Juno News - August 07, 2023


Trudeau says the housing crisis isn’t his problem (ft. Scott Aitchison)


Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

178.2055

Word count

2,006

Sentence count

138

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Justin Trudeau says housing is no longer a federal responsibility. But Scott Aitchison says that's not quite true. In this episode, he talks about why the Prime Minister thinks housing isn't a federal problem, and why it should be.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 It's rather interesting that we have Justin Trudeau's Immigration Minister, Sean Fraser,
00:00:12.820 now becoming the Housing Minister, tasked with solving a problem that some people say
00:00:18.120 immigration has contributed to, maybe not as the primary driver, but certainly as a significant one.
00:00:24.980 And then we have Justin Trudeau turning around and deciding to just wash his hands of it and say it's not his problem.
00:00:33.120 Take a look.
00:00:34.160 I'll be blunt as well.
00:00:36.000 Housing isn't a primary federal responsibility.
00:00:39.120 It's not something that we have direct carriage of, but it is something that we can and must help with.
00:00:44.980 That's something we disagreed with our previous Conservative colleagues when Stephen Harper's government,
00:00:50.880 with Pierre Polyev being a big part of it, pulled themselves entirely out of the housing business for 10 years.
00:00:56.980 And there's a lot of missed opportunities through that.
00:01:01.640 Now, it was a bit of an interesting one, and possibly the nuance of it escaped you
00:01:07.000 if you were someone with a shorter memory or someone who blissfully doesn't have to,
00:01:12.440 as a matter of their job, pay attention to politics every day.
00:01:15.060 But some dutiful Conservative staffer decided to put together a little bit of a montage
00:01:19.860 on how Trudeau himself has evolved on how central housing is to the federal government.
00:01:25.060 Take a look.
00:01:26.360 A Liberal government will prioritize significant new investment in affordable housing.
00:01:32.140 Far too long, a first home has been out of reach for far too many.
00:01:35.900 It's time to change that.
00:01:37.960 And I'll be blunt as well.
00:01:39.800 Housing isn't a primary federal responsibility.
00:01:45.060 Now, I should say, funnily enough, one of the lessons I think you learn on the first day of political communications
00:01:58.260 is not to amplify your opponent's messaging, but actually Canada's housing minister, Sean Fraser, retweeted that video.
00:02:06.000 He literally shared Pierre Polyev's and the Conservative Party of Canada's video on this
00:02:11.560 and offered his own little chastising of it, calling it out of context.
00:02:16.380 Sean Fraser mentioned here it's an edited and misleading clip coming from a guy who recently held a press conference
00:02:22.160 to call someone's home a shack.
00:02:24.560 Well, yes, it is edited because that's how you put together a clip from 2015 and one of 2021 and one of 2023.
00:02:31.160 Otherwise, it would be a three-year-long video, which even the most patient among us wouldn't exactly be able to handle here.
00:02:36.760 Is housing a federal responsibility?
00:02:39.720 Well, Justin Trudeau seems to think it was up until the point at which it wasn't.
00:02:43.820 Scott Aitchison is the Conservative housing critic and a former Conservative leadership candidate and is returning to the show.
00:02:50.180 Scott, good to talk to you again.
00:02:51.340 Thanks for coming on today.
00:02:53.620 Thanks for having me here.
00:02:54.880 So, let's talk first off about this question of where the about face happened
00:03:00.220 because I've heard over the years many, many announcements and programs and campaign announcements
00:03:06.080 and platform pieces from the Prime Minister talking about housing.
00:03:10.340 So, to just kind of wash your hands of it and say,
00:03:12.300 oh, it's not really a federal thing anymore is a bit convenient.
00:03:16.440 Well, no one should be surprised.
00:03:18.980 This is the ultimate photo op and talking points Prime Minister.
00:03:23.020 Sure, when it sounded good to talk about housing, he talked about it.
00:03:27.060 But then he just woke up recently and figured out that, in fact, it's a crisis.
00:03:31.040 Some of your viewers may recall that I asked the former Minister of Housing many times
00:03:35.920 if he thought that the housing situation in Canada was, in fact, a crisis, and he couldn't use the word.
00:03:41.600 But now they've caught on.
00:03:42.700 They've realized that it's a mess.
00:03:43.900 They realize that young people, new Canadians, first-time homebuyers,
00:03:49.040 people looking for a place to rent to get out of their parents' basement, there's nothing.
00:03:53.020 We have a supply crisis in this country.
00:03:55.240 They've just figured it out.
