The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Canada is in Housing Hell.

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your

00:00:17.220 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Court with Alex Brock with new content

00:00:20.800 for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. On today's show, we are talking about

00:00:25.880 Pierre Polyev's housing video. It's gone viral. Perhaps you've seen it. If not, we're going to

00:00:30.620 talk about it. Plus, the Stellantis deal. We have questions and concerns being raised in committee.

00:00:36.100 And of course, we ask that you like, comment, subscribe, and share this program because I

00:00:39.900 guarantee you are not hearing it in the mainstream media. Of course, you can download it and listen

00:00:43.820 to it at your convenience on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify to talk about this

00:00:48.960 and much, much more. We have Brad Viss, the Member of Parliament for Mission Matsui, Fraser Canyon,

00:00:54.020 in the beautiful province of British Columbia. Thanks for coming on. So happy to be here, my

00:00:57.880 friend. All right. Used to be the housing critic. So I know this is a file you are very passionate

00:01:01.880 about, especially coming from British Columbia, where this is a hot button issue everywhere you

00:01:06.680 go. It's housing. And of course, the leader issued a new video on the weekend, put it out over social

00:01:11.840 media for lots to talk about. Last I saw, it was well over 2 million views. It's probably higher than

00:01:17.960 that now. It's everywhere. It is indeed absolutely everywhere because it's addressing the number one

00:01:26.020 fear that every Canadian who owns a home and has a mortgage and every aspiring Canadian who wants to 0.81

00:01:34.980 have a mortgage and create their own little piece of heaven in the community they live in. And

00:01:41.300 unfortunately, right now, getting a home has become extremely difficult since Justin Trudeau came into

00:01:48.540 office. And in the last year, especially with the rapid increase in interest rates that people have

00:01:58.480 to pay on their mortgage, a lot of families have suffered immensely, especially if you're on a variable

00:02:05.000 rate mortgage. I don't know about you, but in my community, I heard from a single mother, but a well-off

00:02:11.180 single mother, she makes well into the six figures. But you know, she bought a townhouse a few years ago 1.00

00:02:16.960 for 750 grand. And she heard Justin Trudeau say, well, you know, these interest rates are going to

00:02:23.760 be very, very low for a very long time. He didn't, well, we've heard it all before. He doesn't think

00:02:29.840 about monetary policy. Or he took on debt so Canadians wouldn't have to. Exactly. So she did. She took on the

00:02:37.560 debt. And now she's wondering whether she can keep the family home that her and her daughter live in. 0.94

00:02:44.260 And we're not talking about someone below the average income. We're talking about someone way

00:02:49.180 above the average family income. She makes well over six figures. But if you're a single parent,

00:02:55.480 and you've got, you know, your mortgage goes from $3,000 to $6,000, and your take-home pays maybe

00:03:01.440 $7,000 a month, it's hard to get by when your monthly expenses go up that much. And there's

00:03:08.100 similar stories like that no matter what community you go to in Canada right now.

00:03:12.020 We try to point this out on the show quite often, cause and effect, because it's important to remember

00:03:17.000 how we got here. If you forget how we got here, you're doomed to make the same mistakes going

00:03:22.140 forward. So as the video that Pierre Polyev released points out, he puts it out in a number

00:03:28.300 of categories. But most importantly, is the part where Justin Trudeau ramped up spending,

00:03:33.280 and he also printed a bunch of cash. So we're going to get super producer Dan to queue up,

00:03:38.240 cut one, we're going to show a bit of the video. It's about a minute and a half. So please stick

00:03:41.560 with us. Before we get into that, do you want to say anything? Well, no, no, I think I want to run

00:03:46.160 into it. Well, I think that the key point is that this liberal government didn't believe that there

00:03:51.760 was any relationship between the decisions they were making as a government, and what the interest

00:03:57.740 rates would be. That's actually a very good point. And that is the key point we need to take away

00:04:01.600 from this. And this is what Pierre has been stating even before he was the leader of our party,

00:04:07.320 that there is a relationship between government spending and your mortgage payment every single

00:04:13.520 month. The liberals were disassociated from that reality, and the consequences couldn't be more

00:04:19.340 grave. Cause and effect, here we go. Play cut one, super producer Dan.

