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Results: 46 - 60 of 129
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
2021-06-16 17:22 [p.8556]
Mr. Speaker, as I said when I quoted the Oxford dictionary, a tax has three characteristics: that it is a state revenue levied by government, that is adds to the cost of goods and services transactions and that it is a compulsory contribution.
I have just gone through the first point in which I have demonstrated that this cash creation is state revenue levied by the government—
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
Lib. (MB)
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
2021-06-16 17:23 [p.8556]
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Within our Standing Orders, and you alluded to this yourself, it does state that members do need to be concise and virtually to the point in regard to how a member's privilege might have been taken. There is a bit of frustration in the sense that we have witnessed other members from the Conservative Party use privilege as a way to—
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
2021-06-16 17:23 [p.8557]
Mr. Speaker, as I said, the second characteristic of a tax is that it adds to the cost of some goods, services and transactions.
Just today, Statistics Canada released fresh data showing what consumers have known for months; that inflation has rocketed up to 3.6%, well above the Bank of Canada's 2% target. This data was essential to my argument today, thus one of the reasons why I waited for its publication before presenting this.
As of this morning, three of four measures of the Bank of Canada for inflation show that inflation has breached the 2% target. Several product groups were well above that. Gasoline is up 43.4%; home ownership replacement costs, 11.3%; and durable goods, which includes things like cars, appliances and furniture, is up 5%. That is just to name a few. This is demonstrated proof that people are, in fact, paying the cost of the inflation tax.
Food prices are also on sharp rise. According to the latest Canada Food Price Report, food costs increased 2.3% last year, with an expected 4.5% to 6.5% increase in meat, 3.5% to 5.5% increase in bakery and 4.5% to 6.5% increase in vegetables this year.
Housing prices have ballooned 30% from March 2020 to March 2021. This is where the cause and effect is most evident. COVID should have reduced housing prices. The wages with which people buy houses dropped. People lost their jobs, making it harder to place offers on homes. To escape lockdowns, more people moved to the countryside, where prices per square foot are lower. Immigration came to a halt, reducing the number of buyers in the market. All these factors would have driven demand and therefore prices down.
In fact, the country's top housing regulator, CMHC, predicted prices would drop as much as 14% for those reasons, and they did begin to drop in March and April of last year. Then, suddenly, as the Bank of Canada's increase in the money supply began flooding into the market, prices began to reverse. The government pumped $356 billion of brand new, newly created cash into the system, and that was exactly the size of the deficit and the size of the money supply growth—
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
Lib. (MB)
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
2021-06-16 17:27 [p.8557]
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member is not being concise and to the point. If the member wants to continue to debate the issue, he can have an opposition day tomorrow. There is a budget debate. That is where he can be making these points. From my perspective, I do not hear, and I leave it to you to make that decision, a matter of privilege, but rather a waste of valuable time.
View Charlie Angus Profile
NDP (ON)
View Charlie Angus Profile
2021-06-16 17:27 [p.8557]
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I will be very concise. Again, the member for Winnipeg North has interfered multiple times without saying anything. I was hoping we would have this done by now, but with the continual interruptions by the member for Winnipeg North, we are almost going to see the clock out, and that is very unfair.
View Michael Barrett Profile
CPC (ON)
Mr. Speaker, on that same point of order, the member for Winnipeg North is using points of order as a tactic to interrupt the member for Carleton. The Chair had made a decision and then gave instruction to the member for Carleton to be concise. The member for Winnipeg North then challenged the Speaker's interpretation of what was and what was not concise.
We are seeing this tactic where we have members using their privilege in this place to raise germane questions of privilege, and we have members from the government side who enter into debate instead of accepting the decision of the Chair, and that was with respect to whether the member was being concise. It was not a question of repetition.
I would hope that other members, under your direction, Mr. Speaker, would allow the member to conclude his question of privilege without these interruptions and tactics they are deploying.
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
2021-06-16 17:29 [p.8557]
Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, housing prices were dropping until the bank began printing its money. The increase in the money supply flooded into the mortgage system. From the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021, mortgage lending grew by 41% and, as a result, from April 2020 to April 2021, housing prices went up about 42%. In other words, there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the increase in the money supply and the increase in prices.