00:03:56.600 And instead of taking responsibility for their failed programs,
00:04:01.320 keep in mind, in 2017, Justin Trudeau stood in front of the cameras
00:04:05.320 and promised his national housing strategy.
00:04:07.660 He called it life-changing.
00:04:10.500 He called it transformational.
00:04:12.520 Well, here's the transformation, Prime Minister Trudeau.
00:04:16.300 Eight years later, house prices have doubled.
00:04:19.280 Rent has doubled.
00:04:20.900 Mortgages have doubled.
00:04:22.500 Interest rates have skyrocketed.
00:04:26.280 That's your record.
00:04:27.560 That's the transformation.
00:04:29.340 So that's why he's advocating responsibility now, because he screwed it up so badly.
00:04:33.660 It's a crisis, and it's his making.
00:04:36.220 So when do you think he was wrong?
00:04:37.880 Do you think he was wrong when he was saying it was a federal issue,
00:04:40.500 or do you think he's wrong to say that it's not now?
00:04:42.840 Because there is an argument that it's, under the Constitution,
00:04:45.640 not one of these things that is relegated to the federal government.
00:04:49.900 Yeah, listen, he's wrong to say it's not a federal responsibility now.
00:04:54.000 It's everybody's responsibility.
00:04:55.900 Every level of government.
00:04:56.980 We're all in the same business here.
00:04:58.380 We're in the business of helping Canadians,
00:04:59.960 and this is an area where Canadians need particularly a lot of help.
00:05:05.320 And you've heard Pierre Polyev talk about this issue so passionately,
00:05:08.720 and he's bang on.
00:05:10.600 It's every level of government that's involved,
00:05:12.780 but the municipalities are the front lines.
00:05:15.740 They are the front lines.
00:05:17.640 Sorry, you cut out there for a moment.
00:05:19.320 Please continue.
00:05:20.760 But local politicians and their delay tactics cause, 0.82
00:05:24.400 you know, increase the cost of every unit that gets built in this country.
00:05:27.420 And, of course, the federal and provincial governments,
00:05:29.940 you know, they're involved in housing as well.
00:05:31.980 The federal government needs to be more active in a leadership role,
00:05:35.500 and Pierre talks about actually leveraging federal dollars,
00:05:38.820 whether it's infrastructure money for water and sewer pipes
00:05:41.760 or infrastructure money for transit,
00:05:43.800 leveraging that money to cities to get results.
00:05:46.900 Dollars for doors.
00:05:47.960 No more pandering.
00:05:48.980 No more patting everybody on the back saying,
00:05:50.980 oh, yes, we're going to work together.
00:05:52.500 Justin Trudeau's promised that for eight years,
00:05:54.440 and he's made it worse and worse and worse.
00:05:58.080 Does that risk, though, centralizing and nationalizing
00:06:02.060 a process that should be kept more local?
00:06:04.800 I mean, I understand the core problem,
00:06:07.060 and I understand when you have a population that's growing,
00:06:09.880 whether through immigration or other means,
00:06:11.460 and you have a housing issue that's already reeling itself
00:06:15.000 as being quite of a problem.
00:06:16.720 I just don't know if we want the federal government
00:06:19.100 to be a part of that solution,
00:06:20.340 given, in general, what happens when we try to centralize
00:06:23.160 or central plan things.
00:06:25.300 Yeah, no, I'm not suggesting that the federal government
00:06:27.140 take over the development approvals process at all.
00:06:30.100 I have a lot of experience with that as a mayor
00:06:31.860 and as chair of planning.
00:06:33.160 What I'm saying is that the federal government
00:06:34.580 can hold municipalities' feet to the fire.
00:06:37.480 Make decisions.
00:06:38.840 Just make a decision.
00:06:40.640 We've got to move forward.
00:06:41.960 We've got to be working together.
00:06:43.500 And if municipalities aren't interested in playing ball,
00:06:45.880 then the federal government can use its leverage to say,
00:06:48.180 you've got to play ball,
00:06:49.480 or we're not going to support this infrastructure,
00:06:51.860 that infrastructure.
00:06:52.640 And those municipalities that do get it,
00:06:56.180 that do get the job done,
00:06:57.500 that do meet their targets for housing,
00:06:59.960 Pierre talks about making sure they get an infrastructure bonus.
00:07:03.160 So we'll work with people.
00:07:04.260 That's our goal.
00:07:05.440 Justin Trudeau would have you believe that Pierre is angry
00:07:08.240 and nasty and all this kind of stuff.
00:07:10.720 He's presenting solutions.
00:07:13.800 Unlike Justin Trudeau, he's presenting solutions.
00:07:17.120 And Canadians are desperate for those.
00:07:18.360 John Ibbotson had a piece in the Globe and Mail,
00:07:22.480 I think it was yesterday,
00:07:23.320 in which he wrote that the Liberals must fix the housing crisis
00:07:26.600 before it undermines support for immigration.
