Western Standard - 'Trudeau's Liberals are desperate'

00:00:00.080 On Thursday, the Prime Minister admitted he's not worth the cost. He found out that I was

00:00:07.440 holding a monster rally in a Liberal stronghold, and he panicked. His phones lit up as Atlantic

00:00:15.360 Canadian Liberal MPs, bawling their eyes out, pleaded with him to relent to the pressure

00:00:23.040 that the leader of the opposition was mounting to axe the tax. The Prime Minister said he was stiff

00:00:31.680 in spine and he would never back down. And the Liberal MPs from the Atlantic caucus said,

00:00:36.800 well, then we'll oust you as leader and you'll lose your job. How will that do for your ego?

00:00:42.300 The Prime Minister said, in that case, we'll pull together a press conference this afternoon.

00:00:46.900 We'll try to time it right before the Conservative leaders' great rally in Windsor, where 1,000

00:00:53.940 people were scheduled to rise up against the tax. And we'll promise to pause the tax until

00:01:02.900 after the election. So now Atlantic Canadians know that if they elect this Prime Minister,

00:01:10.100 they will get a massive tax hike on their home heating oil. And if they elect the common sense

00:01:17.620 Conservatives, they will have tax-free heat. Pretty simple choice. Pretty simple choice. The

00:01:26.020 Prime Minister has just defined the issue of the next election. Vote for him and have a massive home

00:01:33.300 heating tax. Vote for common sense Conservatives and we will axe the tax for everyone and forever.

00:01:40.740 What do you think, Mr. Speaker? Who would you vote for?

00:01:48.180 But he sent out one of his Newfoundland MPs to say that the reason why only some Canadians were getting

00:01:55.140 a pause on the carbon tax is because other Canadians didn't vote Liberal. So soon they'll have

00:02:01.700 a new income tax rate for provinces that don't elect Liberal MPs, a new sales tax rate, new tax rates

00:02:09.220 everywhere else. But the problem with this bloody-minded divide-and-conquer tax strategy is that some

00:02:17.460 Liberals seem to have failed to win over the Prime Minister's hearts. The Liberal MP for Sudbury

00:02:23.700 has not got a carbon tax exemption. The two Liberal MPs in Thunder Bay, a very cold climate,

00:02:30.180 they don't get a carbon tax exemption. The Liberal MP for Nickel Belt did not get a carbon tax exemption in

00:02:38.260 those harsh, cold Northern Ontario communities that use gas and propane. The extremely ineffective Liberal

00:02:46.660 MP for Edmonton Centre has not got a carbon tax exemption. The loquacious and loud and never quiet

00:02:58.020 member for Winnipeg over here. They call it Winterpeg, cold in Winnipeg. And yet the Liberal,

00:03:04.740 what is this writing again? Winnipeg North, a man of many words but few actions, has failed to get a

00:03:13.380 carbon tax exemption for Winnipeggers. Apparently those people are forced to pay higher prices for

00:03:19.540 their heat because their MPs are so ineffective that they could not mount pressure on the Prime

00:03:25.380 Minister to back down. Mr. Speaker, it is proof that he's not worth the cost, just like he has not been

00:03:30.500 worth the cost for housing. After eight years, this Prime Minister has doubled mortgage payments, doubled

00:03:36.260 the rent, doubled the needed down payment for a home. Let's just review the housing hell he has caused since he

00:03:42.580 promised to lower housing costs. Let's go through it. It now takes 25 years to save up for a down

00:03:50.580 payment in Toronto before this Prime Minister you could pay off a mortgage in that time. Families are

00:03:55.540 now stretching out their mortgage terms to 90 and 120 years because interest rates on their exorbitant

00:04:04.180 mortgages have stretched out the amortization. That means that not only, you know, you used to pay off

00:04:09.220 your entire mortgage by, you know, 25 years in and then you could retire mortgage-free. Now, not only

00:04:16.020 will you never be able to pay off your mortgage in your entire lifetime, even if you hand the house

00:04:20.100 and the mortgage to your kids, they might not be able to pay it off in their lifetime. They would

00:04:24.900 then have to hand the house to a third generation who would still inherit a mortgage. So much for the

00:04:30.740 government taking on debt so that Canadians don't have to. Under this Prime Minister, homes cost 50% more

00:04:37.860 than they do in the United States. And you can buy a castle in Sweden for the price of a two bedroom

00:04:43.140 in Kitchener. Toronto is now ranked the worst housing bubble in the world by UBS Bank. Vancouver is the

00:04:50.260 most unaffordable, the third most unaffordable housing market on earth when you compare housing costs to

00:04:58.580 income. And Toronto is the 10th. Vancouver is now more unaffordable than New York, London, England,