00:04:22.780 A mortgage payment has two parts, interest and principal. Interest rates are set by the Bank of

00:04:29.080 Canada, but heavily influenced by the federal government. You'll forgive me if I don't think

00:04:34.120 about monetary policy. When the government borrows and spends, it bids up the goods we buy and the

00:04:39.520 interest we pay. The Trudeau government has doubled Canada's debt, adding more debt than all prime

00:04:46.240 ministers combined. Our finance minister has conceded that this deficit spending pours fuel on the

00:04:54.520 inflationary fire. And I'm going to start with what we shouldn't do. I think it is very important

00:05:01.820 not to make the problem worse. I am very mindful of the importance of not pouring fiscal fuel on the

00:05:12.700 planes of inflation. And then a few weeks later, she poured 69 billion dollars of new fuel on that 0.97

00:05:19.340 fire. For governments to run huge deficits or borrow money, they sell bonds to investors. In recent

00:05:25.800 years, the Trudeau government's spending has exploded, and they've been borrowing more than

00:05:29.740 lenders will lend. So the Bank of Canada has started creating the cash. The money supply has therefore

00:05:35.520 grown eight times faster than the economy over the last three years. More money bidding on fewer

00:05:42.540 goods, including fewer houses, equals higher prices. But the central bank doesn't just send a Brinks 1.00

00:05:49.840 truck to the prime minister's office. Rather, they use a complicated set of transactions that they call

00:05:55.800 quantitative easing. Now, I encourage anybody who hasn't seen the video to continue to watch that

00:06:02.160 video because it really spells out how we got here. And to the leader's point, a bunch of new money was

00:06:10.280 flooded into the marketplace. The banks started giving it out at low interest rates. And all of a sudden,

00:06:15.580 you had all these people buying up a limited supply of housing.

00:06:20.700 Yeah, not only a limited supply of housing, and we've all seen a doubling in the average family home

00:06:27.820 in the last number of years. And it's directly related to government spending.

00:06:32.020 I don't think there's much more to say on this other than that we can't continue with Justin Trudeau.

00:06:37.820 We can't continue with this reckless approach to fiscal policy, which is impacting millions of

00:06:44.900 Canadian families across this country. All Canadians want is a safe and secure place to live. And they

00:06:49.700 expect the government of Canada to enact policies that are not going to compromise that key and

00:06:56.120 foundational part of every single life. But that's what Justin Trudeau has done. And that's why so many

00:07:00.780 people are hurting so much right now, especially at Christmas season. So we've got a big job to do,

00:07:07.200 Jamie. Yeah. Well, it also goes to, I think, really push back on this narrative that the Liberals are the

00:07:15.420 left, the NDP as well, that care about the working class. Because all these policies, they've been

00:07:20.820 hurting the working class. That is the most affected group right now, is those who, as you pointed out

00:07:28.300 earlier, have decent jobs, but are wondering if they'll be able to keep their house.

00:07:32.340 Well, yeah. And then it goes to all the other program spending we've seen from this government

00:07:35.680 as well. No matter how many times this government chooses to pick winners and losers, when they get

00:07:42.420 the core fiscal issues wrong, no social program, no announcement, no flashy speech by the Prime Minister

00:07:50.440 can overcome the fiscal hardship they have caused for families across this country.

00:07:57.180 And if you want to take it another step further, if you're thinking about how kind of the NDP and

00:08:03.920 Liberals, a lot of the Liberals now are thinking, it's almost as if we can't make everyone equal by

00:08:10.800 making them rich, but we can by making them poor. And that, in my opinion, seems to be everything

00:08:16.640 they're doing is hurting the group of people, the largest group, the so-called middle class,

00:08:22.840 that are not having their wages keep up with the cost of living.

