Juno News - July 10, 2026


Conservative MP seeks to EXPOSE Carney’s condo bailout

Topics
carney condo bailout
Mentioned
Mark Carney Aaron Gunn Gregor Robertson Duncan Vladarchuk Bob Rennie David Eby Brookfield Concert
Ambassador Pete Hoekstra claims U.S. tariffs “improved” Canada’s position What I saw in a Canadian emergency room was unacceptable

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

157.53

Word count

2,141

Sentence count

83

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Prime Minister Mark Carney recently announced a plan to bail out developers, bankers, and investors by using taxpayer dollars to purchase more than 2,000 unsold condominium units in Vancouver. Questions remain about which ministers were lobbied and by whom in the lead-up to this announcement, and which developers and lenders will benefit from this plan, which condo units will be eligible, how prices will be determined, which financing tools will be used, and who will ultimately own the units.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 the conservatives are calling for a study into the carney government purchase of 2200 overpriced
00:00:10.880 vancouver condos they say it's a billion dollar bailout for developers including well-connected
00:00:16.960 liberal backers at the expense of taxpayers prime minister mark carney recently announced a plan to
00:00:23.440 bail out developers bankers and investors by using taxpayer dollars to purchase
00:00:28.640 more than 2200 unsold condominium units in british columbia questions remain about which ministers
00:00:35.040 were lobbied and by whom in the lead up to this announcement d questions remain about which
00:00:40.560 developers and lenders will benefit from this bailout which condo units will be eligible how
00:00:46.000 prices will be determined which financing tools will be used and which entity or entities will
00:00:52.160 ultimately own the units. Our guest today is Aaron Gunn, who is the Conservative Member of
00:00:58.400 Parliament for North Island Powell River. Welcome to the show once again, Aaron.
00:01:04.840 Thank you for having me, Mark.
00:01:07.200 Well, I don't know what you were expecting to take place at that ethics committee meeting
00:01:11.980 today. Maybe you were predicting or maybe you were expecting some degree of cooperation,
00:01:18.380 but you didn't get a whole lot because the Liberals have used their numerical advantage now
00:01:24.180 basically to shut down any further debate.
00:01:26.600 But let's listen a little bit to some of what took place at that committee meeting today.
00:01:32.080 If the Liberals didn't campaign on this policy, why are they suddenly deciding to pursue it now?
00:01:38.180 Whose idea was it? Who lobbied for it?
00:01:40.280 Is this being planned for more Canadian cities?
00:01:43.120 And maybe most importantly, which well-connected developers, big banks, and foreign investors
00:01:48.120 stand to benefit the most. Now I want to take a moment to share with the members
00:01:53.280 of this committee a particular dictionary definition that I just think describes
00:01:58.840 the direction of economic policy in Canada over the past year and I quote
00:02:03.380 an economic system where business success depends heavily on close ties
00:02:08.160 between corporate executives and government officials instead of
00:02:12.120 competing in a free meritocratic market companies thrive by securing political favors such as
00:02:20.180 bailouts tax breaks subsidies or specialized regulations that block competition that colleagues
00:02:27.700 is the definition of crony capitalism and it does increasingly in my view represent the official
00:02:33.980 economic policy of the liberal party of canada and we're seeing it kind of play out a little bit
00:02:40.480 with this condo bailout, at least according to your party.
00:02:44.980 Maybe you could talk a little bit about what happened today.
00:02:50.780 Yeah, well, we showed up to try to get answers for Canadians
00:02:54.600 on important questions that they have regarding this billion-dollar bailout
00:02:59.820 for billionaire developers in Greater Vancouver,
00:03:03.020 where they want to use $1.45 billion of taxpayer money
00:03:06.560 to purchase more than 2,000 condos to prevent the market price of those individual housing units
00:03:13.700 from falling to a more affordable and sustainable level.
00:03:17.160 And we think this is another example of a policy that the Liberal Party and Mark Carney did not campaign on.
00:03:26.900 And yet, now that they've got their backroom majority,
00:03:29.800 they're trying to ram it through Parliament over, by the way, the objections of every single opposition party.
00:03:36.560 And 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.
00:03:55.480 Well, Premier Eby is coming out and saying that the government is buying these units, the federal government, buying these units at liquidation prices.
00:04:05.500 It's not going to get any cheaper.
00:04:07.020 You're getting it under the cost of construction.
00:04:11.280 Is that part of the equation here,
00:04:14.140 the fact that taxpayers are kind of getting a deal,
00:04:17.400 or do you think that ultimately taxpayers are going to get hosed
00:04:21.400 because there's no way developers are going to sell to the government
00:04:25.400 at less than what they can get on the open market?
00:04:30.740 Yeah, of course.
00:04:31.740 You made the point there, Mark.
00:04:32.940 If it was liquidation prices, that might happen if the government didn't step in and buy the units.
00:04:37.600 Obviously, the developers are selling to the government because they can make more money from them than selling them on the open market.
00:04:43.880 And 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.
00:04:59.380 And 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.
00:05:15.720 And 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.
00:05:34.200 Yeah, 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.
00:06:03.300 allowing them to make all sorts of money.
00:06:06.240 I mean, they backed off on the foreign buyers.
00:06:09.120 So I guess that's hurt them somewhat.
00:06:11.180 But now they want a bailout.
00:06:12.660 And I don't remember these developers coming out and saying,
00:06:15.580 you know what, we made so much money this year,
00:06:17.760 we're going to give some to the taxpayers of Canada.
00:06:20.340 That never happened.
00:06:22.000 When they've had great years, of which they've had quite a few,
00:06:25.460 they kept that money.
00:06:26.960 Paid off their speed boats and bought extra homes
00:06:30.220 and had all sorts of fun.
00:06:32.080 Lamborghinis or whatever it is that they're rich by these days. And so why do you suppose,