00:05:05.700 Singapore. Singapore being a tiny island with 2,000 times more people per square kilometer than

00:05:12.100 Canada. Canada used, Canada should be the cheapest place in the world, Mr. Speaker, because of course,

00:05:18.580 we have more land per person than all but four countries on the planet. In other words, we have

00:05:24.980 lots of space, just not a lot of homes. In fact, we have fewer homes than per capita than all other G7

00:05:34.020 countries, even though we have by far the most land to build on. In fact, we have fewer homes per capita

00:05:39.940 today than we did eight years ago when this Prime Minister took office promising more homes and more

00:05:46.420 affordable homes. And if you want the best all-in-one measurement of this Prime Minister's performance on

00:05:52.660 housing and housing, look at the OECD, which compared housing costs to income starting in 2015 to present

00:06:04.740 among all 37 OECD countries. So how have the pace, the ratio of home prices to family incomes grown in Canada

00:06:16.820 relative to the other 36 OECD countries? We are the second worst. In other words, housing costs outgrew

00:06:26.260 incomes in Canada at a faster pace than in all but one of the other 36 OECD countries. In other words,

00:06:36.660 this is a new problem that occurred after this Prime Minister took office and it is a problem that is

00:06:44.020 unique to Canada. He cannot blame some prior government and he cannot blame other countries

00:06:49.700 because he is worse than Canada has ever been and worse than almost anywhere else in the world. This

00:06:56.900 is a made-in-Canada problem unique to this Prime Minister. Why? Because he has spent the last eight

00:07:04.580 years building bureaucracy rather than building homes. He brags that he has the most expensive housing

00:07:12.420 programs. He complains that when I was housing minister, my programs did not cost as much. And he

00:07:19.460 is absolutely right about that. I had far more affordable housing programs. In fact, there were far

00:07:27.860 few billions in my housing programs than there are in his programs. But we don't measure the success by how

00:07:34.500 expensive we can be. We measure success by how affordable we can be. He even made up a fact. He looked at a

00:07:41.060 CBC headline, which is always a dangerous thing to do. And he said that when I was minister that we

00:07:46.100 we only built 99 homes with 300 million dollars. I said, what the heck is he talking about? I have a

00:07:50.740 mind like a steel trap I would have remembered if I'd announced a 300 million dollar housing program.

00:07:55.140 So I checked into it. But here's what actually happened. First of all, the program was created in 2008,

00:08:00.580 a half decade before I even became the minister. Second of all, it didn't spend any money. The program was

00:08:06.980 designed to encourage private home ownership by First Nations. It invested capital of 300 million

00:08:12.660 dollars and didn't spend a penny because the money was invested commercially. It actually grew to 380

00:08:18.740 million dollars. And it wasn't 99 homes. There were 7,000 homes built, purchased, or renovated for First

00:08:26.020 Nations people. So it didn't cost any money. It made a profit and it built, renovated, and bought 7,000 homes.

00:08:34.420 Oh, and by the way, the entire thing is run by First Nations themselves. No wonder the liberals

00:08:38.820 don't like any of that, Mr. Speaker. But forget the facts. If I had to deal with their body of facts

00:08:44.740 in litigating the housing file, boy, I don't know what I would do. You might have to hallucinate to

00:08:49.380 come up with some other facts too. I might even get desperate enough to read CBC headlines as well.

00:08:54.820 But Mr. Speaker, in the meantime, let's talk about a real common sense plan to bring homes Canadians can

00:09:03.060 afford. Let's talk about my bill. The Building Homes Not Bureaucracies Act. Now, principle number one,

00:09:12.420 it will require cities boost home completions by 15 percent per year or they'll lose federal

00:09:19.780 infrastructure money. We give them five billion a year in direct transfers. They can pretty much do

00:09:24.820 whatever they want with that money. I'm saying this is going to be a housing incentive. We're going to start

00:09:28.580 paying city bureaucrats the way real estate agents get paid on volume. You get housing completed,

00:09:35.540 you get more money. You don't get it completed, you get less money. So the bureaucrats will have

00:09:39.940 to wake up every morning and say, how can we approve as many permits as quickly as possible so Canadians

00:09:44.180 have a place to live? And it's going to be very mathematical. I require you hit 15 percent more home

00:09:51.220 building per year. If you beat that by say 10 percent, you get 10 percent more money. You miss

00:09:55.700 it by 10 percent, you get 10 percent less money. Maybe then the bureaucrats will wake up and the

00:10:00.660 mayors will wake up every day and say, how can we get this done quickly? Mayors would then be forced to

00:10:06.100 move their offices right into the permitting room, have a big open room. Imagine that with big screens

00:10:10.660 that say permitting times would be on one wall, number of homes waiting, how many people are on hold

00:10:15.540 right now? How many homes are being held? Imagine if you had big screens in the city hall and all the

00:10:21.460 bureaucrats were busy motoring away trying to get to yes and get things done. Wouldn't that be

00:10:28.180 incredible if we actually focused on results rather than building more bureaucracy, Mr. Speaker?