00:08:26.940 No. And I would say, despite all of this spending, prices are out of control in every aspect of our

00:08:33.060 life. But, you know, Statistics Canada recently came out, and they said that the number of entrepreneurs

00:08:39.300 in our country is dropping off a cliff. Young people don't believe that Canada is a safe place

00:08:46.500 to take a risk anymore. So not only is it hurting the pocketbooks of everyone across this country,

00:08:53.340 the government's sending a message that, hey, we don't want you to take a risk. We want you to be

00:08:57.700 more dependent on government. And that's why we've seen the only job, like real big job growth we're

00:09:02.600 seeing, is in public administration, in government jobs. Whereas the number of small businesses

00:09:08.700 opening, the number of small businesses closing is greater than the number of small businesses

00:09:14.120 opening. And young people don't see an entrepreneurial future or starting a small business as a viable

00:09:20.600 option to the same degree that they did even a decade ago. And you can't run an economy on tax

00:09:26.820 dollars alone. But as you pointed out, investment is a bit sketchy here in Canada,

00:09:32.240 because of the rules, regulations from red tape, you talk about the energy industry, forestry,

00:09:36.460 whatever this government has done, cause and effect. But at the same time, now they've,

00:09:41.520 the government has decided, well, we need to kickstart our economy, our fingers are quick

00:09:45.380 start. So they've decided to invest billions of dollars into a couple of new plants in southwestern

00:09:51.220 Ontario that they have decided the new technology will be electric vehicles, not the market so much.

00:09:57.360 When you have other companies looking at solid state or hydrogen, you have the government

00:10:01.780 saying, we're putting our eggs in the electric vehicle battery plant. So in order to do that,

00:10:07.720 we need to give tax dollars to create this plant or these plants, because private dollars are not

00:10:14.780 doing that. Yeah. You know what? I couldn't have said it better. There's about close to $50 billion

00:10:20.060 in the last year. Like we're talking a huge chunk of change here has been dedicated to the, to new

00:10:28.260 battery, battery factories in this country. The first one was Volkswagen. Now, for anyone that isn't

00:10:37.060 aware, Volkswagen is the only car company in the history of Canada to have been convicted under our

00:10:44.060 Environmental Protection Act for making dirty cars and for lying about it. And it was this company that

00:10:50.000 the government of Canada decided to give $15 billion to create a battery plant. Now, I've had a chance to look at

00:11:00.000 this project in detail. And it's pretty crazy. So what we're going to do is we're going to give a

00:11:07.940 production subsidy. We're going to pay Volkswagen, a massive multinational corporation, to produce a

00:11:13.940 battery in Canada. And then they're going to be able to sell the battery that we paid them to make for a profit.

00:11:19.940 But what's really challenging is that most of the batteries they produce aren't for Canadian consumers. They're for American and

00:11:26.000 Mexican consumers in the, in the broader North American market, and maybe even beyond. Now, the government's been

00:11:32.000 trying to sell battery plants on the fact that we're going to create a circular economy, and it's all going to be

00:11:38.000 sustainable, because we're going to mine those critical minerals in Canada. And if we just put this one big

00:11:43.000 investment forward, you know what, we're going to create all of these magical new jobs. It sort of sounds like that

00:11:48.000 super cluster idea they talked about a long time before. So, backtrack a little bit this year. Um, earlier this year,

00:11:55.000 so they had the Volkswagen announcement in the spring, and don't quote me on that date, but Stellantis

00:12:01.000 had already received a joint $1 billion subsidy from the federal and provincial government.

00:12:07.000 But when they heard what Volkswagen was getting, they said, oh, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on a minute.

00:12:13.000 We're not going to build this plant anymore until we get the exact same deal as Volkswagen.

00:12:18.000 So, in the government's effort to pick winners and losers, um, they've really effectively created a situation

00:12:26.000 where companies are going to be, are going to hold the government, uh, are, are, are, what's the, what's the

00:12:32.000 right way to put it? They're almost, they're putting, they're almost trying to blackmail the government to say,

00:12:35.000 if you don't give us billions of dollars, we're not going to create those jobs that you promised before.

00:12:39.000 So, Stellantis had a billion dollars. It wasn't good enough. They, they halted construction completely.

00:12:45.000 Then the government came forward and they said, well, we're going to give you $15 billion,

00:12:49.000 just like we gave Volkswagen. Now, I'm on the industry committee and, uh, the, the, we are really trying to get

00:12:56.000 to the bottom of what the government has done. But unfortunately, I don't even think the minister has read the contract

00:13:02.000 that he signed, that he signed with Stellantis. We don't know what the terms and conditions are.

