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Madam Chair, it is a pleasure to be here, and I will let the House know that I am splitting my time with the member for Kildonan—St. Paul. To the minister, how does the government intend to increase housing supply in Canada?
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Madam Chair, I would ask the minister this: What is the average house price in Canada?
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Madam Chair, this is tens of thousands of new homes. We are talking about needing 1.8 million to be created. I will give the minister credit for the 100,000 homes he has brought up, but after that we need 1.7 million more, so tens of thousands more homes does nothing. How is the minister going to generate more housing supply in Canada?
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Madam Chair, let us go back to where we started. We need 1.8 million more homes built. That is what the experts are saying. The Liberals' plan is committing to 100,000 more homes in four years, so 1.7 million more homes need to be created in the next 12 months. How does the minister plan to do that?
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Madam Chair, that one I feel was a puffball. The average home price in Canada is $717,000. The average home price last year was $606,000. Does the minister not see there is a problem with getting more homes on the market for Canadian families?
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Madam Chair, does the minister know the average home price in Canada today?
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Madam Chair, 1.8 million new homes are needed in this country. The 100,000 and 30,000 numbers he is talking about solve a symptom, but they do not solve the real problem. Housing supply is the lowest in the G7 and housing prices are the highest in the G7. There is a 5.2% drop in home builds and a 20% rise in house prices. Does the minister not see that his plan is not working?
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Madam Chair, again, there are 1.3 million empty homes. The Liberals' solution to that is a 1% tax. Wow, that is really going to scare a lot of home landlords. Will the minister commit to never introducing a capital gains tax on the sale of a primary residence?
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Madam Chair, the accelerator fund he speaks of creates 100,000 homes in four years. We went through that already. With 1.3 million empty homes in Canada, how do we solve this issue of getting more housing supply for Canadians?
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Madam Chair, Canada owns 41 million hectares. I am trying to draw the connection here for the minister. How exactly will the Liberal minister create more housing supply?
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Madam Chair, so we are still 1.7 million short. The Conservatives had a plan using federal infrastructure dollars to create more housing and off-load 15% of government assets. What do the Liberals think of that plan?
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Madam Chair, let me help the minister out a little. His plan says they are going to create 100,000 houses. When are they going to do that? They will do it in four years. How is the minister going to get 1.7 million more houses in the next 12 months?
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Madam Chair, that was a test. It was $717,000 this year. Last year it was $606,000, an 18.2% increase. Something needs to be done. The minister just received his binder from the back room, so hopefully it will help him. We need to create more housing supply in Canada. Does the minister not see that we need to create 1.7 million more homes in Canada?
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Mr. Speaker, do you know how many buildings the federal government owns? It owns 37,246. Do you know how much land the federal government owns? It owns almost 41 million hectares. Conservatives had a plan in the last election to tie infrastructure dollars to housing prices. The Liberals' plan creates more housing inflation. Can the minister tell us how a 20% rise in housing prices is actually help…
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That is unreal, Mr. Speaker. Does the member not realize that in downtown Toronto, the average price of a single detached family home is $1.8 million? Let us compare Canada with the rest of the G7. Housing supply is the highest. It is the lowest, but housing inflation is the highest. New builds are up. They are down 5.2%, and house prices are up 20%. Under what metric in the world is this plan wor…
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Mr. Speaker, what he just said is that he is off-loading all of the responsibility onto the provinces and the municipalities. Who is he going to blame once that fails? It is the provinces and municipalities. The Conservatives had a plan in the last election to sell off 15% of federal government assets to increase supply. When will the Prime Minister get off his assets and help Canadian families?
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Mr. Speaker, the average home price in Canada right now is $717,000. Do members want to know what it was last year? It was $606,000. That is an 18.2% increase. In 2015, when the Prime Minister came into office, it was $450,000. Under what metric in the world can the Prime Minister explain that his plan is working?
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Madam Speaker, my statement speaks for itself, but the member is right that we can always grow. What I tell my children and the people I love is that it is never too late to do the right thing, and that is what I did today.
