Tako Van Popta
Langley Township—Fraser Heights, British Columbia · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the appeal process in British Columbia is going to take years. In the meantime, homeowners in Richmond, British Columbia, and throughout the province are feeling insecure. Here is the reality in the subject territory in Richmond.”
“Mr. Speaker, in Cowichan Tribes v. the Attorney General of Canada, the B.C. Supreme Court declared aboriginal title over private lands, and the private landowners, 150 of them, are worried.”
“Madam Speaker, earlier in debate tonight, we heard from the Liberal side of the House suggesting that anybody who was opposed to Bill C‑22 was fearmongering and spreading misinformation. However, the very rational debate coming from the member for Vancouver East would suggest otherwise.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for her speech on this self-government agreement, which she says could inform future agreements. There is the Musqueam recognition rights agreement in Vancouver, which has become very controversial.”
“Mr. Speaker, while the high-flying Prime Minister is racking up a $1-million debt for luxury inflight catering, many Canadians are struggling just to put food on the table.”
“Mr. Speaker, earlier in the debate today, we heard the minister say that this agreement is a model to inform future treaties, yet the most recent treaty, the K'ómoks Treaty, which my colleague also mentioned, introduces the concept of UNDRIP, a foreign document. This is not made in Canada.”
The complete record
Every one of 218 lines we hold for Tako Van Popta, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 2 of 5.
“They present themselves as being on a noble quest of wanting to initiate a citizens' forum, as they call it, to review our age-old first-past-the-post electoral system, which they do not like. They found a number of loopholes. (1720) One of the participants actually appeared as a witness at the procedure and House affairs committee a couple of months ago. What they have discovered is that, under the current Canada Elections Act, they can have the same 100 people sign 100 or even 200 nomination forms, nominating 200 different people. They can have the same person acting as a financial agent for all 200 or 100 or however many people they manage to get on the ballot. We want to shut that down. We are saying that this is inappropriate. I want to go back to their comments about wanting a citizens' forum.”
“How much of that is tied to Canadians' skepticism about the integrity of our electoral system? I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that the bill before us is a response not only to international affairs, which I think I talked about quite adequately, but also some local issues that have developed right here in Canada. In the last few general elections and by-elections, a group of local troublemakers or pranksters have interfered with our elections. They call themselves the “longest ballot committee”. We have all heard of their tactics, most recently in the by-election in Terrebonne. They find loopholes in our election act that allow them to nominate large numbers of people, sometimes in the hundreds, to run in a specific riding.”
“I hope that for those who take the time to read this report, what they learn—what I have learned—will not only enhance their understanding of the foreign interference threat but also go some distance in rebuilding the confidence and trust in our democracy. I hope indeed that Bill C-25 will do exactly that, and that it will go some distance in rebuilding the lagging confidence that so many Canadians have in our democratic institutions. I would note that, in the last election, the voter turnout of younger people increased, and so that is a reason for optimism. A larger number of first-time voters came out, and once people vote the first time, they are probably going to vote in subsequent elections. Perhaps that curve is going in the right direction. However, unfortunately, overall, election turnout has not been particularly good.”
“She said, “However, on the whole, I am satisfied that the government now appreciates the foreign interference threat that Canada faces and is serious about responding to it.” It was 15 months ago that Justice Hogue wrote that, and here we are, finally, in the next Parliament, acting on it with the proposed strong and free elections act. It is a step in the right direction. We are going to support it to go to committee where I look forward to drilling down to see that it truly answers the legitimate concerns that have been raised in this report that Canadians have about the integrity of our democratic institutions. Here is one more quote from the Hogue report that I think sums it up nicely: Foreign interference—and our fear of foreign interference—has taken its toll. For some, their faith in our system has been challenged.”
“There was slow reaction to issues that were very urgent and very serious and should have been given a much higher level of attention. There was the failure to get information to the right decision-makers and policy-makers, and when the information finally did get to those decision-makers and policy-makers, they did not know what to do with it. They did not appreciate the seriousness of it. This was obviously under the guidance and inspiration of the Liberal government that, at that time, was not taking foreign interference as a serious issue. Also, there was a lack of coordination. There was confusion about the roles and accountabilities. However, in the end, she summed it up with rather a positive tone.”
