Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, food insecurity is a very serious issue, including in my home province of Nova Scotia, but it is hard to take seriously that question from Conservative Party members when they are literally opposing a tax cut on food. This holiday season, we are putting a GST holiday in place to reduce the cost of the food people buy, including when they eat at restaurants and products that are not ex…
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Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely clear that my hon. colleague was not listening to the answer to his first question before he delivered his second. I said specifically that we are exempting the tax on food that is not already exempted from the GST, including food that people may purchase at a restaurant. What is interesting is that Conservatives are opposed not just to the tax cut on holiday gifts, t…
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That is right, Mr. Speaker. Despite positioning themselves in a contrary way, those guys are all tax and no axe. The Conservatives are literally opposing a tax cut on the essentials over the holidays. We are talking about food, clothes, diapers, car seats and snowsuits for kids. The only thing the Conservatives want to cut is the programs that are delivering real support to Canadians. They want to…
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague seems to have a penchant for alliteration and personal insults, but what he lacks is an ability to advance policies that will grow the economy or actually help people in need. At every opportunity, the Conservatives oppose the investments that are creating jobs in this country. They oppose the investments that are building homes in this country. They oppose the measu…
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Mr. Speaker, what my hon. colleague fails to point out is that Canada is projected to have the fastest-growing economy in the G7 next year. He fails to point out that we are creating jobs at a near record pace. He does not understand that wages are increasing faster than inflation. His strategy for the economy is to make cuts to the programs that are supporting people, cuts to the programs that ar…
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Madam Speaker, I want to begin by thanking my hon. colleague for her advocacy, which helped secure $42.4 million for Kitchener to help the city build more homes quickly. The city is already moving on ambitious zoning reforms and changes to permitting processes that make it easier to build homes near transit, services and opportunities. It is exciting because it is moving forward with new projects,…
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Madam Speaker, these guys are all tax and no axe. We can think about this: Last night, Conservatives literally voted to keep a tax on Christmas. We are moving forward with a tax cut to relieve families of the burden on the cost of such things as car seats, diapers, groceries, clothing for their kids and gifts over the holidays. What is worse, they are also talking about cutting the programs that f…
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Mr. Speaker, we know that it takes investments to solve the housing crisis. We put billions of dollars on the table to help communities cut red tape, change their zoning practices and speed up permitting so they can build more homes faster. The Conservative response to this program, which is helping construction go up and rents come down, is to advocate for cuts to communities, including cuts in c…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her advocacy on behalf of the community she represents. We are putting billions of dollars on the table to help cities cut red tape, change their zoning practices—
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Mr. Speaker, honestly, it is hard to accept the Conservative Party's question, because we have signed an agreement with la belle province, Quebec, to build more than 8,000 affordable housing units with a major investment of $1.8 billion. This agreement is a success. The Conservative Party's position is to scrap the agreement and scrap the program that supports the construction of affordable housin…
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Mr. Speaker, it is as though we are playing bingo, with the number of slogans that are being read off, and people cannot take their eyes off the sheet. This is from a recent article on Conservatives talking about their own leader: “If you repeat the slogans, you get rewarded.... You are celebrated in front of the entire caucus for being a good cheerleader”. The difference between us and them is th…
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Mr. Speaker, the difference between the Liberals and Conservatives in question period is that I do not need to have my notes in front of me to actually speak in the House. The Conservatives are being rewarded in caucus when they repeat their slogans in the House but not when they defend their communities at home. The hon. member will not even admit that his community would be better off receiving …
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Mr. Speaker, a working-class Canadian voting for the Conservatives would be like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders. Members should think about that. We want to build an economy that works for everybody. When we raised taxes on the wealthiest 1% to cut them for nine million Canadians in the middle class, the Conservatives opposed those measures. When we stopped sending child care cheques to mill…
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Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of many of the conversations that have taken place today, I will not impugn the motivations of any particular member, but I am reminded of a famous quote attributed to former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who supposedly said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”. The statistics that he is using right now dramatically misrepresent…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his tremendous advocacy for the city that he calls home. The member has asked a question about the member for Toronto—St. Paul's, who, I will acknowledge, is a new member, but I have watched him in question period and when we review the tapes, we are going to see that he seems to believe the role of a member of Parliament is to mimic the slogans a…
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Mr. Speaker, I will start by thanking my hon. colleague for advocating on behalf of his communities; that is indeed the role that members of Parliament play. In fact, his advocacy has helped secure millions of dollars for communities such as Wolfville, East Hants, West Hants and Kings County. I was shocked to learn that the Conservative leader planned to cut these investments, which are going towa…
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Mr. Speaker, something is interesting. Over the course of the last couple of days, the few times that Conservatives have actually shown any interest in the housing file, they have manipulated statistics to try to paint a false picture. If we look at the report from CMHC that came out this week, we will see that housing starts are up this month. They are up this year due to the investments that we …
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Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to correct the record that my Conservative colleague has put on the floor of the House of Commons. Housing starts are actually up 8% compared to last month, and year over year, are trending in a positive direction, near the all-time record homebuilding pace that Canada has ever seen. It is interesting that this question would come from this particular member, who repre…
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You may have seen the news, Mr. Speaker, but last week the Conservatives had a very bad week. First their leader went out in public to announce that he was cutting billions of dollars in funding directly to communities to build more homes, but later it was revealed that his MPs were advocating for that fund and were since banned from advocating on behalf of their communities. I do not know about y…