This is supported by years of research by academia. For example, Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon”, and John Maynard Keynes—
View Anthony Rota Profile
Lib. (ON)
I am going to interrupt the hon. member for Carleton. Private Members' Business starts at 5:30 and depriving members of their Private Members' Business items is really unfair to them. That is something that they wait on. The hon. member for Carleton can continue either tomorrow or later tonight.
It being 5:30 p.m., the House will proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business, as listed on today's Order Paper.
View Jasraj Singh Hallan Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, I have the honour today to give a speech in response to the government's budget. Many of my colleagues, whether on my side of the aisle or the other side, have already given speeches about this budget, but today I am not here to simply support the budget blindly or criticize it for ideological or political gain. I am here today to speak from the heart. I am here to speak on behalf of my constituents. I am here to make clear to the members of this House how most Canadians from Calgary Forest Lawn feel about this budget.
Let me start with the short hand dealt to my fellow Albertans. This budget fell short in helping Canada's oil and gas, energy, agriculture and forestry sectors to be global leaders in performance and innovation. While there is money going to some sectors in our economy, there is no plan, as usual. As Adam Legge wrote for the Calgary Herald about this very issue, “It is not rooted in the sound recommendations of the government’s own Industry Strategy Council.”
While the government may say that this money will create a fancy new future and make jobs, the truth is that it is more lip service to Albertans. To the single mother who is a field project manager, to the Muslim sister who just got her citizenship and a job in our energy industry as a chemical engineer, and to the eighth-generation roughneck worker in the oil fields, it is very clear that the government has forgotten about them. It has forgotten about the average working class that has made this country great.
While the government's new budget makes life harder for my constituents to earn money, it also makes daily living more expensive and creates great harm for our children and future generations. April's inflation rate was 3.4%. That means the cost of goods is now 3.4% higher, on average. Many of my constituents have been laid off or have taken a massive pay decrease due to this pandemic. Many Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque, and this was even before the pandemic. Many Canadians cannot afford to pay more for basic necessities due to the Prime Minister's reckless spending and budget.
In April, our economy saw 207,000 jobs lost, with an unemployment rate above 8%. What is the solution? It is spending more, says the finance minister. According to her, it is an ideal time to borrow because interest rates are low. That is interesting, because as the global economy recovers, the interest rates are actually rising, and that has been the trend for the last few months. The cost of debt repayment has now reached a skyrocketing $22 billion per year. That means $22 billion less for our seniors, veterans, the health care system and many other important systems and groups that need this money.
Of course, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once said, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Who will pay for this lunch, one may ask. It will be our children, their children and their children's children, and so on. I am already talking to many students who cannot find internships, who are in crippling debt, who struggle with many mental health issues due to this pandemic and even before. Now more over-stressed and with lack of employment due to our weak economy, what will they say when they find out a few years down the road that they will have to pay for all of this mess, a mess that the Liberal government has put us in?
The key word is “inflation”. For every dollar we print, the value of every dollar falls. It is basic economics. I wish we could print all the money in the world and help everyone, but there is such a thing as scarcity. The government does not understand that, and now our constituents have to suffer.
I also have the privilege of being the official opposition's shadow minister for immigration, refugees and citizenship. How does this budget affect immigration, one may ask. The immigration minister promised that Canada will welcome 401,000 immigrants this year, and still there are massive backlogs. We need immigration. Our working population is aging and, unfortunately, our immigration system is aging with it. This budget does nothing significant to address these backlogs. Families remain separated from their loved ones; parents are missing their children's first steps, birthdays and, in some cases, their births.
Just the other month, I received a call from a constituent saying they wanted to kill themselves because they cannot wait any longer to see their loved ones and cannot bear the isolation of this pandemic. My heart breaks for them.
The detail included in this budget is just a timeline or a promise to deliver a new program by 2023. Ignoring the government's track record with broken promises, pushing this problem down the road is not helping anyone. Families are separated for years. People are waiting for half a decade to have their applications processed, and yet the best the Liberals can do is promise an untested program being launched in the future.
