Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, where are the results? The Prime Minister promised to double the pace of housing construction to almost 500,000 new homes a year, but his own budget watchdog said his new $13-billion housing agency will build only about 5,000 homes. The CMHC's chief economist pointed this week to “weaker momentum for future supply”. Meanwhile, Canada's home prices are up 28% since 2015. Canada has the worst housing affordability in all of the G7. My question is simple. Will the Prime Minister stand and defend his record?

Mr. Speaker, the member just described what happens in a recession. The fact is that Canadians need results. This Prime Minister promised results. In fact, he promised to build at a speed not seen in a generation, but all he has delivered in his first year is a third federal housing bureaucracy with no targets, no timelines and no results. He has given Canadians higher costs, higher debt and fewer homes. His regular news conferences in front of that housing construction project in the south end of Ottawa every Monday are not going to fool Canadians much longer. Home construction is slowing. The crisis is getting worse. Where are the results?

Mr. Speaker, home builders and homebuyers in Ontario are still waiting for the federal government to finalize the regulations to permit them to rebate the HST on all new homes. This is creating more confusion and uncertainty in the market, and it is leaving both buyers and builders in limbo. My question is very simple: On what date will the Liberal government finally live up to its promise? I want no rambling, just a date.

Mr. Speaker, what I find most troubling about this particular bill is that it is not too dissimilar from the government's Build Canada Homes creation, an agency created with $13 billion, with zero targets, zero metrics and no transparency. Nobody knows how it is really supposed to work or what it is going to do. It is just going to do non-market housing. The bill before us would involve $1.713 billion that the minister could spend at his whim. There is nothing in the bill about what the metrics would be nor what the housing needs are by province. It is just $1.713 billion, and the Minister of Finance could spend it however he chooses on housing supply. There would be no requirement for him to talk to the Minister of Housing. There would be no requirement for him to understand CMHC data on the need by province. It is nothing. It would just be a blank cheque for the Minister of Finance. The House is responsible for the public purse. Why would there be no scrutiny of the $1.713 billion?

Mr. Speaker, could the minister explain to the House why we are rushing through this bill now, keeping in mind, of course, that the federal government now has four federal housing agencies? We started with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation which is the original Crown corporation that actually solved the crisis after the Second World War. Then there was the Canada Lands Company which is a Crown corporation as well. It was created after CN was spun off. They develop land and do it reasonably well. There is the ministry. Then they created this thing called Build Canada Homes, which was another agency. Now, in the final stages of the sitting in this session, the Liberals are scrambling to move this time allocation to not just have this agency but to turn it into a Crown corporation. For the record, if people are counting, that makes three federal Crown corporations engaged in the housing file, on top of the Department of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities. I guess the question has two parts. Why do we need a fourth housing agency, a third federal Crown corporation, and why are we rushing through to get this corporation created?

Madam Speaker, I find it interesting that back in 2017, when the Trudeau government came out with its national housing strategy, it gave it to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the first federal Crown corporation for housing, which delivered those programs, among other things. The CMHC does a lot of research on housing, probably more research than any other group in the country, in fact, and it is well respected. It also insures mortgages. I find it interesting that this fourth federal housing agency, the third Crown corporation for federal housing, is being created with no clear timelines or targets as to how many units would be built. I actually asked the CMHC the other day if the government had discussed with it what the targets should be, based on the need that exists out there. It said there has been no discussion. I wonder if the minister could explain to the House how the government justifies a $13‑billion fourth federal creation for housing, having done no research to provide it data on the number of units it needs to have built for non-market housing.

Madam Speaker, I do not think the minister entirely understood my question. When I asked him why there were no targets with this new $13-billion agency, the fourth agency, he explained to me what each of them does. Here is a news flash: I understand what each of them does. I just do not understand why we have created a fourth one. Then I asked very specifically why we would create a third federal Crown corporation and give it $13 billion and no targets other than to say that it is going to focus on non-market housing. The pre-eminent researcher on housing in the country is the first federal Crown corporation on housing, the CMHC. It does all the research. Why has the third Crown corporation not talked to the first Crown corporation? Why has the minister not talked to the first Crown corporation to give this thing some targets and put some parameters around it? This is $13 billion of Canadian taxpayers' dollars, and there are no targets. Why is this?

