00:00:00.000The Mark Carney Liberals did a bit of an oopsie with their $3.2 billion condo bailout.
00:00:06.780So you guys know what time it is. It's cover-up time, baby. You see, the Carney Liberals,
00:00:12.640they just don't have the time of day to answer basic questions as to why they needed to give
00:00:18.040$3.2 billion to Vancouver area developers. The easier and more stress-free thing for them to do
00:00:25.420is simply shut down the Ethics Committee from investigating, which I have been told by the
00:00:31.040Liberals is completely ethical because they've assured us that no investigation is needed.0.92
00:00:37.560Obviously, I'm being silly and facetious. In just a second here, I want to cut over to some clips
00:00:43.260from the Ethics Committee meeting from a few days ago, where Conservative MPs Jacob Mantle and Aaron
00:00:49.400Gunn spoke. And then we need to fast forward to today where the Liberal Housing Minister,
00:00:55.180Gregor Robertson, couldn't answer a basic question from a reporter as to why the Liberals were giving
00:01:02.380this money over. He had no clue what the details of the program are, but Mark Carney and Gregor
00:01:08.020Robertson had proudly announced this program a couple weeks ago in Vancouver. This wasn't even
00:01:13.840something they were trying to hide. They were so clueless, they thought this was going to make
00:01:17.680them popular. They live in such a tiny bubble that because their friends in the real estate
00:01:23.220development world of Vancouver liked it, they assumed that this was going to go over fantastic
00:01:28.160with Canadians. But before I get into those clips from the ethics committee, I just quickly want to
00:01:33.440remind you guys to make sure to like the video and subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber,
00:01:38.660leave a comment on what you think about all this, and consider hitting the join button below the
00:01:43.120video if you want to become a channel member and help make the channel more sustainable for me.
00:01:47.680with a few dollars contributed per month. Anyways, without further ado, let's jump into it starting
00:01:54.160off with a statement from Conservative MP Jacob Mantle, who I do need to compliment on the great
00:02:00.120haircut. It used to be longer, his hair looked good before, but I always think it behooves me
00:02:04.360to mention when people are actually, you know, dressed well when they go to Parliament. And his
00:02:08.400outfit's also fantastic at this Ethics Committee, so at the very least, his outfit is not unethical.
00:02:15.120But Jacob Mantle is going to highlight how the Liberals are trying to kick their way out of having an investigation,
00:02:20.260as well as the very basic and obvious questions that they should be able to answer freely right now.
00:02:27.160Now, I'd ask my Liberal members to help me make sense of this, because this whole bailout just doesn't make any sense to me.
00:02:36.920Mark Carney used to take the advice of his banker mentor, Bob Hurst, who said that, quote,
00:02:43.740something doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense and if it doesn't make sense he said you should
00:02:49.100run because you should never buy simply on trust but today the prime minister is asking us to accept
00:02:57.740this bailout on trust and that doesn't make any sense in a normal functioning market excess supply
00:03:06.140of unsold condos would typically lead to one or both of the following first price reductions
00:03:13.420to clear that supply so developers would lower their asking price until that price and demand
00:03:20.460matches supply that's economics 101 supply and demand young canadians at that point would be
00:03:27.820able to purchase those condos at the new lower equilibrium price and as an mp from a generation
00:03:35.180who has been consistently shut out of the market for the last 10 years it's insane to me to see
00:03:40.860a program that would continue to shut out my colleagues and friends in this generation now
00:03:47.420second if developers simply refuse to lower their prices and we know that's what they've told the
00:03:51.500prime minister because they said they don't want to sell at a loss prime minister said they're
00:03:55.340stuck he wants to help them out now if they don't want to lower their prices you know the costs to
00:04:02.140carry those units remain and so they might face the losses of that distress sales bankruptcies
00:04:09.580so banks or new buyers would acquire those units at discounted prices in distress
00:04:15.660and the losses in those cases would be borne by the party that took the risk
00:04:22.220but instead the plan that we have been presented with is to use taxpayer dollars to socialize
