‘It's the end of the Canadian dream': Lorne Gunter weighs in on Trudeau’s 2024 budget

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Last night on The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra noted that in the past few days, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, introduced the budget, which included increased taxes, including carbon taxes.

According to several former liberal finance officials, it's considered the most 'severe budget in 40 years.'

Ezra provided a clip of Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek, who aligns with liberal views although not officially a liberal mayor, discussing "life when houses are no longer affordable for the ordinary person."

Gondek said:

So we're starting to see a segment of the population reject this idea of owning a home and they're moving towards rental because it gives them more freedom.

They can travel to different places, they can try out different communities, their job may take them from place to place.

And so people have become much more liberated around what housing looks like and what the tenure of housing looks like.

But as municipalities, we haven't kept pace with that change, we're still stuck in the forties, fifties and sixties.

Lorne Gunter, senior columnist at the Edmonton Sun joined Ezra to discuss this topic.

"So Lorne, I'm not sure if it's true that people are rejecting homeownership. I think it's sort of the other way around," Ezra pointed out.

"People are not qualifying for home ownership, they cannot afford home ownership because prices are high, mortgage rates are high, prices are rising faster than incomes are rising. I think she's trying to pretend that it's a good thing that people are voluntarily choosing that they're positively rejecting homeownership. I think she's fibbing there," he added.

"Well, I think she's fooling herself that the problem with progressives is that they will concoct these narratives in their head and tell it to themselves," Lorne responded.

Lorne continued:

It's ludicrous! It's the end of the Canadian dream as brought to you by progressive elites who have so messed this up.

There are two facts on this: One is, in their commentary on the federal budget, the Canadian Taxpayer Federation said that in the time the liberals have been in power, rent and mortgage payments in Canada have doubled.

The economy hasn't doubled in size. So what you're looking at is housing, eating more and more and more into the average family's budget.

And that is seen in something from the Royal Bank that came out about 10 days ago where they said, ‘in 2015, when the liberals took over, it took 44% of the median Canadian income to afford a home.’

Now, that's still too steep, in the United State it’s about 37% and in some places even in Canada, it's below that.

Now in Canada, it's 63% of the median income in order to qualify for a home.

This is only an excerpt of last night's episode of The Ezra Levant Show. To watch the full episode, become a subscriber to RebelNews+.