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting. As we are here to discuss third reading of Bill C-20, the Build Canada Homes act, I have been sort of reflecting a bit. Of course, I have spoken on this issue a few times. I have spoken on housing many times in the House of Commons, in committee and certainly around the country. I guess it is no secret that I spent most of my adult life in local government, in municipal politics. I have sat in municipal council chambers and planning committee meetings, and I have also worked with a lot of local builders and understand the process they have to go through to get things approved. During my time as a mayor, I devoted an awful lot of time trying to speed up processes, and when things got stalled about 10 years ago, I was part of the charge at our district council to cut development charges by 50%. We were thinking ahead back then. Now, of course, here we are still talking about the development charges in this country. I guess if there is one thing I would regret from my time there, it is that I did not change the systems well enough. I worked within them to keep things moving, but after I left, things slowed down again a bit, I think. It would have been good if I had done things to change the process. If we fast-forward, we are now here in this place. I thought that, in a time of crisis, this place might work in such a way that we would see what the problems that created the crisis were and that we would work together to find a way to clear the bottlenecks that make it harder and more expensive to build homes. However, if we look at Bill C-20 today, I have to say I find my patience is a little worn. We are in the middle of a housing crisis that is actively compounding. It is getting worse every single month for young families and young professionals. Interestingly enough, I think it is also getting worse for seniors. We probably do not talk enough about seniors and how the housing crisis affects them. If people cannot afford to buy, that means they cannot afford to get into the market, which means the market is not healthy. This means, for the people who were planning to use the equity built up in their home to help fund their retirement, if they cannot afford to sell, they are kind of trapped there. We need movement in this system. This is something that affects all generations, not just young people, but that is mostly who we talk about. After all the debates and the discussion in this place, it is really frustrating that the government's response to this crisis of bureaucracy, pace, process and fees is the creation of a brand new, multi-billion-dollar federal bureaucracy called the Build Canada Homes corporation. For the record, I just want to make sure all Canadians know that I am not talking about a new agency. I am talking about the fourth federal housing agency. We are all familiar with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the work it does. It was created right after the Second World War, and it did miraculous things by getting things out of the way and just getting things built. We solved that housing crisis then in about 10 years. We also have, of course, the Canada Lands Company, which was created and actually does development. It uses federal lands to develop. I hear the members opposite talking about how this Build Canada Homes agency is going to build on federal lands, even though there already is one doing that. We are at a point of real crisis in our country on the housing file. I think people maybe thought that, when they elected this new Prime Minister, there was going to be some kind of shift from the past. They were promised this technocratic competence, a sort of practical delivery. We were told that we were going to get this economic mastermind. He has been the governor of a couple of banks, such as the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. We thought we were going to get this leader who would move past the superficial politics of the past and bring this cold, hard managerial excellence to federal operations. Instead, though, it has actually been a bit of a disappointment, a bit of an illusion, I would say. What we see now is the style over substance that we had with the previous government. I can give examples. The first one would be that, like clockwork, on Monday mornings, the Prime Minister puts on a nice, new, clean hard hat, puts on a fancy, brand new, high-visibility vest, and he goes out into the suburbs of Ottawa and stands in front of a housing construction project for a nice photo op. I have to say that the Prime Minister looks like he is straight out of central casting. He looks really good in that get-up. It looks really exciting, because the image says that the Liberals are getting things done, that they are building. The staging is really immaculate. If members have not seen it, I encourage them to take a look. It is really good stuff. He holds these press conferences, but the interesting thing about press conferences, photo ops, talking points and bureaucracy is that they do not get homes built. They do not pour concrete. As it turns out, posing with a golden shovel does not get a roof over a family's head. The hard truth is that, while the Prime Minister is out there modelling safety gear for his communications team, actual housing starts in this country, which we are studying at the human resources committee, are declining. They are declining at a time when the first federal housing Crown corporation, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which does more research than anybody else on housing in this country, has reported that Canada needs to build between 430,000 and 480,000 homes per year just to reach affordability for all homes. We cannot even build 250,000 homes a year, and starts are declining. It is getting worse. This is what I find so incredibly frustrating. I think Canadians find it incredibly frustrating as well. At committee we looked at the actual structural design of this bill and this agency. We asked housing experts to come and tell us what they thought, and they exposed the reality. Do not get me wrong. We brought in some of the sharpest minds on this. There were builders and experts. Dr. Mike Moffatt was mentioned, who is a well-known expert on this file. Of course, everyone is very polite at committee, because that is what we do. We are polite. However, when we strip away all the polite language and the niceties at committee, their collective verdict was actually kind of devastating. Maybe the Liberal members did not hear this, but I heard over and again that if it were up to them, they would never have created this fourth federal housing agency. As it turns out, Canada does not suffer from a shortage of housing agencies. We already have the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. We have the Canada Lands Company, which develops on federal land. At the very time that Canada needs less government bureaucracy, costs, processes and painful work to get permission to build a house in this country, the government has responded with more bureaucracy. We saw the limits of this approach even with the launch of this thing. Everyone remembers, I am sure, when the Liberals proudly announcing the first six projects that were going to be done under the Build Canada Homes banner on federal lands. It was very exciting. It was evidence that they were hitting the ground running. Even before they turned it into a Crown corporation, it was an agency of the government. There were six new projects. It was so exciting. There was great fanfare. As it turns out, there were really good photo ops and staging. I will tell members that they really looked good. However, the truth is that those six projects they announced were already well under way by the second federal Crown corporation called the Canada Lands Company. It already had the land. It had already done a lot of the planning. Some of the units had already been built on some of these sites. They were presented as this proof that Build Canada Homes was going to develop faster on federal lands. Build Canada Homes did none of those things. What it did was adopt projects that were already years in the making and already well under way. If the Liberals slap a new corporate logo on the side of a train that has left a station and is moving down the track and then claim they built the engine, that is ridiculous. It is rebranding. They have rebranded the Canada Lands Company projects and called them Build Canada Homes projects. We are supposed to celebrate that because apparently it is building more homes, when really all they have done is slapped a new logo on it. If the Prime Minister really wanted to accelerate federal land development, he could expand the existing mandate of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which is an agency that has broad legislative authority. In 2017, it was handed the bulk of the government's national housing strategy to deliver programs. It was not really used to delivering direct programs anymore, but it scaled up and got things going, and for years delivered on these various different programs. However, instead of expanding the mandate or giving new directions to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation or the Canada Lands Company, which is already actively doing development, the Prime Minister has created a whole new parallel executive suite with new corporate rules. It has been a year. The Liberal government has built no homes, yet here we are celebrating. Not only have we created a new agency, but now we are going to jam through a piece of legislation that turns that new agency into a federal Crown corporation, as I pointed out, the third federal Crown corporation. I still do not know why we are celebrating that. The truth is the failure goes even deeper than just the administrative burden of this new thing. Experts like Mike Moffatt told the HUMA committee that they would not have done this either. At the same time, one of the problems with what the government has created is that there is a staggering lack of any concrete targets, clear definitions or binding timelines. Everybody should think about this for a second. This is a brand new fourth federal housing agency, the third new federal Crown corporation for housing. It has been given $13 billion and there are zero targets for how many units it is supposed to get done. The government says it is going to focus on non-market housing. I asked CMHC about this just the other day. It is the leading researcher on housing. CMHC told us how many units we need to get built in this country. It pointed out that 95% of housing in this country is market housing and 5% is non-market housing. I asked CMHC about this. It is interesting. It does not seem to have any targets. I asked whether the government had had a conversation with CMHC or its research department about maybe what their targets should be. The president and CEO of CMHC said they had not had those discussions. I asked if CMHC had done any research to send the government some targets. I realize it has taken employees from CMHC, so now maybe CMHC does different things, but it still does research. Maybe it could advise on how many non-market housing units the country actually needs. It has not done that. Of course, I asked the minister here, just moments ago, whether he had talked to CMHC and its research department about whether it had done any analysis of just how many units needed to be built. Interestingly enough, the CEO of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation made a comment about how he did not know what their target would be, but that they had a certain amount of money. I said, “Wait a second, this is just based on how much money they have. Shouldn't this be based on the need for non-market housing?” Colleagues may be surprised, but I did not really get an answer to that question because, of course, it is Build Canada Homes. It is the Prime Minister's baby. Everyone is very excited about it and we do not ask too many questions, even though we have a situation today where a housing crisis has been getting worse. The government's response is to create a fourth federal housing agency and give it $13 billion. The minister stood here and said the goal is to get as many homes built as possible. Well, I do not find that very promising for Canadians, who are desperately hoping that one day maybe they might own a house. I look at all these pages down here. They are nice, bright, young people who may want to own a house one day. I worry about that. All we get from the government is more platitudes and more billions of dollars, with no targets. How do we measure success if the government has no goals and sets no targets? It is classic. There is that vast research department there that has advised every agency, the industry, the banks and the government on housing data. The government does not want to talk to CMHC. It is not interested in that. It is not interested in setting targets. In fact, the minister referred to a target for the Build Canada Homes corporation. He said it was just a random number. He did not like that. We got nothing. Obviously, he does not respect the work of CMHC and the research it does. I was talking about using those experts, who have done more analysis on the housing market in Canada than anybody, to help them come up with a number. Right now, we have this new agency. We are rushing through this bill because it needs to be a Crown corporation, because somehow that is going to make it better. I have talked to private and non-profit builders across Canada who already have applications in to this Build Canada Homes apparatus. Interestingly enough, with CMHC, when they had this program, there was an apparatus where builders could follow their application online and see how they were doing. They could reach out to get information about the status of their application. Curiously, there is no such thing with Build Canada Homes, so builders are sitting there waiting and wondering what the status of their file is. They do not know, really, what criteria will be used to adjudicate their file. They do not really know when a decision will be made. There is no way to track the progress. I have to say, as a former mayor who has dealt with this on the front lines, that this uncertainty, this lack of transparency, is a killer. It is a killer of housing development. That investment requires some level of certainty. When a builder does not know where their application stands in the process, capital sits idle. Land loans accumulate interest, because one has to borrow money for the land. Subcontractors cannot be booked. By building an agency with no timelines, no targets and no tracking framework, the government has not just created yet another bureaucracy at a time when we need to reduce bureaucracy; it has actually fixed in place this paralysis by process. It has institutionalized the bureaucracy, and we just do not know when this process is going to be done. Homes are built by builders, not by boards and certainly not by prime ministers and photo ops. The housing experts who came to our HUMA committee made it very clear that they would not have built this agency. The tools were there. They existed, and yet here we are. We have wasted an entire year, as the crisis gets worse, adding a fourth federal layer of bureaucracy and administration. It does not solve a crisis that is rooted in regulatory delays. If we do not fix time, we do not fix costs. Bill C‑20 does not fix time. It simply creates an unaccountable gatekeeper and makes builders wait in the dark. I call it the illusion of competence. We do not need a government that acts like a public relations firm. We need a government that focuses on the quiet, very unglamorous work of clearing the path, eliminating regulatory friction and restoring basic administrative competence. We need to get out of the way of builders and stop subsidizing the bureaucracy. If we stopped subsidizing and creating new agencies and new bureaucracies with billions of dollars, maybe then we would have the resources left over to invest in those important social and supportive housing needs that exist in our country. Maybe if we spent some time talking to the researchers, to get real data on what is needed in this country in terms of the number of social, supportive and non-market housing units, we could create some targets. We could have given the CMHC the tools it needed to make sure that this was happening. Instead, we spent one year creating another bureaucracy, and here we are. The crisis is worse than ever, and the minister has the gall to stand in the House and say that the goal is to get as many built as possible. Liberals say not to worry and to just trust them, because it has only been 11 years and they have created strategies. They have another strategy they want to create for housing for young people specifically. Canadians cannot live on strategies and proclamations and photo ops alone. They need homes. They need governments to stop getting in the way and to reduce the bureaucracy, the cost, the fees and the taxes. This was an opportunity for the government. I thought that maybe this was a Prime Minister who understood the file and understood the issue, that we need to use federal dollars and leverage federal infrastructure investment to get results at the local level, working with provinces and working with cities to get the job done, and to get out of the way. There is absolutely none of that. All we have now is a fourth federal housing bureaucracy with $13 billion, and anyone's guess is as good as mine as to how many units are going to get built. It is a huge disappointment. It is the illusion of action, and Canadians cannot afford it anymore.