“It was delayed, and it did not keep Mr. Chiu and his party in the loop. However, this story is not primarily about Mr. Chiu, my friend and colleague, and it is not primarily about the people of Steveston—Richmond East, although they are obviously players in the whole story. This is a story about the Canadian public and our confidence, or lack thereof, in our electoral system. Justice Hogue did not pull any punches when criticizing the government's slow and inadequate response to these allegations. She stated, “I could not fulfill my mandate to help build public confidence in our democratic institutions if I minimized the ways in which efforts have come up short.” She was very critical of the government. She went on to list some of these shortfalls.”
“Chiu, the Conservative Party MP for Steveston—Richmond East, was the target of false narratives related to his proposal to implement a foreign influence registry.” If I have some time at the end, I will talk a bit more about the history behind the foreign influence registry, but for now, I am just going to continue with the Hogue report. It goes on to note that Mr. Chiu and the Conservative Party of Canada requested, very shortly after the election, that these issues be brought to CSIS. (1715) CSIS took on the investigation, but it did not get back to Mr. Chiu and the Conservative Party until almost two years later in the fall of 2023, and then only after media reporting about alleged leaks of the CSIS intelligence report. CSIS dropped the ball. Did it do good work? It probably did, but it was just too late.”
“I accept Justice Hogue's findings that, in those two elections, Canadians got both the government and the opposition that they chose, but I note that her report also says this, which is highly important in the debate going on today: “I...have identified only a small number of individual ridings where foreign interference may have had some impact.” Therefore, at the macro level, Canadians got the government they chose, but at the local level, maybe they did not get the MP that the majority of people had actually wanted due to foreign interference in our electoral system. That is what we take out of this report. Justice Hogue drills down and looks at the riding of Steveston—Richmond East. We were talking about that just a couple of minutes ago in debate. This is what the Hogue report says at page 33: “In 2021, Mr.”
“That would have been the result, and I believe that is what Madam Justice Hogue meant by saying that she saw no impact on the overall result of that election. It was the same in 2021. With or without foreign interference in Canada's 2021 general election, we were going to have the Liberal minority government under then prime minister Justin Trudeau, and the Conservative opposition, with Erin O'Toole as the Leader of the Opposition.”
“In anticipation of the commissioner's conclusion at the end of seven or eight volumes, she wrote this at page 15: “I have found no evidence that the overall result of any election has been swung by a foreign actor and have identified only a small number of individual ridings where foreign interference may have had some impact.” Reading between the lines, the report says that, with or without foreign interference in the 2019 election, we would have had a minority Liberal government under the leadership of then prime minister Trudeau, and we would have had the Conservatives being in the opposition with the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle , who was the leader of the Conservative Party, as the Leader of the Opposition.”
“This is what she had to say at page 3 of her report: The first observation I would like to make from the evidence is that it is true that some foreign states are trying to interfere in our democratic institutions, including electoral processes. This is nothing new and comes as no surprise—states have been trying to interfere with each other’s business since time immemorial. What is new, however, is the means deployed by these states, the apparent scale of the issue and the public discourse on the topic. Members can think about it. We have been talking about AI. We have been talking about the influence of social media on people and the ease of spreading misinformation and disinformation. All of that is affecting our democratic institutions. Today, we were talking about our Canada Elections Act.”
“Mr. Speaker, today we are debating the strong and free elections act, Bill C-25 , the government's response to several recent developments, both local and international, that have challenged the integrity of and public confidence in one of our most important democratic institutions, our elections. After the 2021 election, the federal government appointed the Hon. Marie-Josée Hogue as commissioner for the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions. It is a very long name and also a very long report of seven or eight volumes. The commissioner's final report came out on January 28, 2025, about 14 months ago. I am going to read a couple of quotations from the report because they set the context for what this proposed legislation is all about.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his speech on Bill C-25 , the strong and free elections act. He mentioned our former colleague, Kenny Chiu, who was elected at the same time as the two of us in 2019. He introduced a foreign influence registry private member's bill, something that the Liberal government should have done but failed to do. Madam Justice Hogue noted in her report that this was one of the reasons why Mr. Chiu may have lost his election, because of the foreign interference that followed, in the Chinese language on social media to people in his riding, criticizing him unfairly for introducing this private member's bill. I wonder if my colleague could comment on that.”
“Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Ponoka—Didsbury's speech was inspiring. It is a pleasure serving with him on the committee that studied the bill. We know that a foreign influence registry is going to be set up. We have appointed a commissioner for that now. I wonder if my colleague could comment on how viable that commission will be now that we have a Prime Minister who is willing to enter into a security-sharing agreement with the police authorities in Beijing, a regime that at one time he said was an existential threat to Canada's security. How is that going to interplay with the foreign influence registry?”
