Mr. Chair, it is hard to take the party opposite seriously on rent, when it voted against the Canada housing benefit, which delivers rental supports to Canadians.
House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2025, with 55% of the vote.
Business of Supply May 15th, 2023
Mr. Chair, it is hard to take the party opposite seriously on rent, when it voted against the Canada housing benefit, which delivers rental supports to Canadians.
Business of Supply May 15th, 2023
Mr. Chair, if the Conservatives want to be taken seriously on the issue of rent, they should stop blocking rental supports to Canadians.
Business of Supply May 15th, 2023
Mr. Chair, it is very rich having these types of questions coming from that side, when they believe the federal government should do less on housing, not more.
Business of Supply May 15th, 2023
Mr. Chair, I would really like to understand how building more rentals by investing less money makes sense on that side of the House.
Business of Supply May 15th, 2023
Mr. Chair, it is possible because we launched the housing accelerator fund in the morning, and the leader of the official opposition came up with this plan for more housing supply the same afternoon. However, their copy job was not good enough because it did not even capture the breadth and comprehensiveness of our plan.
Business of Supply May 15th, 2023
Mr. Chair, it is very perplexing. Conservatives talk about, for example, connecting housing to infrastructure. We have been doing that for two years. They talk about investing in municipalities and removing the obstacles to more supply. That is exactly what the housing accelerator fund will do.
We are very much perplexed by the fact that they keep voting against the measures and investments that are supposed to do what they say are their priorities.
Business of Supply May 15th, 2023
Mr. Chair, we will do so by taking the investment under the housing accelerator fund, $4 billion, which will go directly to municipalities, local governments, indigenous communities and other governments to build more housing supply. How are we going to do that? We will invest in their systems, their ability to permit housing and deliver it faster. We will also present plans and incentivize them to consider and put in place more density around transit, more affordable housing units in the market and more rental supply in the market.
Business of Supply May 15th, 2023
Mr. Chair, it is very telling that there are a number of former mayors in this House; some of them sit on that side of the House and have to listen to their own leader attacking mayors, calling them “woke” and “incompetent”. That is an affront to municipally elected local officials, who have been elected by Canadians to address issues around the permitting and delivery of housing.
Business of Supply May 15th, 2023
Mr. Chair, that question points to the need for collaboration. Of course, the federal government has a very important leadership role to play in unlocking more housing supply across the country. We have the fastest-growing population of the G7 but very low housing supply. The federal government has a key role to play in that, but we cannot do it alone. We need collaboration and partnership from the provinces and territories, as well as local and municipal governments, and we need to work with them. We need to empower them. We need to invest in them in terms of their ability to permit housing faster, to deliver housing faster, to build more mixed housing, to deliver more density around transit nodes, to make sure we have the right mix of housing, and to make sure that we have walkable, livable and climate-resilient communities.
To do that, we need to work with them, not denigrate them or attack them, which is the approach of the leader of the official opposition. He has called elected officials, mayors of three of Canada's largest cities, “incompetent”. He has called them “woke”. He has dedicated himself to fighting with them. I do not know how that leads to the building of one additional affordable housing unit. Our approach is different. We want to work with our partners to build more housing.
Business of Supply May 15th, 2023
Mr. Chair, that is the kind of rhetoric that keeps coming from that side. They say, “Canada is broken.” Canada is not broken. Canada is the best country in the world, and people are eager to come to Canada to help us grow our economy and create more prosperity in this country.