Mr. Speaker, the fundamental difference between that member and me is that I recognize the importance of getting things done. Conservatives have proposed all along that we use federal dollars as leverage to make sure that municipalities are getting the job done. I will acknowledge that, in reality, the housing accelerator fund has been useful in some small and rural communities that are already doing really good things. However, in larger centres, where the epicentre of the crisis is, like the GTA and Toronto or the Lower Mainland and Vancouver, in those areas, they have used that money and they have given billions of dollars to cities on promises that they will be better. It has been a failure. It has been another classic Liberal situation where they give a whole bunch of money to cities, have a photo op and pretend that homes get built. It did not work.

Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with my colleague that this is a crisis, in many ways created by the current government. It has been building for years, I grant the Liberals that, but their solutions are, in fact, what the member said: They are building new bureaucracies, creating new agencies, and they give money out based on promises from cities that they will be better. As a case in point, the City of Toronto got the most money of anyone in the housing accelerator fund, $471 million. The Liberals gave it the money and made the deal, and then the City of Toronto, immediately after the ink was dry on that deal, raised its development charges by 40%. Do the Liberals not understand that rising costs make it less affordable and harder to buy a home? They did not get it, and they still do not get it. They are creating more bureaucracy. They are handing money with photo ops, and it is not getting the job done. They are completely ignoring that they are now a big part of the problem.

Mr. Speaker, my colleague always has incredibly insightful questions. That is a very good point. In fact, what has happened with respect to development charges is that the federal government and the provincial government, in Ontario only, have come up with a program to reduce development charges, but not to reduce them unless the local municipality applies to the program. A local municipality can say, “Yes, we are good; we like our development charges at $100,000 a lot”, and that means nothing happens. Those development charges stay high and no results happen. It is all based on whether the municipality agrees to reduce its development charges. Conversely, the Conservative plan would be to leverage municipalities to reduce their fees, and to assist them, absolutely, with the costs of housing-enabling infrastructure, but it would be based on results, not on hopes of things getting better.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say that I am a big fan of that member. We have done some great work together. However, I think she has been afflicted with a very common Liberal problem where she heard what she wanted to hear. There is no question that builders and developers said they would use Build Canada Homes and work with it, that they have to work with the cards they are dealt by this federal government and they are going to work with them. They also said they would not have created this agency if it were up to them. They did say those words. The fact is that all the member heard was that they love Build Canada Homes, they want to work with it and they want to do these things. I also heard the president and CEO of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation say that it was not set up to do the work that Build Canada Homes is now going to do. The interesting thing about this is that, in 2017, when the then federal Liberal government created the national housing strategy, the CMHC was not set up to deliver that either, but it scaled up and did it. This is what is so perplexing about this Liberal plan. They gave the housing project to CMHC in 2017, which scaled up, but now all of a sudden it is incapable of scaling up to deliver this stuff. I do not know why we have a fourth federal housing bureaucracy.

