While the Prime Minister finally announced his intent to resign earlier this month, none of this political upheaval changes the fact that folks across our community have long been feeling the effects of the rapidly rising costs of day-to-day essentials. It’s why I have, and will continue to, present affordability measures that will help folks stretch their dollars at a time when every penny counts.
A big part of this is addressing the rapidly rising cost of housing. Just this November, I introduced a new solution to ensure federal affordable housing funding actually results in housing folks can afford, something which is unfortunately not the case the majority of the time, through Motion 170 – and I will be continuing to push forward this motion when Parliament resumes in March.
This is in addition to my ongoing advocacy to at minimum double our social housing, a milestone that would still only place us in the middle of the pack in comparison to our G7 peers. I’ve also continued to push to end incentives for bad-faith corporate investors, who buy up existing affordable housing and jack up prices, by ending tax exemptions Real Estate Investment Trusts.
I’m glad to share that my team and I are already discussing these housing measures and continuing the conversation on two-way all-day GO train service from Kitchener to Toronto with Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, who remains the new Minister of Housing and Infrastructure. I’m keen to ensure these priorities are centered despite this period of uncertainty.
I’ve also been pushing to disincentivize excessive corporate profiteering, which comes at the expense of regular folks in our community – responsible for 41% of recent increases to the cost of living!
A major culprit: the oil and gas industry, an industry that raked in a shocking $66 billion in profit in 2022 alone. They did it by increasing their pure profit by 18 cents per liter – far outpacing the 2 cent per liter increase from the Carbon Tax – in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.
I’ve been building cross party support to simply extend the excess profits tax already placed on bank and insurance companies during the pandemic. Just a 15% tax on Big Oil’s 2022 profits above a billion would generate $4.2 billion, every dollar of which could be reinvested into critical affordability measures, like operational transit funding now – to decrease fares and increase service – or free heat pumps for folks living in energy poverty.