Madam Speaker, I apologize to my children for abruptly hanging up on them.
I am pleased to be back in the House to be able to speak about this important report on homelessness. I will start by following up on comments made by the member for Kingston and the Islands, who actually admitted what the government's so-called housing accelerator program does. He admitted it does not build homes. Let us be clear, this is not just something we say to criticize the program. This is what the government acknowledges about its housing accelerator program, that it does not have as its purpose the construction of homes.
The government's approach is, in some sense, to recognize, as the member said, that there are some significant problems with red tape and the cost of government at various levels limiting housing construction. However, its solution is to pile more money into those same bureaucratic processes and to think that is going to make the system better. The member identified in his speech a problem we have been talking about for a long time in the official opposition, which is that the cost of government, red tape and gatekeepers are slowing down and limiting the construction of new homes.
The member's solution is, effectively, to say to those gatekeepers, “We are going to give you more steel and more poles so you can build more and higher gates.” The response should instead be, in order to provide relief to Canadians who are trying to buy homes, to lower their taxes, which would make it easier for Canadians to buy homes. The government should also say to municipalities that it is not going to pump more dollars into ineffective bureaucracies, that it is going to expect results in terms of housing construction and that municipalities have to meet targets for new home construction. It should say that if municipalities meet those targets, they will be able to continue to receive transfers from the federal government, and actually receive a bonus if they exceed that target, but that there will be a clawback, a fiscal implication, if they fail to meet those targets.
Instead of simply giving more money to bureaucracies that the government has just acknowledged have some problems, our approach will be to say to those same bureaucracies that we expect results, and we want to incentivize results by tying federal transfers to results in terms of new housing construction. It reflects a fundamentally different attitude toward policy-making.
In the official opposition, we care about results. We think the measure of the effectiveness of a housing policy is whether people are housed. The government seems to think the measure of an effective housing policy is not the results but the intention demonstrated by the expenditure. We care about the results. The government wants its activities to be assessed on the basis of its intentions and measured by its expenditures. It creates a program, says it has a good intention and is going to put money behind it, even though it does not actually get homes built.
In the official opposition, we say we are going to take all that money the government is feeding into already bloated bureaucracies and use those resources to take the GST off new homes for Canadians. We are going to lower the taxes Canadians pay, we are going to give that money directly to Canadians instead of putting it into bureaucracies and we are also going to say to municipalities that they have to achieve certain results in terms of new home construction.
That is clearly a much better, much more effective approach. We are focused on incentivizing and pushing those results. If municipalities do not produce those results, they are going to face a clawback of federal transfers. Meanwhile, it also reflects a belief that giving Canadians back more of their hard-earned money rather than transferring more money into municipal bureaucracies is the solution, giving Canadians the ability to afford their homes. We have a clear plan. It is to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Of course, tonight we are talking about building the homes.
The Liberals always act as if those lines are a trigger for them. The member for Mississauga seems to be triggered by these lines: axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Colleagues can see that we have clear, robust plans behind each of those identified priorities. They reflect a commitment to Canadians to actually deliver results. They are not just to talk about things or to have good intentions, backed up by taxpayer-funded expenditures. Our proposals are to achieve concrete results. We will axe the tax. We will build the homes. We will fix the budget. We will stop the crime. We will ask Canadians to measure our government, not by good intention and by expenditure, but by the actual results that are achieved. I invite the contrast that the member has proposed.
We are confident that giving money to Canadians and incentivizing real results from bureaucracies is the way to achieve results, not to pile more money into bureaucracies and expect somehow that the results are going to change simply by increasing the volume of expenditure on exactly the same things. If we look at the results of the last nine years, we are clearly much worse off. Canadians are paying twice as much for their housing. They are paying twice as much for rent. There has been a dramatic increase in violent crime. The Prime Minister, with the current housing minister, who is the former immigration minister, gravely mismanaged the immigration system. The minister who broke immigration was transferred over to housing because the government thought he could be a communicator for them on that file, but he has failed to deliver results in housing just as he failed to deliver results when it came to immigration.
The parliamentary secretary, as well, has talked about how for the last two years we were getting things done. He said we were effective in the sense that we were putting forward ideas and passing them. I do not think Canadians would say the government was effective. It has effectively been moving the country in the wrong direction. It has effectively made housing costs higher, made rents higher and increased the crime rate. This was the result of the NDP-Liberal coalition. We had a photo op of the NDP leader saying he was tearing up the coalition agreement. Then he taped it back together and has supported the government at every turn.
It will be Canadians who judge the plans that are put in front of them. I am looking forward to the chance to make our case to Canadians, to make the case in favour of our plan to axe the tax, build the homes, as we are particularly talking about tonight, as well as fix the budget and stop the crime. However, the NDP has continued to prop up the Liberals for a variety of reasons. I would challenge New Democrats to have the courage of their convictions, if they are their convictions. If they really think that piling more dollars into existing bureaucracies is the way to build homes, despite this not working for the last nine years, they should bring that case to the Canadian people and see what Canadians decide.
We will be coming forward with our plan to incentivize real results from bureaucracies and to deliver real tax relief for Canadians. We will be bringing our plan to Canadians; the Liberals will be bringing theirs. That will happen when the carbon tax election eventually comes. The Liberals should have the courage of their convictions. They should see the demand from Canadians for change and they should put their proposal before the Canadian people. They are unwilling to do that, though. They talk a good game about how they are apparently confident about what they are doing, but they are unwilling to bring their proposal to the Canadian people.
Let us have a carbon tax election. Let us have that election now. Let us see what Canadians think about what the government is doing. I am proud to stack our plan to build the homes against their nine years of failures any day.
