Bill C-59

Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023

An Act to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 21, 2023 and certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023

Part 1 implements certain measures in respect of the Income Tax Act and the Income Tax Regulations by
(a) limiting the deductibility of net interest and financing expenses by certain corporations and trusts, consistent with certain Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Group of Twenty Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project recommendations;
(b) implementing hybrid mismatch rules consistent with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Group of Twenty Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project recommendations regarding cross-border tax avoidance structures that exploit differences in the income tax laws of two or more countries to produce “deduction/non-inclusion mismatches”;
(c) allowing expenditures incurred in the exploration and development of all lithium to qualify as Canadian exploration expenses and Canadian development expenses;
(d) ensuring that only genuine intergenerational business transfers are excluded from the anti-surplus stripping rule in section 84.1 of the Income Tax Act ;
(e) denying the dividend received deduction for dividends received by Canadian financial institutions on certain shares that are held as mark-to-market property;
(f) increasing the rate of the rural supplement for Climate Action Incentive payments (CAIP) from 10% to 20% for the 2023 and subsequent taxation years as well as referencing the 2016 census data for the purposes of the CAIP rural supplement eligibility for the 2023 and 2024 taxation years;
(g) providing a refundable investment tax credit to qualifying businesses for eligible carbon capture, utilization and storage equipment;
(h) providing a refundable investment tax credit to qualifying businesses for eligible clean technology equipment;
(i) introducing, under certain circumstances, labour requirements in relation to the new refundable investment tax credits for eligible carbon capture, utilization and storage equipment as well as eligible clean technology equipment;
(j) removing the requirement that credit unions derive no more than 10% of their revenue from sources other than certain specified sources;
(k) permitting a qualifying family member to acquire rights as successor of a holder of a Registered Disability Savings Plan following the death of that plan’s last remaining holder who was also a qualifying family member;
(l) implementing consequential changes of a technical nature to facilitate the operation of the existing rules for First Home Savings Accounts;
(m) introducing a tax of 2% on the net value of equity repurchases by certain Canadian corporations, trusts and partnerships whose equity is listed on a designated stock exchange;
(n) exempting certain fees from the refundable tax applicable to contributions under retirement compensation arrangements;
(o) introducing a technical amendment to the provision that authorizes the sharing of taxpayer information for the purposes of the Canadian Dental Care Plan;
(p) implementing a number of amendments to the general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR) as well as introducing a new penalty applicable to transactions subject to the GAAR and extending the normal reassessment period for the GAAR by three years in certain circumstances;
(q) facilitating the creation of employee ownership trusts;
(r) introducing specific anti-avoidance rules in relation to corporations referred to as substantive CCPCs; and
(s) extending the phase-out by three years, and expanding the eligible activities, in relation to the reduced tax rates for certain zero-emission technology manufacturers.
It also makes related and consequential amendments to the Excise Tax Act and the Excise Act, 2001 .
Part 2 enacts the Digital Services Tax Act and its regulations. That Act provides for the implementation of an annual tax of 3% on certain types of digital services revenue earned by businesses that meet certain revenue thresholds. It sets out rules for the purposes of establishing liability for the tax and also sets out applicable reporting and filing requirements. To promote compliance with its provisions, that Act includes modern administration and enforcement provisions generally aligned with those found in other taxation statutes. Finally, this Part also makes related and consequential amendments to other texts to ensure proper implementation of the tax and cohesive and efficient administration by the Canada Revenue Agency.
Part 3 implements certain Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST) measures by
(a) ensuring that an interest in a corporation that does not have its capital divided into shares is treated as a financial instrument for GST/HST purposes;
(b) ensuring that interest and dividend income from a closely related partnership is not included in the determination of whether a person is a de minimis financial institution for GST/HST purposes;
(c) ensuring that an election related to supplies made within a closely related group of persons that includes a financial institution may not be revoked on a retroactive basis without the permission of the Minister of National Revenue;