There are also no details on whether the government will work with experts, national and cybersecurity professionals or even immigration experts to develop a platform that truly works for Canadians. There cannot be a strong recovery without a strong plan for immigration. What Canada needs now is a smarter immigration system that focuses on our resources and on making Canada a more welcoming place full of opportunity and potential.
A Conservative government will work to replace Liberal platitudes with a system that actually works again, one that does not leave families separated and desperate for hope but hopeful for a prosperous life in Canada.
Again, the government will point and blame when it hears these facts about its budget. Of course it will blame the pandemic and say it stalled efforts for economic recovery and the advancement of the immigration system, but the new question is, what is the government doing to reopen Canada safely? The government had a failed plan to procure vaccines, a failed plan to secure our borders to stop variants and a failed plan to support small business and our energy industry in withstanding the negative effects of this pandemic.
Just recently, a Calgary-based company that was making a vaccine for COVID-19 said it is leaving Canada, after the government ignored its calls for support. The goal is to retain Canadian talent, not drive it away. Before this pandemic, the government's policies against our world-class energy industry led to investment fleeing. I personally saw the tradespeople I dealt with having to lay off their workers and having to go back onto the field themselves. They blame the Liberal government's policies and inaction to help support them.
I ask people, even in the toughest of times and with a bad budget, to stay strong. To the small business owners, the families living paycheque to paycheque and those trying to start a new life in our great country, I say not to give up, not to lose hope, for what makes our country great is the people, not its government or fancy budget plans that do very little to help the little guy.
We are stronger together, and I stand here on behalf of my constituents to speak up against this budget and expose whom it is hurting: the everyday Canadian. Inflation due to this out-of-control spending does not really hurt the rich and privileged that bad. Whom it does hurt is the single mother from Calgary who is struggling to pay for her kids' schooling and groceries, the bus driver from Toronto trying to afford his mortgage, and the family-run restaurant owner from P.E.I. who has to close up shop for good because the government could not secure the vaccines fast enough, unlike our counterparts.
I came to this country as an immigrant and I grew up as an at-risk youth. I still remember the raindrops hitting my face as my family and I waited in line for low-income bus passes. I still remember seeing my parents and myself working multiple jobs to make ends meet and to survive. I do not want to see that struggle for my children or anyone's children, or in fact any Canadian. We came to this country to enjoy prosperity, not government debt and a crippling economy.
A Conservative government will have a real plan, made by the experts and guided by the everyday Canadian. We will have a fresh new vision of hope, so that no matter where people came from, who they are or when they arrived here, they will have a chance to live the Canadian dream, just as I and many members of this House did.
As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” Together we will fix this mistake, together we will recover this economy and together we will all grow.
May God keep our land glorious and free.
View Brad Redekopp Profile
CPC (SK)
View Brad Redekopp Profile
2021-06-11 13:07 [p.8298]
Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today and speak to the budget. I actually did not think I would get the opportunity to do this. I did not think I would see a budget from the government, so I am pleased to speak to it today.
I want to put this into the context of COVID-19. Last March, the government shut down the economy because of the pandemic, and we Conservatives co-operated with a lot of these emergency support measures, which was important to do at the time. I want to highlight the Liberals' approach to this.
The very first thing the Liberals did was use their bills as a power grab. They wanted to have the superpower to be able to do whatever they wanted and spend however much they wanted until December of this year, which is still six months from now. That is what they had asked for. Of course, we did not allow them to do this.
The second thing they did was take the power they did have, which was to spend some money, and direct that money to their friends. We think of former Liberal MP Frank Baylis, who got a contract for respirators even though his company had no experience or specialty in that area, and of course the WE scandal, which we have heard a lot about this week, where the government found a way to funnel money to its friends the Kielburgers.
When we exposed all those things, the Liberals did a third thing, which was to prorogue Parliament. They did not want investigations. They did not want documents to come out, and they did not want people to know what was going on. That prorogation of Parliament has created where we are now, where we have this last-ditch, last-hour effort to get this budget passed.
