Liberal cabinet retreat focused on housing and affordability | Power & Politics

Liberal cabinet ministers are gathered here in Montreal to strategize before returning to Parliament next week they say either focus on some key issues affecting Canadians like housing and affordability but the leader of the opposition says the Liberals are in a different kind of retreat he’s retreating on everything he has done

Over the last eight years right after eight years of Trudeau life costs more work doesn’t pay housing costs have doubled crime chaos drugs and disorder are common in our streets and he divides to distract from all that he has broken Justin Trudeau is not worth the

Cost joining us now to discuss the focus of this Retreat is Dominic Leblon minister of Public Safety and intergovernmental affairs minister good to see you again hi good evening David uh obviously Pier PV is not impressed with the agenda You’ set out here surprising isn’t it well I’m as shocked

As you are um you come here at an interesting time we have seen the new polling data once again a persistent double digit lead for the cons conservatives over the Liberals what’s your assessment of why Canadians seem to be losing faith in your government Canadians have gone through a

Very difficult period uh in the last number of years I mean going back to covid after covid interest rates went up uh inflation was an issue Global Supply chains it’s been tough on millions and millions of Canadians so they’re understandably concerned and worried largely about economic issues uh they’re

Concerned about issues like auto theft they’re concerned about uh issues around the cost of housing uh they want a government that’s focused on those issues they want a government that’s taking concrete steps uh to do things that will improve their situation quickly that’s what we’re discussing here in these meetings in Montreal David

Standing in front of a of a sign and insulting people or pointing the finger at others doesn’t actually solve the circumstance of these millions of Canadians who have understandable concerns so we’re doing the difficult but important work work of trying to alleviate the affordability pressure trying to deal with the housing uh

Pressures and we’ll continue to do that increasingly though I mean you see it in in this data and I’m sure you hear it U you know when you travel around the country that that people are skeptical if not completely doubtful that liberals at this stage in the life cycle are the

Right party to solve a lot of these problems that you you’ve outlined how how do you counter that well first of all by not getting distracted from the work we need to do uh you’ve been around politics a long time David you see these stories that become sort of common uh

Acceptance that this or that particular political parties in trouble and then circumstances evolve the situation changes people’s perceptions come and go Tom mare had a transition team in 2015 meeting to plan his takeover of the government and he lost the election then was kicked out of the NDP leadership

Some months later so I think it’s important for us not to be uh distracted from the work that Canadian Ians elected us to do in the next election Canadians will have an opportunity uh to uh evaluate the work of the government and to choose between real Alternatives uh none of the above isn’t

On a ballot when you go to vote there’s a series of real candidates real choices real political parties uh we think that our government and our party is focused on and will bring significant improvements to the challenges the Canadians are facing but we there’s a lot of work to do and we haven’t

Finished that work do you have the time though to finish that work and like let’s look at some of the key issues on housing the Prime Minister on down have have admitted you were slow to respond to this we’ve seen a flurry of announcements since Sean Frasier has

Been the housing Minister through the housing accelerator but each of those announcements is the promise of housing the potential of housing rather than the reality of housing that’s ready to go into the market right now it’s going to take some time I don’t share your your

Pessimism I mean it’s not I’m trying to be realist well no but we heard from the mayor of Montreal who met with us today and talked concretely about a affordable housing that’s being built right now foundations that were poured before the the ground froze in this city in

Montreal so there’s a lot of work to do I’m not pretending that the work is complete but I I wouldn’t say that we haven’t made an important dent in that work but we need Partners we need provinces we need municipalities we need the private sector we need not

For-profit groups um they’re all engaged I mean this is a necessarily the housing issue you that’s the one we were talking about necessarily require uh different orders of government to work together it requires private Capital so it’s complicated uh but it doesn’t mean because it’s not fixed tomorrow morning that we shouldn’t

Continue to do the work we’ve been doing a lot of work but we need to do more work and quickly um and that’s certainly my conversations as the intergovernmental affairs minister with Premier eie last week in British Columbia and Premier canoe in Manitoba I spoke to Premier Ford again on the

Weekend they want to have a government that’s an active partner in this area because we all recognize that it’s very important to Canadians you had presentations today from economists on how to deal with the cost of living how to deal with concerns about a possible recession in the Canadian economy we

Spoke with Kevin Milligan and arm ynan when they came out later and and they actually arguing that what’s required to some degree is big government Investments what they call the care economy Long-Term Care Child Care Health Care is that a direction you’re willing to go in as a government because if you

Go back to the fall economic statement it seemed like the messaging was more towards a little bit of restraint and returning to more traditional levels of government spending after the big spending days of the pandemic do you have the fiscal room and desire to go there so that that is an interesting

