Madam Speaker, where, they ask. “Where?” goes the chorus from the other side. The answer is Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Ontario. They have all signed a memorandum to create these small modular reactors. That is where.
I know this is not in the Standing Orders, for them to ask and me to answer, but we need practice because soon I will be answering lots of their questions. It will be refreshing to actually have a prime minister who answers questions, unlike this one, who does not even acknowledge them.
This is what it means to green light green projects. The Prime Minister stands in the way of the very projects that would lower the cost of carbon-free energy while he simultaneously raises the cost of traditional oil and gas on which Canadians continue to rely on.
His approach to the economy is as former President Reagan described: If something moves, he taxes it. If it keeps moving, he regulates it. If it stops moving, he subsidizes it.
That is the approach that he takes to the economy. My approach would be none of the above. It would be to get out of the way to let our creators create and let our builders build. I would let the great Canadian people do what they do best, which is to build. My friends across the way are starting to get the point. I hear the echo of “Bring it home” from across the other side of the House of Commons. Bring it home, indeed.
That is exactly what we are going to do. We are going to bring our jobs home, back to this country. I am glad the member reminded me of that because all of these gatekeepers who stand in the way of our economy are driving industry and resource production out of Canada. For example, according to Liberal former central banker David Dodge, a hard-core, dedicated, establishment Liberal, who was the central bank governor, said that Canadians now invest $800 billion more in other countries than the rest of the world invests in Canada. Why? It is because money goes where it can get things done. This is not one of those places now.
After eight years of the Prime Minister, we rank second-worst in the entire OECD for the time it takes to get a building permit. That is right. If someone wants to build a mine, a pipeline, a shopping centre, an office building or a house, God forbid, they have to wait longer in Canada than in every other OECD country, except one. The average building permit here, and this includes for very small things, such as home renovations, is 250 days. In South Korea, it is 28 days. Why do members think that countries like that are leaving us in the dust?
We are being left behind because we are a place that cannot get anything done. My biological grandfather came to this country from Ireland about 60 years ago. Like most Irish, he came here because Ireland was poor and Canada was a land of plenty. He came here, started a life and built his dream. He was a wonderful man, lived a great life, and unfortunately we lost him a few years ago.
However, today, the GDP per capita of Ireland is 70% higher than Canada. They have none of our resources, none of our land mass and none of our proximity to the United States of America, the most lucrative economy in the history of the world. They have none of those natural advantages, yet they are 70% richer than we are. Why is that?
It is because they removed the gatekeepers. They knocked down the government barriers. They sped up permitting. They cut taxes. They rewarded work. They reformed their tax system so that hard work would pay off, and big money from all around the world poured in and the great Irish people rose up to become among the most prosperous on planet Earth. We all know that the Irish invented civilization, and now they are reinventing free enterprise capitalism. That is why they are one of the most prosperous people on Planet Earth today.
The Irish have done it. The Singaporeans have done it. The Australians, the New Zealanders and the Swiss have all done it by unleashing the fierce power of the free enterprise system by getting out of the way of entrepreneurs and workers, and by lowering taxes to reward work, industry and savings. We could create a cornucopia of opportunities that could supply every Canadian with the life of their dreams. That is the country that we want to fulfill. That is the country we owe to our kids. That is the country that would generate the necessary wealth to avoid the debt crisis I warned of earlier.
I warned earlier on that the problem we face in Canada is the debt-to-GDP. There is a numerator and a denominator. If we could grow the denominator, that is to say the size of the economy, we could reduce the overall ratio. If we unleash the productive forces of our economy, and have a bigger and more powerful economy, then we could pay off that debt, pay off the interest and reduce the debt without having to reduce our quality of living.
That is the real opportunity that we face before us, to make Canada the fastest place on Earth in which to get a building permit. What a goal to strive toward. It is one of my first goals.
I will show up at the annual meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and I will show up at the first ministers' meeting, to challenge the cities and the provinces to join with me in a single goal: Let us make Canada the fastest place in the OECD to get a building permit. Get it done. Bring it home. Bring all the money back.
They are even nodding over there. I think we are actually seeing a kind of convergence of opinion. There is some excitement over there. I do not know if it is my words or the clear liquids they are drinking, but something has raised their spirits on that side of the House of Commons. Whatever they are drinking, I want some over here, and whatever I do not finish, I will bring it home.
The reality is that we can do this. We can unleash the productive forces of our economy. What would this mean for housing? What do we need to do to allow our young people to again afford a home? There is no natural reason that our young people cannot find a place to live. We have the second-biggest land mass on earth. We have more space where there is no one than we have space where there is anyone.
If we spread Canadians out equally across the country, every single Canadian would have 33 NFL-sized football fields to himself. It would be the perfect place in which to be a hermit. We would never see another human being if we were to spread Canadians out across the country. It is a staggering amount of land. I think there are a few hermits on the other side of the House. They are sitting all by themselves with no one around them. There is nothing wrong with that. Some of my best friends are hermits. There is nothing wrong with being a hermit.
The reality is that we have so much land, so how is it possible that we cannot house our people? We have the fifth-biggest supply of land per capita of any country on earth, yet no one can find a home. Why is this? It is crazy. The Americans have 10 times the people to house on a smaller land mass, yet housing costs there are roughly half of what they are here. For example, Vancouver is the third most overpriced housing market in the world when we compare median income to median house prices. Toronto is ranked 10th. Both are higher than Manhattan. They are higher than Singapore, which is an island. They have nowhere to move in Singapore because there is nothing but sea that surrounds them, yet somehow Vancouver is more unaffordable than Singapore and Manhattan.
Why is this happening? The answer is that we have the fewest houses per capita in the G7, even though we have the most land to build on, because it is the slowest place in which to get a permit. The permitting and other government costs are $650,000 for every home built in Vancouver and slightly less than that in Toronto. The reality is that government at all levels is partly responsible for delaying these permits. However, we know that cities that are controlled by woke, left NDP-Liberal mayors are the worst gatekeepers of all. Ironically, they are the most determined to keep poor people from owning homes.
What are we going to do about it? The federal government gives tens of billions of dollars to the cities for infrastructure. I would make this infrastructure an accelerator of home construction. I would say to the cities that the amount of dollars they get for infrastructure would be linked to the number of houses that actually get completed. I would require all big cities to increase housing construction by 15% per year, or they will lose some of their infrastructure money. Those that exceed the 15% target would get a building bonus, and I would require that every federally funded transit station be surrounded by and even built over top of with high-density housing.
Why does Hong Kong have the only profitable transit system in the world? It builds the housing right on top of the transit. It sells the air rights. It makes sense. The young people get on the elevator, go down to the bottom and hop on the train. It is the only city in the world where they can leave late and arrive early because the housing is right next to the transit. Why do we not require every single transit station funded by the federal government to have high-density apartments all around it? I do not want to drive by another transit station built by our federal tax dollars, handed out by the government, that has no housing behind it. We do not need transit stations in the middle of nowhere. We need housing all around transit stations, and that is what I would require when I am prime minister.
We have got these big, ugly, empty federal buildings. How many do members think we have?