OTTAWA - Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling for an “urgent meeting” of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics to investigate what he calls the “condo bailout” announced by the government earlier this month.
In a letter to the committee chair obtained by CTV News, Poilievre accuses Prime Minister Mark Carney and his government of bailing out developers rather than helping taxpayers.
“Last week, Mark Carney announced a plan to bail out developers, bankers and investors by using taxpayer dollars to purchase unsold condominium units in British Columbia,” the letter reads.
“Under the Liberals’ plan, taxpayers would be on the hook to buy more than 2,200 ‘vacant’ units that British Columbians can’t afford or don’t want at their current price. Far from making housing more affordable, the bailout prevents a price correction from taking place, preserving high prices for developers rather than lowering them for buyers.”
A press release issued by the Prime Minister’s Office on June 18 said Ottawa and the B.C. government plan to “leverage innovative financing tools to convert more than 2,200 vacant condo units in priority growth areas into affordable homes.”
Carney said Thursday the federal government would put up 10 per cent of roughly $1.45 billion in total potential spending to convert the units, with the B.C. government footing the rest of the bill.
The Carney government has defended the proposal and says it’s about affordability, not bailouts.
“We don’t care about the developer. We care about the person, the family that can potentially move into the home,” Carney told reporters during a press conference on Parliament Hill Thursday.
Carney said no developer asked him for the proposal, which he said was “initiated” by the B.C. government.
During the same press conference, the prime minister acknowledged his government had done a poor job of explaining the program laid out in Vancouver a week earlier.
In his letter to the ethics committee, Poilievre says “Mark Carney is building an economy of carve-outs, bail-outs and hand-outs for the Liberal Club; and higher costs, debt and taxes for everyone else.”
“I’m calling on you to hold an urgent meeting of the Ethics Committee so it can investigate this bailout,” Poilievre writes in a letter addressed to Conservative MP John Brassard, who chairs the committee.
With files from the Canadian Press