While all of that was going on, Canada was in a significant recession. Our GDP was negative 11.5% last summer. We had record double-digit unemployment, and many small businesses were shut down, including many in Saskatoon, particularly in the tourism sector. Then finally, in the fall, we got an economic statement. Finally, there was some acknowledgement that the government needed to provide some numbers, and yet even that understated the depth of the economic calamity that was hitting Canada.
While all that was going on, the solution to the problem, which was the acquisition of vaccines, was a failure by the government. The first thing the Liberals did was bet the farm on the Chinese dictatorship supplying all the vaccines Canada would need. Of course, that failed and the partnership with CanSino was a failure.
Once that failed, the Liberals talked a big game about ordering vaccines. They like to highlight all the vaccines they ordered. I was in charge of a manufacturing plant, and my boss was not overly concerned with what I ordered. He wanted output. He wanted me to produce products. When I told him I could not, he did not want to hear excuses; he just wanted the products produced. It is one thing to talk about excuses, about ordering this and that, but the real deal is landing those products in the country, in this case in Canada, and getting the vaccines into the arms of people.
Canada has consistently been at the bottom of OECD countries when it comes to getting people fully vaccinated. Why is that? It is because of this difference between ordering and actually landing products in the country. After all these months, we are still at less than 10% of Canadians fully vaccinated with two doses. The Liberals are very good at talking and not so good at actually doing.
On this budget, it is a major letdown. Unemployed Canadians feel let down, workers feel let down and families feel let down. It is not a growth budget. There is no plan to encourage Canada's long-term prosperity, and even the Parliamentary Budget Officer has said it will not stimulate jobs or create economic growth. This is a budget about Liberal partisan priorities. It is an election budget. There is not even a plan to return to a balanced budget in the forward-looking years.
For Saskatoon West, there was money for Meewasin Trail and for VIDO-InterVac, our vaccine-producing organization associated with the University of Saskatchewan. Both are projects I have been advocating for since my election. I have asked numerous question period questions, raised it at committee, written to ministers and brought media attention to it, and I think the Liberals finally just got tired and provided some funding there.
Was there money in Saskatoon for housing projects? No. Was there money for palliative care? No. Was there money for fighting the opioid crisis? No. Was there money for mental health resources? No. Did the people of Saskatoon West get slapped with the largest deficit and debt in the history of this country? Yes, they did. Let us talk about that deficit and debt.
This past year's debt is $354 billion, and next year's is going to be $154 billion. The deficit control plan of the government is getting the deficit down to $30 billion a year in five years' time. Now, 18 months ago, $30 billion would have been viewed as a massive deficit, and today it is seen as nothing. It is not nothing.
This document is projecting a $1.4-trillion debt. That is $37,000 of debt for every man, woman and child, every Canadian; $150,000 for a family of four. That is a small mortgage. It is like the government stole the identity of every Canadian, took their credit cards and racked up $37,000 in charges that they would have to pay. Not only that, in the background, the government is still taxing Canadians.
Some people would say, “So what? Who cares? Just print more money.” Basic market principles in economics care. Every time in history when a government prints money to pay off its debts, record inflation follows. Inflation means higher prices and the money Canadians earn is worth less and less.
I want to remind Canadians of events that occurred 30 years ago. The government, at that time, had racked up unprecedented debts, and by 1995, the government was unable to borrow money. Former Liberal finance minister Paul Martin was forced to raise taxes and reduce spending. A period of hardship and pain for all Canadians followed those decisions. The government was forced to get its debt in order by the markets.
I want to personalize this a bit, because decisions that we make here in this House affect individuals. My wife and I bought our first house in 1989, right in the middle of this period. Our interest rate on our first mortgage was 13%. To put that in perspective, if someone has a $1,000 mortgage payment today because of a 2% interest rate, and that interest rate were to go to 13%, like my first one, that $1,000 payment becomes a $2,700 a month payment, almost triple. Even if interest rates only went to 5%, that $1,000 becomes a $1,500 payment. It is a 50% higher payment.
With this budget, the Liberal government has made a trillion dollar bet that interest rates are going to stay low forever. Of course history says otherwise. From 1965 to now, the average five-year mortgage rate was about 9%. There was a 20-year period from 1975 to 1995 where the average mortgage rate was about 12%. It is only in the last decade that it has been consistently below 5%, and that is not sustainable.