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his advocacy on behalf of his community, which helped secure tens of millions of dollars for the community he calls home. We are both from Nova Scotia. We have seen small towns and the city receive significant funding to make it easier to build homes more quickly at prices that people can actually afford. We know it takes investment to get homes…
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Madam Speaker, while the Conservative members of Parliament are focused on distractions, we are focused on delivering housing for Canadians who live in this country. We are currently in a debate with the Conservatives based on their big commitment to cut billions of dollars from housing directly to communities right across this country. On this side of the House, we know that it takes investments …
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Mr. Speaker, I share my colleague's concern about the plight of some of Canada's most vulnerable, those without a roof over their head. In order to address those challenges, we need to ensure that we build out the affordable housing stock so people can find a place that is safe and that they can afford. That is why we are moving forward with billions of dollars of investments to help build afforda…
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Mr. Speaker, as the member is well aware, we are making investments to build affordable housing. For example, we signed an agreement with Quebec under the housing accelerator fund to build 8,000 social housing units. The Conservative Party is against that. When given the opportunity to remove the GST on new apartments, the Conservatives opposed it. The Conservative Party leader's strategy is to cu…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to offer a couple of points. First, I want to thank my colleague for her advocacy for her community to receive funding through the housing accelerator fund, which is delivering hundreds of millions of dollars for housing in Toronto. What is fascinating is the Conservative strategy, which is now to forbid their MPs from advocating for their communities. On this side of the House…
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Mr. Speaker, the cost of sending our citizens to war includes the cost of taking care of them when they come home. That is why we have moved forward with programs that are designed to ensure that communities have the capacity to provide housing to those who have put their lives at risk in order to protect our country overseas and at home. I recently was able to work with the Canadian Alliance to E…
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Mr. Speaker, I sometimes ask myself where they found this guy. He twists the facts to suit his narrative whenever he wants. It is almost as though the Conservative Party, when looking for a new leader, hopped on Temu and typed in “far-right Conservative”, so it spat this guy out. He opposes investments in affordable housing. He borrows lessons from his cousins south of the border when he opposes b…
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservative leader asked how arrogance and incompetence can live so comfortably in one man. He manages to show us every single day. Let us actually look at the facts: While he is concerned about my polling numbers, I am concerned about helping people in need. We put billions of dollars on the table to build or repair hundreds of thousands of homes in this country so that vulnerab…
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Mr. Speaker, there was a time not so long ago when the Conservative leader was actually advocating that the government do more to increase density near the services people need, where infrastructure already exists. There was a time when he was actually advocating for doing something to reduce development cost charges to make it cheaper to build homes in this country. There was a time when he was a…
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Mr. Speaker, the attempt to link very challenging life circumstances to the government's housing accelerator fund is beyond disingenuous. The member wants to talk about what her colleague members know. They know that this fund is actually helping to get more housing built in the country. A number of them are writing me personally, asking that their communities be picked for funding, because they k…
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Mr. Speaker, to be clear, what the Conservative Party announced yesterday was billions of dollars worth of cuts to programs that would actually get homes built in the country. While the member has portrayed herself as having a moral high ground in her question, I would remind her that it is the Conservative leader who showed up in Niagara with a video crew so he could call a woman's home a shack. …
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Mr. Speaker, with all the time and energy he spends on me, I am going to have to send him a cheque for the time I have been living rent-free in his head. I have to say, members should make no mistake: The Conservative leader announced yesterday that he would make multi-billion dollar cuts to programs that will get homes built in this country. Now, he knows that and we can agree on that piece. What…
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to see the Conservatives have taken some inspiration from our plan for removing the GST to help get more homes built, but what is completely unacceptable is how they say they are going to pay for it, and this is telling about their strategy across a range of policy areas. They want to cut the programs that are going to deliver housing for low-income and middle-class famil…
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Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to me how often I see Canadian Conservatives borrowing their policy positions from the right-wing populous in the United States. That might be where this particular member learned to advocate for programs that would cut affordable housing. Perhaps it was when he was chatting with his roommate at Yale Law School that he learned how to oppose programs that would provid…
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's question is interesting because she represents a part of Kelowna. I was in Kelowna a year ago last week to announce that the housing accelerator fund would be contributing $31.5 million to her community. Her leader announced this morning that he would cut that fund. The member is now in the awkward position of defending an increase of taxes to her constituents of $31…
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Mr. Speaker, it is important that we make investments in public transit, because we know the disproportionate impact it has on low-income families, seniors and, yes, Canadians living with disabilities. We are moving forward with what will be the largest investment in the history of this country when it comes to public transit. This includes new baseline funding that will provide long-term, reliabl…
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is very proud to stand beside her leader, who is advocating to raise taxes by $31.5 million on ratepayers in Kelowna. One year ago last week, I personally announced that investment. I shared it with the council, including the former Conservative member of Parliament for Kelowna, and its members were grateful for this money to help them build homes more quickly. In th…
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Mr. Speaker, here is a point of clarification. Housing starts this year are actually up year over year, but up tens of thousands over the last time the Conservatives were in office when their current leader had responsibility for the agency that manages housing in this country. However, to drive home the point that is most essential here, when the Conservatives came up with a new idea on housing, …
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Mr. Speaker, it is extremely difficult to take a question of that nature from a Conservative member who himself goes on trips worth tens of thousands of dollars and sips $1,700 bottles of champagne, while at the same time coming to Ottawa so he can oppose policies that give free food to kids in school.
