Ottawa, ON – The federal Conservatives continue to accuse the Trudeau Liberal Government of missing all their targets. The mantra from the Conservatives is simple, housing prices have doubled, rent is doubled, and crime is up 100 percent.
That of course leads to denial by the Liberals. However with the Conservatives now mounting their largest lead over the Liberals according to NANOS Polling, it appears that the Conservative message is resonating with Canadians.
The thrust of most of the Conservative attacks is that the Liberals say all the right things, but then fail to actually deliver results on those promises.
The Conservatives state in a media release, “After nine years of Justin Trudeau, Canadians are living in a housing hell with no end in sight. Despite spending billions of dollars and staging photo-ops across Canada and handing out bonuses to CMHC executives, the Trudeau Government has not managed to build a single home with this program.
“This is because Trudeau’s hallmark housing policy is nothing more than a $4.4 billion photo-op fund. Since the Liberals signed their $471 million Housing Accelerator Fund agreement with the City of Toronto in December, housing starts are down in that city by 21%. In fact, just a few months after the City of Toronto signed an agreement with the Trudeau Government, the city gatekeepers made housing construction even more difficult by raising development charges by an additional 20.7%. When asked at Committee about funding currently not being conditional based on freezing development charges, Trudeau’s Housing Minister indicated no intent to add the condition”.
Other cities are no better off. In Halifax, where Trudeau signed agreements totalling $79.3 million, the city has begun to plan for more homeless encampments instead of building enough homes for people to live in. In Calgary, a rental listing received over 900 applications in 24 hours, despite a $228 million agreement.
When pressed at Committee on how many homes have been built with the fund, Trudeau’s Housing Minister wasn’t able to respond with a number and said “the government isn’t the entity that is constructing the homes.” Which just so happens to be what the government is shovelling money out the door trying to do.
Meanwhile, Trudeau has allowed CMHC executives to collect millions of dollars in bonuses, despite their abysmal performance. This includes a retroactive raise of almost $80K for the outgoing CEO who has headed this failed operation. This is more money than most Canadians make in a year.