00:13:08.000 So we're fighting to find out what the actual cost to Canadians is, is going to be. And what are the long-term impacts?

00:13:15.000 What's the cause and effect of this plant going forward? And in just in these two factories alone,

00:13:21.000 $30 billion at stake. Imagine what we could do with $30 billion in other aspects of our country and civic, civil society right now. 0.86

00:13:29.000 Uh, so we're trying to ask the tough questions, but we're not getting answers.

00:13:34.000 And so, um, just a few weeks ago, it even gets worse. Um, we, the minister is trying to sell this, this contract

00:13:42.000 on, on creation of Canadian jobs. The Korean ambassador goes down to Windsor and meets with the local police force

00:13:50.000 and says, I've got 1,600 workers here to come to work at the plant, subsidized by Canadian taxpayers

00:13:56.000 to the tune of $15 billion. Where am I going to host my 1,600 foreign workers?

00:14:03.000 All right. I just, I can't even think.

00:14:05.000 Well, uh, first of all, Volkswagen, to my knowledge, has scaled back their, their EV, uh, involvement in, in Germany

00:14:12.000 and in parts of Europe. So they're scaling back, but the government, because it is picking winners and losers

00:14:17.000 and subsidizing, which as we all know, endless subsidies only, you know, only delays the inevitable,

00:14:23.000 which is usually the, the, the shutdown because they're, they're not profitable in the long-term

00:14:28.000 because you're not creating a market solution. It's not what the market wants. It is a government-forced marketplace.

00:14:33.000 Yeah. So let's, let's, uh, before we get the, the foreign workers, I want to queue up cut two. 1.00

00:14:39.000 This is you and committee, nice tie, by the way, uh, talking to the parliamentary budget officer here.

00:14:44.000 Now you're, you're, you're investigating on how much does a battery cost in the production, the total production.

00:14:53.000 Don't forget, as you mentioned, mining research and investment in new mines is not happening as fast as it should

00:14:59.000 in order to be the provider of some of these minerals. So, and it, which is mineral heavy.

00:15:04.000 There's lots of video of child labor being used in, in the Congo and elsewhere for some of these materials,

00:15:09.000 but let's play cut two, let's, let's get to that and we'll come back and, and look into it.

00:15:13.000 Cut, play cut two, please.

00:15:15.000 In your analysis, did you consider the overall cost of an automobile

00:15:19.000 and what proportion of the cost of an automobile is directly, uh, related to the battery?

00:15:25.000 Or, or maybe I'll rephrase that. What proportion of an electric car,

00:15:29.000 what proportion of the cost of an electric car is solely attributed to the battery?

00:15:34.000 The estimates vary depending on the, exactly the type of car, high-end cars or, or middle, mid-range,

00:15:40.000 but it's between 25 and 40% of the cost of the car that's related to, to the batteries.

00:15:46.000 25 to?

00:15:47.000 To 40.

00:15:48.000 So I can, is it wrong for me to assume that the government of Canada,

00:15:52.000 Canada for whatever reasons has made an investment or a given Volkswagen,

00:15:59.000 up to $13 billion.

00:16:02.000 And as part of that agreement, we will be subsidizing the sale of Volkswagen cars to American or Mexican citizens,

00:16:11.000 up to 40%.

00:16:13.000 Uh, I wouldn't say that the subsidies itself would represent up to 40% of the car.

00:16:20.000 So, to have a sense of proportion, we'd need to know what would be the cost, the production cost of Volkswagen,

00:16:28.000 and we don't have that information.

00:16:29.000 So, what proportion of the subsidies will be covering, or, or what will the subsidies cover in terms of percentage of the cost of the batteries?

00:16:38.000 Okay.

00:16:39.000 But we do know that the full cost of production is being subsidized by the government of Canada

00:16:45.000 as a part of the contract signed between Volkswagen and the government of Canada.

00:16:50.000 And so, that's a fact, correct?

00:16:53.000 That is a fact.

00:16:54.000 That's in the contracts.

00:16:55.000 It's a subsidy per unit produced.

00:16:58.000 Okay.

00:16:59.000 All right.