The government is repeating the same mistakes of 30 years ago. At best, we are mortgaging our children's future. At worst, we are going to face another debt crisis, like Paul Martin did. The Liberals are spending money now, knowing that inflation is going to cost our younger generations.
What did we get for all this spending? We got $52 million for Liberal pet project A, and $300 million for Liberal pet project B, and hundreds of billions more split up against other Liberal pet projects. Will some of these benefit Canadians? Time will tell. Will the cost of Liberals buying votes for the next election burden generations of Canadians to come? Absolutely.
I want to turn to my home riding of Saskatoon West. Our Saskatchewan economy is built on agriculture, mining, forestry and energy. Saskatoon West is the centre of many of these industries. Our downtown houses many head offices. We have industrial parks, and we have a large railway switching hub and an airport that services all of Saskatchewan, especially the north.
I want to talk specifically about the energy sector. I sit on the environment committee, so I have a unique perspective. The budget was a missed opportunity to grow Canada's largest economic sector. In fact, the Liberals are failing our energy sector. Energy East, of course, cancelled. Teck Resources, Kitimat LNG cancelled. Keystone XL cancelled just this week. The Trans Mountain pipeline is in limbo. Also in limbo is Enbridge Line 5, which delivers much of western Canadian oil to Ontario and Quebec via the U.S.A.
What about small businesses in Saskatoon West? I have been a consistent advocate. The Liberal COVID-19 programs failed small businesses. The initial rent program was horribly designed, and left most tenants without help. The wage subsidy was initially written to exclude most workers, and we had to push the government for the rules to be changed. Then, of course, the CRA began auditing small businesses. We had to put forward a motion to end those unnecessary audits. I have spoken about these issues. Conservatives will continue to be there for small business.
I graduated from university as an accountant, and I worked for many years in business management. I worked in different companies, from large multinational businesses to owning and operating my own small business. The reason I ran for office here stemmed from my desire to bring some business acumen to the federal government. I believe we need a good cross-section of skills. We need drama teachers and journalists, but we also need financially minded people who understand economics and monetary policy. I think this budget proves my point very well.
This is an election budget. The foundational question was not what is in the best interests of Canadians. It was, what is the surefire way to get re-elected. Canadians can see right through this. That is why the people of Saskatoon West elected a Conservative MP in 2019, and that is why we need to elect more Conservative MPs next time. Only a Conservative government could secure our economy and secure our future.
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
2021-06-08 16:28 [p.8124]
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for South Surrey—White Rock.
We have a decision to make as to whether we want to be a property-owning democracy or a landed aristocracy. That might seem stark, and it is, but it is also true. It is 100% true if we look at the facts.
According to CMHC, for a house to be affordable it should not consume more than 30% of a family's income. Currently, in Canada, the average house would consume 50% of the average family's household income. In other words, the average house is two-thirds more expensive than the average family can presently afford. That is just the average. Across Canada, there are more extreme examples.
For example, in Toronto it takes 68% of the average family's income to own the average house. In Vancouver it is 79%, and that is 79% of pre-tax income, which means that it is mathematically impossible, not just difficult, for the average Vancouverite to own the average home. Why is that? It is because people do not have 79% of their pre-tax income left when the government is done with them. Even if they spent 100% of their post-tax income, it would not be enough. Even if they ate no food, bought no clothes and had zero recreation they would not have enough money, as average Vancouverites, to own the average home.
What is causing that? Why is it that Vancouver is the second-most expensive housing market in the world when we compare average income with average house price? Toronto is number five. Both of them are ahead of Manhattan, London, England, and San Francisco: places with more people, more money and much less land. Is it because we do not have enough land in Canada? We are the 10th-least population dense country in the world. There are more places where there is nobody than there are places where there is anybody in Canada. If we spread our population out equally across the land, there would be only one person standing on every three CFL-sized football fields. That is how much land we have in this country, yet somehow we have a housing shortage. Clearly, it is not because of a lack of land.
Could it be there is a booming economy that is driving up housing prices? Of course not. The GDP went down $120 billion last year and has not recovered.
