{"id":786458,"date":"2026-07-07T17:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T17:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/786458\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T17:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T17:02:10","slug":"in-tense-ethics-hearing-conservatives-say-brookfield-partnered-with-vancouver-condo-developer-15-days-before-carneys-bailout-and-call-brookfield-as-a-witness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/786458\/","title":{"rendered":"In Tense Ethics Hearing, Conservatives Say Brookfield Partnered With Vancouver Condo Developer 15 Days Before Carney’s Bailout \u2014 and Call Brookfield as a Witness"},"content":{"rendered":"

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OTTAWA \u2014 In a contentious ethics committee, Conservative MP Aaron Gunn moved Tuesday to summon Vancouver condo marketer Bob Rennie, federal Housing Minister Gregor Robertson, and major developers connected to Rennie\u2019s fundraiser for Mark Carney as witnesses in an urgent parliamentary investigation of the Prime Minister\u2019s multibillion-dollar British Columbia condo bailout. A second Conservative, Gabriel Hardy, then walked the committee through a timeline that ended on the most pointed suggestion of the hearing.<\/p>\n

Hardy asserted that Brookfield \u2014 the asset-management giant Carney chaired before entering politics \u2014 became co-owner in a deal with Concert Properties, a developer holding dozens of condo projects in the Burnaby glut zone, fifteen days before the bailout was announced.<\/p>\n

Gunn\u2019s motion, put to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, calls for no fewer than six meetings this summer into what the governments have styled the Canada\u2013British Columbia partnership on condo conversion \u2014 the June 18 plan to buy more than 2,200 unsold Vancouver-region condominiums with public funds.<\/p>\n

The witness list reaches from the political architects to the industry\u2019s commanding heights: former Vancouver mayor and now Carney housing minister Gregor Robertson; British Columbia Housing Minister Christine Boyle; Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim; Rennie, whom the motion identifies as the figure \u201coften called Vancouver\u2019s Condo King\u201d; Duncan Wlodarczak, chair of the Liberal Party of Canada in British Columbia and chief of staff at Onni Group, one of the province\u2019s largest developers; the Urban Development Institute; Concert Properties; and Brookfield Asset Management. The motion further demands that both governments produce any agreement between them on the condo program, and any agreement between either government and any developer or lender, immediately upon finalization.<\/p>\n

Gunn\u2019s motion would put the bailout\u2019s contracts \u2014 which developers, which units, at what price \u2014 before Parliament as they are signed, answering the questions the governments have so far declined to address.<\/p>\n

It asserts that Carney\u2019s plan would \u201cbail out developers, bankers, and investors by using taxpayer dollars,\u201d that it \u201cwill not make housing more affordable, but will prevent a price correction from taking place, preserving high prices for developers rather than lowering them for British Columbians trying to enter the housing market,\u201d that \u201cforcing home buyers to compete with their own tax dollars while raising housing prices for the benefit of developers is not in the interest of Canadians.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Liberals, he said, \u201cnever campaigned on spending more than a billion dollars in taxpayer money to give a handout to their wealthy developer friends.\u201d The plan, he argued, means developers \u201cwouldn\u2019t have to lower prices and God forbid sell at a loss,\u201d and raises \u201csome pretty obvious ethical questions that I think deserve answers \u2014 such as, if the Liberals didn\u2019t campaign on this policy, why are they suddenly deciding to pursue it now? Whose idea was it? Who lobbied for it? Is this being planned for more Canadian cities? And maybe most importantly, which well-connected developers, big banks and foreign investors stand to benefit the most?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI also have to point out how insane the generational inequity of this policy truly is,\u201d Gunn added. \u201cHanding out huge sums of money to developers who have made billions over the past 20 years, paid for with tax dollars by those who are still trying to enter the housing market for the very first time. It is yet another generational transfer of wealth that creates no new units of housing while rewarding those who built and priced condos that nobody could afford.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conservative member Gabriel Hardy followed, pressing the case for urgency before the money moves.<\/p>\n

The announcement came June 18, two days before Parliament adjourned, for the purchase of 2,200 unsold condominiums at a per-unit cost Hardy placed near $660,000.<\/p>\n

Hardy then laid out the timeline, beginning with the Rennie fundraiser The Bureau has reported on. \u201cAn evening with Carney,\u201d he told the committee. \u201cIt cost $1,750 to meet Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, in his office. No journalists \u2014 that\u2019s often what happens, no journalists, behind closed doors. Don\u2019t worry, our prime minister is full of virtue. But 17 main developers were there. And they all have one thing in common: thousands of condos unsold.\u201d That was February 2026, Hardy said. In March 2026, he continued, a BC Housing document speaks to a meeting involving British Columbia\u2019s housing minister. In May 2026, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported a 76 percent surge in unsold completed condos in Metro Vancouver \u2014 concentrated, Hardy stressed, in Burnaby and Richmond. \u201cRemember that,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause it\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then came June 3. \u201cBrookfield becomes co-owner\u201d in a deal with Concert Properties involving eight industrial properties, Hardy told the committee \u2014 and he was careful with the distinction: \u201cJust to be clear, the co-ownership is not for condos with Concert Properties.\u201d But Concert, he noted, \u201chas projects in the region, including 50 in Burnaby. Fifty condo buildings in Burnaby.\u201d Fifteen days later came the bailout announcement. \u201cFor Brookfield, 15 days before the announcement, they are becoming co-owners with this condo company with thousands of condos that haven\u2019t been sold,\u201d Hardy said. \u201cAnd then all of a sudden there\u2019s announcements in cities and sectors that would interest Brookfield and in which Brookfield has made investments. Should we investigate? Yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, Hardy said, is why Concert Properties was named in the motion. \u201cConcert Properties, who created a partnership with Brookfield 15 days before the announcement, will be among the developers from whom the government will be purchasing these condos in the fall. These are just facts. They\u2019re not presumptions. They\u2019re not accusations.\u201d The prime minister, he noted, has said developers did not request the program from him directly.<\/p>\n