00:17:00.000 So, for up to 40% of the cost of an electric vehicle is the battery.

00:17:06.000 And I'm sure we've seen all online people showing invoices, you know, pictures of their invoice when their battery goes and has to replace it.

00:17:13.000 And it's in the tens of thousands of dollars.

00:17:15.000 Yeah.

00:17:16.000 So, that's what I was trying to get at there in that, in that clip with the parliamentary budget officer.

00:17:20.000 You know, he was doing his job effectively.

00:17:22.000 He doesn't want to speculate on the actual cost of an automobile.

00:17:25.000 He was being a good economist there.

00:17:28.000 But it's my job to kind of dig a little bit more.

00:17:31.000 And so, if we're covering the 100%, the full cost to produce a battery for a certain number of years,

00:17:38.000 it's taxpayers paying, Canadian taxpayers, paying for Volkswagen to have that product so they can sell it for a profit to an American or a Mexican consumer.

00:17:48.000 And this is all premised by the government and their sales pitch is that, hey, if we invest now, this factory is going to be here for the long term.

00:17:57.000 But to my knowledge, there's nothing in those contracts that stipulate those factories have to stay in Canada after the production subsidy has ceased.

00:18:07.000 So, we have no guarantees for the long term viability of these projects and these jobs that go along with them.

00:18:16.000 So, to your point, the government's taking a really big risk here without any assurances for Canadian taxpayers that these factories are in fact going to pan out and we have the contractual agreements to prove it.

00:18:30.000 And that brings us back to Stellantis.

00:18:33.000 They promised lots of Canadian jobs and long term stable jobs.

00:18:39.000 But we don't know what's in the contract.

00:18:41.000 We don't know what the government signed.

00:18:42.000 They're not willing to tell us.

00:18:44.000 And that's what's so scary.

00:18:46.000 And that's what I'm worried about right now is that all these great auto workers in Windsor could think they have a long term job and maybe they will for 10 years.

00:18:54.000 But after that, Stellantis might just go look for another country willing to put $15 billion forward and they're going to close up shop and leave.

00:19:04.000 Well, it didn't work out too well when Kathleen Wynne started to subsidize the construction of wind turbines. 1.00

00:19:10.000 As soon as the funding ran out, unfortunately, and very sadly, a lot of people lost their jobs because of it.

00:19:16.000 And that's why we need to be very careful.

00:19:17.000 We need to ensure the market is there to sustain the profitability and the demand for these kinds of, in this case, vehicles or turbines or whatever it may be.

00:19:28.000 There has to be that market case.

00:19:30.000 And when you fail as a company, you have a risk of going under.

00:19:33.000 You have a risk of losing anything.

00:19:35.000 The government, when it fails, it just asks for more time, more patience, and of course, more money.

00:19:41.000 Yeah.

00:19:42.000 Now, there's so many aspects of these deals that we need to cover.

00:19:46.000 I don't even think an hour is sufficient.

00:19:48.000 But, you know, one of the things the government has been saying as well is that we're going to use Canadian lithium.

00:19:54.000 There's only two active lithium plants in Canada and red tape is preventing more lithium plants from being in the phase of production.

00:20:03.000 So when these plants are built in the next two or three years, we're likely going to be taking lithium from China.

00:20:10.000 And we all know the challenges that China has with or the Beijing regime in China has with human rights abuses.

00:20:18.000 Yep.

00:20:19.000 Or environmental.

00:20:20.000 And environmental concerns as well.

00:20:21.000 So we're going to be taking lithium from China into these Canadian batteries.

00:20:26.000 And that's not the way the government has said they're going to do it, but we don't have the facilities.

00:20:31.000 So they're misleading Canadians on that point.

00:20:34.000 And then the most egregious fact of all is that the government can't even tell us how many foreign workers they're going to be subsidizing in the production of these batteries.

00:20:45.000 I think right now we've heard that there was going to be one, maybe a few, maybe a few more.

00:20:50.000 We've heard up to 1,600.

00:20:52.000 Well, let's get to the video.

00:20:53.000 Let's do the video to explain that.

00:20:54.000 We'll get cut three ready.

00:20:55.000 And then we've got to close it out so the guests always get the final word.