00:04:29.340those losses while developers avoid the full consequences of their actions so maybe they can
00:04:38.300can help me make sense of that. And by the way, as Jacob Mantle is getting at here, this is going
00:04:43.760to increase prices. Mark Carney explicitly said that the developers didn't want to have to sell
00:04:49.420these condos at a loss. And so that was inferred as one of the reasons that the federal government
00:04:54.780was stepping in. This is also a project being done in conjunction with the British Columbia
00:04:59.500NDP government and Premier David Eby. Although because they're so in debt, their last budget
00:05:05.560deficit was $13.4, $13.9, $13.3 billion. The thing is that the federal government is really
00:05:12.760the government that's footing the bill. Because when the BC government is in debt, well, who are
00:05:17.340they borrowing the money for to pay for their half of the $3.2 billion? Well, it would be the Canadian
00:05:23.860Central Bank, and it would be the federal government. And so we're in a situation here
00:05:30.060where apparently simply a developer not being able to profit off of a bad investment is enough
00:05:36.500for the government to step in and bail them all out. And you can tell that this is actually
00:05:40.680profiting the companies because Brookfield, one of their subsidiaries, ended up buying up a bunch
00:05:48.400of the condos that got bailed out 15 weeks before the bailout actually happens. How does this keep
00:05:54.100happening with Brookfield? Whenever government money is about to squeeze out of a department,
00:05:59.220they simply happen to have their mouth sitting agape right under the hose right when it happens.
00:06:05.400It's almost like they have inside information to make sure that they benefit very quickly
00:06:10.580from simply knowing where to place their money right before government grants get thrown out,
00:06:15.740tax breaks, or other things such as bailouts. But now let's jump over to Aaron Gunn's statement
00:06:22.240at the committee. Again, this is like a really bad look for the liberals that they didn't expect
00:06:28.200considering they so proudly had announced this program at the beginning look we're gathered here
00:06:33.000today in the middle of summer not because i think everyone loves spending time in ottawa in july but
00:06:37.760because canadians have very real concerns about the liberal plan to bail out billionaire condo
00:06:43.960developers in the fifth most unaffordable housing market in the entire world starting with the fact
00:06:49.860that during the last election the prime minister and the liberal party never campaigned on this
00:06:55.900They never campaigned on spending more than a billion dollars in taxpayer money to give a handout to their wealthy developer friends.
00:07:02.700They never campaigned on using the taxpayer dollars of hardworking Canadians to buy more than 2,000 condos in Greater Vancouver.
00:07:11.120Also, developers wouldn't have to lower prices and, God forbid, sell at a loss.
00:07:16.300And they never campaigned on artificially propping up what are already extremely unaffordable housing prices and preventing the market from moderating to a more affordable and sustainable level.
00:07:28.120Of course, all this begs some pretty obvious ethical questions that I think deserve answers, such as if the Liberals didn't campaign on this policy, why are they suddenly deciding to pursue it now?
00:07:40.300And to answer that question, but not actually answer it, what the liberals and the NDP in British Columbia have been claiming is that they weren't actually asked by the developers for these bailouts, which then brings up the question of how did you independently decide that you were going to give them this money, though?
00:08:00.800And that is what we're going to get to later with Greg Robertson flopping around at the press conference like a fish out of water, because if they didn't ask for it, why are you giving it?
00:08:12.900And so, like, why? Obviously, they asked. They've had, there's already records of fundraising that went on with Vancouver area developers, with the Kearney Liberals, and no doubt with the BCNDP as well.
00:08:26.840Again, you have Brookfield assets involved in this.
00:08:31.060No doubt somebody has some sort of a line to Mark Carney who can let him know that they're involved in this scheme.
00:08:37.660This stuff doesn't just fall out of the sky, but the liberals are trying to pretend it did fall out of the sky.
00:08:41.840And it's just, you know, sometimes $1.6 billion from the federal and provincial governments just happen to flow into buying up a bunch of random condos in Vancouver.
