00:01:07.200Well, I don't know what you were expecting to take place at that ethics committee meeting
00:01:11.980today. Maybe you were predicting or maybe you were expecting some degree of cooperation,
00:01:18.380but you didn't get a whole lot because the Liberals have used their numerical advantage now
00:01:24.180basically to shut down any further debate.
00:01:26.600But let's listen a little bit to some of what took place at that committee meeting today.
00:01:32.080If the Liberals didn't campaign on this policy, why are they suddenly deciding to pursue it now?
00:01:38.180Whose idea was it? Who lobbied for it?
00:01:40.280Is this being planned for more Canadian cities?
00:01:43.120And maybe most importantly, which well-connected developers, big banks, and foreign investors
00:01:48.120stand to benefit the most. Now I want to take a moment to share with the members
00:01:53.280of this committee a particular dictionary definition that I just think describes
00:01:58.840the direction of economic policy in Canada over the past year and I quote
00:02:03.380an economic system where business success depends heavily on close ties
00:02:08.160between corporate executives and government officials instead of
00:02:12.120competing in a free meritocratic market companies thrive by securing political favors such as
00:02:20.180bailouts tax breaks subsidies or specialized regulations that block competition that colleagues
00:02:27.700is the definition of crony capitalism and it does increasingly in my view represent the official
00:02:33.980economic policy of the liberal party of canada and we're seeing it kind of play out a little bit
00:02:40.480with this condo bailout, at least according to your party.
00:02:44.980Maybe you could talk a little bit about what happened today.
00:02:50.780Yeah, well, we showed up to try to get answers for Canadians
00:02:54.600on important questions that they have regarding this billion-dollar bailout
00:02:59.820for billionaire developers in Greater Vancouver,
00:03:03.020where they want to use $1.45 billion of taxpayer money
00:03:06.560to purchase more than 2,000 condos to prevent the market price of those individual housing units
00:03:13.700from falling to a more affordable and sustainable level.
00:03:17.160And we think this is another example of a policy that the Liberal Party and Mark Carney did not campaign on.
00:03:26.900And yet, now that they've got their backroom majority,
00:03:29.800they're trying to ram it through Parliament over, by the way, the objections of every single opposition party.
00:03:36.560And it's, I think, as I alluded to in that video, the perfect example of crony capitalism, where they're artificially propping up the market price of housing to prevent developers, their wealthy developer friends, from, God forbid, actually taking a loss on one of their projects.
00:03:55.480Well, Premier Eby is coming out and saying that the government is buying these units, the federal government, buying these units at liquidation prices.
00:04:32.940If it was liquidation prices, that might happen if the government didn't step in and buy the units.
00:04:37.600Obviously, the developers are selling to the government because they can make more money from them than selling them on the open market.
00:04:43.880And this is how ridiculous it is, is you have millennials and other individuals, other British Columbians trying to enter the housing market for the very first time who now have to compete against their very own government to be able to afford a place to live.
00:04:59.380And again, they are coming in, even though they didn't campaign on this, to prop up an artificially inflated housing market in greater Vancouver rather than letting prices correct or moderate and fall to a more affordable and sustainable level.
00:05:15.720And I think one of the things that's most outrageous about this is, of course, they're doing this through the transfer of wealth of over a billion dollars from the very same taxpayers who can't afford a place to live and giving it to the wealthy developers who have made billions off Vancouver real estate over the past 20 years.
00:05:34.200Yeah, there's always the uncomfortable relationship, really, between backers of the Liberal Party, backers of Mark Carney, who also happen to be developers, who also happen to have profited mightily from the policies of the government over the years that have allowed these prices of real estate to basically go sky high.
00:06:03.300allowing them to make all sorts of money.
00:06:06.240I mean, they backed off on the foreign buyers.
00:06:32.080Lamborghinis or whatever it is that they're rich by these days. And so why do you suppose,
00:06:39.340well, I mean, it's obvious, but maybe you could speak about the relationship between Kearney,
00:06:45.300the Liberal Party of Canada, and some of these developers in British Columbia.