Debate I found it interesting to listen to those economists present to the cabinet earlier today um but on the issue for ex example of a care economy uh the issue of something as important as child care for families that’s a big affordability issue well we’ve already built into our fiscal framework into the

Government spending plans a permanent child care program nationally that lowers the cost to $10 a day that is a very significant investment but that’s not new spending or additional spending that’s already built into the government spending plan uh as is the hundreds of billions of dollars over a 10-year

Period that we’re transferring to the provinces for health care so my colleague the health Minister talked to us about the agreements that he’s close to finalizing with provinces so to use two examples you raised yes we have to do aot lot in those areas that’s what building an inclusive prosperous economy

Requires the good news is we’ve been doing that work also for a long period of time and we’ve done a great deal in the last few years but that spending is already accounted for so um I think we need to continue to make those thoughtful Investments uh to ensure that

Our economy is inclusive and the affordability issues are dealt with headon but as the minister of finan has said there’s not an unlimited amount of spending at a difficult time fed federal government took a huge amount of the burden of covid some provinces including my own in New Brunswick are facing

Record surpluses so there can also be in the fiscal federalism a bit of an adjustment in terms of the priorities that some of our provincial Partners uh can also share with us as well a big priority for this year you’re going to be hearing from well the Canada’s

Ambassador to the United States on the upcoming US election uh Trump won was difficult for this government NAFTA was put on the table tensions between the two countries were high uh because of the uncertain nature of him as a as a president how worried are you as a government that

He’s going to win and come back well we’re going to hear from Ambassador Hilman tomorrow I had a chance to talk with her in in the late fall when I was in Washington um look Canadians have been increasingly interested in us politics there are retired School teachers in my writing that spend more

Time watching CNN than CBC News world I know it’s shocking David for you but it became it became in Mr Trump’s Administration a reality where Canadians became interested in in American presidential politics so this is going to be a year where that takes up a lot

Of attention our focus is to be ready for whatever government the Americans elect we don’t choose the American government they will uh any government of Canada needs to have a constructive robust trusting relationship with their American counterparts uh the Ambassador will talk to us about those opportunities and in an election year um

The American the sources of power and the American government the American Congress are so diffuse that state Governors influential senators and representatives in Congress um can also have a lot of influence and of course it’s a bipartisan context so that’s the work we’re going to do and we’ll wait to

See who Americans elect in November but as Trump seems to be surging I mean he is the runaway front runner for the Republican nomination I think that’s a pretty clear assessment of where things are especially with Ronda santis dropping out your party has seemed to see an opportunity to exploit that in

Linking him to PR PV you know comparing him to the Maga style right-wing Politics as a way of trying to discredit the conservative leader and perhaps help your political fortunes I mean are you hopeful of a trump win because of how might change you know an external event

That could change the political dynamic because some people in your party seem to think this is something they can exploit we’re we’re not going to spend a lot of time being hopeful on a particular outcome in an American election our job as a government is to

Work as I said with the government that Americans will choose it’s true that Mr PV practices a divisive form of politics with a considerable amount of misinformation uh he’s not afraid to assert a falsehood uh in a video or in a social media post um Canadians will

Judge that in an election and Canadians have access to trusted sources of information that increasingly are calling out that kind of political tactic um our job is to present to Canadians a progressive incl inclusive government that has a plan to deal with the issues that are concerning them

Right now and a plan to build an economy that works for them in the future that’s what we’re focused on I’m not worried about Mr pv’s platform Mr PV and his supporters refer to your government as divisive you know going back to the Convoy and vaccine man ACC these is big

Issues that drove a big wedge in into Canadian Society do you think we’re headed for perhaps one of the more polarized elections in the country’s history because it certainly seems as if the polit political conversation the country is moving to the extremes I I certainly hope not uh I think that

Canadians benefit when there’s a thoughtful exchange of ideas including real points of of Divergence between political parties that’s healthy in a democracy it’s important that political parties can stick to the basic facts of a discussion Mr PV has had some challenge doing that uh it’s not it’s

Not the case with with other political parties and it wasn’t the case with some prede essor leaders of the conservative the progressive conservative party that used to exist years ago you might remember that or even the Conservative Party of Canada so but at the end of the

Day our Focus uh David when the election comes uh will be to tell Canadians the work we’ve done to make their lives better and to offer them a hopeful positive plan and if others want to be divisive and focus on personal attacks Canadians will judge it didn’t work in

2015 for Mr Harper and I don’t know if it’ll work for in 2025 for Mr POV but uh we have a lot of work to do between now and then okay minister of Public Safety and intergovermental Affairs Dominic Lon thanks for your time thanks David thank you

Liberal cabinet ministers have gathered in Montreal to strategize before returning to Parliament next week. Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc says that Canadians want a government that is focused on economic issues and that is taking ‘concrete steps’ to improve their situation. ‘That’s what we’re discussing here,’ he says.

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