Western Standard - December 04, 2023


After 8 years, they still don’t exist

Topics
rent and housing policies middle-class housing costs
Mentioned
Speaker Kitchener Hamilton
Increasing capacity for veterinary medicine City of Chestermere councillors and senior staff dismissed

Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

175.97

Word count

1,172

Sentence count

76

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Learn English with Justin Trudeau. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's plan to get rid of the GST, bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy to build more homes has been widely acclaimed by the media and the opposition. But what will the Prime Minister do when it comes to building more homes?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
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 For the first time in 60 years, rent is rising faster than salaries.
00:00:07.200 That's according to the Bank of Montreal.
00:00:09.680 After eight years of this prime minister, rent has doubled, mortgage payments have doubled,
00:00:15.620 and down payments have doubled too.
00:00:18.720 Will the prime minister finally watch my documentary?
00:00:23.400 It's an unprecedented, very striking, common-sense documentary.
00:00:29.160 And will the prime minister come up with a common-sense plan to bring down grocery prices
00:00:33.540 and build homes that people can afford and can buy?
00:00:37.120 Mr. Speaker, it's a shame that the Honourable Member doesn't put as much energy into generating housing policies
00:00:42.300 as he does to generating housing videos.
00:00:44.800 The reality, Mr. Speaker, is when I actually look at the measures he's putting forward, including in the video,
00:00:50.180 they're going to result in fewer homes being constructed than we are already on pace to build.
00:00:55.080 He plans to put the GSD back on some home construction.
00:00:58.100 He plans to cut funding for cities who are trying to build more housing,
00:01:02.260 and he plans for Canada to get out of the home-building game altogether.
00:01:05.560 Mr. Speaker, we will make the investments necessary to build more homes
00:01:09.280 and not adopt the strategy to cut home funding like the Conservatives would.
00:01:13.160 The Honourable Leader of the Official Opposition.
00:01:15.160 Mr. Speaker, he clearly didn't watch my common-sense documentary,
00:01:18.940 which is being widely acclaimed by all.
00:01:22.900 If he had, he would know the facts.
00:01:25.240 Our common-sense plan takes the GST off for apartments that are affordable, below average cost.
00:01:31.380 He wants to take it off just for $10 million penthouses.
00:01:35.260 We want to take the bureaucracy out of the picture so home builders can build.
00:01:40.400 He's got a $4 billion fund that, according to the City of Halifax,
00:01:44.180 is funding more bureaucratic gatekeepers.
00:01:47.340 So, why won't he watch the documentary, follow the common-sense plan
00:01:52.140 to get rid of the taxes and the bureaucracy, and build more homes?
00:01:56.380 The Honourable Minister of Housing.
00:02:00.200 Mr. Speaker, it's fascinating.
00:02:02.020 For him, it's about how many people are going to watch his Twitter videos.
00:02:05.240 For me, it's about how many people are going to have a roof over their head.
00:02:08.600 Mr. Speaker, the right path forward is going to have Canada make investments in home building,
00:02:14.260 not cuts to home builders.
00:02:15.740 The right investment will reduce taxes on the construction of homes, not put taxes on them.
00:02:20.540 Mr. Speaker, the right path forward will not repeat the mistakes of the past
00:02:24.260 by cutting funding for affordable housing for 30 years, as that Honourable Member pledges to do.
00:02:29.040 We will make the investments.
00:02:30.260 We will not accept that cuts are the right approach.
00:02:33.340 The Honourable Leader of the Official Opposition.
00:02:35.600 But here's the reality.
00:02:36.780 People don't have roofs over their head.
00:02:38.080 After eight years of this Prime Minister and his Housing Minister of photo ops and media puff pieces,
00:02:43.980 the rent has doubled, mortgage payments have doubled, down payments have doubled.
00:02:48.600 In his own own province in Halifax, they now have 30 homeless encampments.
00:02:56.100 Nine out of ten young people say they will never be able to afford a home.
00:03:00.760 And what have they done?
00:03:01.880 Create a $4 billion housing accelerator that two years later hasn't completed a single solitary.
00:03:08.080 Why won't they get rid of the bureaucracy and the taxes so that we can bring homes Canadians can afford? 0.98
00:03:13.980 The Honourable Minister of Housing.
00:03:17.500 Mr. Speaker, the irony when I take criticisms about photo ops from that member is shocking because he continues to use his opportunities to travel around the country on the government's dime to take pictures in front of projects that our government funded.
00:03:31.500 The reality is that the one that he is talking about has secured agreements that will change the way that cities are built, not just in Halifax, but in Moncton, Kitchener, Kelowna, Calgary, Vaughan, Brampton, Richmond Hill, London, Hamilton, the province of Quebec.
00:03:44.940 And I will continue the more time that he is talking about, and I will continue the more time he can.
00:03:47.340 The Honourable Leader of the Official Opposition.
00:03:52.760 You know, all those homes and all those cities that he's talking about, they're all open concept.
00:03:57.640 They have no walls.
00:03:59.020 They have no windows.
00:04:00.060 They have no roofs.
00:04:00.980 They have no basements, no kitchens, no bathrooms.
00:04:04.160 In fact, Mr. Speaker, other than that, they're the best homes you can imagine, and you'll have to imagine them because after eight years, they still don't exist.
00:04:13.960 So, instead of pouring billions of dollars into local government gatekeepers who block construction, why won't he follow my common sense plan to require cities boost housing construction by 15% a year or lose their money unless they beat the target and get a building bonus?
00:04:31.320 Common sense.
00:04:31.920 The Honourable Minister of Housing.
00:04:37.220 Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Member's argument falls apart when you come to understand he ignores the good work that has been done since the National Housing Strategy was adopted in 2017.
00:04:47.420 There are hundreds of thousands of homes that exist today that have been built or retrofitted as a direct result of government supports that have put them in place.
00:04:55.580 Mr. Speaker, when you actually look at what the Honourable Member's policy will do, it will raise taxes on middle-class home construction.
00:05:01.920 It will cut funding to cities who desperately need the infrastructure so they can build more homes.
00:05:07.220 And he will remove support for affordable housing altogether, which is a cardinal sin we cannot repeat after a 30-year history where we should have learned those lessons.
00:05:15.340 The Honourable Leader of the Official Opposition.
00:05:18.820 A cardinal sin.
00:05:19.820 It's time for that member to make a confession that since 2017, when they brought in this program, housing costs have doubled.
00:05:28.820 The rent has doubled.
00:05:30.280 Mortgage payments have doubled.
00:05:31.800 The needed down payment have all doubled.
00:05:34.920 My common sense plan, which is in a 15-minute documentary he can watch between photo ops while he's being chauffeured around, would ensure that cities have to permit 15% more homes in order to keep their funding.
00:05:47.100 It would take taxes off construction, including carbon taxes off of building materials, and it would require CMHC bureaucrats quickly approve financing or lose their bonuses and get fired.
00:05:58.800 This is a common sense plan.
00:06:00.280 Why won't he get working to implement it?
00:06:02.380 The Honourable Minister of Housing.
00:06:06.520 I'm fond of the Honourable Member's soliloquies on biblical passages, Mr. Speaker.
00:06:11.080 Somebody who read scripture in church growing up, and if there's one lesson I took, it's that we all have a responsibility to help the vulnerable members of our community.
00:06:18.240 The reality is we have been investing since 2017 to put money in place that's actually going to support people who do not have a roof over their head,
00:06:26.680 to build more affordable housing after 30 years of liberal and conservative governments not taking the issue of housing seriously.
00:06:33.820 The Honourable Member plans to make cuts where we will make investment, and I know which path will put a roof over more of my neighbours' heads.