00:07:29.700 And the point he's making there is that when we see,
00:07:31.820 you know, a federal government working up to 500,000 immigrants per year,
00:07:35.260 we see housing prices that are already unaffordable,
00:07:38.060 especially in really high immigration cities like Toronto and Vancouver.
00:07:41.520 This is going to cause Canadians to really take out their housing angst on immigration.
00:07:46.540 I was wondering, I mean, first off,
00:07:47.640 do you see immigration as being a contributor to the housing problem?
00:07:52.500 I see immigration as a crucially important thing for Canada.
00:07:55.640 We need to keep growing.
00:07:56.880 We need more Canadians to help grow our economy
00:08:00.000 and to do the jobs that we need people to do.
00:08:02.920 But this is another symptom of what's wrong with Justin Trudeau and his government.
00:08:07.060 They haven't planned one bit for the increasing numbers of new Canadians.
00:08:10.960 They haven't thought very much about attracting the skills and abilities
00:08:15.040 that we need to help build new homes.
00:08:17.740 They haven't planned any of this stuff out.
00:08:19.900 Justin Trudeau has broken our immigration system,
00:08:21.980 and he hasn't planned for the increasing numbers of Canadians that we need in this country.
00:08:26.880 And so as a result, you see, you know, more and more new Canadians,
00:08:30.920 immigrants coming to this country who can't find a place to live either.
00:08:33.500 But we need to be attracting the skills and abilities to help us build the housing that we need
00:08:38.200 because labour is one of the other crucial elements to building more homes.
00:08:42.200 We need more homes.
00:08:44.060 And we need the skills and labour to get it done.
00:08:47.540 I know there have been, and it gets outside of the housing file slightly,
00:08:51.880 but there have been a number of discussions and studies and news reports in recent months
00:08:57.280 about inflation and about the cost of goods at the grocery stores.
00:09:00.580 And we are seeing in general a cost of living crisis in this country.
00:09:04.840 But housing is the absolute worst part of that for people.
00:09:08.920 I mean, if you look at the numbers, you said doubling in eight years.
00:09:11.580 Like, no one can say credibly that if they've been working at the same job for eight years,
00:09:15.680 their salary has doubled in that time.
00:09:18.100 No, absolutely not.
00:09:19.280 And listen, I think there's a lot of Canadians that are realizing now
00:09:24.160 that there are consequences to massive deficits and to government borrowing
00:09:28.120 gobs and gobs of money.
00:09:30.820 When the federal government borrows billions and billions of dollars
00:09:34.560 to give some Canadians $500 to help with the cost of groceries
00:09:38.400 that now cost thousands more dollars, it's actually making the situation worse.
00:09:43.020 It's not helping.
00:09:44.240 He's just trying to buy people for their, he's trying to buy their votes
00:09:47.620 with their grandchildren's future.
00:09:50.280 It's a disaster and it's of his making and we need to fix it.
00:09:54.540 We need to clean up the fiscal mess in Ottawa
00:09:56.360 because that is how we're going to get inflation down.
00:09:59.600 It's how we're going to get the economy working properly again.
00:10:02.400 It's how we're going to get more homes built.
00:10:03.840 It's how we're going to make opportunity available again to all Canadians.
00:10:06.960 When you look at the trajectory moving forward, I mean, my big concern here is that
00:10:12.540 even among existing homeowners who have kind of scraped their pennies together
00:10:16.800 to put a down payment down, they've gotten a mortgage in.
00:10:20.140 We've had interest rates go up.
00:10:21.880 People are going to have to renew those mortgages at some point.
00:10:25.300 And I'm worried there's going to be an additional part of this crisis
00:10:28.580 that we haven't seen yet when people can't even afford to keep their homes.
00:10:32.080 Well, this is exactly it.
00:10:34.540 And I can tell you, I have some personal experience with this.
00:10:36.620 I have a variable rate mortgage on my house.
00:10:38.760 A year ago, it was 1.55%.
00:10:41.540 Today, it's 6.8%.
00:10:44.040 My mortgage payments have doubled.
00:10:47.680 A lot of Canadians can't afford an extra $200 a month in extra costs.
00:10:52.440 You know, these are the real life consequences of reckless spending
00:10:56.540 and reckless borrowing.
00:10:58.160 Justin Trudeau and his team have caused this.
00:11:00.740 Thank you very much, Scott, for coming on.
00:11:03.440 Really good to talk to you and appreciate your insight on this.
00:11:06.040 Thanks, Andrew.
00:11:06.600 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:11:08.940 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:11:14.400 Thank you.