Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to rise on a question of privilege that has taken our country by storm over the last number of months. No matter what the Liberals say, no matter what argument they throw at Canadians, it comes down to one very simple fact: The Conservative Party of Canada will not relent in our protection of the Constitution and the powers granted to the House by the people of Canada when it relates to reviewing documents and knowing what takes place in the Government of Canada.
I was a member of the industry committee when the hon. member for South Shore—St. Margarets spoke for the first time about the $400 million of waste in question today. Across Canada right now, Canadians are facing crises they have never seen before. The cost of living is up big time. In my riding, food bank usage has more than doubled. Canadians are struggling to pay their mortgage. In fact, since the Liberals and the NDP came to power, house prices and mortgages have doubled. The cost for a mortgage is over $3,500 per month, and the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Canada's 10 biggest cities is over $2,300 a month. Young Canadians are losing hope because the Canada they once knew is not the Canada before them today.
Indeed, I have said in the House before that if young Canadians, say in their early twenties, are in careers where they make more than the average of $55,000 that a Canadian worker makes, saving up for a home in my community would take them nearly 20 years if they saved a large portion of their salary.
Canadians are struggling. British Columbians are paying a carbon tax of over $80 per tonne. Just paying for the gas to get to work every day is costing Canadians hundreds of dollars a month, which goes directly into the coffers of the government.
On housing, Canadians have lost hope. They do not know where to go and are wondering what happened. If a young man or woman making a good salary in Canada was able to save $500 or $600 a month, it would still take them close to a decade to get into a condo in the market I live in today. Canadians are struggling and losing hope. Therefore, when Canadians hear in the House of Commons that the government simply refuses to do what Parliament is asking them to do, they are deeply concerned. They are concerned that the government is willing to stall the business of the House and possibly stall a carbon tax election, a housing tax election.
I will talk a bit about small businesses as well. Productivity for small businesses is in a crisis. In fact, from May to June, Canada lost 9,037 businesses; 6,331 declared insolvency year over year during that same period. The closures we are witnessing right now are even greater than those we saw during the pandemic, when the entire country was shut down. While Canadian entrepreneurs and workers are struggling, the government is still hiding behind a facade and behind lies about what the House of Commons can, in fact, ask.
In the spring, I addressed the damning report released by the Auditor General, which revealed that close to $400 million had been misappropriated by the board of Sustainable Development Technology Canada, otherwise known as SDTC. Two weeks ago, I spoke on the privilege motion and called on the government to provide the relevant documents. Once again, we find ourselves discussing a subamendment to bring the Privacy Commissioner and the former deputy secretary to the cabinet to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs as well. Canadians want us to get on with that work. We are simply waiting for the papers.
As parliamentarians, we must stand up for Canadians and ensure that they have the information needed to make informed decisions. The Liberals' refusal to table the documents has effectively paralyzed our country, hindering our ability to do the work we were elected to do. The obstruction makes it impossible for us to address many of the pressing issues that young Canadians are faced with every day: skyrocketing housing costs, rising food inflation and increasing crime.
This summer, I was out door knocking across British Columbia, and no matter what part of my province I was in, no matter what street I was on, I heard about middle-class families that just could not get ahead. At the end of the month, after either a massive mortgage payment or rent payment, a car payment and fees for school programs and athletics, they were left with nothing.
One family said to me, and it stuck out so clearly, that just a few years ago they were donating to the food bank and now they have to go there a couple of times a month to make up for the loss. They said that with the cost of gas, getting to work is more expensive, not to mention the fact that in their community today, the amount of crime they are facing as well is just through the roof. This family, like so many others, is wondering what happened to the Canada it knew and still loves.
The issue is about more than just $400 million to Liberal insiders and friends; it is also about what this country stands for and what Canadians expect us to do in the House of Commons. Let me take this time, yet again, to remind the House of the government's corrupt mishandling of SDTC, otherwise known as the green slush fund. The program was designed to support innovation in sustainable development technologies. Established in 2001, it operated with few issues under both Liberal and Conservative governments until the Prime Minister took office.