Mr. Speaker, that is another incredibly insightful question from my colleague. He happens to be a builder, and he knows what he is talking about. He has actually built homes, and he understands these changes and what they have done. The real problem with the building codes process federally is, of course, the process itself. There is a whole process that they go through where they make recommendations to make changes to the code. Then provinces may or may not adopt that. The interesting thing about these code review bodies is that they are populated, mostly, not by electricians or plumbers or carpenters, but by lobbyists and salespeople for the people who manufacture these products. In fact, they do not ever consider what the cost implications are of the changes they are making. The Canadian Home Builders' Association reports that over the last 10 years, changes made to the building codes have added over $100,000 to the cost of a home. Not all of those things are common-sense, energy efficiency-type things. They have just added more cost, and there has been no consideration by the national building codes or the National Research Council of what that means for the cost of a new home.

Mr. Speaker, in response to the need to build 500,000 homes per year, the Prime Minister promised to build at a speed not seen in a generation. Today, the housing industry projects a nearly 20% decline in construction over the next three years, while Stats Canada reports that home ownership among young people is at the lowest level it has been since just after the Second World War. Even the Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that housing momentum is vanishing. Housing professionals, and Conservatives I might add, have been warning for years that the greatest threat to building more homes that Canadians can afford is in fact government fees and delays, so what has the Prime Minister done? Well, he spent the last year building the fourth federal housing bureaucracy, an agency that the PBO estimates will only add 26,000 units of the millions we need over the next five years. Here are my suggestions for the Prime Minister: stop building bureaucracy, cut the government delays, cut the fees, cut the taxes, and get out of the way so builders can build and Canadians can afford a home again.

Mr. Speaker, under the Prime Minister, tariffs on steel have doubled, tariffs on lumber have tripled and barriers on Canadian manufacturers have only expanded, yet he has not secured the removal of a single one of those tariffs. While he says those tariffs are part of the reason that Canada's economy is struggling, Mexico is getting close to a deal with the U.S. There are 2.6 million Canadians who depend on trade with the United States for their livelihoods. Why is the Prime Minister dragging this out instead of fighting for tariff-free trade, and when will he deliver the results that he promised Canadian workers?

Mr. Speaker, Canadians have heard this over and over again, but alas, Canadians cannot survive, and their jobs will not survive, on Liberal rhetoric alone. Tariffs are higher, and they are broader. They are hurting Canadian workers, yet the government has not gotten any of them removed. On behalf of the 2.6 million Canadians whose livelihoods depend on trade with the United States, where is the plan? Where are the results?

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are being asked to believe that short-term measures will fix a long-term housing crisis. Meanwhile, Statistics Canada is showing that residential permits are down nearly 5% year over year. In the GTA, new home sales are at a 35-year low. The Liberals are pointing to temporary measures like a one-year tax break and vague promises about costs being reduced by up to 50%. If the Liberals' plan relies on temporary measures, how can Canadians believe that it will deliver the sustained increase in housing supply that Canada so desperately needs?

Mr. Speaker, the minister talked about more of these short-term measures, but Canadians have really been waiting for years. In that time, affordability has worsened and supply has fallen. The Liberals promised to build 500,000 homes a year, but last year not nearly half of that number were built. As it turns out, Liberal promises do not build homes. Canadians cannot wait any longer. At what point will we see the real results that match the scale of what is needed in this country, instead of the illusions the Prime Minister continues to offer?

Mr. Speaker, from the first run of sap to the last maple taffy, communities across our region are coming together to celebrate one of Canada's oldest and sweetest traditions. Whether it is Maple Mayhem at Muskoka Lakes Farm and Winery, the community spirit of the Parry Sound Maple Fest, the energy of the Muskoka Maple Festival in downtown Huntsville, the hands-on experiences of the Muskoka maple trail or a true working sugar bush experience at Hubbert's Maple Products during the Almaguin Maple Festival, there is something happening in every corner of Parry Sound—Muskoka. These events remind us of who we are: hard-working, community-minded and deeply connected to the land and the traditions that built this country. This spring I encourage everyone, locals and visitors alike, to get out, bring their families, support our producers and take part in these incredible celebrations. When people show up, they are not just enjoying maple season, they are supporting the people and communities who make Parry Sound—Muskoka the most incredible place to call home.

Mr. Speaker, it is a new day, and that means there is another CMHC housing report that is warning that housing starts are falling because projects simply no longer work financially. Government taxes, fees and regulations now account for up to half the cost of a new home. When government takes that much, fewer homes get built, so will the Liberal government please just listen to the Conservatives, listen to experts and take the immediate step to improve the economics of housing and eliminate the GST on all new homes?

Mr. Speaker, it is not surprising the minister read only a part of that report, because the report actually talks about how housing starts are falling. They are dropping dramatically, and the reason they are dropping is that the cost of government is just too high and housing construction is too expensive. My question is simple. Instead of creating a fourth federal housing bureaucracy with the new Build Canada Homes, why will the government not deal with the real barriers to home building, which are taxes, fees and approvals, so builders can get building the homes that Canadians can afford?

