion national housing strategy. To put this in perspective, in the last six months, through the rapid housing initiative, we have secured and built more homes in six months than the previous Conservative government did in its last two years—
View Leona Alleslev Profile
CPC (ON)
Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the national housing crisis, it is about the facts.
Monthly mortgage prices have increased from an average of $330 to $2,500. For many in the GTA, the cost of housing exceeds 75% of their income and owning a home is out of reach as it takes over 277 months to save for a down payment. The Royal Bank says that calls for forceful action to cool the frenzied real estate market have been mostly ignored.
When will the government act to make housing a priority?
View Adam Vaughan Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Adam Vaughan Profile
2021-06-11 11:42 [p.8278]
Mr. Speaker, this government has been acting since the day we took office in 2015. A $72 billion investment into the housing sector delivers market rental solutions to families so they can rent cheaper and therefore save to get into the housing market. Our first-time home buyer program has helped more than 10,000 Canadians acquire their first property.
Our move to end chronic homelessness, as I said, has delivered 4,770 units of housing in the last six months, which is almost exactly what the Conservatives did over the last two years in office. We did it while also maintaining subsidies for co-ops, also building new housing, also repairing housing and also making sure that the reaching home dollars more than doubled, in fact, are now at half a billion dollars a year for the next three years.
Our government's record on housing is clear. The Conservatives lack leadership—
View Alice Wong Profile
CPC (BC)
View Alice Wong Profile
2021-06-11 13:21 [p.8301]
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the budget implementation bill and give some thoughts about the budget. The document itself, as tabled by the Minister of Finance, was 725 pages long. It is the largest budget document in federal history. Unfortunately, quantity does not necessarily mean quality.
In terms of quantity, we have record spending and deficits. This fiscal year and the last fiscal year are ranked one and two, and both contain the largest amount of spending and the largest deficits in recorded Canadian history. It is not even close to the third-highest deficit. The current deficit that will have to be paid by Canadians will total over half a trillion dollars. That is just for the last two years. There is surely more to come. If we write on a piece of paper the number 5 followed by 11 zeros, that is nearly the amount of accumulated deficit incurred since Confederation. We are far from where we were when the Prime Minister promised “a modest short-term deficit” six years ago.
Canadians will be paying for this spending for decades. Since all of the spending comes from borrowed money, we will also be paying interest. We are not paying off the debt today, but its effects will drag on our economy like an anchor weighing down a swimmer in the ocean.
Right now, interest rates are being held low. The Bank of Canada is purchasing government debt off the open market, which puts downward pressure on interest rates. This allows the government to borrow and spend, but this is impacting the lives of everyday people in my riding of Richmond Centre.
Consequently, the price of everything is increasing. Indeed, with easy credit due to low interest rates, the prices of real estate have skyrocketed. Young constituents of mine cannot afford a place to live, while older folks are sitting on a windfall. Rents are getting higher because landlords must afford to finance and pay back higher and higher levels of debt. Unaffordability of places to live is one of the consequences of huge government deficits.
Higher prices are also seen in everything else, ranging from food to gasoline, services, and the list goes on. Disruptions in supply chains due to COVID-19 are not helping. Everybody at street level can see this happening. Prices were bound to rise, but the government's fiscal policy is making things a lot worse than they should be.
I do concede the point that last year in March, we knew a lot less about COVID-19 than we do today. Governments around the world reacted in different manners, but most were consistent in providing emergency supports to the population while we figured things out.
Beyond that, there was no excuse for what we have seen out of the government over the past half-year or so. The Liberal government has been very slow to bring us back on the path to recovery. Nothing illustrates this more than the snail pace of COVID-19 vaccinations that we have seen. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars were wasted in this initial effort.
We should be a first-world nation with first-world results, but instead the Liberal government has been lagging badly. Most Canadians at this point, including myself, are in the category of receiving a partial vaccination. Compared to our fully vaccinated friends down south in the U.S. and compared to countries like Israel, we have underperformed. This will cost us, and we see it in the budget today.