(d) making technical amendments to an election that allows electing members of a closely related group to treat certain supplies made between them as having been made for nil consideration;
(e) ensuring that certain supplies between the members of a closely related group are not inadvertently taxed under the imported taxable supply rules that apply to financial institutions;
(f) raising the income threshold for the requirement to file an information return by certain financial institutions;
(g) allowing up to seven years to assess the net tax adjustments owing by certain financial institutions in respect of the imported taxable supply rules;
(h) expanding the GST/HST exemption for services rendered to individuals by certain health care practitioners to include professional services rendered by psychotherapists and counselling therapists;
(i) providing relief in relation to the GST/HST treatment of payment card clearing services;
(j) allowing the joint venture election to be made in respect of the operation of a pipeline, rail terminal or truck terminal that is used for the transportation of oil, natural gas or related products;
(k) raising the input tax credit (ITC) documentation thresholds from $30 to $100 and from $150 to $500 and allowing billing agents to be treated as intermediaries for the purposes of the ITC information rules; and
(l) extending the 100% GST rebate in respect of new purpose-built rental housing to certain cooperative housing corporations.
It also implements an excise tax measure by creating a joint election mechanism to specify who is eligible to claim a rebate of excise tax for goods purchased by provinces for their own use.
Part 4 implements certain excise measures by
(a) allowing vaping product licensees to import packaged vaping products for stamping by the licensee and entry into the Canadian duty-paid market as of January 1, 2024;
(b) permitting all cannabis licensees to elect to remit excise duties on a quarterly rather than a monthly basis, starting from the quarter that began on April 1, 2023;
(c) amending the marking requirements for vaping products to ensure that the volume of the vaping substance is marked on the package;
(d) requiring that a person importing vaping products must be at least 18 years old; and
(e) introducing administrative penalties for certain infractions related to the vaping taxation framework.
Part 5 enacts and amends several Acts in order to implement various measures.
Subdivision A of Division 1 of Part 5 amends Subdivision A of Division 16 of Part 6 of the Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1 to clarify the scope of certain non-financial activities in which federal ‚financial institutions may engage and to remove certain discrepancies between the English and French versions of that Act.
Subdivision B of Division 1 of Part 5 amends the Trust and Loan Companies Act , the Bank Act and the Insurance Companies Act to, among other things, permit federal financial institutions governed by those Acts to hold certain meetings by virtual means without having to obtain a court order and to permit voting during those meetings by virtual means.
Division 2 of Part 5 amends the Canada Labour Code to, among other things, provide a leave of absence of three days in the event of a pregnancy loss and modify certain provisions related to bereavement leave.
Division 3 of Part 5 enacts the Canada Water Agency Act . That Act establishes the Canada Water Agency, whose role is to assist the Minister of the Environment in exercising or performing that Minister’s powers, duties and functions in relation to fresh water. The Division also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Division 4 of Part 5 amends the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act to, among other things,
(a) authorize the making of regulations respecting fees or charges to be paid by tobacco and vaping product manufacturers for the purpose of recovering the costs incurred by His Majesty in right of Canada in relation to the carrying out of the purpose of that Act;
(b) provide for related administration and enforcement measures; and
(c) require information relating to the fees or charges to be made available to the public.
Division 5 of Part 5 amends the Canadian Payments Act to, among other things, provide that additional persons are entitled to be members of the Canadian Payments Association and clarify the composition of that Association’s Stakeholder Advisory Council.
Division 6 of Part 5 amends the Competition Act to, among other things,
(a) modernize the merger review regime, including by modifying certain notification rules, clarifying that Act’s application to labour markets, allowing the Competition Tribunal to consider the effect of changes in market share and the likelihood of coordination between competitors following a merger, extending the limitation period for mergers that were not the subject of a notification to the Commissioner of Competition and placing a temporary restraint on the completion of certain mergers until the Tribunal has disposed of any application for an interim order;
(b) improve the effectiveness of the provisions that address anti-competitive conduct, including by allowing the Commissioner to review the effects of past agreements and arrangements, ensuring that an order related to a refusal to deal may address a refusal to supply a means of diagnosis or repair and ensuring that representations of a product’s benefits for protecting or restoring the environment must be supported by adequate and proper tests and that representations of a business or business activity for protecting or restoring the environment must be supported by adequate and proper substantiation;
