Conservative MP Aaron Gunn and Bloc Québécois MP Luc Thériault sent a joint letter Monday to Lobbying Commissioner Nancy Bélanger, asking her office to investigate whether the Canada-British Columbia Partnership on Condo Conversion violated the Lobbying Act or the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct.
Carney and BC Premier David Eby announced the program June 18; Build Canada Homes and BC Housing will convert more than 2,200 vacant Metro Vancouver condo units into affordable housing at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion.
Bob Rennie, the marketer widely known as Vancouver’s “Condo King,” hosted fundraisers where tickets for an “Evening with Mark Carney” reached $1,750. Duncan Wlodarczak — chief of staff at Onni Group, one of BC’s largest developers, and chair of the Liberal Party of Canada in BC — previously advised Housing Minister Gregor Robertson.
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Read: Ethics Committee Moves To Probe Carney-Eby’s Condo Housing Plan
Carney has rejected the “developer bailout” label critics have used since the program’s launch, arguing the government would buy units below construction cost rather than make struggling developers whole.
Read: Breaking down Carney and Eby’s condo-to-housing plan
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre first raised the lobbying question in a June 26 letter to the ethics committee, after Carney said no developer had asked him “directly” for the program — a qualifier Poilievre argued left open exactly who else the government might have consulted.
Read: Poilievre Calls for Ethics Probe of Carney’s Condo Plan
The committee met July 7. Gunn moved to summon Rennie, Robertson and developers tied to Rennie’s fundraiser as witnesses. A second Conservative MP, Gabriel Hardy, said the timing of a separate deal deserved scrutiny — Brookfield, the asset manager Carney led before entering politics, struck a co-ownership deal with Concert Properties, a Burnaby-area condo developer, just 15 days before the program’s announcement. The Liberal majority voted 5-4 to adjourn debate before members could decide the motion.
Robertson has echoed Carney’s language since, saying neither of them received “direct lobbying from developers in support of this program,” according to CBC. Monday’s letter argues that that qualifier is itself worth investigating — pointing to exactly the kind of indirect access Rennie and Wlodarczak represent.
The Lobbying Commissioner can open an investigation and refer findings to the RCMP if she finds reasonable grounds that a contravention occurred. Gunn and Thériault’s letter is the third attempt this summer to get an independent body to examine the program, after Poilievre’s ethics committee request and the shelved July 7 vote both stalled.