We see plenty of media out there showing obvious evidence that things are heading back to normal in places outside of Canada. People are attending sporting events, socializing and exercising without having to wear masks. Indeed, we are seeing hints of that occurring today from our provincial governments. However, people remember the initial promise of the federal Liberals when they said it would take two weeks to flatten the curve, which did not turn out as expected at all.
With this uncertainty, why would anybody want to make preparations for a recovery that may or may not occur? The rug has already been pulled from the floors of the restaurant industry in British Columbia, twice, with incredibly short notice.
My point is that the government's failed response to the COVID-19 vaccinations has directly resulted in the necessity of additional emergency spending support. Tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars would not have had to be spent had we seen one the leaders rather than a laggard in our COVID-19 response.
However, the current Liberal government has made so many missteps that will slow down this road map. The slowness of our government's COVID response has also caused distortion in the labour market. I speak to businesses that cannot find employees because government benefits are competing with them, competing with businesses that want to hire. Going back to my original point about costs, it means the cost of labour is rising and this results in increased prices for everything. The volatile economic climate caused by the government's missteps is stalling our recovery.
At least before COVID-19, Richmond was home to a vibrant tourism sector. Today, we have travel centres and tourism-sensitive areas of the economy that are completely shut down. We need to create an environment that would get this sector back to where it was. We support tourism, but not virtualism. This is what I have been telling people here in Richmond.
While nearly every industry from coast to coast to coast has felt the negative effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the hospitality and tourism industries have been especially hard hit, from international border closures, to provincial border regulations and stay-at-home orders, the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Canadians, either directly the in tourism hospitality industry or in an adjacent field, have been hammered by COVID-19.
I have heard from countless constituents who work for airlines, the travel infrastructure, hospitality and in the tourism industry and they have all told me the same thing: “we need help”.
I want to take this opportunity to express my thanks to my colleagues from Niagara Falls as well as Durham for their efforts in bringing the voices of those in the tourism industry to parliamentarians and to this place to be heard, and indeed, they were heard.
Richmond Centre is also home to the YVR airport and to many great aerospace firms that operate and maintain our airlines, airplanes and helicopters. The budget funding needs to be implemented in conjunction with an aerospace strategy that allows us to compete in the global marketplace.
The final area I want to touch on is one which is extremely close to my heart. For a number of years, I was very fortunate to be able to serve not just Richmond, but Canadians from coast to coast—
View Tracy Gray Profile
CPC (BC)
View Tracy Gray Profile
2021-06-10 16:12 [p.8238]
Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-30 on behalf of my constituents in Kelowna—Lake Country. Like so many things with the Liberal government, this omnibus budget is unfocused, leaving many of the most affected by the economic crisis behind.
The budget outlines bold new ideas to build back better with new debt of $354.2 billion last year and $154.7 billion this year. This is a plan where every person in Canada would owe over $13,000, or over $52,000 for a family of four, in new debt in just two years. Not to mention the years of needless deficits leading up to this, which the Conservatives have been warning about since the government took office in 2015. However, I believe Canadians are smart enough to realize that the budget is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt by the Liberals to buy their votes on the backs of their own borrowed money.
It was in this House, when the budget was first tabled, that a Liberal member alluded that this budget has something for everyone. This is not true if someone had just opened a new business. For a year now, the Conservatives have been bringing forth the issue that new businesses, which do not have any sales track record, are not eligible for many programs, and the Liberals have ignored this.
This is an election budget, not a budget focused on economic recovery. It is clear that what the Liberals claim is stimulus is more about their own partisan priorities, rather than about maintaining jobs, creating jobs, helping businesses the most affected by the pandemic, or growing the economy.
Despite billions in new spending, this budget still leaves people and small businesses behind. The budget lists the establishment of a $500-million tourism relief fund as well as $100 million for Destination Canada to market Canada. This amount is a drop in the bucket of a $157.4-billion budget and is an insult to the tourism industry. Tourism was the first affected, and it will be one of the last to recover, yet tourism only garnered one and a half pages in a 750-page omnibus budget document. In my riding, tourism small businesses are a backbone of our community.