What else is it? Is it COVID? COVID should have reduced housing prices. When CMHC testified at the finance committee at the beginning of COVID, it said that the pandemic would reduce housing prices by 14%. The Bank of Canada said it would be a disinflationary event, and it should have been. People were moving farther out into the country where per-square-foot costs are actually lower. Furthermore, their jobs were threatened so they would be less inclined to get approved for mortgages, and their earned wages were down, which means they would have less money with which to pay, which should have driven down housing prices. Instead, housing prices went up. They started going down in April 2020 before rocketing up 40% since that time.
What is the real cause? The answer is that the government is restricting supply and ballooning demand.
Let us start with supply. Here in Canada we have one of the slowest processes on Earth to get from buying land to building on it. In some jurisdictions this takes seven years. In Canada in general, it takes forever to get anything approved. In fact, out of 37 OECD nations, we are ranked number 36 for the time it takes to get a building permit for a warehouse, and it is not much different for housing.
Toronto's per-unit-of-housing cost of government is 50% higher than the average in United States municipalities. The charges alone consume almost a quarter of a million dollars in costs for every new unit of housing built in Toronto. The global cost of government for a new unit of housing in Vancouver is $600,000. That is just to pay the cost of government.
This, of course, keeps aristocratic, leafy neighbourhoods gentrified and keeps other people out. It makes the rich richer because they get to have an exclusive domain over these neighbourhoods, where no one else can build and get in. That is very good if someone already has a house as it increases their wealth, but those who are not yet in are shut out. It is as if there was a wall built around these neighbourhoods, where only the rich are allowed inside the wall and everyone else has to try to pay the gatekeeper to get in, but of course most cannot afford to do so. Therefore, the government restricts supply.
What does the government do with demand? It has pumped $356 billion of brand new, created currency into the financial system. The Bank of Canada began printing money in March of 2020, and from February of that year to February of this year the money supply grew by $354 billion. What was the size of the federal deficit? It was $354 billion, exactly the same number, so the printed money was to pay for the government's overspending.
What did that do to inflation? As we know, inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon. As the supply of money goes up, prices rise with it, and this started with housing prices. In fact, from Q1 2020 to Q1 2021, the money that went into the financial system and the mortgage system increased new mortgage borrowing by 41%. Does anyone know what the price increase was for housing between April of last year and April of this year? It was 42%. The newly created money jacked up mortgage borrowing by 41% and housing prices by 42%. Is it coincidence? Of course not. These are the simple laws of supply and demand, and they are working very well for the very rich.
For someone who owns a $10-million mansion, the increase in that person's home value, depending on which month to month is chosen, is somewhere between $3 million and $4 million. That is money that individual gets for doing absolutely nothing. For a working class person with the dream of buying a home, that dream just got more remote and more unlikely. Furthermore, landlords are about to raise people's rents because the cost of property has risen. He or she will use this, perhaps in some cases unavoidably so, to raise the rents of the people who live there. The wages of working-class people measured in the amount of real estate they can buy are down in value by 30% to 40% in just one year. Meanwhile, the wealth of the super rich is way up. Printing money raises the prices of the things that the poor must buy and that the rich already own. It is a colossal wealth transfer from the working wage earner to the wealthy asset owner.
What do we do? Sometimes the answers are actually simple: not easy, but simple. We should open up the country to construction so we build more homes and increase supply, and we should stop printing money in order to avoid pumping helium into prices. In other words, we should start building and stop printing. It is more about what the government should stop doing than what it should start doing. It should allow people to keep the value of their dollar, to buy things that are of worth with that dollar and build things that will make their lives better. That is how we restore our property-owning democracy. It is how we go back from today's aristocracy to what Canada should be, which is a meritocracy.
View Brad Redekopp Profile
CPC (SK)
View Brad Redekopp Profile
2021-06-08 17:29 [p.8133]
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam.
It is my privilege to rise in the House to speak today. Housing is an issue that was important to me before becoming an MP, because in my previous job I owned a small home-building business and we built about 60 homes in the space of 10 years. Today I want to share some of the knowledge I gained over the years of building houses.