The Auditor General's report outlined that there were a staggering 90 instances where conflict of interest policies were not followed. Nearly $76 million was spent on projects connected to friends of the Liberals who sat on the board. The most egregious example comes from the Minister of Environment, a member of Parliament from the Montreal area. He worked for a company called Cycle Capital, which received hundreds of millions of dollars from the green slush fund. In fact, the Minister of Environment still has shares in this very company.
When we, on this side of the House, stand up for the rights of Parliament and for struggling Canadians, the Liberal Party is standing up only for its rich friends who have been enriched by taxpayer dollars at the expense of everyone else. Not only that, but $59 million of projects were awarded that were not eligible for funding, and $12 million was spent on projects that not only fell into conflict of interest but were also ineligible from the very beginning. The situation not only represents a betrayal of public trust but also illustrates a significant failure in oversight by the current minister.
We have to ask ourselves in the chamber how we can ensure accountability in government if those that are in power are not held to the same standards we expect of taxpayers. Conservatives have proven through the debate that the privileges of parliamentarians were violated by the government's refusal, which is why we are continuing to speak and why we will not relent about the serious action the government has taken.
This is not just a procedural misstep. It is not just political wrangling. It is a direct challenge to the very foundation of why all of us are in the House in the first place, and that is to approve or disapprove of how the government spends money. That authority rests with the 338 members of the chamber. As my colleague from southern Ontario so aptly mentioned in the debates related to Sir John A. Macdonald in the province of Canada, our system of government was designed to ensure that cabinet remained accountable to this very House.
However, the Liberals are shying away from their responsibilities to be accountable. They are taking every step possible and sharing every single false argument related to preventing them from doing what is right in the eyes of our Constitution and in the eyes of the taxpayers who pay for this place. It is not just us saying this; the Auditor General made it clear that the scandal falls squarely upon the government, that it did not sufficiently monitor the contracts and that it did not sufficiently follow due diligence procedures.
To understand the gravity of the situation, we must first reflect on the historical context of parliamentary privilege. Our rights and privileges as parliamentarians are not mere formalities; they are rooted in centuries of struggle against tyranny. As the British House of Commons gained eminence as a legislative assembly, it established privileges as statutes and part of common law aimed at protecting its members from interference, namely, the Crown.
Erskine May, a cornerstone reference in parliamentary procedure, defines privilege as “the sum of the peculiar rights enjoyed by each House collectively as a constituent part of the High Court of Parliament, and by members of each House individually, without which they could not discharge their functions”. In other words, I cannot do my job, nor can anyone in the House do their job, for that matter, if our privilege is disrupted.
In Canada, we inherited this legacy through the Constitution Act of 1867, which enshrines our rights and privileges, ensuring that they are not exceeded by any authority outside the House. The Parliament of Canada Act of 1985 further states that we retain these privileges, “not exceeding those...held, enjoyed and exercised by Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom”. In other words, we inherited the democratic traditions of the Westminster parliamentary system of responsible government. This is a powerful affirmation of our rights and responsibilities as members of this institution, drawing on hundreds of years of precedent that bring us here today.
I will get back to the motion. in June, the House leader of the official opposition tabled a motion asking for all files, documents, briefing notes, memoranda, emails and other correspondence exchanged among government officials regarding SDTC. The motion was sent through, and SDTC and associated parties either redacted the documents, withheld the documents or outright refused to present the documents to the official opposition. This is a clear violation of our collective parliamentary privilege. In making his argument, the opposition House leader referred to page 239 of Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, which reads:
Disobedience to rules or orders represents an affront to the dignity of the House, and accordingly the House could take action, not simply for satisfaction but to ensure that the House of Commons is held in the respect necessary for its authority to be vindicated. Without proper respect, the House of Commons could not function.
