Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm pleased to be here this morning to debate what is in my view a very straightforward and simple motion to have this committee, the ethics committee, review the recently announced Canada-B.C. partnership on condo conversion—what has more colloquially become known as “the condo bailout”.
This motion requests that individuals who are involved with the bailout appear before this committee, including the Minister of Housing, Gregor Robertson, and the Build Canada Homes bureaucracy, of course. It also requests that the federal and provincial governments provide the committee with written documentation and agreements with respect to the condo bailout. Two things that are squarely within the mandate of committees are to send for people and to send for papers to get answers for Canadians.
That's why this study is necessary. We need some transparency in this condo bailout. We need answers to some basic questions. At the top of that list is, who benefits? In other words, who asked for this bailout? Which condo units in which buildings will be bought? What prices will be paid? Who will be eligible to buy or rent these condos?
Beyond just the mechanics of the bailout itself, the proposal from the Liberal government raises some very real ethical considerations respecting the close relationship between the Minister of Housing and the Prime Minister on the one hand, and Liberal donors and developers on the other.
Mr. Chair, I'll just add a note on your prerogative, because I heard some criticism earlier, and we might hear some more from our Liberal colleagues. Of course, the Standing Orders empower you as a chair to call a meeting, and I'm always pleased to see committee chairs doing their job, which is chairing meetings and calling committee meetings to investigate matters within the committee's purview.
In contrast, we've seen Liberal chairs cancel meetings. It's ironic to hear criticism that we would have a meeting as parliamentarians to discuss an issue of importance to Canadians while we see Liberal chairs—those on the other side—cancel meetings because they don't want to do their job. Now, I won't say it's all Liberal chairs. There are some Liberal chairs who are admirable. I think of Ms. Sgro, who has not cancelled a meeting for any untoward reason. Chairs like her and like you should be commended for doing their job, not criticized for it.
I ask Liberal members to help me make sense of this, because the whole bailout doesn't make any sense to me. Mark Carney used to take the advice of his banker mentor, Bob Hirst, who said, “If something doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense.” He said if it doesn't make sense, you should run because you should never buy simply on trust. However, today the Prime Minister is asking us to accept this bailout on trust, and that doesn't make any sense.
In a normal, functioning market, excess supply of unsold condos would typically lead to one or both of the following. First would be price reductions to clear supply so developers would lower their asking price until price and demand match supply. That's economics 101—supply and demand. Young Canadians, at that point, would be able to purchase those condos at the new, lower equilibrium price. As an MP from a generation that has been consistently shut out of the market for the last 10 years, it's insane to me to see a program that would continue to shut out my colleagues and friends of this generation.
Second, if developers simply refuse to lower their prices.... We know that's what they've told the Prime Minister, because they said they don't want to sell at a loss. The Prime Minister said they're stuck, and he wants to help them out. If they don't want to lower their prices, the costs to carry those units would remain, so they might face losses from that—distressed sales, bankruptcies—and banks or new buyers would acquire those units at discounted prices in distress. The losses in those cases would be borne by the party that took the risk. However, instead, the plan that we have been presented with is to use taxpayer dollars to socialize those losses while developers avoid the full consequences of their actions. Maybe they can help me make sense of that.
What also doesn't make sense is the desperate letter that was sent by the Minister of Housing at 10:30 or later last night to the members of this committee. He was trying desperately, clearly, to give members of the Liberal Party the cover they need—