Madam Speaker, just before my formal remarks, I would like to take one moment to mention that two weeks ago today, I was able to stand in the House and congratulate Megan Oldham from Parry Sound on a bronze medal win at the Olympics in Milan. I am excited to report that, a week ago today, I had the immense privilege of standing at the bottom of the hill and watching her win gold in the big air event. I had never been to the Olympics before, and I have to say that watching a constituent and family friend win gold is a pretty exciting experience. I just want to report that we are obviously immensely proud of Megan in Parry Sound—Muskoka and all across Canada. The town of Parry Sound is actually planning a fairly large community celebration this Saturday, and I will be there. Singing O Canada as a constituent wins gold at the Olympics is something I will never forget. I will move on to the debate today: For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. The warning President John F. Kennedy delivered at the Yale commencement in 1962 is the warning that we need to hear today. President Kennedy knew that nations could drift because of the comfort of assumptions, systems and myths. Today, Canada is living a myth. The myth is that we can solve a housing crisis by expanding bureaucracy, that another agency will compensate for a system that is designed to delay, and that process is the same as decision. The truth is much harder. The problem in this country is not a shortage of process. It is a shortage of permission. Until we confront that truth honestly, housing affordability will not return. Canada's housing crisis did not appear suddenly overnight. It was constructed, layer by layer, over years, over decades, with one additional approval, one new study, one longer consultation, one more appeal mechanism and one more condition layered onto an already complex process. Each individual decision seemed reasonable and each safeguard seemed maybe defensible, yet layered together they produced delay. Delay is not neutral. Delay is a decision and it has a cost. When approvals stretch from months into years, capital sits idle, risk increases and projects that once made economic sense no longer do. As time expands, costs explode, and either those costs are embedded into the final price or the homes are just simply never built. That is not ideological rhetoric. It is simple math. This paralysis by process is measurable in months, in dollars and in lost opportunity. The CMHC estimates that Canada must build between 430,000 and 500,000 homes per year for a sustained period to restore affordability. We are nowhere near that pace. In recent years, housing starts have fallen well below that level. Meanwhile, population growth accelerated. Between 2019 and 2024, for every 100-person increase in the adult population, only a small fraction of ownership housing was added. That imbalance compounds annually. Home ownership among Canadians aged 30 to 34 has declined sharply, rents have risen and carrying costs have increased dramatically. Now, nearly nine in 10 Canadians express concern about housing affordability. This is not some cyclical downturn that will just reset itself. It is structural and it is pervasive. That is not just my diagnosis. I am not just griping as a partisan here. The warnings are everywhere. The OECD has repeatedly identified restrictive zoning, prolonged permitting and fragmented approval systems across levels of government as principal constraints on housing supply in Canada. It has called for as-of-right zoning, predictable and shortened approval timelines, reduced regulatory overlap and alignment between infrastructure funding and housing approvals. Its conclusion is clear: Canada's housing challenge is not primarily a financing issue; it is a supply and regulatory issue. The International Monetary Fund has gone even further. In its article IV consultation, it has warned that housing supply constraints in Canada now represent a macroeconomic risk. They are not simply a social issue, but a macroeconomic risk. Housing shortages fuel inflation, restrict labour mobility, suppress productivity growth and elevate financial vulnerability. When workers cannot move to opportunity, productivity declines. When productivity declines, growth slows, and when growth slows, fiscal capacity weakens. This paralysis by process in housing becomes paralysis in economic growth, so when international institutions flag housing supply as a growth constraint, it is wise for us to listen. Canada does not lack capital, talent or expertise; what Canada lacks is permission. Prime Minister Lester Pearson believed that governments reveal their priorities not through their rhetoric but through what they make it easy to do and what they make it hard to do. In Canada today, it is easier to create a new program than to reform a process, it is easier to announce than to approve, and it is easier to expand bureaucracy than to shorten timelines. That imbalance is not limited to housing, although housing is where its consequences are most visible, which brings us to Bill C-20. Bill C-20 would create the Build Canada Homes corporation, the fourth federal housing bureaucracy and another governance framework and layer of administration. Let us apply the Pearson test. Would it shorten municipal timelines or eliminate duplication or endless review? Would it impose service standards or reduce the tax burden on housing? The answer is quite simply no, it would not. It would reorganize, but it would not reform, and that matters because the crisis we face is not a shortage of institutions; it is an accumulation of delay. Build Canada Homes would not change zoning law, eliminate discretionary rezoning, impose firm timelines on reviews, reduce development or remove environmental duplication charges. It would add a new entity; it would not remove a barrier. If we do not fix time, we do not fix cost; if we do not fix cost, we do not fix affordability. The minister said that we do not need to predict how this new agency is going to work; we already have some evidence. Those first six housing projects on federal lands announced by Build Canada Homes were presented as proof of momentum. They were proof that the new Crown corporation was hitting the ground running and already delivering, yet we know that those lands were already well under development through the Canada Lands Company, an existing federal Crown corporation. The sites had already been identified, transferred and prepared; planning work was already under way; municipal engagement had already begun, and in some cases, approvals were already advancing. Build Canada Homes did not unlock those sites; it inherited them. We all know that rebranding does not increase supply, shorten approvals or break the chains of our process. If greater authority was required, it could have granted that to Canada Lands Company. Instead, the government has layered on another structure, while the underlying approvals system, with all its delays and costs, remains unchanged. We have seen this pattern before from the Liberal government. The housing accelerator fund was introduced with similar language, such as urgency, speed and transformation. Billions were allocated, planning studies were funded, consultants were hired and zoning frameworks were reviewed, but did it eliminate discretionary rezonings, impose binding approval timelines or remove duplication? In many cases, it simply funded more planning. It did not remove process. Money was layered on top of delay and actually subsidized the paralysis. Even the CMHC is not immune. Developers across the country report prolonged underwriting reviews, repeated revisions and changing requirements mid-process. The financing designed to accelerate housing is slowed by administration. With every new agency or program, the signal from the government is very clear: The system is not optimized for speed; it is optimized for review. Review without discipline becomes delay, and delay without reform feeds the paralysis. I find it interesting that when the government seeks to assist the auto sector, as an example, it works directly with the producers. It tries to strengthen their competitiveness; it secures investment for them and works to improve their supply chains. When the government wants to support farmers, it does not create some federal body that plants crops and raises cows. It backs producers, reduces risk and tries to expand markets. However, in housing, instead of empowering builders by reducing delays and costs, the government has created a new bureaucracy. Homes are built by builders, not by boards. At the end of the Second World War, Canada faced a severe housing emergency as well. Nearly one million veterans returned home. Ten years of depression and six years of war had nearly halted construction. By 1946, the country was short more than 200,000 homes. Families were living in temporary huts and converted barracks. The crisis was immediate, yet Canada mobilized. Financing expanded, land was serviced, approvals were streamlined and authority was clear. Housing production increased dramatically through the late 1940s and early 1050s, and within a decade, that shortage was largely overcome. That is not nostalgia; it is a very clear example of urgency a time when the government treated time as the enemy. It is easy for us today to frame this housing crisis as only about young Canadians. It is about young Canadians, but it is important to point out that scarcity affects every generation, because housing supply affects retirement security. When young families cannot afford homes, household formation slows. When household formation slows, economic growth slows. When that growth slows, pension sustainability weakens. When housing markets become distorted by undersupply, volatility increases, and volatility affects home equity. Home equity affects retirement planning. Reduced labour mobility reduces productivity, and that reduced productivity affects tax revenues, those same tax revenues that fund health care and pensions. Housing supply is not a generational wedge issue; it is an issue of national stability. Boomers should care, mid-career Canadians should care and young Canadians already do care. Housing supply is tied to our nation's fiscal health. It is tied to productivity, and that scarcity harms us all. We know this is true because residential construction represents roughly 7% of Canada's GDP. With related industries included, nearly one-fifth of economic activity is connected to housing. When housing slows, construction employment declines, material production declines, mortgage lending slows, and retail contracts and government revenues shrink. Housing anchors fiscal health at every level, so when supply fails, the economic ripple is national. We know that real reform is not about announcing new funds or new agencies. It is about removing friction: expanding as-of-right zoning, imposing building review timelines, aligning infrastructure funding with housing results, reducing the onerous tax burden, coordination across jurisdictions and holding departments accountable for time. None of that requires yet another Crown corporation. It requires government reforming itself at all levels. Following the same playbook of the last 10 years simply will not work. President Kennedy warned about myths: the myth that comfort can replace courage, that process can replace decision and that more administration equals more results. Canada is living that myth right now. As we are trapped in that myth, prices rise, supply continues to fall, opportunity continues to narrow, growth continues to weaken and confidence continues to erode. Prime Minister Pearson believed governments are judged by what they make easy and what they make hard. By that measure, we are failing. It is easy to announce, reorganize and create new agencies, yet it remains hard to approve housing, shorten timelines and remove duplication. It is hard to say “yes”, and Canadians are paying the price for that imbalance. They see it in the cost of every home, the rent paid each month, delayed family plans and slower growth that affects retirement security and public finances alike. That is not abstract. It is absolutely measurable and absolutely reversible. We have built at scale before. We have mobilized nationally before. We have delivered transformative projects before, but the question before this House is not whether Canada can build; it is whether we are prepared to do it again, because when government makes it too hard to build homes, it weakens economic security across all generations for all Canadians. Canada does not lack builders, Canada does not lack capital and Canada does not lack the skill. Canada lacks permission. We must restore urgency. We must restore accountability for time and restore clarity of purpose, and then supply will follow. Canada can build again, but not if we continue pretending that more bureaucracy is actual reform, and not if we continue layering announcements on top of delay. For 10 years, Canadians have been promised strategies, funds, frameworks and agencies, and for 10 long years, affordability has moved further and further out of reach for every Canadian. Home ownership has fallen, rents have risen and starts have slowed. The crisis has deepened. This is not a failure of messaging or announcements; it is a failure of government. Repeating the same formula, another agency, another announcement, another layer, will not produce a different result; it will produce more of the same. If we are serious about restoring affordability, then we must confront the truth. The obstacle is not a lack of government; it is too much government standing in the way. The answer is not a fourth housing bureaucracy; it is the courage to reform the system that created the delays in the first place. Let us choose reform over reorganization. Let us choose timelines over talking points. Let us choose permission over paralysis. Canada can build again, but only if we stop repeating the costly errors of the past and start removing the barriers that caused this crisis and continue to make it worse. Canadians deserve this level of urgency, this level of honesty. This nation has done it before, and we can do it again, but Canadians are running out of time. We must do it now.

