Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary claimed that members of the Conservative caucus are no longer able to write letters to the government. That is in fact false. In order to demonstrate the point, I wrote a letter to the government while he was speaking. The letter says as follows: “Dear Government, please help my community by calling a carbon tax election now.” If one of the pages could come over and bring that to the parliamentary secretary, I would greatly appreciate it.
What my community wants is very clear: It wants to replace the government and its failing policies with a government that will actually get housing built. The parliamentary secretary talked about a program the government has that is building bureaucracies. He admitted this in his speech. He said that the program does not build homes; it gives money to municipalities in the hope that they will clean up problems with their permitting process.
The Conservatives have a much better solution. First of all, we will make housing more affordable for Canadians by removing the GST from new homes. We will also say to municipalities that they have to meet certain housing targets to receive the same level of federal funding. If they exceed those targets, they will get a bonus, and if they do not meet those targets, they will face a clawback. We would pay for results instead of just giving municipalities money and feeding bureaucracies in the hopes that it is going to change things. Our plan will actually get homes built.
I will send that letter now.