“Mr. Speaker, a couple of the amendments relate to actions of the longest ballot committee, and the bill is proposing to restrict the ability of pranksters, which I am going to call them, on the longest ballot committee to interfere with our election processes. One of the steps Conservatives are suggesting is prohibiting a person from signing nominations of more than one prospective candidate. Another one is a prohibition on acting as an official agent for more than one person in one riding. This came up at the procedure and House affairs committee, and one of the questions was whether it would withstand a charter challenge. Section 3 of the charter has been given a very broad interpretation to allow people to participate in the electoral district. I would ask for the member's comments on whether it would survive a charter challenge.”
“Mr. Speaker, the recent B.C. Supreme Court ruling in Cowichan Tribes calls into question whether private property rights in Canada are secure, creating unnecessary economic risk in our economy. Clearly the Liberals have dropped the ball on this one, and right at a time when Canadians are facing pressure from higher costs and economic uncertainty. Will the Liberal Prime Minister direct the lawyers to argue that private property rights in Canada must be secure for homeowners, farmers, businesses and investors? It must be number one.”
“I was talking to one land developer who says that until there is a change in attitude, they are leaving their money in a GIC, which is much safer and returning a better profit these days.”
“Mr. Speaker, if all that wishful thinking would actually solve the problem, we would not have a problem. I think the member will agree that we actually do face a housing affordability crisis. I just want to give a couple of examples of the government getting in the way. In a British Columbia setting, we have the provincial government chasing away investment dollars that drive the pre-sale market, which is one of the pillars of condo market financing. Number two is the national building code driving an aggressive green agenda that is not tied to economic reality. Third is the wild west in development cost charges by municipalities that is taking any profit away from builders.”
“They think that they are, in the professor's words, the “omniscience” or the single mind that can comprehend the complexity of modern economic activity. They think that just one more little tweak or a little adjustment to our comprehensive plans, one new bureaucracy, and the problem will be solved and the market will start to behave the way they think it should behave. The Liberals have failed so far, and they will continue to fail until they understand that the best thing they can do is to just get out of the way of the free market and let the market decide how it is going to be. The answer is not another bureaucracy and not an over-regulated economy. It is just to let the market behave the way it should. Do they agree with that?”
“I am not going to repeat that speech, but I will highlight a couple of quotes from Professor Friedrich Hayek, the 20th-century free market economist of the classical liberal tradition. I noted, and will note again, that the current Liberal Party has abandoned classical liberal economics and replaced it with central planning socialism. This is why I quoted Friedrich Hayek, because he spent a good part of his academic life attacking central planning socialism and pointing out its weaknesses. He said, “The beauty of the market lies in its ability to coordinate actions without requiring omniscience.” He also said, “No single mind can comprehend the complexity of modern economic activity—only a decentralized process can manage it.” The Liberals used to believe that, but they do not anymore. They have become central planning socialists.”
“Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago, I had a round of questions in question period about Canada's housing affordability crisis hitting young people particularly hard. Normally, supply meets demand, which is just economics 101, but the current real estate market is in such a state of imbalance that the new homes that buyers want and can afford are just not being built. That was the basis of my question. I noted that despite demand, CMHC was reporting a reduction in new housing starts over the next few years. The response I received was that we should just support the Liberals' housing plans, which are the ones that have been missing the mark and causing all the problems in the first place. I was directed to Bill C-20 , the Build Canada Homes act, which a couple of sitting days later I actually had the opportunity to speak to.”
“Mr. Speaker, Bill C-13 is about bringing the United Kingdom into the comprehensive trade agreement with the Pacific. The member for Courtenay—Alberni mentioned frozen pensions for U.K. pensioners who decide to retire here in Canada. It seems deeply unfair, particularly since the U.K. does not do that for other countries like the United States. As a matter of fact, it seems to be picking on Commonwealth countries. This agreement seems like the perfect opportunity to resolve that problem, yet the Prime Minister has failed to do that. I would like to hear the member's comments on what that says about the Prime Minister 's ability, or perhaps lack thereof, to negotiate good deals for Canada.”
“Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague from Peace River—Westlock that Alberta grain-fed beef is the best in the world. I love our friends from Great Britain, and I want them to benefit from Alberta grain-fed beef, but here is another thing. I love people from Ontario, and I want them to benefit from the best wine in Canada, British Columbia wine. I know it is not the topic of the day, but can my friend comment on the importance of British Columbia wine in LCBO stores?”