Madam Speaker, I suppose the FCM can be forgiven for thinking that there may be some results coming from this government after 10 years, but the fact of the matter remains that the Liberals have created a fourth federal housing bureaucracy. There is the department; there is CMHC, a Crown corporation that has existed since just after the war; there is the Canada Lands Company, which is already developing these projects they announced; and now we have Build Canada Homes, which, by the way, is now responsible for one of the other Crown corporations. My question for the hon. parliamentary secretary is this: How many bureaucracies will we need to solve this crisis? Is it maybe one more? What if this one does not achieve what we want it to do? Will we build another one? The solution is not more bureaucracy; it is about getting the bureaucracy out of the way. I wish this government would simply understand that and help us get the bureaucracy out of the way.

Madam Speaker, I will tell the member right now that, in fact, Quebec is one of the provinces that actually has done fairly well on housing. There is no question that partnerships between the federal level and the provincial level are important. I would simply argue that those partnerships should focus on getting provinces to reduce the burden of endless reviews and consultants' reports. We have to speed up the process required to get things approved in this country. All that time adds cost, and until we reduce that time, we are not going to reduce the cost. This government could do that in partnership with Quebec, as with every other province.

Madam Speaker, that is a very important point, and I probably should have spoken about it more in my speech. I listened to the minister, and I heard all about these new projects. They are all focused on rentals, and there is clearly no question that there is a need for rentals in Canada. It was the first Trudeau prime minister who cancelled the incentivization of building purpose-built rentals, and we see the implications of that today. However, what the government seems to forget is that home ownership is still, in fact, the dream of young people in this country, and until we reduce the cost of new homes, we are just not going to make that a reality. The Liberals will talk about how they have removed the GST on new homes, but only for first-time homebuyers. The problem with that, particularly in the markets where housing is really in crisis, the largest markets in the country, is that the first-time homebuyers do not make up enough of the market of new homes for builders to break ground. As such, it is not enough to actually stimulate the market. Builders are laying people off as we speak, and they are not starting any new projects. We have to reduce the cost overall so that we can get builders building again, and the government is not doing that. This is putting home ownership further and further out of reach. The Conservatives have a plan to actually make home ownership a reality again for Canadians by reducing the cost overall, which includes fees and time.

Madam Speaker, as usual, there is a fundamental flaw with that member's line of argument. I honestly do not understand what he is talking about. There is no question that the federal government has a role. I think I have talked about that many times. He is just not paying attention. That is fine. I do not really expect him to pay attention. The fact of the matter is that, as Conservatives, we would much prefer that Canadians have the opportunity to own their own home rather than rent from the government. It is great that the member wants to build lots of government homes, but Canadians do not want to live in those homes; they want to live in one they own. That is the promise that we would restore.

Madam Speaker, I do not know whether the new Crown corporations talk to the other Crown corporations, but the CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, is the first housing Crown corporation of the government, and it is talking about making sure we build between 430,000 and 500,000 homes a year for the next several years to restore affordability. However, instead of engaging CMHC to help with this project, and instead of engaging Canada Lands Company, the other federal Crown corporation responsible for housing, the government is creating a third one, and it does not have any targets. The government has let the first corporation talk about targets, and it let the newest one take over one of them. Honestly, it makes zero sense to create yet another corporation. The first one has told us what its targets are, and the government would create a new one without targets. It would just be more bureaucracy, and I do not foresee any results coming out of it.

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his work with young people. He focuses a lot on youth employment and unemployment, as it were, and he is quite correct. I have talked to young people all across the country and in my own community, even before I came to this place. Young people hope to own a home. This is something my generation and previous generations simply took for granted. The reality is that we have done it before. It is only over the last 40 years that we have made it so expensive and so hard to get permission to build a home. The way to fix that is to make it easier, and Conservatives would do that.

Madam Speaker, my colleague is a former deputy mayor of the city of Toronto, which is one of the most expensive cities in the country to build a home in. I am sure she is quite familiar with how much cost the local government and the city add to the cost of every new home. I am wondering if she might be able to speak to the cost of government, particularly at the local level, and if she sees a way for the government to do things like reducing the cost of government on the cost of a new home.

Mr. Speaker, I noted that my hon. colleague mentioned some great things going on in the city of London. It is important for us to congratulate Mayor Morgan and his council for some of the things they have done to get housing built faster in that city. What they have focused on is streamlining the process, speeding up approvals and zoning as of right, so people do not have to go through the rezoning process. Interestingly enough, the Liberals did not need Build Canada Homes to do that. They did it already and are getting the job done. I am wondering if the member can explain to the House specifically why Build Canada Homes is required and why the things that they wanted to do could not have been done by the Canada Lands Company, which is a federal Crown corporation; the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which was the first Crown corporation; or maybe even the department. What specifically about the fourth federal housing agency is so crucially important, if London can get it right?

