From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

‘Housing hell: How we got here and how we get out’ has been viewed more than four million times.

A video by Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Pierre Poilievre exposing the country’s housing prices and supply crisis, which a taxpayer watchdog said is being fueled by high-interest rates from bad fiscal policy by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, has reached over 4 million views.

“Something new and strange has happened in Canada. Canada is sitting on probably one of the largest housing bubbles of all times, something we haven’t seen before,” Poilievre said in his 15-minute video titled Housing hell: How we got here and how we get out.

“An entire generation of youth now say they will never be able to afford a home. This is not normal for Canada.”

Housing hell: How we got here and how we get out. pic.twitter.com/vVLsXMVM35

— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) December 2, 2023

The video goes deep into Canada’s housing market and includes statistics on why it is in such a dire state. It currently has 4.2 million views on X (formerly Twitter) after it was released on December 2.

Poilievre documents in his video, using facts to back him up, that in the coming months and years “tens of thousands of Canadians could default on their mortgages” due to skyrocketing interest rates.

He noted how the “nightmare scenario” after “generations of affordable and stable Canadian home prices” means that 66% of a person’s average monthly income is to simply “make payments on the average single detached Canadian house.”

“Given that most of the remaining 34 percent of the family paycheck is taken out by taxes, there’s literally nothing left for food and recreation,” Poilievre noted.

Taxpayer watchdog says high house prices due to Trudeau’s out of ‘control’ government

Franco Terrazzano, federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), told LifeSiteNews that the reason house prices, along with everything else, are more expensive is due to Trudeau’s “out of control” governmental spending.

“Trudeau’s never-ending deficits and the hundreds of billions of dollars the Bank of Canada printed during the pandemic are driving up the cost of everything,” Terrazzano told LifeSiteNews.

“Life is more expensive because the cost of government is out of control.”

Terrazzano noted that governmental fiscal policy is making home prices more expensive and thus out of reach for most. He said what needs to happen is a reduction in red tape.

“Taxes and onerous government regulations are making homes more expensive,” Terrazzano told LifeSiteNews.

“If governments want to make homes more affordable, they would cut taxes and the red tape that makes it harder and more expensive to build homes.”

Terrazzano highlighted a report from the C.D. Howe Institute that shows the cost of excessive government regulations on home building.

As for Poilievre, he observed how it now would take a staggering 25 years just to save enough money to make a downpayment for a simple home in Toronto.

He continued, noting how newlyweds now on average pay $1,000 per month to rent a “single room in a townhouse that they share with two other couples.”

He also raised the issue of how 35-year-olds “live in their parent’s basements” and “rents are so high in Toronto that students live in homeless shelters.”

When it comes to middle-class workers, Poilievre emphasized how “people like nurses and carpenters now live in their vehicles.”

While housing falls primarily under provincial and municipal jurisdiction, some areas, such as interest rates, are directly influenced by the federal government.

House prices have shot up in Canada due to short supply in the market, and speculative buying and interest rates have risen to highs not seen for decades. As it stands, Canada’s interest rate sits at 5%. At this same time in 2021, interest rates were 0.25%.

This past Wednesday, the Bank of Canada decided to keep rates at 5% but did not rule out future rate increases, as it “is still concerned about risks to the outlook for inflation and remains prepared to raise the policy rate further if needed.”

Interestingly, Trudeau put out a video the same day as Poilievre that he said was to address housing challenges. This video only has 264,000 views, however.

Curiously, Poilievre made no mention of Canada’s high immigration levels, which critics say has put a strain on an already tight supply.

Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada, has been one of the only party leaders to call out high immigration levels and their effects on housing.

Trudeau’s ‘money printing’ pouring fuel on ‘inflationary fire’

According to Poilievre in his video, in the past one could save enough to buy a house by their mid-20s but said this “changed” about “eight years ago” when Trudeau came to power.

“When the government borrows and spends, it builds up the goods we buy and the interest we pay. The Trudeau government has doubled Canada’s debt, adding more debt than all prime ministers combined. Our finance minister has conceded that this deficit spending pours fuel on the inflationary fire,” Poilievre said.

He observed how excessive money printing through a banking scheme called “quantitative easing” has only benefited well-connected banking insiders and financial institutions that are awash with money.

“In recent years, the Trudeau government spending has exploded, and they’ve been borrowing more than lenders will lend. So, the Bank of Canada has started creating the cash. The money supply has therefore grown eight times faster than the economy over the last three years,” Poilievre said.

“More money bidding on fewer goods, including fewer houses, equals higher prices.”

Poilievre ended his video by stating that the “good news is housing costs were not like this before Justin Trudeau.”

“And they won’t be like this after he’s gone,” he added.

He said that the solution, besides a change in leadership, is for all levels of government to work together to cut red tape and taxes to encourage the construction of new homes.

Under Trudeau, mainly due to excessive COVID money printing, inflation has skyrocketed.

A recent report from September 5 by Statistics Canada shows food prices are rising faster than headline inflation at a rate of between 10% and 18% per year.

Earlier this year, the Bank of Canada acknowledged that Trudeau’s federal “climate change” programs, which have been deemed “extreme” by some provincial leaders, are indeed helping to fuel inflation.