Q: How does it feel to have crossed the aisle as it were, Chris, from journalist to politician?

MP: I still have newspaper friends who are ticked at me for going over to “the dark side.” That is of course what we always called it. And they say, how could you ever do that? You know, it’s a betrayal. After you spend so many years — and you know this as well — watching committee or council meetings for hours on end, it’s as though by osmosis, you get to understand the process. And the real sausage-making of government at any level is the committee work. When you get back into it on this side, it’s oddly almost just a resumption of what you did before, only now you’re at the table.

Q: How does it feel to be at the table, not just any table, but at the House of Commons?

MP: I have to say, when I’m sitting there and I notice that the camera has swivelled to me — and it may only be CPAC — but when I’m looking at myself on a monitor, asking a question in a Defence Committee meeting of the Minister of Defence, these decisions have consequences above, you know, the Green Task Force at Belleville City Council. Being involved, it’s really put a jump in my step. I’m enjoying what I’m doing, and I’m working with some pretty amazing people. You know, this is when you’re in the House or you’re walking down the halls of West Block and you’re thinking, I’m in the

federal  government. And there’s only 300-some odd of us there in the whole country. So it’s a pretty privileged position. We have our fun because there’s some amazingly fun and smart people to be around. But it’s also serious business. The country right now is in a pretty serious state.

The country right now is in a pretty serious state.

MP Chris Malette

Q: How does it feel to be joining government in 2026, as opposed to, say, 2015?

MP: The world wasn’t quite so scary then. We had a free trade agreement with the United States and all of our goods were seamlessly moving across the border. Of course, Russia had also started blowing up Ukraine. But everywhere you turn right now, something is happening. Trump’s over in China seeking trade deals, and we’ve also made some deals with China. But let’s not, for one minute, fool ourselves that China doesn’t want to dominate us. They don’t want to, maybe, militarily dominate. But economically, they just want to wipe us off the map. And we’ll all be buying Chinese goods in no time after we send them all of our raw materials. Right. That’s their end goal. Let’s not kid ourselves. There are friendly enemies around the world. And we’ve got to know which ones there are, and which ones we have to kind of gird our loins against. And right now, that’s why we’re increasing our defence spending. Russia is making no bones about the fact that they will come in and blow you up if they want to. So, you know, these are crazy, scary times that we’re in right now. 

Q: What is the Prime Minister really like, Chris?

MP: Everybody likes to put labels and categories on folks like Mark, and, you know, the fact that, yeah, he was a central banker. But you’ve got to remember, he was also a goalie: he played NCAA hockey for Harvard. He’s got a great sense of humour, but you don’t see it all that often. You’ll see it, you know, in unguarded moments, when the press isn’t around. But the man is spectacularly quick and intelligent. You don’t get to be the Governor of the Bank of Canada or England without having a good noodle on your shoulders. This guy has intelligence, and he has common sense; we can relate to him. I really see that in him every week.

When we’re in national caucus and the doors are closed and the microphones are off, we hear some of the unvarnished truth facing Canada and sometimes, you’ve got to swallow hard and say, boy, we’re in tough. But the guy sitting at the head of the table when all 173 of us are in there, he wants to hear it unvarnished from us. He’ll get into it from time to time with some of our caucus members if he doesn’t agree with them. It’s very civil, but it’s highly productive. 

Q: Do you have any good news for us on affordable housing?

MP: We literally just left a meeting with Mayor Steve Ferguson, CAO Adam Goheen, Councillor Phil St-Jean, and Elis Ziegler from the Prince Edward Affordable Housing Corporation. We heard them loud and clear. The Disraeli Street project, and, of course, Pinecrest is still there. I’ve spoken in the past of my frustrations with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. All of these projects have applied through the CMHC. It is fairly rigid in how it portions out approvals and that’s frustrating. A Habitat for Humanity project in Belleville got turned away. CMHC’s formula for approvals is so rigid, so precise, that if you don’t check just the exact box, you’re not going to get approved.

Build Canada Homes is a new federal agency that will build affordable housing at scale. It has a $13 billion in initial investment, and $7.3 billion to be spent between now and 2031. It has the flexibility to facilitate home builds outside the rigid approval process of CMHC. We have some approvals in the pipeline that will be announced soon. Prime Minister Carney and Housing Minister Gregor Robertson have both said, “we want to have large scale and small scale approvals all through the summer and into this fall.” We want to see BCH support the Duke Dome project on Wellington’s Niles Street— and seniors housing in Bloomfield, come on, that’s a no-brainer for this community. The municipality just stressed to me in no uncertain terms, these are crucial programs for Prince Edward County. People that come into work here can’t afford to find a place to live. So we need housing, but we also need the infrastructure to support it.

Q: We’ve heard some complaints that you, or your office, are a bit slow on email. 

MP: Yes, I’ve seen it on social media. “Hey, Malette, why don’t you answer your emails?!” You have to understand that everybody with a keyboard now just bashes off whatever they want,  and they want an answer yesterday, and there are hundreds of them a day. People with real issues, like assistance with a government program. Or, you know, they have an immigration issue and they’re going to be deported tomorrow. We get back to them fairly quickly. Somebody just wants to say Mark Carney’s a jerk? That might not be high on our priority list. 

It used to be you had to pick up a pen and a piece of paper to write a letter. Now everybody’s an instant critic on everything and they want an instant answer. What can I say? We’re doing the best we can.