The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Canada’s Housing Crisis

00:00:00.000 Welcome once again to the Blueprint. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your host,

00:00:05.920 Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, Quartholakes, Brock, with new content

00:00:09.560 every single Tuesday for you, 1.30pm Eastern Time. We do appreciate you joining us. We have a great

00:00:14.760 show, as always, lined up. We ask that you like, comment, subscribe, share this program. Together,

00:00:19.640 we can push back against that ever-moving Liberal agenda because I guarantee you the message

00:00:23.380 and the information you're going to hear today is something you probably aren't getting in the

00:00:27.020 mainstream media. And of course, if you can't listen or watch it all, right this second you

00:00:30.920 download it, listen to it on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, you name it,

00:00:35.800 it is out there. We have a great show. We're going to talk about inflation. We're going to talk about

00:00:40.240 taxes. We're going to talk about carbon taxes. We're going to talk about housing and the list

00:00:43.360 goes on to talk about those issues. We have Matt Jenner, the Member of Parliament for Edmonton

00:00:47.960 Riverbend. He's also the critic for housing, the Shadow Minister for Housing. Ed Fast is right beside

00:00:52.460 him, the Member of Parliament for Abbotsford, also our Finance Shadow Minister. Gentlemen, welcome.

00:00:57.020 Good to be on your show, Jamie. We have a lot to talk about. Housing prices,

00:01:00.980 the average housing prices started around $400,000 just a few years ago and now it's upwards

00:01:06.780 almost $900,000. $868,000 right now is what the average price in Canada is. But you want to know

00:01:15.560 what it was? When these Liberals came into government just six and a half years ago, it was $434,000. So

00:01:23.360 they have effectively doubled the housing price in just that six years. And it's unbelievable to think

00:01:29.280 that home ownership is anything but a dream right now for so many Canadians that are of that new

00:01:36.960 generation looking forward to buying a home one day. And at the beginning of the pandemic, we actually

00:01:41.780 saw for the first couple of months housing prices start to dip a bit. It was when the printing presses

00:01:46.500 started to get fired up. That's when we saw the rise in this housing price. And it's gone up like

00:01:52.740 every month. So about the 15th of every month, you see the new housing amounts come through. And

00:01:59.380 this month is really the big, I don't know if you want to congratulate the Liberals for reaching this,

00:02:06.260 the doubling of the average house price since they've come to office. But it's just been,

00:02:10.020 it's been a wild ride to see this just go up. And particularly in the last 20 or so months,

00:02:15.060 we've really just seen it go up. So you look at areas, GTA, Toronto, Vancouver, around Ed's area,

00:02:22.900 it's around a million dollars is the average home price. And that's, you know, that's the average

00:02:27.540 average home price is around that amount. So it's, again, it's just been been wild to see and really not

00:02:34.100 a lot of solutions being offered by this Liberal government to help quell any of that, that rise.

00:02:39.620 So, you know, we keep pushing back in question period, trying to encourage them to find these

00:02:44.180 solutions. But right now, it's only has one projected direction that's up.

00:02:49.380 Well, Ed, a lot of this has to do with a made in Canada problem. Maybe you could tell us a bit

00:02:54.500 about that. And, you know, there are jurisdictions in the world dealing with inflation and other issues,

00:02:59.460 but a lot of it, what you're seeing is because of the Liberals and their spending problem that

00:03:05.060 they seem to have and how the Bank of Canada is just printing money to buy the debt.

00:03:10.900 Well, you know, Matt mentioned question period, day after day in question period. We've been asking

00:03:16.580 the Minister of Finance, what's your plan to fight inflation? How are you going to help Canadians with

00:03:21.460 the skyrocketing cost of living? There's been no answer. All they've done is said, this is a global

00:03:27.140 phenomenon. We're washing our hands of it. Well, I can tell you, when it comes to housing, this is

00:03:32.100 not a global phenomenon. When you talk about CPI, consumer price index inflation, some of that is

00:03:39.220 related to global challenges. But when it comes to housing, this is a made in Canada problem where

00:03:46.100 our government has borrowed and spent and pumped so much stimulus and liquidity into the marketplace

00:03:53.780 that you got so many more dollars chasing the same number of houses and same number of dwelling places

00:04:00.740 that suddenly you've got skyrocketing housing inflation. And you talked about the average

00:04:05.940 price being close to 900,000. But there's many areas of Canada, like Vancouver, like Abbotsford,

00:04:12.180 where I'm from, Toronto, that are seeing sky high prices. I mean, Vancouver, you can't buy a starter

00:04:18.820 home for less than, say, two and a half million dollars out my way, out in the Fraser Valley.