Mr. Speaker, it is a treat to rise today in the House to congratulate Megan Oldham on her incredible bronze medal performance at the Milan Olympics. Megan's achievement is the result of years of hard work, discipline, sacrifice and relentless effort, but the quiet determination it takes to compete on the world stage is what we saw. When Canadians watched Megan stand on the podium, they did not just see a medal. They saw the payoff of commitment, resilience and belief. She reminded young athletes all across Canada that excellence is built one day at a time, often far from the spotlight. On behalf of Canadians, I want to thank Megan for representing our country so beautifully and so classily. Her determination is incredible, and her success is a source of pride for her hometown of Parry Sound, the people of Parry Sound—Muskoka, all Canadians in sport and all of us here in the House. I invite all my colleagues to congratulate Megan on her bronze medal performance.

Mr. Speaker, new home sales in the GTA have fallen to their lowest in 45 years, putting 100,000 jobs at risk. Home ownership among 30-year-olds to 34-year-olds has dropped from 62% to 52%. Young Canadians are losing hope; 93% of gen Z and millennials are worried about housing, and nearly half of them are planning to leave their home communities. The Prime Minister promised to help Canadians buy their first home, so after nearly a decade, why are sales collapsing and builders are laying off workers, and why is ownership getting farther and farther out of reach?

Mr. Speaker, we should not be surprised the minister is talking about his build Canada rentals project, but home ownership is what is collapsing. In 2020, 69% of housing starts were for ownership. Today it is 49%. New home sales are down 45% in the GTA, and builders are laying off workers. I have a very simple question for the minister: Does he really and truly believe that creating a fourth federal housing bureaucracy, without reducing taxes, fees or all the approval delays, would really make it easier for Canadians to buy their first home?

Mr. Speaker, between 2011 and 2021, home ownership among 30- to 34-year-olds fell from 60% to 52%. From 2019 to 2024, for every 100 adults added to the Canadian population, only 12 homes intended for ownership were built. That is less than half the rate of the earlier decades. How does the Prime Minister expect young Canadians to ever buy their first home when his government keeps using the same old policies that have not worked for the last 10 years?

Mr. Speaker, new home sales are down 45% in the GTA and 56% in Vancouver. Rebates do not matter to first-time homebuyers if no homes are getting built. Nearly half of young Canadians are now considering leaving their home communities because they cannot afford to stay. When will the minister listen to all the experts, the builders, the developers and the Conservatives, and remove the HST on all new homes under $1.3 million so that we can get builders building homes again?

Mr. Speaker, CTV reports that 35,000 households left the GTA last year because the cost of housing is simply too expensive. The Missing Middle Initiative reported yesterday that “Ontario's housing engine has stalled”. In the GTA, preconstruction sales for condos are down 89%, and for ground-oriented homes, they are down 65%. This means that starts have fallen off a cliff, and it means it is going to be worse in 2026. My question is, when the Prime Minister told young Canadians that they would have to sacrifice, was he really referring to the dream of home ownership?

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's fourth housing bureaucracy, Build Canada Homes, replaces Justin Trudeau's life-changing national housing strategy with less money and even bigger promises. We need 480,000 homes per year in the next 10 years to restore affordability, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer reports that Build Canada Homes will only build about 26,000 over the next five. So, why will the Prime Minister not listen to home builders, housing experts and the Leader of the Opposition and axe the tax on all homes under $1.3 million?