Lou is owner of Cheers Okanagan Tours in Kelowna—Lake Country, a tour and shuttle company offering winery tours, ski shuttles, airport transportation and other tour options. They are ambassadors for our local attractions. It has seven vehicles it has had to continue to store and pay for. Lou told me that once her business is back to pre-pandemic levels, it will take three years for her to recover her small business.
Terri, owner of Vacanza Destinations in Kelowna—Lake Country, a boutique travel tourism company, has had no revenue in over a year. She has gone substantially into personal debt. In order to keep her business ready to turn back on, she has to retain all her licensing, liability insurance and many other expenses, costing thousands each month. Terri told me that once business is back to pre-pandemic levels, it will take up to five years for her to recover.
Terri and Lou are two women who have built up their small businesses with hard work. The Liberals say there is money in the budget for people to upgrade their transferable skills in order to work in different industries. Maybe some people, like Terri and Lou, like their jobs, the careers they have built and the relationships they built. It is not up to the Liberals to pick what jobs they like and which ones will survive the pandemic. Tourism is not a priority for the government, nor is it reflected in the budget.
The budget details how arts, entertainment and recreation are the largest affected sector for people losing work in February 2020 compared to 2021, yet there is just slightly over one page out of the 750-page budget referencing these sectors, which are sectors important to Kelowna—Lake Country. The budget outlines approximately $450 million in funding, but much is spread over three years. Musicians, and those involved performing arts, festivals, arts, culture and sports, are some of the hardest hit. This budget is a disappointment.
As I mentioned earlier, the Liberals say there is money in the budget for people to upgrade their transferable skills in order to work in different industries, but why should people not use their talents? Why should they be forced to not work in their field?
I will say it again, it is not up to the Liberals to pick what jobs they like and which ones survive the pandemic. The spending in this budget is unfocused and does not address the hardest hit industries, such as arts, culture and recreation, as priorities.
Aerospace is another major employer in my community of Kelowna—Lake Country. The budget states, “In 2019, aerospace contributed more than $28 billion to Canada's GDP, directly and indirectly supporting 234,500 jobs”. The budget also correctly notes, “Highly dependent on purchases from airlines hit hard by the pandemic, the sector is facing reduced demand and a longer path to recovery, relative to other sectors of the economy”.
The government seems to think an appropriate level of support for an industry it states has been hit hard by the pandemic is $250 million over three years across the entire country. Realizing how meagre this truly was, the Minister of Finance tried to spin this underwhelming investment by stating, “This is in addition to the $1.75 billion in the Strategic Innovation Fund”. However, that fund is over seven years. This is another example of an unfocused $154.7-billion omnibus budget.
There are a number of measures in this budget that I could support. However, in the 750-page omnibus budget of debt and election-style spending on the backs of future generations, it is not the real plan that Canada desperately needs. Extending the Canada emergency wage subsidy and the Canada emergency rent subsidy are both welcome ideas. This, in addition to a number of measures to continue helping individual Canadians and industries, I can absolutely get behind. However, this budget leaves out important sectors that have been the most hurt.
In this budget, the Prime Minister would add more to our national debt than all other previous prime ministers combined. The biggest source of federal funds this last year was not tax revenue or lenders, but central bank money printing. The $303.5 billion of new printed money in 2020 is not free. Devaluing the dollar risks increasing inflation, meaning everyone pays more for things such as housing, food and transportation.
Statistics Canada announced the cost of living went up 3.4% in April 2021 alone. This has been especially apparent in our housing market. Canadians faced a nationwide housing affordability crisis, and the budget completely ignores first-time homebuyers and the housing needs of young Canadians.
On May 26, the finance minister would not answer a simple question of how many units the rapid housing initiative has built. The housing problem is compounded by the recent government announcement of new mortgage qualification rules. Experts are saying this puts home ownership further away for many.