“Mr. Speaker, Bill C-13 is the bill by which the United Kingdom will be brought into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP. All of the other countries, and I believe there are 11 of them besides Canada, accept beef imports and pork imports from Canada, yet the United Kingdom is putting up non-tariff barriers to that. I wonder if the member could comment on that. Was that an oversight on the part of the Canadian negotiating team?”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech on Canada accepting the U.K. into the CPTPP. It is my understanding that Canada trades freely with the other countries in that agreement with respect to beef and pork. Do Canadians have a legitimate concern that the government has failed to come to that agreement with the United Kingdom?”
“We have heard from victims of crime that Canada's criminal justice system feels deliberately opaque. They feel left in the dark. It does not have to be that way. We can do better. The bill is a small step in that direction. Let us expedite it through the House and the other place, and push Canada's criminal justice system another small step towards true justice for everyone, including victims of crime.”
“He said this on November 18, 2025: “Transparency and accountability are core principles of our democracy, and the bill we debate today seeks to enhance the application of these essential principles, specifically for the benefit of those victimized by crime.” This is a really good summary. What would the bill do? It seeks to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to ensure that victims receive clear explanations about how an offender's eligibility and review dates for temporary absences, release or parole are determined. Victims and their families would be told not only when those dates will be but also the rationale behind why those dates have been chosen, because we believe transparency and accountability are core principles of our democracy.”
“I can tell members that it feels really good to be admired by the Liberal side of the House for a change. We do not get a lot of that. However, I do not want to make too much of this recent and probably very temporary sense of goodwill. The chamber is a very adversarial one after all. Let us just settle on this. This is good legislation, and we should push it through as quickly as we can. I am well into my speech and I realize I have not even said what the bill would do. I can do no better than to summarize with a sentence from the speech I referenced earlier from my friend, the member for Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies .”
“That is great. We know the Liberals will support it. As a matter of fact, they like the bill so much that they have adopted the substance of it and have incorporated it into one of their bills, Bill C-16 , which is a very large criminal justice bill that runs 166 pages. It is at the justice committee right now undergoing a very thorough review. It may come back here, but in the meantime, we are going to keep pushing my colleague's private member's bill. (1245) As an aside, I am feeling positive. We are seeing a lot of stealing of ideas in the current Parliament, with the Liberals adopting Conservative proposals and calling them their own, proposals that just a short while ago they were criticizing and scoffing at. Now I guess they have finally seen the light. Imitation is the highest form of admiration.”
“It then went to committee for third reading. The only thing that was left to do was royal proclamation. What happened to it? It died on the Order Paper when Prime Minister Trudeau prorogued Parliament early last year for the sole purpose of rescuing his faltering Liberal Party from falling over the cliff. I will have more on that some other day, because that is not what we are talking about today. We are now here in the 45th Parliament and again it appears we have all-party support for this common-sense Conservative bill that is going to have a real and positive impact on victims and their families. In preparing my talking points for my intervention today, I took the opportunity to read the speeches published in the Hansard that were delivered by other members of other parties. It looks like the Bloc Québécois will support it.”
“In his speech in this chamber a couple of months ago when this bill was first introduced, he shared a personal story about how a crime committed many years ago impacted him and his family, and to this day the impact is still felt. It never goes away. I am also very pleased that another colleague, the member for Oshawa , has seconded the bill. She too has a connection with this piece of legislation, because it was her predecessor, a member of Parliament, our friend and former colleague Colin Carrie, who introduced a similar private member's bill in the last Parliament. It was called Bill C-320 . At that time, all the parties agreed it should go ahead and it almost made it over the finish line. It went through the first, second and third readings here. Then it went to the other place for the first and second readings.”
“We want a criminal justice system that is fair, balanced and in compliance with our charter, but in all of that, where are the innocent victims whose lives have been upended by the terrible acts of the convicted criminal? Too often the lives of the victims are a sideshow in our criminal justice system. They need to be more front and centre. We want justice after all, not just for the criminal and not just to put people away for public safety or for punishment. We want a true sense of justice for the innocent, so that they too feel that the justice system is working for them. That is why I am so pleased that my colleague, the member for Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies , brought forward this private member's bill to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act focusing on victims.”