00:04:25.140 We're talking about a million dollars for a starter home. In fact, some friends of ours recently sold

00:04:30.820 their place and they were just thrilled they were going to get a million. That's what the realtor told

00:04:35.700 them. They got in a bidding war and it ended up 1.2 million dollars they got for their place.

00:04:44.020 Of course, they have to go somewhere and right now they're going to rent. And if this keeps on,

00:04:47.940 they're going to be left out of the marketplace altogether. So this is a very challenging time

00:04:53.140 for millions of families who've seen this dream of home ownership slip through their fingers.

00:04:59.060 Absolutely. It's extremely sad. So when you were talking about housing,

00:05:01.780 the Liberals get up day after day, as Ed was talking about, and touting their housing plan. But

00:05:06.020 a lot of what they've done in programs that they've announced has got low pickup

00:05:10.820 or has actually contributed and put gasoline on this fire.

00:05:14.740 Yeah. So you take some of the programs that they've, so a lot of the programs are done through

00:05:18.500 the CMHC, right? And you've taken some of the programs, like the first time home buyers program,

00:05:22.900 for example, not only does it have little pickup from individuals who see that program as a potential

00:05:30.100 for them and their family to get into the market. It's actually so many mortgage brokers and companies

00:05:35.380 are saying, this isn't helpful for us at all. So you get pushback from both sides on this particular

00:05:41.780 program. It's a great talking point to be able to say, you know, first time home buyer program,

00:05:46.420 but how many first time home buyers have actually got into that program is such a minuscule number

00:05:51.060 that they need to reset that program. They need to scrap that program and find something else that

00:05:56.500 encourages younger Canadians to get into the housing market. Because it is, as the example that Ed used,

00:06:03.300 we hear thousands of stories in my office from people who say, you know, I've put 26 offers on a place,

00:06:10.500 and I still haven't got a home. Like, imagine that, like imagine, you know, 10 years ago,

00:06:14.580 putting 26 offers on something, you think you would have got maybe, maybe one of those offers,

00:06:19.300 but it's just, it's turned into just a complete debacle. And then the CMHC on the other side of

00:06:24.100 that, we just saw last week, we had some documents revealed that, that CMHC gave themselves,

00:06:30.180 their employees bonuses of, that came up to, like, from, from all of our, our perspective,

00:06:37.460 that, that particular, uh, branch of, of this housing minister's file has been just a complete

00:06:43.300 debacle. It's 48 million dollars in bonuses to their employees in a time when house prices went

00:06:48.500 up 29 percent in the last year. Like, how is that success? How does that generate success for that

00:06:54.100 particular program? Absolutely. Interesting metrics they're using. Yeah, yeah, I want to know their

00:06:58.340 metrics. The minister won't share that with us. I can understand why. Inflation Ed, 5.7 percent,

00:07:04.820 a 30-year high in February. My goodness, this, this is, go grocery shopping nowadays or anything. It is

00:07:10.980 just unmanageable for many. It's going higher. Um, we had the governor of the Bank of Canada

00:07:18.660 in front of our finance committee and we asked him, well, you said inflation was going to be

00:07:24.740 transitory. In other words, hey, it's a temporary phenomenon. It'll be behind us and we'll be back to 0.98

00:07:30.420 normal. Well, that didn't happen. It's not transitory. Inflation is here to stay for a while. In fact,

00:07:37.540 the governor admitted as much that, in fact, it's going to get worse before it gets better. That's bad

00:07:44.340 news for those who are having trouble paying for groceries, paying for home heating, uh, paying for

00:07:50.580 housing, of course. This is a very challenging time for Canadian families, for individuals who

00:07:57.540 thought they were going to live out the Canadian dream of prosperity, that are seeing a government

00:08:03.300 spend so wildly without any restraint that it's actually, uh, driving up the cost of living. And

00:08:10.980 of course, paychecks are being eroded because wages are falling behind in the inflation rate. And that is

00:08:19.540 the conundrum that many Canadians find themselves in. Um, you know, obviously those who are in the

00:08:25.700 market right now, the wealthy who are all heavily invested are doing really well with inflation.