Hardy then turned to the prime minister\u2019s ethics screen \u2014 the conflict-of-interest wall meant to separate Carney from decisions touching Brookfield. The screen, Hardy told the committee, has been \u201cactivated 17 times. So these are direct employees of the prime minister who trigger this screen. So there are potential conflicts of interest.\u201d The committee, he said, had shared eight documents on potential conflicts involving the prime minister. \u201cFor a year \u2014 and I\u2019ve been here for a year \u2014 we\u2019re seeing that things are shady with the prime minister,\u201d Hardy said. He offered a pattern he said kept recurring: \u201cThe prime minister often finds a way to be involved in everything. And I\u2019ll give an example. In Mirabel, there was an announcement for planes. 28 days earlier, Brookfield became co-owners of a business that needed planes desperately in Mirabel. The committee hadn\u2019t been able to ask questions on that, because every time that we table a motion, we\u2019re told that we\u2019re conspiracy theorists.\u201d <\/p>\n

That, he said, is why Brookfield Asset Management sits on the witness list: \u201cOne might wonder \u2014 is it actually a coincidence that Brookfield is always around? These questions are legitimate, and we need to receive answers.\u201d The government members, he said, \u201care doing everything that they can so that we don\u2019t move forward… We were able to work in a certain way before they became a majority. And now, since they have the majority, they are ensuring that these investigations don\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMake no mistake,\u201d New Democrat Jenny Kwan, appearing at the committee, added. \u201cIt is a bailout for developers, even though the prime minister wants to pass it off as affordable housing. No one is buying it. The prime minister admitted as much at the announcement. He said, quote, \u2018Developers are stuck.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Kwan said she rarely agrees with her Conservative colleagues, but backs the argument for an ethics probe in this case. Carney\u2019s framing of the plan, she said, \u201csounds like a board member from Brookfield Asset Management, rather than the prime minister.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government side\u2019s response, through the meeting\u2019s opening stretch, came as procedure rather than argument. <\/p>\n

Before Gunn had finished reading his motion\u2019s clauses, Liberal member Bardish Chagger raised points of order over the French translation of the motion and its distribution; further interventions questioned the speaking order and the room\u2019s audio, forcing Gunn to restart his reading repeatedly. The chair, Conservative John Brassard, said \u201cI know what you\u2019re doing here. I know what you\u2019re doing to disrupt the meeting and that\u2019s fine. You can continue it because people are watching.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the new Liberal members, Wade Chang \u2014 who intervened early Tuesday on the speaking order \u2014 represents Burnaby Central, part of the region where the unsold-condo glut is concentrated.<\/p>\n

The government defense came from Chang, who told the committee the Conservatives were distracting members from work in their ridings with an unneeded investigation demand before the government had a chance to provide details \u2014 and who spoke, he stressed, for constituents in one of the highest-priced housing markets in Canada. \u201cAverage rents here sit at roughly $2,300 a month, about 18 percent above the national average,\u201d Chang said. \u201cBurnaby is consistently ranked among the top five most expensive cities to rent in all Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

The condo conversion partnership, Chang argued, would move renters into \u201chomes that are already built instead of waiting years for new construction \u2014 and that\u2019s exactly the kind of fast action a rental market like Burnaby Central needs.\u201d He cited the program\u2019s development-charge stream \u2014 nearly $1.6 billion in federal funding matched by British Columbia, up to $3.2 billion, cutting charges for multi-unit housing by up to 50 percent in priority communities and saving up to $40,000 per unit. \u201cChair, at the end of the day, this committee has a choice,\u201d Chang said. \u201cSpend more time debating speculation instead of solutions, or find\u201d \u2014 moving families into homes. \u201cI know what my constituents in Burnaby Central expect from me and this committee, and it is not political theater.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the federal contribution to the condo purchases through Build Canada Homes, he told the committee, “will be approximately $150 million, not billions.”<\/p>\n

The witnesses Gunn seeks sit at the center of the proximity pattern The Bureau has documented. Rennie hosted \u201cAn Evening with Mark Carney\u201d at his Vancouver offices in February \u2014 a fundraiser whose Elections Canada filing lists 146 attendees paying up to $1,775 each, among them at least 17 of the province\u2019s leading developers and former premier Christy Clark. A number of those developers hold unsold inventory in the Vancouver region\u2019s glut \u2014 the same distressed stock the program proposes to buy. British Columbia government records show a briefing note headed \u201cRennie Meeting\u201d was opened for Premier David Eby\u2019s office in the same month. On a Postmedia panel in March 2025, Rennie said he was \u201cworking with Carney\u201d on a plan to let foreign buyers back into the condo market through a federally backstopped rental pool. <\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2014 In a contentious ethics committee, Conservative MP Aaron Gunn moved Tuesday to summon Vancouver condo marketer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":786459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-786458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/786459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}