00:10:34.820 That's what my bill will incentivize. Right now, by contrast, the current housing minister has come up

00:10:40.900 with a program. It works very simple. He calls up the mayor. He says, everyone knows housing is hell

00:10:46.820 after eight years of our government. Can I come to town and take credit for homes you were already

00:10:51.380 going to build? And I'll write you a big check if you do it. So he shows up. The city says, yeah, yeah,

00:10:55.860 there was already a subdivision going in over there. Let's give the minister credit for that. And in

00:11:00.260 exchange, he'll stroke a big check for 40 million dollars with which we can build more bureaucracy.

00:11:04.820 And then the bureaucrats will be happy, the politicians will be happy, and everyone else will be miserable.

00:11:09.860 And so that's what he's been doing. We know that this is not leading to more housing construction

00:11:14.020 because housing starts this year are down 9%. So yes, he can show up and say, oh, look at these

00:11:20.820 24,000 homes that were already going to be built. But the overall housing starts, the number of shovels

00:11:27.540 put into ground, down 9%. Two years after this so-called housing accelerator was created, not a single

00:11:34.420 solitary new house has been completed. A $4 billion housing program that doesn't build housing. My plan

00:11:43.460 creates a strict mathematical formula that pays for results. Second principle, we're going to require

00:11:50.420 every federally funded transit station be surrounded by housing so that you can live right next to the bus

00:11:56.340 or train. Countless stations that I've been to right across this country don't have housing. In fact,

00:12:02.660 in Winnipeg, the gatekeepers there actually stepped in to block 2,000 new homes right next to a transit

00:12:09.940 station that was built for those homes. They had to get slapped down in the courts. And what did the

00:12:15.140 Liberals do? They gave more money to the incompetent politicians at Winnipeg City Hall to block housing

00:12:21.140 for the people who need it. Well, I'm going to put all the federal funds for transit stations

00:12:26.180 into a trust. And the city will not get the money for the transit station until there are apartments

00:12:32.420 occupied all around the station. And that way, they will have to hurry up and approve the housing if

00:12:37.540 they want to get the money. We will again pay for results. Next, this bill will require that the

00:12:44.260 Federal Minister of Public Works do a full inventory and come to this house within months to

00:12:50.980 announce all the buildings that will be sold in order to build housing. The Prime Minister promised

00:12:57.940 this eight years ago. And in eight years, with all the 37,000 federal buildings and 6.2 million square

00:13:07.700 meters of office space and the thousands of acres, how many homes has he managed to build on federal

00:13:13.780 land and in federal buildings? How many? I asked him. Don't worry. He didn't know either. 13.

00:13:20.980 Not 13,000. Not 1,300. 13. My bill will make it mandatory by law that the Minister come here with

00:13:26.900 a plan to sell off 15% of all federal buildings, thousands of acres of federal land, so that we can

00:13:33.140 build, build, build on that land that's being used for nothing. And federal bureaucrats, on the fourth

00:13:38.500 principle, are going to have to get their act together as well. I was speaking with a builder who

00:13:43.540 builds beautiful, environmentally friendly homes and apartments in Atlantic Canada. He's in the

00:13:49.700 process of building a carbon neutral home right now. It'll be the greenest apartment complex in the

00:13:56.900 world. He had to wait two years for CMHC to approve the financing on that home. The benchmark is supposed

00:14:03.060 to be 60 days. So here's how life is going to work around here when I'm Prime Minister and in this bill.

00:14:07.780 The CMHC bureaucrats will have to hit the 60-day target within six months. If they don't, I'm cutting

00:14:13.780 their pay in half. And if they don't do it within a year, I'm firing the entire executive. It's right

00:14:19.460 in the bill. That's life. You're a barber, you don't cut hair well, you get fired. If you're a mechanic and

00:14:26.340 the engine block falls out, you get fired. In the real world, when people don't do their job, they don't get

00:14:30.980 bonuses. That's how life works under this Prime Minister for the senior six-figure bureaucracy. This bill puts an

00:14:37.620 end for that. We're going to pay for results, not for bureaucracy and the privilege of incompetent

00:14:44.980 bureaucrats who make life miserable and costly for everyone else. Mr. Speaker, the Building Homes,

00:14:52.500 Not Bureaucracy Act is common sense. The common sense of the common people united for our common home.

00:14:58.900 Your home. My home. Our home. Let's bring it home.

Western Standard - October 31, 2023

'Trudeau's Liberals are desperate'

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