Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to share my time today with the amazing member of Parliament for Lethbridge.
Notionally, I support the bill. Who would not support better housing for those who cannot afford it? We have a housing affordability issue in Canada. We have an issue regarding too many regulations, which are adding costs to housing and slowing down the development of housing. Local municipalities are limiting the amount of supply. We have higher interest rates, which are pushing people out of the market. We also have an affordability issue, period, in Canada.
We have a Liberal government that sits smugly, day after day, telling us, in the face of all the evidence, that everything is fine, the economy is great and not to worry. It reminds me of the black knight in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He has and arm and a leg chopped off, but he is bouncing around on one leg saying that everything is okay and that he is fine. It is the same denial that we hear from the current government.
Meanwhile, we have investment fleeing from our country at record rates and interest rates are on the rise. Just recently we heard that almost 50% of Canadian families are just $200 a month away from not being able to pay their bills. We are creating fights with our international partners: America, China, Australia and Japan. Despite what the government says, evidently we are not okay.
Let us look at how the government is making things unaffordable.
It is killing jobs. I want to talk about Alberta. The Prime Minister has stated again and again that Alberta needs to phase out the oil sands. The Liberals are doing a great job on it. They killed northern gateway, which would have brought Alberta oil to the northern B.C. coast and then to overseas Asian markets. Let us not be fooled by their claims that this was done by the courts. This was killed by a government order in cabinet.
Despite the member for Edmonton Mill Woods, a senior cabinet minister from Alberta, being at the table, he did not raise a complaint when the government killed northern gateway. Before he was punted from cabinet, the member for Calgary Centre stated that he would pound on his desk at the cabinet table to make sure a pipeline got built, yet he sat quietly and did not say a thing while northern gateway was killed. Just a couple of weeks ago, the member for Edmonton Centre stood in the old place to say that he was proud of the pipeline-killing Bill C-69. He was proud of the government for banning tankers off the northern B.C. coast only carrying Alberta oil. He was proud of that record.
The Liberals killed energy east. Do not be fooled again by their saying it was a business decision. They killed it with regulatory changes that made us consider upstream and downstream emissions from that pipeline.
Did they make the same requirements for the Saudi oil coming in? No, they did not. This is the same Saudi Arabia that the foreign minister was bashing on Twitter regarding human rights. Nevertheless, the government can bring in the oil no problem without the same regulations as are in Alberta.
What about Venezuelan oil? Were there any issues? Of course there were not. The government is happily bringing in oil from Venezuela without the same regulatory requirements or emissions testing as exist for Alberta oil.
The government put Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain project into a coma and then nationalized it. Members have to ask themselves, who in the world, with such immense oil reserves, has the problems that exist in Canada and has to nationalize oil? It is Venezuela and no one else.
The government nationalized it to the tune of $4.5 billion, and we just heard form the PBO that it overpaid. It was published in the paper that the Liberals overpaid by $1 billion. That is $1 billion if it gets built. If it is blocked, which is what I am sure the Liberals want, the existing pipeline would only be worth $2 billion.
In response to an earlier question, the finance minister told us to read the report. I would suggest to him that he read the report himself so that he can see how much he overpaid.
The loss of revenue from the pipelines ranges from $40 million to $100 million a day. Scotiabank says it is $40 million. The Government of Alberta says it is $80 million. GMP FirstEnergy says it is $100 million. The lowest of those numbers, from Scotiabank, works out to $15 billion a year in lost revenue, lost wages and lost resources for the government. We have to ask ourselves what we could do for social housing with that $15 billion.
There are two sides to the housing issue. It is not just a lack of available housing but a lack of good-paying jobs, and the current government is killing those jobs.
The Liberal government is forcing through a carbon tax. The government's own report shows that it needs to go to $300 a tonne to be effective. That works out to about $5,000 a year for a family in Alberta, and it is higher in Saskatchewan. On top of that, the Liberals eliminated the sports credit for children, the arts credit for children and the public transport credit. Here they want more public transport, but they eliminate the credit for low-income people to take advantage of public transport. They eliminated income-splitting for families. They cut the tax credit for text books. Of course, they are hiking the CPP. They like to say that they are providing for the future with the CPP, but we are paying a tax now that will not benefit us for decades. Of course, there is the middle-class tax cut. Those making between $90,000 and $170,000 will get tax break of $2.50 a day. However, people who are low-income, those making less than $45,000 a year, who are hurt by the lack of affordability will not get penny from the Liberal government's tax cut.
I want to talk further about the carbon tax. We are very blessed in this country. I am very blessed in my riding of Edmonton West. We have a phenomenal number of churches, charities and not-for-profits that deliver services to the needy. We have an incredible food bank with an incredible number of volunteers, but they expect the carbon tax to hit them with between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. I am sure people opposite are confused when they see banks raise their rates, but a food bank cannot pass costs on to its clients. The churches cannot pass on the cost of the carbon tax. These are churches that go out and provide help for the food banks and help to the needy.
One of my favourite organizations in my riding is called the Elves Special Needs Society. It looks after Edmonton's most disabled and disadvantaged people from ages one or two up to 55. It cannot afford the added carbon tax. Some of its clients cannot feed themselves, breathe for themselves or care for themselves. Members of the Elves Special Needs Society had to go the food bank and beg and borrow to get adult diapers for some of their clients, as it is so stretched for money, yet the government wants to add a carbon tax on top.
I want to talk about the fast and loose numbers for the Liberals' housing program. The Prime Minister said in this place that the government has already helped one million people find housing. However, here is the truth. The government's own document from the department shows that they have actually helped 7,500, not a million. The government's own document said 7,500 last year, which dropped from the previous year and the year before that.
The Liberals said they have spent $5 billion this year on housing. A report from the former Parliamentary Budget officer, Kevin Page, says that they have actually only spent $1.3 billion over the last couple of years. The Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy said:
This all begs the question: Where is the proposed $40 billion National Housing Strategy funding? By following the funding throughout the years and tracking what is “new” money, we have painted a picture of what the NHS looks like apart from the glossy document that accompanied its announcement. And unfortunately, for now, the NHS is virtually nowhere to be seen in the federal fiscal framework.
Once again, for the government, I give it an A for announcements, but Canadians give it a D for delivery.
We have an affordability crisis in housing and day-to-day living in this country, and the Liberal government is making it worse, as I made it very clear. Heaven forbid the Liberals get re-elected. They are going to jack up taxes and make it even worse for common, everyday Canadians.