Liberal club shouldn’t benefit at the public’s expense, says Poilievre
Ottawa, ON – Today, the Hon. Pierre Poilievre, Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and the Conservative Party of Canada, announced that he has asked the chair of the Ethics Committee to hold a meeting to launch an investigation into conflicts of interest arising from Carney’s plan to bail out developers, bankers and investors by using taxpayer dollars to purchase unsold condominium units in British Columbia.
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.
After receiving pushback to the proposal, Carney claimed that “no developer asked for this from me directly,” raising further questions on which Minister was lobbied to introduce the program. And despite being a joint announcement with Premier David Eby, neither side will confirm who originally pitched the idea, with the Premier and Carney blaming each other.
The proposal came after two fundraisers held in Vancouver during his leadership campaign and in February 2026, where attendees paid up to $1,750 for a closed-door fundraiser, “An Evening with Mark Carney.” With developers reportedly in attendance, where the condo bailout plan came from deserves full transparency for Canadians to ensure that nobody was given undue benefit.
“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,” Poilievre said. “This will do nothing to build more of the homes we need. Instead, Carney is forcing taxpayers to intervene before developers lower prices. Conservatives will investigate the Liberal Club’s latest bonanza that sticks taxpayers with the bill.”
Despite Carney promising to build half a million homes per year, Canada is barely building half that number. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation predicts a 18 per cent decline in homebuilding. In May, housing starts fell 6 per cent, after building permits were down 8 per cent in April according to Statistics Canada.
This has had a direct impact on the price of housing: in Vancouver, it now costs a whopping $1.1 million to buy the average home. According to Demographia’s latest housing affordability report, Vancouver is ranked the 5th most unaffordable housing market globally.
That means Vancouverites need to earn at least $225,200 a year to qualify for a mortgage, $900 more than they needed to earn in April. And according to RBC it now takes 88.4% of pre-tax median household income to afford a home in Vancouver. This is a direct result of government fees and charges that contribute “30 per cent of an overall construction build,” according to Homebuilders Association Vancouver.
“If you want affordable housing, get rid of all the red tape and taxes on home building and let builders build workers’ work, buyers buy, and investors invest,” Poilievre added. “We want to make this the fastest place in the world to get a permit. We want to take off all federal sales tax for a home under $1.3 million and incentivize municipal and provincial taxes to be removed from home building so that our builders can provide us with an abundant supply of houses that people can own and mortgages they can pay off.”
Poilievre contrasted Carney’s bailout with the Conservative plan to take the GST off new homes and incentivize municipalities to speed up permitting and lower development charges to actually lower prices. He also commended Conservative MP Brad Redekopp’s Housing Cost Transparency Act, which would require the National Research Council to publicly disclose the real-world costs, delays and affordability impacts of proposed building code changes before they are imposed.
“This is the economy Carney has created: privatizing the profit and socializing the losses,” Poilievre concluded. “There is a tiny club of connected Carney insiders, power brokers, and corporate lobbyists who get all the benefits while sticking Canadians with all the losses. It’s time for a genuine free market where willing buyers purchase from willing sellers at the best price.”