When the rules of parliamentary privilege and the House are disregarded, it undermines the authority and the powers the House can enact, and it diminishes its ability to govern properly. Let us not forget that it is not the government that decides which papers it must provide; it is the Parliament of Canada that decides which paper it needs. Without respecting the use of parliamentary privilege and obeying the orders of the House to produce and bring forward the requested documents, there is a complete disregard of respect for the House and its authority, as well as of our duty to Canadians to provide them with accurate and transparent information.
Why does this matter? It matters because we are in a housing crisis. We will not get out of the housing crisis without building more homes. Again, $400 million matters because Canadians cannot afford a nice place to live. We will not get out of the housing crisis without building more homes. To build more homes, we need everyone pulling in the same direction: the federal government, the provincial government, municipalities, workers and, yes, the private sector.
Demonizing, taxing and blocking private sector involvement in Canada's housing market not only keeps us from solving the housing crisis but actually makes things worse. Smart federal housing policy incentivizes the private sector to build the housing people need across the housing spectrum, instead of demonizing it, which is what the government has been doing.
As for our new policy to remove the GST on new homes under $1 million, we cannot get to this important work because the government and the House of Commons have been hamstrung with the government's refusal to put documents forward. We either have to go into a carbon tax election or a housing tax election, or get to the bottom of why the government is so corrupt that it refuses to give Parliament the documents it requested.
Since the government came to power, the price of a home in Canada has doubled. Average monthly mortgage costs have more than doubled, to over $3,500 per month. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Canada's 10 biggest cities is over $2,300 a month, and nine out of 10 young people in this country who do not own a home believe they never will. It now takes over 60% of one's income to cover the cost of owning a home. According to the OECD, Canada has the largest gap between home prices and incomes of all developed countries. Canada has the fewest number of homes per capita in the G7, and CMHC is predicting that housing starts will continue to decline by up to 32%.
The government has spoken a lot about its housing accelerator fund, which has actually led to no homes despite billions of dollars more of taxpayer dollars wasted. In fact, my community of Abbotsford was one of the communities that received money under the plan. Do members know what the City of Abbotsford is doing right now? It is about to increase the DCC by 46% and levy a new $7,800 tax on all new homes built to pay for our recreation infrastructure deficit. As a young parent, I understand the need for effective recreational opportunities for our youth, but they should not come on the backs of Canadians who want to purchase their very first home.
What we need to do is incentivize more home construction. How we are going to get there is by pushing municipalities to approve more homes quickly, incentivizing them with infrastructure dollars to densify and to build up around our transportation stations so Canadians can get to work faster, save more money and live in the community where they are in fact working. We can do this. We are a country of resilience.
Unfortunately, the government has directed $90 billion directed toward housing, but all it can do is point to the statistics I raised earlier that show that housing is more expensive, rent is more expensive and young people do not have an opportunity to get into the market. Indeed, the Liberal record on housing is so bad that young people are giving up on owning a home. In some cases, they are thinking about moving south of the border because there are more opportunities there.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation says that Canada needs a total housing stock of over 22 million units by 2030. To reach 22 million units by 2030, CMHC says we must build 3.5 million more units than we are building right now. CMHC says that those 3.5 million units required by 2030 will require an investment of at least $1 trillion to build. CMHC says we need increased participation from the private sector to meet those goals. That is exactly what the Conservative Party is saying as well: Let us incentivize the private sector to play a larger role in home construction.
It is not just the Conservative Party saying this. TD Economics came out with a study in September about the productivity crisis we are facing in Canada. That report said the crisis is nowhere worse than in homebuilding construction, and we need to incentivize private sector players to get back into building homes that Canadians need and where they can live the Canadian dream.
As I turn back to the parliamentary motion before us, it is about the production of documents, but more importantly, it is what this government is signalling to the entire country, which is that corruption is okay, mismanagement of public funds is okay and the rules that have governed our country since we came into inception do not seem to matter anymore.
I am calling on the 24 backbenchers who stood against the Prime Minister to stand with the Conservative Party to have a carbon tax election now, to have a housing tax election now or just to have an election, because it is clear that Canadians do not have confidence in the Prime Minister and that the House of Commons really does not have confidence in the Prime Minister any longer.