00:08:55.860is this being planned for more canadian cities and maybe most importantly which well-connected
00:09:01.660developers big banks and foreign investors stand to benefit the most now i want to take a moment
00:09:08.120to share with the members of this committee a particular dictionary definition that i just
00:09:13.640think describes the direction of economic policy in canada over the past year and i quote an
00:09:19.960economic system where business success depends heavily on close ties between corporate
00:09:25.420executives and government officials. Instead of competing in a free meritocratic market,
00:09:32.460companies thrive by securing political favors such as bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies,
00:09:38.360or specialized regulations that block competition. That, colleagues, is the definition of crony
00:09:45.600capitalism, and it does increasingly, in my view, represent the official economic policy
00:09:50.960of the Liberal Party of Canada, rewarding insiders, well-connected corporations,
00:09:56.160and party loyalists while everyday Canadians fall further behind,
00:10:00.360privatizing the profits of the wealthy, then bailing them out should something go wrong.
00:10:06.200And as one of the millennial members of Parliament,
00:10:10.460I also have to point out how insane the generational inequity of this policy truly is,
00:10:16.340handing out huge sums of money to the...
00:10:18.660I'm going to skip over that part just because Jacob Mantle had also already highlighted it, but, you know, feels like something where if there was a good answer for all this, the liberals would quickly nip this thing in the bud, especially since this is disrupting what is at least rhetorically a good week for Mark Carney.
00:10:34.640He has his pipeline. He has some other projects coming down the pike that make him look good. Now, I don't actually believe the pipeline is real. I believe Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is sincere about wanting to build pipelines.
00:10:48.040I believe that Mark Carney, the First Nation bands, and Premier David Eby are not sincere about wanting to build pipelines, especially since before this, if you remember, Mark Carney signed over the Aboriginal land title to the entire Lower Mainland to the Musqueam, which is run by Chief Wayne Sparrow and their very anti-oil band council.
00:11:11.640they're already well off they are probably heavily incentivized to say no even just for
00:11:16.500the power game of it all demonstrating who really owns the lower mainland but uh you know that's
00:11:22.200that's it for there like um really what i think is half what is what's happening uh for mark carney
00:11:28.920is that he's kind of having his week spoiled by this condo bailout news and so you think if again
00:11:35.060if they had good answers for what was going on they would have already tried to bury this entire
00:11:38.960thing by answering them as quickly as possible because they want to get back to what looked like
00:11:43.940it was a winning week. But here is housing minister Greg Robertson being asked a question
00:11:50.300by Sitka Media about why the $3.2 billion bailout was done in the first place. And just on the
00:11:57.520ethics committee's decision, do you agree with that, yes or no? Yeah, I submitted a letter to
00:12:02.380the ethics committee as well, clarifying that this is a BC government program. The government
00:12:06.260to Canada will participate in 10% of that, subject to the proposal being firmed up.
00:12:15.460By the way, guys, it is not only a 10% stake. In this particular part of the plan,
00:12:21.200they're only putting in like $110 million. They're still putting in $1.6 billion,
00:12:26.180but in just this half of the plan, they're only putting in 10%. The full $3.2 billion
00:12:32.320It's still all taxpayer money backed by the federal government.
00:12:36.240In fact, pretty much all of it's backed by the federal government because the NDP have
00:12:39.320no ability to actually pay for this themselves.
00:12:41.860But they keep downplaying it and then pushing off blame to the BC NDP.
00:12:45.840But they proudly announced it and they're pretending they don't know the details.
00:12:50.260The proposal being firmed up, the BC government's working on the details of it.
00:12:55.620So any mischaracterization is premature.
00:13:01.480Nobody has seen what this program will be.
00:13:04.060And at its core, as the Premier and Prime Minister stated last week, this is about getting affordable condos available to families right now below market prices,
00:13:16.140making sure there's a program that makes those empty homes available at an affordable rate and a rent-to-own program.
00:13:23.960So that's what this is. And we're waiting for the details to come forward before the program is launched.
00:13:32.280And so they put in at least let's just let's just say it's only the half and they're not having to back the other half.