My colleague, the Conservative shadow minister of housing from Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, led an opposition day motion yesterday which had many common-sense solutions to address the growing housing and affordability crisis. Instead of embracing these ideas, which have been suggested by experts, the Liberals voted it down, doubling down on their failed strategies.
The budget also fails to meaningfully address the parts of our economy that allow for growth without the need for hands-on government intervention and billions of dollars in borrowed money. Our economic engines of natural resources and trade can create jobs and help pay off our massive debt. Canadian exports are responsible for one in five jobs and nearly a third of our GDP, yet trade is barely sprinkled around the budget.
For the Conservatives, not only does trade represent a guarantee of economic security for millions of workers, but it is also an important aspect of food security and, especially, our best way to combat debt.
The Liberal government is mismanaging the trade file, and the problems keep getting worse.
It is clear that the government has no real plan to secure our future through an economic recovery where all sectors and all regions are firing on all cylinders. I simply cannot support a budget that is unfocused, fails so many who have been the most affected, and burdens future generations with billions of dollars in crippling debt.
View Brad Vis Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, the government loves to announce it is spending billions of dollars on housing, but we are years into the national housing strategy and it has nothing to show for it, except for higher prices and a market that is more and more out of reach for Canadians.
Could the Prime Minister please explain why he is intent on destroying the hopes and dreams of Canadians and new immigrants who just want to own a home?
View Justin Trudeau Profile
Lib. (QC)
View Justin Trudeau Profile
2021-06-09 15:00 [p.8159]
Mr. Speaker, once again the Conservatives never let facts get in the way of a good political attack.
It is a fact, as new numbers show, that the national housing strategy is helping over 200,000 families get the housing they need by building new homes, by repairing existing ones and by helping with costs. Since 2015, our government has supported the creation of nearly 100,000 new units and repaired over 300,000 more across housing programs.
However, we are not stopping there. Budget 2021, which the Conservatives voted against, includes funding for the construction, repair and support of 35,000 affordable housing units.
View Brad Vis Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I will take no lessons from a Prime Minister who is squeezing out a generation from home ownership under his watch.
The HUMA report “Indigenous Housing: The Direction Home” was tabled on May 26. Will the government persist in a paternalistic Ottawa-knows-best approach, or will the government commit to implementing and supporting a “for indigenous, by indigenous” approach to empower indigenous Canadians with the autonomy to address their own unique housing needs?
View Justin Trudeau Profile
Lib. (QC)
View Justin Trudeau Profile
2021-06-09 15:01 [p.8159]
Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what we have been doing for a number of years, working directly with indigenous leadership and indigenous communities on meeting specific housing needs. That is something we recognize. We have long recognized the need for leadership from the federal government. Unfortunately, the Conservatives, when they were in government, refused any role for the federal government on housing.
We have stepped up, not just in working with indigenous communities on housing, but in working with provinces and municipalities to fix the challenges around housing.
View Brad Vis Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, the least the House could do is give indigenous Canadians a date when they can expect that FIBI process.
Under the government, housing has never been less affordable. Both the Prime Minister and the finance minister acknowledge we have a housing supply crisis.
Will the government take concrete action to secure Canada's future, support the Conservative motion and address the housing supply challenges facing Canada right now?
View Justin Trudeau Profile
Lib. (QC)
View Justin Trudeau Profile
2021-06-09 15:02 [p.8160]
Mr. Speaker, it is a good thing the Conservative Party is finally noticing that the federal government does have a role to play in housing. However, over the past number of years, we have not waited for the Conservatives. We have moved forward ourselves, building new affordable units through programs like the rapid housing initiative, expanding the first-time home buyer incentive, introducing Canada's first national tax on vacant property owned by non-resident non-Canadians, working to maintain the stability of the market, making the largest public transit investment in Canadian history and more.
We will continue to work on housing. We will continue to hope that the Conservatives will eventually support our initiatives.
Results: 16 - 30 of 346 | Page: 2 of 24

|<
<
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
>
>|
Export As: XML CSV RSS

For more data options, please see Open Data