00:06:51.880Yeah, and you know what, you make a good point. And after all, this is the Ethics Committee. And
00:06:57.320you can critique this, first of all, from an economic perspective in all sorts of different
00:07:02.100ways. But focusing in for a second on the ethical implications, this is not a public policy that the
00:07:10.480Liberals and Mark Carney campaigned on during the last election, which begs the obvious question,
00:07:15.560who came up with the policy, who pushed for it, who lobbied for it, and most importantly,
00:07:21.920who stands to benefit the most when it comes to developers, big banks, and foreign investors who
00:07:30.420are in many cases heavily involved with these projects. And there's all sorts of ugly connections
00:07:35.900here. I mean, we already know that the wealthy developer crowd in Vancouver are closely connected
00:07:42.600with the Liberal Party. I mean, look no further than who their housing minister is. It's the
00:07:46.420former mayor of Vancouver, Gregor Robertson, who took tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands
00:07:51.380of dollars from Vancouver developers. His close friend and personal advisor, Duncan Vladarchuk,
00:07:59.120is now actually the chair of the Liberal Party in British Columbia, while also serving as chief
00:08:05.560of staff to ONI Developments, which is one of the largest property developers in Greater Vancouver.
00:08:11.800You also have Bob Rennie, who's been called the Vancouver condo king, who's close, who had a
00:08:18.580private meeting with David Eby not long ago who held a private behind closed doors secret
00:08:24.080fundraiser max dollar fundraiser for Mark Carney earlier this spring and what we wanted to do with
00:08:31.360the committee is to to put some sunlight on this conversation to provide some transparency
00:08:37.800to Canadians and quite frankly if the Liberals had nothing to hide they should be open to that
00:08:44.820opportunity if they really think this is such a great public policy why not use the opportunity
00:08:49.540of committee even during the summer months to help talk about it more and it's not like if you look
00:08:54.360at the witness list that we brought here to the committee we weren't calling or asking for
00:09:00.300conservative witnesses we were asking to call members of the government and their and their
00:09:04.660key supporters in the development community to get some truth to get to the bottom of this
00:09:09.420and to provide an opportunity, quite frankly, for the Liberals to explain themselves in full transparency of the Canadian public.
00:09:17.940And they unfortunately chose not to do that.
00:09:20.080They actually complained, Mark, that they were forced to come to Ottawa in July and do their jobs that they're paid to do, God forbid.
00:09:29.040Yeah. Do we even know how many houses Gregor Robertson owns in Vancouver?
00:09:34.900I mean, I've lost track at this point. He actually owns another one in my riding.
00:09:38.400So he seems to be diversifying away all over at least the province.
00:09:42.540But while millennials like myself are struggling to get into the housing market.
00:09:47.140So it's I mean, it's it's it's so incredibly frustrating.
00:09:52.680And again, just to reiterate this from a millennial perspective, as you're using the tax dollars of individuals who are struggling to afford their own home to transfer over a billion dollars to developers who have made billions over the past 20 years.
00:10:06.240It is generationally completely inequitable.
00:10:11.540And I think it's another one of these cases where the government's got it upside down and completely wrong.
00:10:18.380And I was listening to the ethics committee hearing today and your colleague, your French speaking colleague, talked about Brookfield, for instance, partnering with the B.C.-based company, I believe it's Concert, which is heavily invested in real estate.
00:10:35.200now I did a little bit of digging and found that this particular agreement doesn't involve
00:10:41.280residential but obviously if all sorts of money government money is going into real estate in
00:10:49.900lower the lower mainland it's going to elevate residential values it's going to have an impact
00:10:55.980on other forms of real estate commercial and otherwise because you know it's you know a rising
00:11:02.240tide lifts all boats in real estate as well. But you think that there's a level of discomfort there
00:11:07.460that the prime minister has not addressed because he did not recuse himself from this announcement
00:11:13.820at all, did he? No, he completely leaned into it. And quite frankly, as conflicted, I think as the
00:11:20.460prime minister is on this as almost every public policy decision, his housing minister, with his
00:11:25.980deep, deep connections to the real estate industry in Vancouver is undoubtedly even more so.
00:11:34.300And look, I mean, just think about this for a second. On one hand, governments both in Ottawa
00:11:42.640and Vancouver, sorry, Ottawa and Victoria have been saying for years that housing has become
00:11:49.360unaffordable in BC and in Vancouver in particular, and that prices need to be made more affordable
00:11:55.880so more young people can enter the market.0.98
00:11:58.260They bring in, as part of justification of this,
00:12:02.060things like the Airbnb ban, foreign buyers tax,
00:12:06.020speculation tax, vacancy tax, you name it.