00:08:31.940 In fact, the government, Jamie, is doing really well with inflation because they're seeing record

00:08:37.060 taxes, tax revenues come in because of inflation. So the prime minister is doing well with inflation,

00:08:43.220 but Canadians are being left behind. That is the sad, sad story here. Absolutely. And a lot of this is,

00:08:49.220 is, uh, the house isn't necessarily worth more. It's just the, the extra dollars is, is making it

00:08:55.700 not go as far in, in, in terms of savings account, in terms of you got the inflation of the currency,

00:09:00.900 also have supply chain issues. So those dollars aren't buying as what they used to. It is just

00:09:05.860 a cascading effect everywhere. I thought this was a good news podcast. It is. You make it good news here.

00:09:12.020 Well, yeah. So you see that. And then you see like the price of groceries and the price of,

00:09:16.580 of, of, of gas in, in areas like it's $2 and, uh, in, uh, in Ed's neck of the woods. It's just,

00:09:22.900 all of that compounds on the top of, you know, you've bought, maybe you've spent money for a

00:09:27.460 million dollar home in Vancouver. You're now paying more for groceries because of the supply

00:09:30.980 chain issues. You're paying more for gas because of, uh, uh, again, the rising gas prices. So it's just,

00:09:35.940 it's turned the entire affordability is, is such a key is what issues we raise in question period all the

00:09:42.340 time are largely focused on affordability because that's what we're hearing from our, our constituents,

00:09:47.780 from our communities is that life just simply isn't affordable. And now the carbon tax is going

00:09:52.980 on. The carbon tax. April 1st, April Fool's Day. Yes. This prime minister is playing a joke on

00:09:58.980 Canadians. He thinks it's a joke to increase the carbon tax by another 11 cents per liter.

00:10:06.660 This is unbelievable. It's compounding. And remember the GST on that tax is a tax on a tax.

00:10:15.220 That's right. So the government raises more money, but Canadians get left behind. And when we ask the

00:10:21.380 government, could you at least temporarily suspend the GST, we as conservatives brought forward a motion

00:10:27.700 in the House of Commons, the proper place to do that and say, listen, government, you can do something

00:10:32.340 here. Temporarily suspend the GST on gasoline purchases and help Canadians. And what did they

00:10:39.380 do? They voted against it. They said, no, we don't care about Canadians. We want to increase our tax

00:10:45.140 revenues. We want to keep spending and borrowing. That's hurting Canadians. It's hurting our economy.

00:10:51.460 This is a bad news story, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we saw with, with oil and natural gas,

00:10:57.300 there's been a displacement in the marketplace and, and the industry itself has been trying for

00:11:03.700 as long as I can remember to, to increase in terms of extraction, to refining, to distribution.

00:11:09.860 But in the last seven years or so, this government has thrown every roadblock at the industry

00:11:14.740 who, yeah, they have their faults, but they also have a good point that they want to provide this

00:11:18.500 energy source to the world that is, that is demanding it right now. And, and we have no way of

00:11:24.020 getting our extra supply to market. We don't have a way to get to the European market that Energy East

00:11:28.740 would and another pipelines. It just seems that this government has, has stopped any ability this

00:11:34.980 country has to help lower energy prices and also displace the bad actors like Russia, Venezuela, 0.99

00:11:41.220 Saudi Arabia at the same time. And, and lower emissions. And we also import, we still import

00:11:46.420 oil, right? We still import as a country oil when, when we're one of the biggest reserves in the world.

00:11:51.700 So when they, when they kill Energy East, when they put in anti-energy bills like C48 and C69,

00:11:58.820 the, the tanker bans on the west coast, it's no, no wonder we can't get our, our oil to different

00:12:05.940 markets. So you, you see this as this was, this is an opportunity. It was certain opportunity,

00:12:12.180 but it still is an opportunity. If this government would just wake up and see that, you know, our energy

00:12:16.900 is some of the most environmentally friendly energy in the entire world, to be able to champion that

00:12:21.860 and get that to other markets is, you know, it's a tremendous opportunity, not just for, for wealth,

00:12:26.740 but for, for Canada on the world stage. And we just continually vilify the, the energy sector in,

00:12:32.660 in my province of Alberta, but across the, the country, it's, it's something that this government

00:12:38.420 just isn't interested in, in talking about or, or championing at all.