00:20:58.000 So we'll close out that because we have gone a bit long.

00:21:01.000 So we'll do the video and then we'll get your comments on that.

00:21:04.000 Let's play cut three. 0.94

00:21:05.000 Hi, Rick Perkins here with my colleagues on the industry committee.

00:21:09.000 We just came out of a meeting where we're dealing with this Stellantis foreign worker issue problem.

00:21:15.000 And the Liberals can't seem to get their story straight.

00:21:17.000 The South Korean ambassador said that they were bringing in 1,600 workers from South Korea to work at this plant.

00:21:23.000 Not Canadian workers. 0.99

00:21:25.000 When the minister made the announcement, he said it would be 2,500 jobs today in question period.

00:21:30.000 They said there would only be one foreign worker.

00:21:33.000 The company has now put out a statement saying they're going to bring in 1,600 foreign workers, 900 around construction.

00:21:40.000 Then, but only two days ago, the same company said they were going to have 2,300 Canadian jobs.

00:21:47.000 It seems the company and the government can't get their story straight.

00:21:51.000 So we're going to keep driving into this issue.

00:21:54.000 We're going to demand the release of the contracts publicly because that's the only way to get at the truth, which this government doesn't seem to be able to say.

00:22:02.000 They don't seem to know the truth.

00:22:04.000 Maybe that's the problem.

00:22:05.000 One minister thinks one thing and the other minister says the other.

00:22:08.000 Let's give them a chance to read the contract they signed because apparently they haven't read it and release it to the public.

00:22:15.000 We demand that they release it to the public to full transparency when they're spending $15 billion of your tax dollars on this foreign auto giant's jobs in Windsor.

00:22:28.000 Let's cut that there. Make us to the point. We'll do your final thoughts and we'll close out.

00:22:32.000 Jamie, this is serious stuff. We're talking about for one factory in one community, $15 billion taxpayer dollars.

00:22:39.000 That's adding $1,000 to the debt of every Canadian family in this country.

00:22:45.000 It is my job, it's the job of my colleagues on industry committee to get to the bottom of this and know what type of deal the government has signed on behalf of Canada

00:22:54.000 and to make sure that any money being spent by the government of Canada is being spent wisely.

00:22:59.000 In this case, I don't think it is.

00:23:01.000 And I don't know if this approach is one that's actually going to create long term sustainable jobs in Canada.

00:23:07.000 We have to be able to answer those questions.

00:23:10.000 But until the government, until the government stops hiding the contract they signed, we're not going to know.

00:23:16.000 So we're going to continue fighting to get the contract, to see what's at stake, so we can make informed decisions to protect workers.

00:23:24.000 And the final point is that this Liberal government has put forward a bill on replacement workers.

00:23:31.000 The same week, they allow foreign workers to come build a battery plant in Canada when they promise those jobs to Canadians.

00:23:40.000 That's a $300 million loss to the local Windsor economy.

00:23:44.000 That's not fair to people in Windsor and all of the skilled tradespeople and auto workers they have there.

00:23:49.000 Doesn't seem like common sense, so let's bring some common sense back to this government.

00:23:53.000 We can only do that with a change of government. Brad, thank you very much for your time.

00:23:56.000 Thank you, my friend.

00:23:57.000 Brad Viss, Member of Parliament for Mission Massway, Fraser Canyon in British Columbia.

00:24:00.000 We thank him for his time. We thank you for your time.

00:24:03.000 Don't forget, new content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30pm Eastern Time.

00:24:07.000 Please like, please comment, please subscribe and share, share, share this program.

00:24:12.000 Download it on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play and Spotify.

00:24:15.000 It's out there for you. Just feel free to download it.

00:24:18.000 And until next week, remember, as always, low taxes, less government, more freedom.

00:24:22.000 That's the Blueprints.

00:24:27.000 We'll see you soon.

00:24:28.000 We'll see you soon.

00:24:30.000 Bye.

00:24:31.000 Thanks.

00:24:32.000 Bye.

00:24:33.000 Bye.

00:24:34.000 Bye.

00:24:35.000 Bye.

00:24:36.000 Bye.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - December 08, 2023

Canada is in Housing Hell.

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