00:06:39.340 well, I mean, it's obvious, but maybe you could speak about the relationship between Kearney,
00:06:45.300 the Liberal Party of Canada, and some of these developers in British Columbia.
00:06:51.880 Yeah, and you know what, you make a good point. And after all, this is the Ethics Committee. And
00:06:57.320 you can critique this, first of all, from an economic perspective in all sorts of different
00:07:02.100 ways. But focusing in for a second on the ethical implications, this is not a public policy that the
00:07:10.480 Liberals and Mark Carney campaigned on during the last election, which begs the obvious question,
00:07:15.560 who came up with the policy, who pushed for it, who lobbied for it, and most importantly,
00:07:21.920 who stands to benefit the most when it comes to developers, big banks, and foreign investors who
00:07:30.420 are in many cases heavily involved with these projects. And there's all sorts of ugly connections
00:07:35.900 here. I mean, we already know that the wealthy developer crowd in Vancouver are closely connected
00:07:42.600 with the Liberal Party. I mean, look no further than who their housing minister is. It's the
00:07:46.420 former mayor of Vancouver, Gregor Robertson, who took tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands
00:07:51.380 of dollars from Vancouver developers. His close friend and personal advisor, Duncan Vladarchuk,
00:07:59.120 is now actually the chair of the Liberal Party in British Columbia, while also serving as chief
00:08:05.560 of staff to ONI Developments, which is one of the largest property developers in Greater Vancouver.
00:08:11.800 You also have Bob Rennie, who's been called the Vancouver condo king, who's close, who had a
00:08:18.580 private meeting with David Eby not long ago who held a private behind closed doors secret
00:08:24.080 fundraiser max dollar fundraiser for Mark Carney earlier this spring and what we wanted to do with
00:08:31.360 the committee is to to put some sunlight on this conversation to provide some transparency
00:08:37.800 to Canadians and quite frankly if the Liberals had nothing to hide they should be open to that
00:08:44.820 opportunity if they really think this is such a great public policy why not use the opportunity
00:08:49.540 of committee even during the summer months to help talk about it more and it's not like if you look
00:08:54.360 at the witness list that we brought here to the committee we weren't calling or asking for
00:09:00.300 conservative witnesses we were asking to call members of the government and their and their
00:09:04.660 key supporters in the development community to get some truth to get to the bottom of this
00:09:09.420 and to provide an opportunity, quite frankly, for the Liberals to explain themselves in full transparency of the Canadian public.
00:09:17.940 And they unfortunately chose not to do that.
00:09:20.080 They 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.
00:09:29.040 Yeah. Do we even know how many houses Gregor Robertson owns in Vancouver?
00:09:34.900 I mean, I've lost track at this point. He actually owns another one in my riding.
00:09:38.400 So he seems to be diversifying away all over at least the province.
00:09:42.540 But while millennials like myself are struggling to get into the housing market.
00:09:47.140 So it's I mean, it's it's it's so incredibly frustrating.
00:09:52.680 And 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.
00:10:06.240 It is generationally completely inequitable.
00:10:11.540 And I think it's another one of these cases where the government's got it upside down and completely wrong.
00:10:18.380 And 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.
00:10:35.200 now I did a little bit of digging and found that this particular agreement doesn't involve
00:10:41.280 residential but obviously if all sorts of money government money is going into real estate in
00:10:49.900 lower the lower mainland it's going to elevate residential values it's going to have an impact
00:10:55.980 on other forms of real estate commercial and otherwise because you know it's you know a rising
00:11:02.240 tide lifts all boats in real estate as well. But you think that there's a level of discomfort there
00:11:07.460 that the prime minister has not addressed because he did not recuse himself from this announcement
00:11:13.820 at all, did he? No, he completely leaned into it. And quite frankly, as conflicted, I think as the
00:11:20.460 prime minister is on this as almost every public policy decision, his housing minister, with his
00:11:25.980 deep, deep connections to the real estate industry in Vancouver is undoubtedly even more so.
00:11:34.300 And look, I mean, just think about this for a second. On one hand, governments both in Ottawa
00:11:42.640 and Vancouver, sorry, Ottawa and Victoria have been saying for years that housing has become
00:11:49.360 unaffordable in BC and in Vancouver in particular, and that prices need to be made more affordable
00:11:55.880 so more young people can enter the market. 0.98
00:11:58.260 They bring in, as part of justification of this,
00:12:02.060 things like the Airbnb ban, foreign buyers tax,
00:12:06.020 speculation tax, vacancy tax, you name it.
00:12:08.660 And then you finally get a situation
00:12:10.040 where in part because of some of these policies,
00:12:12.820 you end up with a surplus of housing units
00:12:15.180 and housing actually starts to come down in price.
00:12:18.720 But before allowing the market to actually correct itself
00:12:21.780 to a more sustainable, affordable level,
00:12:24.880 the government steps in using taxpayer dollars to artificially keep this market artificially
00:12:31.560 inflated so that young people can't enter it like literally the left hand and the right hand
00:12:36.240 are are basically implementing policies that are working um against each other and at a certain
00:12:44.180 point the government needs to answer certain questions that if the that if the free market
00:12:48.880 if supply and demand dictates that the housing prices in a market like Vancouver and British
00:12:54.840 Columbia should come down or correct, will the government allow that to happen? Or are they
00:13:00.560 going to use taxpayer money to bail out these billionaire condo developers in perpetuity? And
00:13:06.520 if they're doing it in Vancouver, are they also going to do it in Toronto and other markets that
00:13:10.740 have seen a similar either dip or stabilization in price? Thank you so much for coming on the
00:13:17.920 show, Aaron. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me, Mark.
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