(c) strengthen the enforcement framework, including by creating new remedial orders, such as administrative monetary penalties, with respect to those collaborations that harm competition, by creating a civilly enforceable procedure to address non-compliance with certain provisions of that Act and by broadening the classes of persons who may bring private cases before the Tribunal and providing for the availability of monetary payments as a remedy in those cases; and
(d) provide for new procedures, such as the certification of agreements or arrangements related to protecting the environment and a remedial process for reprisal actions.
The Division also amends the Competition Tribunal Act to prevent the Competition Tribunal from awarding costs against His Majesty in right of Canada, except in specified circumstances.
Finally, the Division makes a consequential amendment to one other Act.
Division 7 of Part 5 amends the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act to exclude from their application prescribed public post-secondary educational institutions.
Subdivision A of Division 8 of Part 5 amends the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act to, among other things,
(a) provide that, if a person or entity referred to in section 5 of that Act has reasonable grounds to suspect possible sanctions evasion, the relevant information is reported to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada;
(b) add reporting requirements for persons and entities providing certain services in respect of private automatic banking machines;
(c) require declarations respecting money laundering, the financing of terrorist activities and sanctions evasion to be made in relation to the importation and exportation of goods; and
(d) authorize the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada to disclose designated information to the Department of the Environment and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, subject to certain conditions.
It also amends the Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1 in relation to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act and makes consequential amendments to other Acts and a regulation.
Subdivision B of Division 8 of Part 5 amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) in certain circumstances, provide that a court may infer the knowledge or belief or recklessness required in relation to the offence of laundering proceeds of crime and specify that it is not necessary for the prosecutor to prove that the accused knew, believed they knew or was reckless as to the specific nature of the designated offence;
(b) remove, in the context of the special warrants and restraint order in relation to proceeds of crime, the requirement for the Attorney General to give an undertaking, as well as permit a judge to attach conditions to a special warrant for search and seizure of property that is proceeds of crime; and
(c) modify certain provisions relating to the production order for financial data to include elements specific to accounts associated with digital assets.
It also makes consequential amendments to the Seized Property Management Act and the Forfeited Property Sharing Regulations .
Division 9 of Part 5 retroactively amends section 42 of the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to specify the payments about which information must be published on a Government of Canada website, as well as the information that must be published.
Division 10 of Part 5 amends the Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act to increase the number of directors in the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, as well as to provide for consultation with the portion of the National Joint Council of the Public Service of Canada that represents employees when certain candidates are included on the list for proposed appointment as directors.
Division 11 of Part 5 enacts the Department of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Act , which establishes the Department of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, confers on the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities various responsibilities relating to public infrastructure and confers on the Minister of Housing various responsibilities relating to housing and the reduction and prevention of homelessness. The Division also makes consequential amendments to other Acts and repeals the Canada Strategic Infrastructure Fund Act .
Division 12 of Part 5 amends the Employment Insurance Act to, among other things, create a benefit of 15 weeks for claimants who are carrying out responsibilities related to
(a) the placement with the claimant of one or more children for the purpose of adoption; or
(b) the arrival of one or more new-born children of the claimant into the claimant’s care, in the case where the person who will be giving or gave birth to the child or children is not, or is not intended to be, a parent of the child or children.
The Division also amends the Canada Labour Code to create a leave of absence of up to 16 weeks for an employee to carry out such responsibilities.

Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I can only go where my caucus leads, and they are asking me to continue speaking. I can do no other. I am but their humble servant. The member across the way is also very humble, and he has much to be humble about, indeed, as does his entire government.

Today, I rise to speak about false Liberal advertising. What we have in the private sector are laws that could lead to the criminal prosecution of any business that advertises one thing and delivers the opposite. If somebody goes on television, tries to sell a product and then fails to deliver it after collecting payment, they can be sued civilly and maybe even charged criminally.

Weirdly, in politics, we call it law-making. We have a Prime Minister who literally brings programs before the House of Commons that do exactly the opposite of what they say. For example, he said he was going to spend millions of dollars buying back hunting rifles. What has this resulted in? A 100% increase in violent crime. He has a program that he says will help protect the media that has actually removed the media from social networks. We have a Prime Minister who has an $87-billion affordable housing program that has doubled the cost of housing. This the exact opposite of what he promised, and yet he took billions of dollars from Canadians in order to pay for it.

The Liberals were trumpeting their idea of an affordable food program for kids, and then we found out that there is no food in the program. We found that the program does not provide a single dollar for food. Here is what it does, and I have it right from the bill:

The Minister must, in consultation with the Minister of Health, representatives of the provincial governments responsible for health and education, other relevant stakeholders in those fields and representatives of Indigenous governing bodies, develop a national framework to establish a school food program

Let us just walk through all the steps, because we know that normally, in the real world, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but there were many points that were unrelated to kids actually having food in their belly. One minister would consult with another federal minister, who would consult with provincial ministers, who would consult with stakeholders, which is code for lobbyists, who would then develop a national framework to establish a school food program.

I note that the bill actually did not provide a single dollar to source anything of nutritional value, not a single calorie of nutrition is funded by the bill. It does not feed kids, it feeds bureaucracy.

This is an example of all of the wonderful labels and slogans Liberals put on their spending that actually does not deliver anything to the end-user. It is more self-service, not public service but self-service, of the bigger and fatter bureaucracy and the ecosystem of lobbyists, interest groups, researchers, bureaucrats, Crown CEOs and contractors who feast off all of the money that is hidden under these beautiful and unimpeachable slogans. There is the beautiful “Let's Protect Innocent Kittens Act”. Liberals will spend a billion dollars on that, but they will hire a bureaucrat who will create a department that will consult with paid interest groups, which will contract out their report writing to those who have expertise in PowerPoint. They will have hundreds of people feeding off this program, and the poor little kittens will be forgotten about in the end. Who thinks of the kittens? They do not actually get anything, not even a little bit of milk, because Liberals will carbon tax that as well.

That is the system of the government: It spends more to achieve less. As I said, there is an $87-billion housing program that is supposed to make housing affordable but that has doubled the cost of housing, doubled the rent, doubled the mortgage payment and doubled the needed down payment. Let us go through the numbers. When I was housing minister, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment was about $950 a month; now it is just under $2,000 a month. The average mortgage payment on an average home, newly purchased, was $1,400; today it is $3,500. The average down payment for a newly purchased standard-price home was $20,000. Imagine that. We almost cannot imagine it. The $20,000 amount for a down payment almost seems quaint. That was only eight years ago. Now, it is over $50,000.

The Prime Minister's main criticism of me is that I did not have big enough bureaucracies at the same time as I was making housing affordable. His measurement of success is not whether one delivers an end product to the end-user; it is whether one builds a big enough bureaucracy and line item in the budget to pay for it. Failing is bad; failing expensively is worse, and, boy, has he ever failed.

I recently produced a documentary called “Housing Hell: How we got here and how we get out”. Has anybody heard of it? I see that even some random Liberals on the backbench have heard of it, and that is nice, because they do not really get put to any good use. It is good that they were able to have a quiet 15 minutes to soak in the production.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, maybe I will make a few more that will add up to an hour, and then the member will have something to do with himself when he is away on Christmas break. Maybe that will be the Christmas gift that appears under the member's tree when he wakes up and opens his phone.

We have seen an absolute meltdown by the bought-and-paid-for media. First of all, they were furious that I went around them. How dare I communicate directly with Canadians, they asked. They proceeded, with no success, to try to poke holes in the documentary, which introduces a new fact roughly every 20 or 25 seconds for the entire 15-minute period. The media was desperate to find an error or a problem, and they could not find a single factual error in the entire documentary. They tried.

Let me review some of the undisputable facts, because they are all publicly sourced, with proof to show where they come from. For example, one headline said, “Nine out of 10 Canadians believe they will never own a home, survey shows”. That is right out of the Milton Reporter on April 25, 2022. It is so much worse now than it was back then. This headline was in The Globe and Mail: “This 57-year-old grandmother didn’t choose the van life. The housing crisis chose it for her”. That was in May 2023. Imagine the miserable life of this wonderful grandmother after eight years of the Prime Minister. Another news headline was that students are forced to live under bridges.

One might ask why I am quoting the media, of which I am critical, and it is because they fail to mention in any of these articles who the Prime Minister is who presided over the housing hell. They fail to assign blame to the person who actually caused the problem in the first place.

CBC/Radio-Canada, desperately flailing around trying to find fault with my documentary, recently said that I had no proof that it takes 66% of an average family's monthly income to make payments on the average home. The report comes from RBC, in its quarterly housing affordability calculation. It has been doing it for 40 years, and it is now higher than it has ever been in its recorded history. That is because housing costs have not only grown but have also vastly outgrown our very poor and miserable wage growth under the Prime Minister.