00:13:38.020They're putting $1.6 billion into bailing out Vancouver area developers for unsold condos because we need to do this for affordable housing, even though the justification that Carney gave and David Eby gave to bailing them out in the first place was that they didn't want them to lose money on these units, implying that the prices were already going down a lot.
00:14:01.280So why do they need to shell out taxpayer money to then make these units available below market value?
00:14:08.980Because the entire market is going below market value.
00:14:12.160What market value is, is shifting downward very significantly right now.
00:14:19.320You went to a press conference to announce a program that you had no details on,
00:14:24.300and you were just going to trust David E.B. on it,
00:14:27.060even though you, Mark Carney, were the one to actually make the proud announcement that we're
00:14:32.640doing all this. So this stinks. And the justification that it wasn't our project
00:14:38.760is not good enough to shut down an ethics committee investigation. Is that just a cheat code now?
00:14:45.440You can give money to your friends as long as you give it through a municipal or provincial
00:14:49.580government. And then once somebody in the federal government wants to investigate, you're like, ah,
00:14:53.700that's a provincial thing we just funded it it's like yeah you funded it that's that's the problem
00:14:58.900here you put money towards it i don't care if when we were transferring the money finally to
00:15:04.200the developers if like david eby hit the button or mark carney hit the button my problem is the
00:15:10.520button was pressed and the taxpayer money was basically shot into the sun to burn up again
00:15:16.960you could justify bailing out anybody on this justification oh my blueberries are not as uh
00:15:24.060like my blueberries are not as like uh are not being sold for as much this year as they were
00:15:28.640last year because there's a lot more people on the market selling the harvest was great this year so
00:15:33.140my blueberries are only being sold at like you know three or four dollars per uh per cardboard uh
00:15:39.900per cardboard box of them and i want five dollars like it was last year the government better come
00:15:45.920and kick me in that extra dollar. Oh my goodness, my accounting services have gone down in price
00:15:51.540because of whatever, whatever. I need the government to come in and pay me more money
00:15:55.300for my accounting services. Oh my goodness. I don't even know what else you could apply this to.
00:16:01.560That wouldn't be completely absurd. My used cars aren't worth as much these days. The federal
00:16:06.740government better come in and give me another $3,000 per car that I sell, or I could lose money.
00:16:11.880It's like, yeah, it's a free market. You made a bunch of bad choices, and now you're going to lose some money. These developers aren't going bankrupt. They're far from going bankrupt. They were making money hand over fist years ago, and now they're a little butthurt that the prices are going down, so they might take a haircut on some of these condos that they put way too much money into building when they weren't going to actually be able to flip them when immigration rates started going down.
00:16:36.660Many of these were being sold at the time where they should have known that the horizon on
00:16:41.460immigration was eventually going to dip because it was unsustainable before. But if you needed to
00:16:46.900rely on an unsustainable market fueled by massive amounts of TFW students and new permanent residents
00:16:53.340in order to make money, that sounds like a frankly unethical business model. You need to make it as
00:16:59.780impossible to rent or buy in order for you to actually be able to squeeze enough money out
00:17:04.400from people to be able to actually profit. Now, I do blame the city of Vancouver, city of Burnaby,
00:17:09.900as well as the provincial government of BC, because they have made it difficult to build.
00:17:15.700I am not a NIMBY and I'm not a YIMBY. I think we just need reasonable housing policy. And it's
00:17:21.420unreasonable in the lower mainland of British Columbia. But oftentimes, it's the biggest
00:17:29.360developers who actually support the bad policy, because it kind of removes their competition from
00:17:36.160the area. And even though it's more difficult on a technical level to build a house, because it's
00:17:41.640more difficult for everyone, it does shove competition out of that marketplace. Anyways,
00:17:46.780that should be it for this video, guys. Thank you guys for watching. Make sure to like, share,
00:17:51.180subscribe, consider hitting the join button and becoming a member of the National Telegraph
00:17:55.320YouTube channel. And with all that being said, thank you guys for watching and I'll see you all