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Mr. Speaker, when he says to adopt their plan, their plan is to cut the supports for cities that are going to build homes and their plan is to cut the money that is actually going to build the infrastructure to make homebuilding possible. He talks about bureaucracy. He must not have read the line in his own plan that says that they want to hire new bureaucrats just to run a snitch line for those w…
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Mr. Speaker, I can assure my hon. colleague that we understand the challenges that families are experiencing in our communities, but those families are right to ask who is actually fighting for them. Seniors who have earned their pensions, not just with their premiums but with decades of hard work, bad backs and busted joints, are facing an opposition leader who has a history of gutting their pens…
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are going to be disappointed to know that I spend no time or energy thinking about the insults they hurl at me. What concerns me is the insults they hurl at Canadians. I have news for the hon. member, because she stated a fact that needs to be dispelled. Six is the number of affordable housing units the Conservative government helped build. The Conservatives are tryi…
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Mr. Speaker, the opposition members would like to distract from the issues that matter most to Canadians. They focus these days on caucus unity. I would point out the member sits just a few seats down from a colleague she criticized just a few years ago for casting aspersions on the LGBTQ2+ community. When it comes to the work we are doing to get homes built, we are doing everything we can to buil…
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Mr. Speaker, we know that Canadians have had a tough couple of years as a result of the rising cost of living and global inflation. However, Canadian households are right to ask who is actually fighting for them. I can tell them that it is not the Conservative caucus members who do not want to forgive interest on student loans. It is not the Conservative leader who wants to take away the Canada ch…
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Mr. Speaker, they want to talk about immigration as failure. I am surprised they call it a failure that we provided refuge to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Ukrainians who fled a war of aggression. I am surprised they think it is a failure to have made good on our commitment to welcome 40,000 Afghan refugees, including those who fought alongside the Canadian Forces. I should not be surprised,…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his advocacy on the issue of supporting those who have the most acute housing need, which disproportionately impacts indigenous people across this country. As my colleague very well knows, we have advanced billions of dollars specifically to help address some of these concerns, including support directly to the City of Edmonton, working with partner Homew…
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Mr. Speaker, under the Conservative leader, slogans are up, rhymes are up and parroting talking points so that a member can get a shiny gold star in caucus seems to be up. I cannot imagine diminishing myself when I have the opportunity to represent my community in the House, or to cheapen the arguments that we can put forward on the floor of the House. If the Conservatives care about helping peopl…
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Mr. Speaker, that is a very interesting question. As the member knows full well, we are investing to build affordable housing in Quebec and across the country. In Quebec, we have invested more than $900 million to build housing. I find it interesting, because the Conservative Party opposed the program that helps build housing. When the leader of the Conservative Party was the federal minister resp…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question and for his concern for the rising cost of rent, which I completely agree is a very serious issue. Where we differ is that we are not satisfied with just launching complaints on the floor of the House of Commons. We want to advance policies that would put solutions on the table to make a meaningful difference for families. That is why we are …
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Mr. Speaker, my NDP colleague has suggested it is for the minister to tell my colleagues what to do at committee. On this side of the House, I can tell the members that it is my colleagues who tell me to increase investments to build more affordable housing. The NDP members have made a point of pointing out where there may be some challenges, which I actually agree that we need to address. The dif…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his advocacy for the economy in Nova Scotia. There are a few reasons we got involved in politics; creating good jobs at home and protecting the environment are among them. The behaviour of Conservative MPs from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador with respect to this file is absolutely ridiculous. We have to ask ourselves why they oppose good jobs at hom…
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