Carney bails out Vancouver condo developers with Canadians' tax dollars

Drea Humphrey and Tamara Lich called out Mark Carney's $3.2 billion Vancouver condo bailout on Monday's Rebel Roundup, questioning the connection between a prominent real estate marketer and the Liberal Party.

Mark Carney announced a $3.2 billion plan to convert 2,200 empty condos into affordable housing using what he called "innovative financial tools," but Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had a simpler name for it.

"He wants to privatize the profit and socialize the losses," Poilievre said. "This is a transfer of wealth from the have-nots to the have-yachts." On Monday's Rebel Roundup, Drea Humphrey and Tamara Lich spent a segment proving his point.

The mechanics are straightforward. Developers built condos during a housing bubble. The bubble burst. The units sit empty because buyers can't afford them at the prices developers need to break even. The normal market solution — let prices fall until someone can afford them — would mean developers absorbing losses on a bad investment.

But Carney's solution is to have taxpayers cover that gap instead. Drea then connected the dots.

The man the industry calls the condo king — Bob Rennie, Vancouver's most prominent condo marketer — organized a $25,000-a-plate fundraising lunch for Greg Robertson, who is now the Liberal Minister of Housing.

Rennie was also BC Liberals' top fundraiser for years, the broker who made property developers the party's leading donors. He is among those likely to benefit from the $3.2 billion now flowing from Ottawa.

"Imagine you're gathering $25,000-a-plate dinners for the Liberals," Drea said, "and now you and your friends need a bailout."

Tamara pointed out that Carney's approach traces back further still — noting a piece she wrote the previous year about Rennie pitching Carney on a housing plan that promotes foreign ownership of local real estate, including a 15-minute community development on 40 acres near BCIT in Burnaby.

"The conspiracy theorists are really just conspiracy realists," she said. "We're just a little ahead of our time."

Meanwhile, ordinary B.C. residents hoping to sell their properties and leave the province won't see a dollar of that $3.2 billion.

"It's basically a slap in the face to the private citizens that want to sell their properties and leave," Tamara said, "because they're not going to be getting bailouts from the Liberal government — probably because they can't host $25,000-a-plate dinners."

Rebel Roundup airs Monday, Tuesday and Thursday at 11 a.m. MT / 1 p.m. ET.

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