00:12:42.020 Well, we just saw today the, the government having to significantly reduce emissions in order to

00:12:47.300 reach their target, which is going to hurt the oil and gas industry. At the same time,

00:12:51.300 they're moving towards the more electric vehicles, but what do the batteries use to make

00:12:56.180 these electric vehicles? Rare earth materials. So they're, they're, they're against, uh, taking

00:13:02.580 oil out of the ground, but they'll have no problem taking rare earth materials out of the ground.

00:13:08.340 And it's called rare earth for a, for a reason. There's only so much of that to go around and not

00:13:11.940 all of it's done in Canada. Right. Yeah. And by the way, the government has approved the sale

00:13:16.180 of Canadian rare earth companies. Yes. We saw the one in Argentina, Lithium. Yeah.

00:13:21.700 Why would we sell those rare earths or our right to extract those rare earths, whether those

00:13:28.180 reserves are in Argentina or in Canada, those are strategic reserves are critical minerals. And here we are,

00:13:36.660 one bit by bit disposing of those to hostile regimes. I mean, that's, this is dangerous.

00:13:43.140 We have a government in place that is not looking out for the long-term interests of Canadians,

00:13:49.060 shutting down or oil and gas industry, selling off our critical mineral, uh, supplies. This is

00:13:56.340 unacceptable for a country that's as rich as we are. Well, let's put that. I don't want to go too much on

00:14:01.780 the energy side, but just to quickly hit that, you talked about what we're doing to our mining

00:14:06.980 sector. You look at the communist party of China, they are carving up Africa right now. They are 0.90

00:14:11.140 taking over the drilling rights, mineral rights, extraction, port access all around that continent.

00:14:16.980 You talked about Argentina. So they are cornering the market on the materials that we need and

00:14:21.700 others for the electric vehicles. While at the same time, you have countries like Russia supplying

00:14:26.980 energy through Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2, soon to be, uh, putting them dependent on, on Russia. Like,

00:14:33.460 this is not a safe way, like you said, to allow North American energy independence and then supply

00:14:39.540 the world so you have a good partner in this relationship. Yeah, we need a Canada First policy

00:14:44.660 that puts the interests of Canada and Canadians first. And that means understanding what the challenges

00:14:52.340 and opportunities of the future are. We have an opportunity to be a world leader in the sustainable

00:14:59.700 development of our oil and gas reserves. We are the world leaders already. And there are many countries

00:15:06.660 around the world that are selling their products elsewhere around the world when we could be displacing

00:15:12.740 those products, contributing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and at the same time driving prosperity

00:15:19.700 here at home. And yet we've got a government in place that has completely shunned the industry,

00:15:25.060 and in fact has disparaged the industry, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to do so many

00:15:32.260 things that would build up our country and also be environmentally responsible and sustainable.

00:15:38.020 All right. I took us a bit off course there, so we are a bit behind his schedule.

00:15:42.980 We'll get to your closing remarks in just one second. Maybe we'll just talk about, as, as Matt mentioned,

00:15:47.060 uh, kind of pointed out, well, let's have the happy side. What are we proposing for the housing market?

00:15:51.300 Then I'll get to Ed to talk about finance and we'll get to closing remarks.

00:15:53.620 Yeah. Good news, Jamie. Help is on the way. Help is on the way here.

00:15:57.300 Not only do you have Ed and I raising this and our colleague Dan Albus raising this constantly in the

00:16:02.900 House of Commons to the Liberals, but we've decided this week to launch what we're calling the

00:16:07.380 Conservative Housing Task Force. And that's where we're going to actually come up with solutions for

00:16:12.420 the Liberals. We're going to go around the country. We're going to, you're going to hear what's

00:16:16.420 working, what's not working in places like, like Abbotsford, Vancouver, Toronto, Peterborough,

00:16:22.340 Burlington, some of the real hot markets, but also not forgetting that there's, there's real issues

00:16:27.540 facing some of the, the, the smaller markets. I'm in, I'm in Edmonton. We don't have a major housing

00:16:32.580 crisis facing us right now, but it's coming. Calgary, same thing. There's, there's rural communities

00:16:37.220 that are facing a real pinch. There's labor issues that are associated with all this. So we've,

00:16:42.660 we've launched that this week. We, we intend to do that from now until the, the end of when the House

00:16:47.620 rises, mid-June. And we're, we're going to essentially present our report to the Liberals

00:16:53.060 and, and hope that they take every single one of our ideas. I think, spoiler alert,

00:16:57.940 they won't because there are ideas, but we're still going to, to come up and, and we're going to,

00:17:02.100 we're going to show that there's solutions out there for this housing market. It doesn't have to be

00:17:05.540 this way. So we want to make sure that through this task force, we're, we're pushing those ideas out

00:17:09.860 there. All right, Ed, what are we talking about inflation? How do we get this under control?