The question I want to address is how the federal government impacts the cost of housing. First of all, I want to talk about regulations. Many regulations are provincial and local, but the federal government does have significant impact when it comes to the Canadian building codes. They are set by the National Research Council every few years and then adopted by the provinces.
We always speak about the positive changes that come out of the building code changes. For example, most recently there was lots of talk about insulation, insulated basements and insulated concrete floors, etc. We must remember that everything costs more when we add new features and new things to buildings. There are more materials, more labour and sometimes more costs for testing, such as when we have to test for radon, for example.
We have to be careful when we introduce new rules, new legislation and new building codes because we have to balance the cost of these improvements with the cost that will end up in the cost of the home. If we introduce too much bureaucracy and too much cost, then that affects the consumers and the affordability of houses.
We need simple programs, not complicated bureaucratic ones. A good example of that is in Saskatchewan, with the Saskatchewan home renovation tax credit. Essentially, if people have a project that fits the category, they get the work done, get the receipt, put it on their tax return and get the money back as a tax refund. It is quite simple.
We can contrast that to the Canada greener homes grant recently introduced by the Liberals, which is quite a bit more bureaucratic. For that, people have to actually get an audit done, first of all, to measure the baseline efficiency of their house. Then they get the work done, and then they have a second audit to see if there is an improvement. It is a program with excessive bureaucracy.
I want to contrast that with the CERB program. Of course, that was a program that gave $2,000 a month to people at the beginning of the pandemic. This was a program with almost no rules, no audits and very few checks. It was just money for everyone. Now, it was a pandemic, I understand, but in hindsight I think nearly everybody would agree that it was a little too easy to get money out of that program. If we compare that to the greener homes grant, where there is all this bureaucracy, essentially the government is assuming that people are trying to cheat and trying to get money they do not deserve.
We need to find a balance here, where there are appropriate checks and care given, but it is not too bureaucratic and does not create too many onerous problems. It needs to be simple.
The second thing I want to talk about is monetary policy. This is perhaps the most important. When my wife and I bought our first house in 1989, we paid an interest rate of 13%. To put that in perspective, if a 2% interest rate today is a $1,000 payment, if the interest rate were to change to 13%, that $1,000 payment becomes $2,700. Even if the interest rate only went up to 5%, that $1,000 payment still becomes $1,500 a month.
The government has made a trillion-dollar bet that interest rates are going to stay low forever, but history tells us otherwise. From 1965 to now, the average five-year mortgage rate was approximately 9%. There was a 20-year period in there from 1975 to 1995 when the average rate was about 12%. It is only in the last decade that the average mortgage rate has been below 5%.
Where are interest rates going in the future? Nobody knows for sure. However, the failed policies of the Liberal government are causing significant deficit spending. Deficit spending eventually causes inflation, and inflation will drive house affordability further out of reach for Canadians.
High prices also cause people to opt into high-ratio mortgages. I had an example of a customer who planned to build a house with me with a 5% down payment. I explained to them what the bank did not want to explain, which is that the CMHC charges them a fee for a 5% down payment mortgage, and that fee is 4%. Essentially, it wipes out their down payment completely. Once the customer understood that, they chose to wait and try to save for a larger down payment.
This is where the government can lead. Instead of the government's failed first-time home buyer program, people need a real program. We could increase amortization periods, improve mortgage terms and possibly create a tax incentive to allow people to save for their down payment.
The third area that I want to talk about is rental housing. There has been very little new rental housing built in Saskatoon recently, and in fact in Canada. The simple reason is that developers can make more money by building condos. The government may need to introduce some measures to gently prod the market toward more rental products.
This was done before, around 1980, through the program called the MURB program. This incentivized investors to build rental properties, and it worked great. There were 195,000 units built at a cost of about $2 billion in today's dollars. Let us compare that to the Liberals' national housing strategy. It proposes to build 71,000 units for $26 billion. It would be $26 billion to get 71,000 units, as opposed to $2 billion to get 195,000 units. It seems to me that the program from 40 years ago has a much better ROI, and perhaps the Liberal government should look at that program as it designs its program.