CBC/Radio-Canada then went on to its next excuse, claiming that Canada's housing hell is just part of some global phenomenon. That is an easy claim to dispute and disprove because, of course, our housing hell is so much worse than that of any other country on earth. For example, Toronto is rated by UBS Bank as the worst housing bubble in the world. Vancouver is the sixth. Both of them were rated as moderately expensive only 10 years ago.

If one wants a different measure, go to Demographia, which has a very simple formula. It divides the average house price in a country or a city by the average income. Based on that measure, Vancouver is the third and Toronto the 10th most overpriced housing market in the world, worse than Manhattan; Los Angeles; Chicago; London, England; and even Singapore, a country with 2,000 times more people per square kilometre than Canada has. Look at the comparison with the United States. The average American housing prices, depending on the measurement, are 25% to 40% cheaper. In border towns, house prices on the Canadian side, 15 minutes away, are often double or even triple the prices of those south of the border.

A two-bedroom house in Kitchener now costs more than a castle in Sweden. In fact, the OECD did a measurement of the growth in house prices relative to the growth in incomes in all of the roughly 40 OECD countries, and Canada saw the second-worst deterioration of housing affordability since the Prime Minister took office in 2015. No, one cannot blame it on some global phenomenon; it is a uniquely Canadian hell and a uniquely here-and-now hell. The Prime Minister is responsible.

I find they say that the Prime Minister really has nothing to do with housing—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona is rising on a point of order.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I noticed the time. Of course, the leader of the official opposition is entitled to take as much time as he wants, but some of us are beginning to wonder whether he is running out the clock so he does not have to take questions, if he is afraid to take questions from the floor, or whether he will be leaving some time for members to ask him questions about his dissertation.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-59, an act to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 21, 2023 and certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, we then went on to demonstrate in the documentary another indisputable fact: that Canada has the fewest homes per capita in the G7 after eight years of the Prime Minister, even though we have the most land to build on, and that we built more homes in 1972 than we built last year. In fact, in 1972, there were 22 million Canadians. Last year, there were 39 million. In other words, we have doubled the population while reducing the number of homes we are building, because of the massive bureaucracy the Prime Minister continues to build up. As a result, the number of homes relative to the number of families who need them is in stark decline.

What do colleagues think is causing the rising cost of building a home? In Vancouver, for example, what would colleagues think is the leading cost of building a home? Is it land, labour, lumber or even the profit of the builder? No, it is the government: the cost of permits, delays, consultants, red tape and taxes. All of these costs add up to more than all of the other costs combined. They add up to $1.3 million for every newly built home. In Montreal, the city has blocked 25,000 new homes in the last two years. In Winnipeg, the courts had to shoot down a decision by the city hall to block 2,000 homes right next to a transit station that was built for those homes. Why was that? It was because the city councillor said his constituents did not want neighbours. Many Ontario municipalities have raised development charges 900%. Have the costs of servicing communities gone up 900% over the last several decades? I would like to see why.

Granted, those decisions are municipal, but they are federally funded because the Prime Minister happily forks over billions and billions of dollars more, rewarding bureaucracies for blocking the way. For example, he has created the new housing accelerator fund. After two years and $4 billion, it has not completed a single solitary home. Recently, the minister had a great photo op in the city of Halifax, in your province, Mr. Speaker, and boy, did we ever need a housing announcement there, because, after eight years of the Prime Minister, there are now 30 homeless encampments in that city. Can people imagine that?

Mr. Speaker, you are from Nova Scotia. Would you ever have imagined that there would be 30 homeless encampments in Halifax? Eight years ago, if I had told you that would have happened, you would not have believed me. This is after eight years of the misery and poverty that the Prime Minister has imposed on our people. We were all a little bit relieved when, all of a sudden, the minister decided he was going to show up and do something on housing. He announced millions of dollars for the Liberal mayor. What did we find out the money was for? It was for hiring more—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

We have another point of order from the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I asked whether the leader of the Conservative Party was trying to run and hide from the Q and A, but I did not get an answer. Will he be leaving time for us to ask him questions about his dissertation?

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

That is not a point of order, but we know that we will be moving on to the next item at about 5:42 p.m., so the hon. member does have unlimited time.

