Finance committee  Certainly, I do. That's a good question. The national housing strategy does set out to try to do that. There are two elements of the national housing strategy: One is to preserve what we have and the other is to add new stock. Even at $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000 of retrofit per existing social housing unit, it's a heck of a lot cheaper than $400,000 of subsidy for new stuff, so absolutely, we should be doing that.

Finance committee  Some of the bigger organizations have the capacity to do that, and we certainly have seen takeovers, for a dollar, to take over the asset, maintain it and utilize it. Some of the bigger organizations are able to borrow against their balance sheet to facilitate that. I think the bigger issue is creating an investment fund that allows non-profits to buy the private rental stock that I mentioned with rents that are going up.

Finance committee  I'm sorry to leave you all.

Finance committee  That speaks to the presentations you had in previous weeks, particularly from CMHC, on the amount of supply we actually require in the country. I think it is important to clarify the nature of the CMHC report alongside the TD projections of supply requirements. There are two elements to supply requirements.

Finance committee  For members' information, I do have to leave at five o'clock. I have 24 students waiting for me. I deferred the class by half an hour because I thought I'd have enough time. It's not that they're more important than you. In 1975, we had the wage and price controls legislation. We had massive inflation back then.

Finance committee  I've recently updated that study to 2011-21. There were 550,000 in the 2011-21 period. Of course, the number is going down because there aren't enough units left under $750 to disappear in the first place, and we see a movement up to the next rent band of $750 to $1,000 where we're seeing that erosion as well.

Finance committee  Not really. It's really a provincial jurisdiction.

Finance committee  Typically, when you buy a home yourself, with mortgage insurance, you can basically go as low as a 5% down payment. If you're buying as an investor, you have to provide the 20% down payment, and therefore you can save on CMHC or private mortgage insurance fees, so there already is a gradient that's in there.

Finance committee  It's a very tricky situation. A number of municipalities have tried to put in place regulations to try to regulate the short-term rental market. Individual investors can collect $170 or $200 a night from short-term rentals versus $2,000 a month, perhaps, from long-term rentals. Do the math.

Finance committee  I identified five specific recommendations in the brief that speak to the issues I've raised there. The first one relates to revisiting macroprudential policies that punish first-time buyers. I think the concern has been that if we give assistance to first-time buyers, we're pouring fuel on the fire and we'll just create more price inflation.

Finance committee  I appreciate your giving up the time. Through you, Mr. Chair, the fifth one is establishing explicit guidelines and targets for temporary foreign worker visas and international students that better align with the existing rental supply in the respective local markets where those individuals are heading under their permits.

Finance committee  Thank you for your question. Through you, Chair, the Canadian housing statistics program has done a number of statistical reports that have identified the number of purchasers who are in fact investors. I think the last one I saw showed that 31% of purchases in 2022 were by investors in the housing market.

Finance committee  I think what we see in the data in 2020, 2021 and 2022 is prices across the country on average going up 20% a year, so it had a profound affect.

Finance committee  I think it did. That said, of course, there are many reasons that they did that. They're not just there to look after the housing market. In fact, the Governor of the Bank of Canada has said quite emphatically that it's not their job to look after the housing market, but it was there for sure.

Finance committee  Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the invitation to appear here today. I've undertaken extensive research in this area and published a number of papers, including one this summer in Housing Finance International. I've provided links in my brief. I was invited only last Thursday, so I don't think you've received the brief yet.