In February we hosted a town hall to discuss housing. What I heard was that affordable housing is key, not just for the obvious things, but for physical and mental health. In Saskatoon at any given time, there are approximately 475 homeless adults. I have received over 210 emails and letters on this issue since becoming an MP. The rapid housing initiative was supposed to address Saskatoon's housing needs, but there was no money in the big city stream for Saskatoon, and in the project stream, applications from Saskatoon were all denied by the government.
I supported three projects in Saskatoon West. I wrote letters and spoke to the parliamentary secretary. The Lighthouse application consisted of an acquisition and upgrading of a motel facility to add residential transitional housing. What was the result? There was no funding. The Saskatoon Tribal Council currently runs the White Buffalo Youth Lodge in my riding, and it has many housing options for indigenous people. It also proposed to buy a hotel and convert it to housing. What did the Liberals do? They denied it. The Salvation Army project in my city was the same story. The Liberal rapid housing initiative failed Saskatoon.
I want to remind the House of the homelessness partnering strategy of the former Conservative government. The HPS of the Harper government earmarked funds for certain regions and then let those regions decide for themselves what specific projects to fund. In Saskatoon, a board of local experts was created to make these investment decisions. They took the decision power away from the politicians and gave it to local people on the ground. They knew exactly where the money needed to be spent. With the rapid housing initiative, those decisions remained in Ottawa, with the politicians. Is it any surprise that Saskatoon, with no hope of a Liberal politician, failed to get any money?
Right now in Saskatoon, rental rates are high, availability is low and the quality is poor. This disproportionately affects single mothers, indigenous people, low-income people and new immigrants. It is especially hard for those living on social assistance, as the allowance for rent is not enough to cover the actual cost of rent.
Conservatives have solutions to Canada's housing crisis, and they are in the text of the motion today. If we put that together with our plan for mental health, we really have something good. I hope the Liberals heed the call. If not, Conservatives will secure our housing when we are elected.
As I close, I could not help but think of immigrants and newcomers as I was putting together these thoughts today. I could not stop thinking about the Muslim family killed in London, Ontario, on Sunday. It takes great bravery to leave one's home, country and family to make a new life in Canada. It takes strong courage to begin living in a country where one has few friends or family, and often one does not speak the language. It is difficult to find a good home to live in, as we have been talking about today. However, someone should not have to worry about their basic safety. That is one of the reasons they chose Canada.
To my good friends Hasan, Ilyas, Afzal, Mohammad, Sadiq, Assad, Sayad, and to all Muslims in Saskatoon and Canada, I am so sorry that one hate-filled man has caused so many to live in fear. He does not represent Canada. I am sorry that they feel afraid on the streets; they should not. To all Canadians, let us work hard to make our streets safe for all ages, all genders, all nationalities and all religions.
View David Yurdiga Profile
CPC (AB)
Madam Speaker, the government has borrowed and spent an unprecedented amount of money in the time they have been in power. In the past year alone, the debt-to-GDP ratio has grown by almost 20%.
If the government insists on dumping all this new spending onto the Canadian economy, how does the Prime Minister expect the prices will not rise? Why is the Liberal government forcing Canadian people to endure the massive inflation that is coming?
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-06-04 12:09 [p.7980]
Madam Speaker, this is a key example of where Conservative ideology gets in the way of formulating successful policy. If he has complaints about the amount of money we are spending, I would point him to the major credit rating agencies. He can take his pick.
Moody's, S&P and DBRS have all reaffirmed Canada's AAA credit rating. If he is concerned about our debt-to-GDP ratio, I would point him to the fact that we have the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio of any G7 economy.
The reality is that when we launched into this public health emergency of a scale we have never seen before, we decided we would be there for people and for businesses. The effect of that response—
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-05-28 11:17 [p.7553]
Madam Speaker, on Wednesday evening I asked the Minister of Finance if she knew what the inflation rate in Canada was and I got no answer.
I asked her if she knew what the Bank of Canada's target inflation rate was and I got no answer.
By feigning ignorance, she is showing that she has no idea what is going on in Canada right now. Everything costs more, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed yesterday that interest on this government's astronomical debt will cost $3.4 billion more a year.
Why did the minister fail to present a credible economic plan to Canadians?
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