Mr. Chair, it is a real honour for me to rise to speak to this very important issue.
My introduction into politics, just shy of 20 years ago, even before I was involved in municipal politics in Kingston, was being appointed to the affordable housing development committee in Kingston. This committee was put together as a result of the provincial government in Ontario at the time seeing an incredible need for housing and new affordable housing to be built, putting together a program with provincial dollars and working directly with municipalities to come up with a plan as to how we could build more affordable housing, particularly for those who need it the most. Noticeably absent at the time was the federal government. The federal government had absolutely no role to play in that. It was not participating in any way whatsoever.
The former Conservative government had no interest in affordable housing. It treated housing as though it were an issue that was solely for provinces to deal with and, of course, their subordinates, the municipalities. I find it incredibly rich today to not just hear Conservatives go on as though the federal government is solely responsible for housing, but now we are starting to hear it from the NDP too, almost pretending as though the federal government is solely and wholly responsible for building housing in this country. Well, unfortunately for their narratives, that is just not the way it works.
In Canada, we have two levels of government. One is not subordinate to the other. One is not superior to the other. We have provincial governments, and we have a federal government. They are there to work together. One is not in a higher position than the other. They are there to work together on the complex issues that we have, one of those being housing and building housing.
However, the member for Carleton, the Leader of the Opposition, stands up to routinely criticize mayors, politicians and municipal leaders throughout the country. He calls them “woke” and refers to them as “incompetent”. I mean, if he wants to be prime minister, how is he supposed to transition from that combative approach to one of trying to work with municipalities? It is not going to happen.
We do not have to look too far back in history to see where it had already happened with a Conservative government. We can look at Stephen Harper in the former Conservative government, who barely ever met with the premiers. I think there was an extended period of time where he went years without meeting with them because there was absolutely no interest.
Now we have the newest Leader of the Opposition, who gets up in this House to rail on about these gatekeepers, and refers to our local mayors and city councillors as gatekeepers. Who, trying to work together with municipalities, would ever take that approach? It is one that is trying to intentionally be combative for, let us say, hoping to gain a little bit of political gain out of it. Yes, Conservatives will come in here, and they have done it tonight, to resort to their slogans and buzz words, including “gatekeepers, “woke mayors” and “bring it home”. These are the slogans, but they do not have any policies. They do not have any ideas. The irony is that, when there is one idea that they finally seem to have come up with, it is something that we are already doing, and they voted against it. We already have the housing accelerator fund.
The member for Thornhill admitted the day before the last budget that the Conservatives were not going to vote for it any way, so they had already decided, even before seeing the budget, that they were not going to vote for it. Maybe, in their defence, they did not realize what they were voting against. However, the housing accelerator fund is specifically there to help municipalities increase the supply of housing, and it is directly correlated. The money received will be measured against and accounted for in how much housing is being built.
Those are the incentives. That is literally what the Conservatives are now saying is going to be their plan, something that they just voted against. That is the only thing they have offered, a plan that literally already exists and that they voted against days ago.
When we try to assess what is going on, we cannot help but come to the natural conclusion that the only things Conservatives are interested in are their buzzwords and their slogans. They are hoping that those things will stick and resonate with Canadians, and that this will somehow translate into the Conservatives forming government. I would suggest to them that Canadians are not as naive or as ill-informed as they might think; Canadians are actually paying attention to what is going on.
When one talks about things as critical as housing and what is going on, I know that there is a desire to reduce it to some simplistic terms. This is particularly coming from Conservatives. However, the reality is that a lot has happened in the last number of months and years.
We talk about global inflation. Of course, they will never put the word “global” in front of that, despite the fact that it is a global phenomenon. We talk about the pandemic and how that has contributed to things. We talk about Ukraine and how what is going on has affected supply chains, as well as what that has meant to the global economy and, indeed, the Canadian economy, which depends and relies so much on international trade. There is no doubt that we will be affected by the outcomes of those things that I just mentioned and how other countries are dealing with them.
The two programs that I really wanted to talk about in my opening statements before my question were, first, the housing accelerator fund. That fund is specifically tied to municipalities and encourages them to reduce the red tape and the NIMBYism and to put the incentives in place to get municipalities to start aggressively looking at how to build housing. It seems that they are happy about it, but they did not vote for it.
My community is a perfect example of the struggle that exists. Kingston was the first capital of Canada. I know some people would like to debate that with me, but it was. One of the things that we value so much in our community is our downtown and the fact that it did not build up with high-rises decades ago, when many other municipalities did. This is despite the fact that many people were pushing for it. What we see now is a question of how we increase the density in the downtown core as opposed to urban sprawl; we know this is more affordable from the construction, rental and property tax perspectives. It makes more sense. However, how do we balance this with the needs and the desires of a community to maintain the downtown core?
I see that struggle in my community. I know that what is needed is some incentivizing from the federal government to make that happen. I see the federal government's role here as being very important in working with municipalities. We can only accomplish this kind of thing if we sit down with municipal leaders, as the minister has been doing, by going across the country and meeting with mayors and elected officials. We must talk about how the federal government can help them, as opposed to having an appearance by the Leader of the Opposition at the committee of the whole.
By the way, in the seven and a half years that I have been here, not eight, I have never once seen the Leader of the Opposition participate in a committee of the whole meeting. Why does he even have critics or shadow ministers? He is doing everything himself. I am sure he can rely on some of his colleagues to do some of the work for him.
Rather than be critical and call them “woke”, why not sit down with them and ask how we can help them? As a former mayor of a city in Ontario, I can say that this is what mayors want.
My first question for the minister is this: How important is the role of working with mayors and city councils throughout the country, as opposed to just taking a combative approach with them?