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Mr. Chair, voting against every measure we bring to this House to help young people access their dream of home ownership is not much of a plan either.
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Mr. Chair, the member opposite and his party believe in doing less and in investing less in housing, and that somehow that will magically result in more housing being built in Canada. We believe the federal government has a leadership role to play in housing. They do not. That is the fundamental difference.
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Mr. Chair, it is not fearmongering to actually do something about a challenge. Fearmongering is voting against real measures to help Canadians, Canadian renters, homebuyers and the most vulnerable find a place to call home, and then coming to the House of Commons to express fake outrage about something the Conservatives continually vote against, which is real help for Canadians. It is hard to take…
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Mr. Chair, will the member opposite finally admit their plan to vote against the housing accelerator fund, which is exactly about creating more supply so that more Canadians have access to more homes through home ownership and rent, was a bad idea?
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Mr. Chair, we do not believe in railing against mayors. We do not believe in insulting elected officials. We believe in working with them because that is how we get more homes built in Canada.
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Mr. Chair, we have a plan. It is called the national housing strategy. One of its programs is the housing accelerator fund, which is about making systemic changes at the local level to build more housing.
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Mr. Chair, one of the hon. members is heckling me about gatekeeping. His leader is the biggest gatekeeper in this Parliament. He has voted against every measure to help Canadian homeowners, to help the most vulnerable and to help build more supply. That is a fact.
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Mr. Chair, I am proud of the fact that our government has issued new guidelines to help those who already have mortgages so they are not threatened with high interest rates and higher payments. We are doing what we can to help those who already hold mortgages, while, at the same time, helping first-time homebuyers by setting up the first- time homebuyers' savings account, which the hon. member vot…
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Mr. Chair, can the hon. member tell us how attacking and insulting mayors actually leads to building more rental units?
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Mr. Chair, could the hon. member tell us, with his cuts to housing, which programs they would cut from the national housing strategy? They believe in cutting their—
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Mr. Chair, can the hon. member tell us how he votes against the housing accelerator fund, but expects more housing supply, including rental—
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Mr. Chair, what I do know is that the Conservative Party, when in power, did nothing to help Canadian renters. We introduced the Canada housing benefit, which is helping renters.
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Mr. Chair, they absolutely do not care about Canadian renters because, if they did, they would not have voted against the Canada housing benefit or the top-up to the Canada housing benefit. In the member's own province of Alberta, the Canada housing benefit is helping 35,000 households. He voted against it.
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Mr. Chair, they vote against rental supports and vote against more supply, but hopefully everything will work out because the free market will take care of it. That is exactly the kind of magical thinking that they have on that side of the House. We actually believe in a federal leadership role in housing, in more support for renters and in more supply for Canadians.
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Mr. Chair, the national housing strategy has resulted in the creation, building and repair of almost half a million homes and the support of almost two million households. That is our record.
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Mr. Chair, it is very rich listening to that side of the House talking about how many units were built, how many were created, how many were repaired and how many people were helped, when he voted against every one of those measures to help Canadians.
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Mr. Chair, for one last time, does the party opposite believe that Canadians have a right to housing, yes or no?
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Mr. Chair, how does the party opposite fall so morally bankrupt that the members believe in magical thinking that says that we can cut programs and cut investment, but somehow build more housing? That is incredible. The fact that they can say that with a straight face is concerning. I know that Canadians see through that because the Conservatives have voted against every single measure to help Can…
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Mr. Chair, I am proud to work with the municipalities to build more supply. The Conservatives talk about getting rid of gatekeepers. He should start with his leader. His leader is the biggest gatekeeper in the House, voting against every measure to increase supply, increase affordability and to help vulnerable Canadians.
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Mr. Chair, that is the kind of rhetoric that keeps coming from that side. They say, “Canada is broken.” Canada is not broken. Canada is the best country in the world, and people are eager to come to Canada to help us grow our economy and create more prosperity in this country.
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Mr. Chair, that question points to the need for collaboration. Of course, the federal government has a very important leadership role to play in unlocking more housing supply across the country. We have the fastest-growing population of the G7 but very low housing supply. The federal government has a key role to play in that, but we cannot do it alone. We need collaboration and partnership from th…
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Mr. Chair, it is very telling that there are a number of former mayors in this House; some of them sit on that side of the House and have to listen to their own leader attacking mayors, calling them “woke” and “incompetent”. That is an affront to municipally elected local officials, who have been elected by Canadians to address issues around the permitting and delivery of housing.