The hon. leader of the official opposition.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, not only would I be prepared to answer that member's questions, but I would also like to up the ante. I am prepared to put partisanship aside and put on a multi-party screening of my documentary, “Housing hell: How we got here and how we get out”. I know that I have offered that before, but what I am prepared to do is up the offer and make myself available for an hour of questions and answers after the screening is done so the member could come and enjoy. I have only an hour. I am very busy, but I would be happy to have the member come and enjoy the documentary. We will be showing it in both official languages, of course.

We will show it in both official languages. The members from the Bloc Québécois can come. I know that they are allergic to common sense. It is going to be tough.

We do not want them to get an allergic reaction to the common sense in the documentary, but we will be inviting them all to join in the spirit of camaraderie as we build homes and reverse the housing hell that this Prime Minister, with the help of the NDP, has caused Canadians. They cannot say that I never did anything for them.

The facts of this documentary continued as we went through it to demonstrate that Canada has really no excuse to have a housing crisis. We have the second-biggest land mass in the world. We have by far, by many orders of magnitude, the most land per capita of any country in the G7 and the sixth-biggest supply, give or take, in the world per capita. If we spread Canadians out evenly, we would have something like 33 NFL-sized football fields for every single Canadian. It would be the perfect place to be a hermit. People would never see another person because we have so much land.

Obviously, critics will say, “Well of course we have all this land that is far away and nobody can live there.” That is nonsense. We have land all around and even inside our big cities. We have land right along the strip of the Canada-U.S. border. People can take a drive around Ottawa and see all of the land that is undeveloped, or the tiny government buildings on thousands of square metres of land that is unused, which could be used for housing if the federal government would unlock it. There is no excuse. The only thing stopping the construction of housing is the government.

By the way, if members doubt this, they can explain this to me. The United States has most of its population concentrated in large metropolis centres like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, etc., and yet somehow, housing is 25% to 45% cheaper there. How is it that housing in Tokyo is more affordable than it is in Vancouver, if the issue were just that we are all crunched into small metropolitan spaces? That is totally false. It is yet another excuse that government-funded media makes for government failure.

We know it is a failure that can be fixed, because look at the incredible work of the Squamish people. Because they did not have to worry about the bureaucracy at Vancouver City Hall, they were able to approve and begin building 6,000 apartments on 10 acres of land. That is 600 units per acre. If they had to go through city hall, it never would have happened, and those 6,000 wonderful families and couples would not have those homes. They have demonstrated that if they get the government out of the way and let builders build, then they have more apartments. Unfortunately, that is exactly the opposite of what this—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I have a point of order from the hon. member for Milton.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am also eager to ask questions, but I am also eager to point out that it was a $1-billion CMHC loan, the largest ever from the federal government, to the Squamish Nation.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

We are falling into debate. Do not forget that once the member is finished, there will be an opportunity for questions and answers.

The hon. leader of the official opposition.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I love how when the first nations people do extraordinary things, Liberals show up to take all the credit. The member reminds me of the rooster who thought that just because he crowed when the sun came up, he made the sun come up. He did not make the sun come up; he just crowed about it. It is actually the first nations people who are building this project, and it is a shame that Liberals try to take credit for it.

If we could just get the Liberals and the government out of the way, we could do many more great things because we know that, prior to the current government, housing was affordable in this country, taking a fraction out of a family paycheque to afford a home. The good thing is that housing was not like this before this Prime Minister and it will not be like this after he is gone.

The second cause of the housing hell, which I pointed out in my documentary, was the rampant money printing that the government unleashed. While it was technically done by the Bank of Canada, it was clearly in total collaboration with the elected government and with the total support and the lack of discipline from the government to print $600 billion. The government has created 32% more cash in a period of time when the economy has grown by 4%. In other words, the cash is growing eight times faster than the stuff the cash buys.

The Liberals did this through a program called quantitative easing, where the government sells bonds to the private sector and the Bank of Canada buys them right back at a higher price, profiting the financial institutions, freeing up easy money for government to spend, but also flooding the financial markets with easy cash that is lent out to wealthy investors.

In my documentary, I use a Bank of Canada graph demonstrating the total liftoff in the number of homes bought by investors that happened exactly—