Conservatives and Bloc Ask Lobbying Commissioner to Investigate Carney's Condo Bailout, Naming Vancouver's “Condo King” and Liberal Party Chair Who Works for Developer

MP Aaron Gunn posted this video to explain his call for a lobbying commissioner investigation. Source: X

OTTAWA — Five weeks after a Liberal majority shelved a parliamentary probe of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s British Columbia condo bailout, opposition MPs have taken the same questions to an independent officer of Parliament, asking Canada’s lobbying commissioner to investigate whether people with access to senior Liberals helped shape the $1.5-billion program.

The complaint points specifically to Vancouver’s so-called “Condo King,” Bob Rennie, and Duncan Wlodarczak, chief of staff at the Onni Group of Companies, who is also the British Columbia chair of the Liberal Party of Canada and a former adviser to Housing Minister Gregor Robertson.

Conservative MP Aaron Gunn, his party’s shadow minister for ethics and accountable government, wrote jointly with Bloc Québécois MP Luc Thériault on Monday to Commissioner of Lobbying Nancy Bélanger, asking her to investigate the Canada–British Columbia Partnership on Condo Conversion and determine whether the Lobbying Act may have been breached in the development of the policy.

“Did Mark Carney and the Liberal government break the law?” Gunn wrote in publishing the letter.

The two-page request is narrower than the sprawling witness list Gunn put before the House ethics committee in July.

It lays out Carney’s rationale for a program delivered through Build Canada Homes and BC Housing intended to convert more than 2,200 vacant condominium units in Metro Vancouver into affordable housing, at an estimated cost of approximately $1.5 billion.

Ottawa and Victoria, the MPs write, could simply have allowed prices of the unsold units to fall, “making them more affordable for British Columbians trying to enter the housing market.”

Instead, they argue, the Liberals chose to use taxpayer money to “bail out certain developers, shielding investors from the consequences of their own decisions.”

“This plan raises serious questions about how this policy emerged and who may have lobbied for it,” the letter says.

Two names come into focus.

The first is Rennie, the prominent Vancouver condo marketer identified in the letter by his long-standing industry nickname, the “Condo King.” Gunn and Thériault note that the June announcement followed two Vancouver fundraisers involving Rennie, including an “Evening with Mark Carney” for which tickets cost as much as $1,750.

The second is Wlodarczak, chief of staff at the Onni Group of Companies, a major Vancouver-area developer. The MPs note that Wlodarczak is simultaneously the British Columbia chair of the Liberal Party of Canada and previously served as an adviser to Robertson, who was then mayor of Vancouver. This writer, reporting for The Province in 2014, revealed that Rennie had hosted a $25,000-per-plate fundraiser for Robertson attended by Vancouver developers.

The letter then seizes on a distinction made by Carney and Robertson themselves. Both have indicated they were not lobbied “directly” regarding the program.

“But that itself raises further questions about the motivations behind the decision, and the conversations that may have led to its development,” the Conservative and Bloc MPs write.

Their request to Bélanger is explicit: investigate the condo-conversion partnership and determine whether the Lobbying Act or the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct was breached, including whether “unregistered lobbying or contraventions of the Act or Code by those with access to the Prime Minister and Minister of Housing played a role.”

“Canadians deserve transparency about how this decision was made,” the MPs write.

The letter marks the second route the opposition has taken in attempting to examine the program.

The first closed on July 7, when the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics took up Gunn’s motion to summon Rennie, Robertson, British Columbia Housing Minister Christine Boyle, Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, Wlodarczak, the Urban Development Institute, Concert Properties and Brookfield Asset Management. The motion also sought production of every agreement between the two governments and any developer or lender as it was signed.

The Bureau reported that hearing in detail. The Liberal majority ended debate on the motion in a five-to-four vote, shelving the proposed investigation without allowing the motion itself to be decided.

At that meeting, Conservative MP Gabriel Hardy laid out a timeline running from a February 2026 Rennie fundraiser through a 76 percent surge in unsold completed condominiums in Metro Vancouver reported in May, to June 3, when Brookfield — the asset manager Carney chaired before entering politics — became co-owner in an industrial property deal with Concert Properties, a developer Hardy said holds 50 condo buildings in Burnaby.

Fifteen days later, the federal and provincial governments announced the condo-conversion program. Hardy was careful to note that the Brookfield–Concert transaction did not itself involve condominiums.

Gunn’s questions that day closely foreshadowed the complaint now before the lobbying commissioner.

If the Liberals did not campaign on the policy, he asked the committee, “why are they suddenly deciding to pursue it now? Whose idea was it? Who lobbied for it?”

And, he added, “which well-connected developers, big banks and foreign investors stand to benefit the most?”

After the committee vote, Gunn told CBC News that the Conservatives were “definitely not going to give up.”

Running alongside the lobbying complaint is a third opposition pressure point. House of Commons petition e-7547, initiated by Arman Keyvanskhou of Vancouver and sponsored by Conservative MP Dan Albas, opened for signatures on June 26 and closes October 24. It had drawn 802 validated signatures as of Tuesday, with the largest blocs in British Columbia and Ontario.

It asks that no federal funds, guarantees or loans be used to acquire unsold British Columbia condominiums unless each purchase is publicly disclosed, independently appraised, priced materially below market comparables or based on post-receivership valuations, and placed under permanent non-market affordability covenants held by public, non-profit, cooperative or Indigenous owners.