Mr. Speaker, budget 2025 was supposed to mark what we were told was going to be a generational shift in this country. That is what we were told. When it came to housing, the government promised something truly historic. In fact, the budget documents declared rather boldly, I might add, that budget 2025 was the most ambitious housing plan since the Second World War, backed by more than $11 billion in a brand new top-down federal initiative called Build Canada Homes. That is a pretty big claim, and when a government promises to match the scale of what Canada achieved in the Second World War, it is probably worth remembering just how extraordinary that moment was in Canadian history. Back then, Canada was not just short on housing; we were in a full-blown emergency. Ten years of economic depression, followed by six years of war, had nearly wiped out homebuilding in Canada. When peace finally came, over a million veterans returned in a matter of months. They were getting married, starting families, looking for work and looking to start their futures, but Canada simply did not have any homes. We know this from the debates in this very House. On August 12, 1944, then finance minister James Lorimer Ilsley warned Parliament that housing had become one of the gravest domestic problems facing the nation. He described overcrowding, rising rents and a shortage of adequate dwellings in every major centre, and he was not exaggerating. According to the government's own 1946 report on housing and community planning, Canada was short more than 200,000 homes. Cities were reporting families living in garages, converted barracks and temporary wartime huts. Wartime Housing, which was a temporary agency during the war, had to expand its operations because so many Canadians simply had nowhere else to go. Here is the critical lesson from that era: Canada solved that crisis. We solved it with focus, with urgency and with a government that understood that its job was not to control everything but to clear the way for builders, for communities and for families. When the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation was created in 1946, its mandate was clear: accelerate construction, cut through bureaucracy and partner with the private sector to rebuild the country. It worked. Between 1947 and 1955, Canada built more homes per capita than at any other time in our history. Entire communities were built from the ground up. Neighbourhoods in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Vancouver and Halifax flourished. Builders built, trades worked, families prospered, and the government kept costs low and approvals fast. It stayed in its lane. It empowered Canadians instead of layering on more red tape. That was the formula. That is the lesson. The contrast with today's reality simply could not be sharper. Young Canadians now face a housing crisis that by many measures is even worse than what we faced in 1945. The Bank of Canada and Statistics Canada tell us that housing is more unaffordable relative to income than at any other time in our history. Government-imposed costs, development charges, fees, taxes and regulatory delays equal between 30% and 50% of the price of a new home in major cities in this country. The C.D. Howe Institute and the Canadian Home Builders' Association have been telling us this. The CMHC, the very agency created to cut red tape back then, now warns that red tape is one of the biggest barriers to building the homes Canadians need. Their 2023 “Housing Supply Report” confirms that Canada builds fewer homes per capita today than we did in the 1970s, despite having the fastest population growth in more than half a century. This is not because Canadians have somehow forgotten how to build. We have some of the best builders and tradespeople in the world. It is not because we lack the land, the lumber or the talent. This is a crisis created by government, with layer after layer of fees, years-long approvals timelines and endless paperwork. It is a system so slow and so expensive that viable projects become unaffordable before a shovel even hits the ground. Instead of cutting through the barriers, the government keeps building new bureaucracies, including a fourth federal housing body. They then call it ambition. Budget 2025 was supposed to break this cycle, but instead of addressing the real structural problems, it would simply repeat the approach that has been failing Canadians for almost a decade. The Prime Minister promised to cut development charges in half, for example. In budget 2025, there is nothing about that. He promised to incentivize private rental construction through the old MURB program. Budget 2025 says nothing about that either. He promised a “generational shift”, but we know the first six projects announced under the Build Canada Homes announcement are all Canada Lands Company projects that it has been working on for years. While the government claims to be fighting the gatekeepers, it continues to reward the worst offenders. Let us look at Toronto. After charging massive development fees, including a 40% increase just after receiving approval for its $471-million housing accelerator fund, a deal it is not even honouring today, the federal government still handed the city $283 million for a sewer project that it had already charged developers for. The government is rewarding failure. It is rewarding the worst housing gatekeepers in the country. Meanwhile, the scale of the crisis continues to grow. CMHC tells us that Canada needs 480,000 homes a year for the next 10 years to restore affordability. This year, we have not yet reached 200,000 starts. In fact, 2025 is on track to being the worst year for homebuilding in three decades. Young Canadians are doing everything right. They are working hard and are saving what they can, but they still cannot afford a home. They are delaying families. They are delaying their careers. They are delaying life itself because they cannot find or afford a place to live. This is not the Canada we want to leave them, and it does not have to be this way. The postwar generation showed us exactly what works when we take the housing crisis seriously. They kept costs down. They reduced government barriers. They aligned federal, provincial and municipal efforts. They partnered with builders instead of fighting them, and they measured success by one outcome: getting homes built. This is the approach the Conservatives would bring back. We would lower the cost and burden of government, because every delay and every dollar added by government adds to the price of a home. We would eliminate duplication, streamline approvals and bring common-sense timelines to projects. We would reward municipalities that open doors and stop giving money to those that slam them shut. We would treat housing as a national priority, not just as a slogan but as a mission grounded in results. Canadians are practical. They are builders and problem solvers, and our history proves it. After the war, we did not back away from the scale of the challenge; we met it head-on, and in the process, we built a future that gave families hope, stability and prosperity. Budget 2025 fails all the Canadians who believed the Prime Minister when he promised to build at a scale not seen in generations. We can do it again. The example is in our own history. Young Canadians deserve a government that works as hard as they do, that cuts red tape instead of adding it, that empowers builders instead of blocking them, that rewards cities that are getting the job done, not the ones that are not doing the job, and that focuses on what matters, which is getting more homes built so every Canadian has a safe place to live. Canada has beaten the housing crisis before, but budget 2025 does not even come close to the ambition required for the scale of the problem today. I would encourage the finance minister to look back in our history to the work of another era, at a time when Canada recognized the scale of the crisis in housing and took bold action to meet the challenge head-on. I would encourage the Minister of Housing to understand the scale of the crisis today and that it does call for bold, sweeping action. I wish he understood that his proposals tinker around the edges of the real root cause of the problems in the housing crisis. He is waiting to see if they work, and that time is over. I wish he understood that without bold action, today's housing crisis is quickly becoming a housing catastrophe. Budget 2025 does not meet the moment. It fails an entire generation of young Canadians who dream of achieving what their parents and their grandparents simply took for granted. We have done it before. We can do it again. We must do it again.

Mr. Speaker, what I am not surprised about from the member is that he seems to believe that everyone should live in government-owned homes. Conservatives believe that it is a right of Canadians to own their own home. We think the government should get out of the way and not try to own everything, not try to control everything. In fact, the example I gave is what we did right after the war. It was a Liberal government that got out of the way, that got government out of the way, that got homes built and that built the middle class. I wish he understood that.

Mr. Speaker, I will be very clear that Conservatives do not believe in further unconditional grants to cities and provinces. We believe in funding infrastructure based on one result only, and that is the number of homes that get built. With regard to the days of just giving money and hoping for the best, that has clearly failed. That is from 10 years of Justin Trudeau. That is not what we need anymore. It is what we need to change and Conservatives will do it.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear to me that my hon. colleague understands the problem in housing. This is a guy who used to build homes, so he actually understands the cost of local government, the cost of delays of the local government and the cost of development charges. What the current federal Liberal government promised to do in the election campaign was to get development charges cut in half in cities where they are way too high. There is nothing in budget 2025 about that. The Liberals have failed Canadians. When the real costs and real delays in getting homes built are at the local level and government costs are over 30% of the cost of a home, we know the solution. It is not another bureaucracy. It is getting government out of the way.

Mr. Speaker, Tuesday's budget presented a $78.2-billion deficit, driving up prices and making life more expensive for families all across Canada. Food inflation is skyrocketing and made worse by the government's massive debts. This year, food bank visits in Canada hit 2.2 million. Ten years ago, in Parry Sound—Muskoka, an idyllic rural collection of small communities where neighbours take care of each other, the food programs that were needed back then were Salvation Army food drives at holiday times. Today, there are 16 food-related charities in Parry Sound—Muskoka. From communities like Bracebridge and Huntsville, which are towns with three different food-distribution charities, to the many tiny communities of a few hundred people, like Argyle, Burk's Falls and Honey Harbour, food banks are essential lifelines in every corner of the riding. These small food programs in Parry Sound—Muskoka are struggling to keep up with the need. As the amazing people of Parry Sound—Muskoka continue to support each other, they also beg the government to please stop making life so expensive for them and all their neighbours.

Mr. Speaker, the Toronto homebuilding industry released a scathing report on the government’s budget, warning of 100,000 job losses in the sector despite the Prime Minister's promising 500,000 new homes a year during the election. The government continues to refuse to implement our policy of cutting the GST on all new homes under $1.3 million. Now, housing starts have plummeted and developers are laying off their trained staff because the cost of government is just too high. Why will the government not listen to the experts and cut the GST on all new homes under $1.3 million, so builders can get back to work and build the homes Canadians so desperately need?

Mr. Speaker, if spending money could solve the housing crisis, we would have a surplus right now. This is a government that named a housing minister who made housing taxes 141% more expensive in Vancouver and increased the price of homes by 149%. We are in a housing crisis now, and it is clear this guy does not get it. The experts are warning of 100,000 job losses in this sector. If the government will not listen to us and to what we are saying about cutting the GST on homes under $1.3 million, why does it not listen to the experts?

Mr. Speaker, food bank visits have skyrocketed to 2.2 million this year. Home prices are 54% higher today than they were in October 2015. CTV reported this morning that a 76-year-old man in Prince Edward Island has been living in his car for the last two months because he cannot afford rent. The Prime Minister has told young Canadians that they need to sacrifice. The question is very simple: How much more sacrifice does he require from struggling Canadians to pay executive bonuses?