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Mr. Chair, we will do so by taking the investment under the housing accelerator fund, $4 billion, which will go directly to municipalities, local governments, indigenous communities and other governments to build more housing supply. How are we going to do that? We will invest in their systems, their ability to permit housing and deliver it faster. We will also present plans and incentivize them t…
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Mr. Chair, it is very perplexing. Conservatives talk about, for example, connecting housing to infrastructure. We have been doing that for two years. They talk about investing in municipalities and removing the obstacles to more supply. That is exactly what the housing accelerator fund will do. We are very much perplexed by the fact that they keep voting against the measures and investments that a…
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Mr. Chair, it is possible because we launched the housing accelerator fund in the morning, and the leader of the official opposition came up with this plan for more housing supply the same afternoon. However, their copy job was not good enough because it did not even capture the breadth and comprehensiveness of our plan.
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Mr. Chair, with all due respect, I know how this committee of the whole works. I am pointing out the hypocrisy of not helping Canadian renters and then standing here and talking about rent as if they care.
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Mr. Chair, I would like to know how the Conservatives plan to cut supports for renters and then stand here and pretend to care about renters.
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Mr. Chair, I also noticed that you are not giving me the same amount of time as the questioner to answer.
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Mr. Chair, I will take the party opposite's rhetoric on housing seriously when it actually produces a real plan on housing.
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Mr. Chair, we on this side of the House believe in the right to housing. They do not.
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Mr. Chair, the hon. member should talk to members of her caucus, who believe we should do less on housing.
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Mr. Chair, we know that one of the solutions to higher housing prices is more supply. We brought in measures to create more supply. The Conservatives voted against it.
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Mr. Chair, do the Conservatives have a plan for housing, or do they just have rhetoric and buzzwords?
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Mr. Chair, the Conservatives do not have a plan. All they have is gimmicks and buzzwords.
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Mr. Chair, I do want to speak about housing. The problem is the Conservatives have no plan, and they stand here, pretending to care about Canadians and getting help to them, but they vote against all the measures we bring to this House.
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Mr. Chair, almost half a million homes built or repaired is a significant impact. Almost two million Canadian households helped through the national housing strategy is a significant impact. Is the hon. member denigrating that number and minimizing the impact?
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Mr. Chair, first of all, all the amounts of money have not all been spent, because this is a 10-year plan. It is a long-term plan. It is a stable plan. It is a predictable plan. The impacts are already there. We have seen almost half a million homes repaired or built, and almost two million Canadian households have been positively impacted by the national housing strategy.
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Mr. Chair, I have provided the hon. member with the current numbers based on all the investments that we have made. I have made those numbers clear, twice, in my answers. What is rich is that this is the party that has voted no all along, to all those investments that have delivered all the units that I just mentioned.
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Mr. Chair, we have spent over $30 billion on housing investments, creating 118,000 new units and repairing almost 300,000 units of affordable housing.
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Mr. Chair, what is interesting to learn from that question is that it is almost as if the party opposite is just discovering the notion of making federal lands and property available for affordable housing. I have news to break to them, we have been doing this since the beginning of the national housing strategy in 2017. Conservatives have just come around to the idea now. Even then, the idea is a…
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Mr. Chair, he is the one who is taking Canadians for fools, because he thinks he can vote against all the investments in affordable housing, including the federal lands initiative, which is doing exactly what he pretends to care about, and yet he comes back to this House and says that he cares about all these issues. The voting record shows that the member has voted, every single time, against inv…
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Mr. Chair, it is called the federal lands initiative. We have had this program for a number of years. The hon. member has come around to the utility of this program, and I congratulate him for coming around to this idea, but he is a number of years late into this program.
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Mr. Chair, the hon. member must know or at least ought to know that CMHC, as a Crown corporation, makes decisions regarding mortgage insurance criteria and questions regarding compensation for its staff independently.
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Mr. Chair, no minister of the Crown makes or has ever made decisions in terms of an independent Crown corporation's employee compensation system. The hon. member knows that or ought to know that.
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Mr. Chair, it is embarrassing to listen to this kind of questioning, because the hon. member should know or knows that no minister of the Crown is responsible for the compensation determined by an independent Crown corporation.
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Mr. Chair, I think the hon. member is absolutely on brand in attacking civil servants, which is what the Conservatives did when they were in government for almost nine years. I am not going to take that bait. The hon. member knows or should know that no minister of the Crown has ever made a determination on the employee compensation by an independent Crown corporation. He knows that. He can play a…
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Mr. Chair, for almost a decade, the party opposite, when it was in government, revelled at attacking civil servants, denigrating them and calling them partisan names. We do not do that on this of the House. We respect the independence of Crown corporations. The hon. member, as an hon. member of Parliament, knows or should know that Crown corporations are responsible for determining the compensatio…
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Mr. Chair, the CMHC is an independent Crown corporation and no minister of the Crown will determine the compensation of employees of an independent Crown corporation.
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Mr. Chair, according to the logic of the hon. member, the Crown corporation that is responsible for delivering almost half a million repairs and new homes as part of the national housing strategy is not entitled to determine its own compensation for its employees. We are not going to play that game on this side of the House.
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