Madam Speaker, let me begin by unequivocally answering the question: No, there is no contemplation, no desire and no will to tax people's primary residence. The capital gains tax is not being touched by this government and will not be touched by this government. It is the third time the member opposite has received that answer. Maybe this is the lucky time it lands.

In terms of what our government is doing to create affordability, the zoning issue she talks about and the provincial guidelines she talks about are beyond our jurisdiction. We can talk about what we are doing to make housing more affordable for Canadians, whether they choose to rent or whether they choose to own.

Let us begin by talking about home ownership. We have put in a vacant homes tax to try to chase out of the market speculators who buy homes but do not allow people to live in them. We have put in beneficial ownership requirements and rules in place to make sure that money laundering is chased from the Canadian market and takes that speculative forced inflation out of the market.

We have provided support for first-time homebuyers. In fact, we just recently announced new measures to deal with the riding and geography the member represents in the Lower Mainland and Victoria in B.C. and in Toronto to increase the capacity of that program and to increase the threshold to make sure those two particular urban regions are addressed through the first-time homebuyers program.

We have also taken steps to make sure that we move toward providing supply through the national housing strategy, a $70-billion program, which provides a lot of new market rental housing, a lot of deeply affordable housing, including the rapid housing initiative, which recently produced close to 5,000 units of new housing. It has also done things like block financing for Habitat for Humanity and provide $58 million in funding to provide low-income home ownership opportunities for Canadians looking to purchase their first home.

What did the Conservatives do with every single one of those measures? They voted no, no, no and no, and then no one more time just for good measure. What does that do? It protects the status quo. It protects the market as it is, which is interesting because the Conservatives effectively created this market. When the member for Carleton was minister for housing and I was in opposition, we sat there and watched him brag about how unregulated the housing market was. He bragged about it. The unregulated housing market has created a speculative bonanza that is driving first-time homebuyers out of the dream of owning a home.

It is Conservative policy that got us here, and the worst policy was when Jim Flaherty double-crossed the Prime Minister, double-crossed his caucus and cancelled all the income trust. The one he did not do was the real estate income trust sector, and that has galloped into the housing market and has driven inflation so that housing is beyond the reach of most Canadians. When the Conservatives stand up here and protect the status quo, the status quo is a market that they have designed and delivered to Canadians, and that is the housing crisis we inherited as a government.

When I was a journalist covering Parliament Hill, Stephen Harper once told me that if I wanted to talk about housing in Parliament, I should read the Constitution first, because there was no federal responsibility toward housing. That is why I put down my pen and I picked up an election sign. I planted it in the front lawns of the communities I represent, including a lot of condominiums with first-time homeowners who are renting right now, and I got to work on the national housing strategy, providing federal leadership on this program for the first time in over a decade.

If the member opposite was serious about housing, and I do not really think she is, if she was serious about helping Canadians make the choices they want to make, and I really do not think she is, she would start supporting the federal housing policy proposed by the Liberal government, instead of protecting the status quo designed and delivered by the member for Carleton, by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and by former finance minister Jim Flaherty.

The member joined a party that has walked away from housing, walked away from the needs of Canadians looking for housing, whether to rent or to own, and now she is trying to pretend that there is a tax to be worried about. I will say it one more time to her, for the fourth time: This government has no plans to change the capital gains tax exemptions for primary residences—none, not one bit, not at all, never.

I do not know what CMHC has hired to do as a study. What I can say is that the government has made a very firm decision, a very clear decision. We will not be introducing a tax on someone's principal residence to change the exemptions for the capital gains tax. It is not going to happen on our government's watch—

Adam Vaughan

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Adjournment Proceedings

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