“At the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, when I served on that committee in the last Parliament, we conducted a study on victims of crime. We learned from many victims and their families that, from their perspective, Canada's criminal justice system feels more like a criminal system than a justice system. That is because the focus is on the criminal: Are they guilty? Do we have enough evidence to convict them in a court beyond a reasonable doubt? What would be the appropriate sentence if they are found guilty, or the appropriate release conditions? Underlying all of this, of course, is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the legal right everybody has to be presumed innocent. That is all important stuff and nobody is arguing about that.”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about a private member's bill sponsored by my good friend and colleague, the member for Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies . It is a great piece of legislation that will amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act with a focus on victims. It is a simple bill that will have a significant and positive impact on our justice system. Unlike other criminal bills, this one does not create a new crime or further define an existing crime. It does not create new penalties for something that already is illegal. It will have no impact on people who have been convicted of a crime and who are incarcerated. However, it will have a very big and positive impact on victims of crime.”
“Mr. Speaker, despite promising the fastest-growing economy in the G7, the Prime Minister has delivered the weakest. Today, we are the only country in the G7 with a shrinking economy and young people are paying the price. The generation that should be building up wealth for the future is instead falling further behind. Personal debt is at an all-time high. Savings are basically non-existent, and millennials are giving up hope. They want to know when the government will create a working economy so that they can have hope for a better future.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that every time the member for Winnipeg North stands up, he is accusing us of filibustering. This is an important topic. It is very important for Canadians, certainly in my home province of British Columbia, where housing affordability really is a crisis for young people. These are important issues. We need to be debating them in the House of Commons, and that is exactly what we are doing.”
“Mr. Speaker, that is an important question, but I am really the wrong person to be asking it to. Trying to get into the minds of the Liberals is hard to do, but what I have observed time and again is that the Liberal politics of the Liberal Party of the 2020s is all performative politics. It just wants it to seem that it is doing something. If there is a problem, it has a solution: another organization, photo op or ribbon cutting, and the problem is solved. That is its problem.”
“Mr. Speaker, the question from my colleague from the Bloc Québécois was a thoughtful one. I live in a community that is highly urbanized, but parts of it are still rural, so I sympathize with the question. I will revert back to what I had said earlier, which is that the market generally sorts things out. If there is a demand in smaller communities, it will be filled if the government gets out of the way. Is there a role for government? Provincial and federal governments own a lot of land. Maybe they should put that out into the marketplace. I know there are areas in British Columbia that would benefit greatly from the release of federal lands from federal control. Put it into private enterprise and let us build.”
“Mr. Speaker, the question just underlines what I was saying: Governments do not build homes. People build homes. Home builders build homes. Electricians, drywallers, carpenters and land developers are the ones who build homes. The government just needs to get out of the way and create the environment that welcomes investment so people will actually build homes and so the market meets the demand.”
“The bill is simply about setting up a new bureaucracy to keep an eye on the existing bureaucracies that have failed time and time again to solve our housing affordability crisis and our housing availability crisis. Young people particularly are paying the price for all this mismanagement. In closing, here is some free advice for the Liberals from the free-market Conservatives. We continue to adopt and follow free-market economics because that is the solution to our economic goals: Just get out of the way. What the Liberals have been doing for the last 10 years has not been working, and the newly repackaged commission, the newly repackaged and restructured bureaucracy, would not solve the problem either. We wish the Liberals would just get out of the way and let smart Canadians build homes to meet market demand.”
“That is all we need to know to understand why the Liberals are always so optimistic that their next government central planning agency is finally going to solve the problem. If it does not, then the next one will, and the next one after that. They are always optimistic and always dreaming, always with wishful thinking. If Liberal wishful thinking would build homes, Canada would have the most affordable, the most successful and the most balanced housing market in the world, but that is unfortunately not the case. People who expect that the bill would actually accelerate affordable housing construction in Canada will be disappointed.”
“I will go back to Friedrich Hayek, who had this to say: “The beauty of the market lies in its ability to coordinate actions without requiring omniscience.” He also said, “The fatal flaw of central planning is the assumption that someone knows enough to direct the use of resources efficiently.” Here is another quote, a third from Professor Hayek: “No single mind can comprehend the complexity of modern economic activity—only a decentralized process can manage it.” The Liberals do not believe that. They used to believe it, but they do not believe it anymore. They have now abandoned classical liberal tradition to adopt central planning socialism. Today they think they are the omniscience, the single mind that can comprehend the complexity of modern economic activity.”
