CARLETON'S MAN VS. THE BUREAUCRATS — When House finance committee chair PETER FONSECA gaveled his gang into session Monday afternoon, everyone knew Tory MP PIERRE POILIEVRE would be first to question Canada's chief statistician ANIL ARORA and his number-crunching colleagues from Tunney's Pasture. The order of the day: diving into housing inflation. The big question: Would the relentless Tory play good cop or bad cop? Poilievre started with the good, recalling that he'd last seen Arora at a suburban Manotick diner "eating a CPI-adjusted breakfast." Har har. Enough pleasantries. They came armed with new stats on housing prices from the Canadian Real Estate Association, and wanted to know why Statistics Canada's own data appeared to downplay the, er, overheatedness of Canadian housing markets. Anyone who follows Poilievre on social media already knows why he was there. He blames Liberal pandemic spending and the Bank of Canada's quantitative easing program for injecting too much money into the economy, making it too easy for banks to lend and people to borrow. The result: sky-high prices. — Quickly, some stats: Earlier in the day, CREA senior economist SHAUN CATHCART expressed only pessimism on behalf of the nation's prospective homebuyers. "Unfortunately, the housing affordability problem facing the country is likely to get worse before it gets better," he said. The industry association reported housing prices in December were 26.6 percent higher than a year earlier, an eye-popping finding fueled in part by record-low availability of housing stock. StatsCan reported last week that new house prices increased only 11.7 percent last November over the year before at the national level. Quite a discrepancy. Poilievre openly challenged the agency's methodology. — What gives? They were comparing apples and oranges. That particular StatsCan metric includes only new homes, not resold dwellings. It's one of several measures the agency uses to track housing and shelter costs. The Tories also took aim at StatsCan's calculation of monthly "shelter costs" — i.e. housing — as part of the consumer price index that measures overall inflation. Shelter cost increases haven't kept pace with the roaring housing market, they said. (Globe and Mail reporter MATT LUNDY shared an explainer on why that's the case.) MP JAKE STEWART insisted New Brunswickers' experiences weren't reflected in StatsCan's numbers. GREG PETERSON, an assistant chief statistician, eventually spelled out that CPI calculations reflect the average of every household — many of which have stable monthly rent, mortgage or insurance payments. It was a rather dense meeting. — He just couldn't resist: When the mic found its way to Tory MP GREG MCLEAN, he asked Arora if StatsCan was collecting data on the added costs to Canadians of a tax on the sale of their principal residence. Surely, said McLean, the agency would be taking those steps after the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation funded a report produced by the non-profit Generation Squeeze that recommended such a tax. Conservatives on the Hill are convinced that Liberals are cooking up a new tax justified by that report. Housing Minister AHMED HUSSEN insists that's not a thing. The Tories might eventually be correct, but the tax they're talking about isn't yet real. Which is why Arora said the agency was not gathering that data. — Elsewhere in Tory land: Conservative leader ERIN O'TOOLE held a press conference just as Poilievre was warming up at committee. The party boss called for another emergency meeting on the Hill, this time convened by the industry committee. O'Toole's presser comes five days after the Globe and Mail reported the feds allowed a Chinese state-owned firm to take over Neo Lithium, a producer of the critical mineral that could eventually be destined for electric vehicles, without a national security review. O'Toole wants a Cabinet minister to defend that decision, and he also wants the Liberals to reverse it. You're on notice, FRANÇOIS-PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE. — What's next for FINA: The finance committee meets again Friday. On tap are PETER ROUTLEDGE, the superintendent of financial institutions, and CMHC president/CEO ROMY BOWERS. Expect plenty of questions about a certain home "tax." GOVERNING GRADES — Ontario Premier DOUG FORD's extremely Doug Ford response to Monday's massive snowfall in Toronto was to get in his truck and dig people's cars out of the piles of white stuff. He called into the CP24 cable news network from the driver's seat — with his camera on. The premier's boosters will reliably applaud his personal touch. His many haters will take a diametrically opposed view. Was the personal 3-1-1 routine a stunt? Well, it was surely no accident that Ford spokeswoman IVANA YELICH supplied photos to journalists who wanted handy visuals. (Even the premier's shoveling style produced opinions.) — So what? This actually matters because Angus Reid published its latest polling on every premier's approval. Nova Scotia's TIM HOUSTON is tops in the country at 57 percent. Quebec's FRANÇOIS LEGAULT is second at 56, a point ahead of British Columbia's JOHN HORGAN. Ford was mired in seventh place, ahead of only Alberta's JASON KENNEY and Manitoba's HEATHER STEFANSON. — The slide continues: At the height of the pandemic's first wave, Angus Reid measured Ford's approval rating at what turned out to be an apex of 69 percent. It's been downhill ever since. He's now stuck at 30. Ford's critics will say he should have been almost anywhere else after a major snowstorm in the middle of a health-care crisis. They may be in the majority. Back in April of 2020, 88 percent of Ontarians applauded Ford's handling of Covid — a province-wide reaction to the newly empathetic premier who looked nothing like the bully many Ontarians knew from Toronto city council. That number has dropped to 29 percent. Two-thirds now disapprove. — Notable notables: Saskatchewan's SCOTT MOE used to come out on top in Angus Reid's surveys. Moe's government still gets solid marks on vaccine and rapid test distribution, but his dipping approval — now down to 45 percent — might be explained by the 59 percent disapproval of his handling of the pandemic. | 
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