00:17:13.700 Well, uh, to get inflation under control, the government's going to have to, uh, restrain

00:17:19.460 itself. Uh, it's going to have to, uh, reduce the borrowing and spending that it's engaged in.

00:17:27.940 One of the other things we are asking the government to do, it will be delivering a budget

00:17:31.860 in the next few weeks. We're saying to the government, you have to have a plan to return to

00:17:38.900 balanced budgets. You may recall, Jamie, back in 2008, 2009, when we experienced the last

00:17:45.780 global economic crisis, it was a conservative government that stepped in. We made the significant

00:17:52.100 investments in our economy that allowed us to be the first of the G7 countries to recover

00:17:58.660 from that, uh, economic downturn. And we can, got back to balanced budgets by the year 2015.

00:18:05.860 When the liberals took over, they assumed a balanced budget. And from then on, it's been

00:18:12.900 all downhill. They just spend, spend, spend without any regard to the long-term fiscal impacts

00:18:20.500 of, uh, their profit against spending. And so we're calling on the government now, listen,

00:18:27.060 give us a date when you're going to balance the budget. It's absolutely critical that you put your

00:18:32.340 government on a trajectory to meet a balanced budget target, say in the medium term. We know

00:18:38.500 it's very difficult to do in the short term, given the massive indebtedness that's been incurred

00:18:43.220 and the huge deficits the government is running. But we believe it can be done in the short,

00:18:47.860 in the medium term. And that's what we're calling the government to do. They need a real fiscal anchor.

00:18:53.380 In other words, a target that will anchor their fiscal and their monetary plans going forward.

00:19:00.500 Well, judging by this new deal with the NDP, it looks like they're going to be spending tens of

00:19:04.420 billions more than, uh, we, we are way over time, but closing remarks quick. I always give the

00:19:09.940 guests the last word, uh, but 30 to 45 seconds each, if you could.

00:19:14.180 Yeah. Housing is such a hot issue. It's, it's for future, future homeowners that right now

00:19:21.940 are just so worried about getting into the market. University students, people who one day dream of

00:19:26.100 that home ownership, it's not happening at the way that, that the prices are projected. And so we're,

00:19:31.620 we need to come up with solutions and, and that's, uh, that's ultimately what we're trying to do.

00:19:35.540 Absolutely. Yeah.

00:19:36.500 I want to give Canadians hope. Uh, we're still an incredibly, uh, rich country and natural resources

00:19:43.700 and human resources and people. We're incredibly well educated as a country. Uh, we are hoping that we

00:19:50.580 can win the trust of Canadians as a conservative party, that we can inspire Canadians to elect us the

00:19:58.340 next time we have a federal election. And of course, we will introduce policies that will reposition our

00:20:03.940 economy for the long term, bring back sustainability in terms of our finances and make sure that we're

00:20:10.980 able to stabilize housing prices so that future generations of Canadians still have this hope that maybe

00:20:17.380 someday I can actually buy into the marketplace and own my own home and provide for my children, my

00:20:24.580 family. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Ed Fass, Member of Parliament for Edmonton, also the Shadow

00:20:28.900 Minister for Finance. Also, Matt Jenneru, Member of Parliament for Edmonton Riverbend and Shadow

00:20:33.380 Minister for Housing. We appreciate your time and your contribution here today. Join us again every single

00:20:39.060 Tuesday, 1 30 p.m. Eastern time with new content. Question period is coming up in just a few minutes.

00:20:44.260 Please stick around for that. Also, a gentle reminder, like, comment, subscribe, share this

00:20:49.220 program. Again, this is information you're probably not getting in the mainstream media. And of course,

00:20:53.380 if you can't watch or listen to it right this second, download it on platforms like CastBox,

00:20:57.540 iTunes, Google Play and Spotify. Listen to it at your convenience. Low taxes, less government,

00:21:02.420 more freedom. That's the blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - March 29, 2022

Canada’s Housing Crisis

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