“Builders are being pessimistic about their ability to meet the demand in face of high costs that drive sale prices beyond what the market can bear. There is a serious imbalance in our economy, in other words. As I was preparing my notes, I thought of the famous economist Friedrich Hayek, the free-market economist who spoke about this in his famous 1945 essay, “The Use of Knowledge in Society”. I will paraphrase it. I just want to highlight that Friedrich Hayek was of the classical liberal tradition of economics, the tradition that the Liberal Party of Canada used to follow until it abandoned all that and Liberals became central planning socialists. That is what they are today.”
“This is especially true in B.C, where, the report predicts, “Housing starts will continue to slow down in 2026, with a more significant decline...in 2027-2028.” We are headed in the wrong direction. (1550) The Canadian Home Builders' Association had this to say in its Q4 report from last year: “Setting new record lows in builder sentiment was the unfortunate theme for the [housing market index] in 2025.” Builders are losing faith in their ability to build homes in the current sector, the environment that the Liberals have created. Ontario and British Columbia unfortunately will “lead the way in terms of broad pessimism among single- and multi-family builders.” Yes, it is pessimistic. People want to buy or rent homes but lack the financial resources to buy.”
“We already have the Canada Lands Company. We have the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. We have Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada. I would just point this out: If creating bureaucracies could solve the problem, we would not have a problem. Let us take a look at the track record of the current bureaucracies. According to CMHC's own recent housing market outlook for 2026, housing starts are heading in the wrong direction, despite all the announcements from the Liberals, below the target necessary to restore housing affordability. A quote from the report sums it up very nicely. It says, “New home construction is set to decline through 2028 as developers face high costs, weaker demand and more unsold homes.” Can members imagine this, in an economy where there are not enough homes?”
“Another headline on the same topic reads, “Loss of provincial fund upends many affordable rental projects”. People are up in arms about this. They want to know what is going on. The provincial government has made all these promises, and now it is abandoning ship because it does not have the money to do it. Thirdly, this new, highly paid bureaucracy will analyze what is wrong with the current state of affairs in the housing sector and advise government as to what to do, how to tweak things. One of the first reports coming out of this agency, this Crown corporation, no doubt, will analyze the current housing market in Canada and why it is in such a state of imbalance, despite the existence of federal government bureaucracies and best intentions that were supposed to make things better. This is the fourth bureaucracy, now.”
“Build Canada Homes, it will be called. Here is what Canadians will get out of this new corporation. First of all, it will create its own bureaucracy, a board of directors comprising eight to 10 people, a chairperson, a full-time CEO, all of whom will be on the federal payroll. Secondly, it will get into the business of building affordable homes, apparently. It is good timing, I say somewhat facetiously, just as the B.C. government is getting out of that line of business. The headline in the Vancouver Sun over the weekend, screaming on the front page, is “'A massive step back' for housing”, while David Eby is grappling with a stunning $13.8-billion operating deficit just three years after he inherited a surplus of $5 billion from the previous government.”
“We hear it again today, that the government has all the solutions to all the problems and that with enough central planning, it can make the market behave the way it thinks it should behave. In my years in Parliament, I have observed time and again that the Liberal government's politics are performative in nature. It wants to appear to be doing something about whatever the problem is that is being debated that day. If major projects are being held up because of federal bureaucracy, well, let it create a major projects office. If military procurement is a mess, let it set up a commission to look at why all the other commissions have not been doing their job. Now, in a situation of housing unaffordability and new houses not being built to keep up with demand, we have a new bureaucracy for that too: a new Crown corporation, in fact.”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-20 , a bill from the Liberal government to establish yet another federal Crown corporation, called Build Canada Homes, which would apparently finally find the solution to the economic woes in our housing sector that have stubbornly evaded solutions provided by existing federal bureaucracies. The stated purpose of Build Canada Homes is to “promote, support and develop the supply of affordable housing in Canada and to promote innovative and efficient building techniques in the housing construction sector in Canada”. I know that sounds optimistic. Let us test that claim, that aspirational statement, against reality. For 10 years, we have had a Liberal government that thinks it is smarter than the free market.”
“Mr. Speaker, that answer is completely unacceptable. The Canadian Home Builders' Association says that, five years ago, new housing starts in the ownership market stood at 69%, the rest being in the rental market. Last year, that number dropped down to 49%. Despite all the nice talk, clearly the Liberal plans are not helpful for prospective new buyers. Again, why do they not just adopt our plans and help restore the dream of home ownership once again for Canadians?”