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Madam Speaker, it is great to see my friend and neighbour in the Valour Building here in Ottawa. I had an opportunity to see him just this week. It is refreshing to start to be able to see more people around this place. The member raises some great questions. The important thing to remember, and what he and I often talk about, is that there are a lot of partisan lines drawn in this place. It is un…
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Madam Speaker, it is good to be here. I am thankful for the opportunity to speak on what could very well be one of the last sitting days of the 43rd Parliament. It remains a tremendous opportunity to represent the riding of Edmonton Riverbend, and I certainly look forward to continuing important discussions during what is likely a potential election around the corner. Now I want to get to the topi…
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Madam Speaker, it is great to see my friend joining us here in the chamber today. Education is, of course, a very important aspect. I think of my friend who works in my constituency office. She is scared to go out in public to a train station where other members of her faith have been attacked and have had their head scarves pulled off. To me, that means something is wrong. Together, members from …
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Mr. Speaker, the Edmonton Oilers were eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs last week. After the fourth and final loss, as devastating as it was for the team and the fans, one teammate bore the brunt of online hate. Ethan Bear, an indigenous player from Ochapowace First Nation, had to deal with racist comments targeted at him personally on social media. In response, Ethan made a brave video sta…
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Mr. Speaker, it has been a long time coming to get to this point. I am absolutely thrilled and moved by a lot of the speeches we heard, not just today but over the course of the last 15 months when this bill first began in this place. There are so many thanks to go around. I can only thank them so many times, but I want to thank our stakeholder community, which has from the beginning helped to exp…
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Mr. Speaker, I am here in Ottawa today specifically to push back and fight against the government's bill, Bill C-10, which is an absolute attack on the freedoms we as Canadians enjoy online. This legislation would give sweeping power to the CRTC to regulate the Internet with no clear guidelines of how that power would be used. The government has now said it would introduce an amendment to make it …
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Mr. Speaker, that really has been the key question all along, about getting that next step, the EI benefits, to follow the bereavement leave. The member for Elmwood—Transcona has been supportive throughout this process and has also asked those key questions throughout in trying to get this to the next stage. I have no updates on my end, unfortunately. I hope we will see something soon, if not in t…
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Mr. Speaker, that is a key question that came up throughout the conversation of the debate. According to the department, there is already, within the policy declaration, opportunity to expand this legislation within the department. It is not specifically written in our legislation, and that is perhaps an opportunity for either an improvement to our legislation, or maybe the member would like to br…
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Mr. Speaker, the scope of the bill originated as compassionate care leave, something that was near and dear to many members in the House of Commons. That is where we were in second reading, after going through the committee stage, and, honestly, with support from the member for Mount Royal and the Minister of Labour, we were able to amend this bill to allow for 10 days of bereavement after the dea…
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moved that the bill, as amended, be concurred in at report stage.
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moved that the bill be read the third time and passed. Mr. Speaker, we made it. We are finally at third reading. I have to say this has been quite a remarkable journey. I want to start with a huge thanks to so many people who have helped along the way. These include my friend and consistent champion of this legislation, the hon. member for Mount Royal, who has worked extremely hard to make this a …
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Mr. Speaker, I look forward to sitting down with the member for Kingston and the Islands and having a further chat about some of these amendments. He is absolutely right. What we cannot do as private members, and I know he knows this as well, is impact the public purse whatsoever. We cannot impact EI benefits. We cannot push for the government to spend more money. As private members, all we can do…
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Madam Speaker, we have heard from many across Canada that the pensions of thousands of U.K. expats are frozen, despite the government's negotiating a new trade deal. These U.K. state pensions are not operated when the pensioner lives in a country that does not have a reciprocal operating agreement with the United Kingdom, like Canada. As a result, thousands of British pensioners living here are no…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to request a recorded division.
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Mr. Speaker, we request a recorded division.
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Mr. Speaker, I am humbled by a lot of the comments made in the chamber today, but also during the first debate. I will get to my thanks in a minute, but I want to address what we have been hearing, which is an outpouring of support from people who are caregivers now, people who have been caregivers, people who think they will potentially be at the point of taking care of a loved one or people grie…
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