I will be splitting my time, Mr. Speaker.
I rise today to speak not just about a bill but about a generation that did everything right. They studied hard, they worked hard, they saved diligently and they followed the rules, and yet they cannot afford a home in the country they love and the Canada they call home.
Today we are debating the Liberals' so-called Build Canada Homes act. The Liberals are calling it bold, transformational and generational, but for the young couple staring at listings they can never afford, for the new immigrant family working two jobs and still renting a one-bedroom apartment and for the tradesperson who builds homes all day but cannot buy one at night, this Liberal bill feels less like hope and more like déjà vu of the years under the last Liberal prime minister. When we strip away the Liberal rhetoric, what do we find? It is another Liberal announcement, another Liberal acronym, another Liberal bureaucracy, another federal agency staffed by highly paid Liberal-connected Ottawa bureaucrats and another Liberal promise without a target. However, one thing is clear. The Liberals are not interested in building homes. They are simply building roadblocks and a backlog while crushing the hope of an entire generation.
In my own community, I meet young professionals, software developers, engineers and accountants, who quietly pull me aside at events and say they have given up, not because they are lazy or lack ambition, but because, even with good incomes and savings, the math simply does not work. One young couple told me that they had saved for 10 years, 10 years of discipline and counting the pennies on two full-time incomes. All they want is a modest townhouse to start a family, but they are completely priced out. They tell me they have given up on having kids and starting a family because of the housing crisis the Liberal government started. Others tell me they are moving back in their parents' basement because they want to at least have some money left at the end of the month after paying rent so they can afford food and basic necessities.
This is what the Liberal housing crisis has done. It has normalized suffering and despair. What does the latest “Housing Market Outlook” from the government's own housing agency, CMHC, tell us? It tells us that things are not improving. As a matter of fact, they are getting even worse, believe it or not. CMHC says Canada needs between 430,000 and 480,000 housing starts per year for the next decade just to restore affordability and meet projected demand. What did the Liberals get built last year? It was a meagre 259,028 homes. By 2028, housing starts are projected to fall as low as 212,000 per year. That is a staggering 18% drop and 55% below what CMHC says is necessary.
The Prime Minister promised 500,000 homes per year. He said we needed to build at a pace not seen since the Second World War. Instead, we are building at half the pace he promised, and headed even lower. In Toronto, housing starts were down 31% compared to the previous year. In other major Ontario cities, they were down 13%. In January, in the entire greater Toronto area, only 269 new homes were sold. That is down 36% from last year. It is 80% below the 10-year average, making it the lowest level since the early 1990s. That is not a slowdown. It is a Liberal paralysis. Buyers cannot buy, builders cannot build and sellers cannot sell, and the Liberals' answer is to create a fourth federal housing bureaucracy under the so-called Build Canada Homes act.
The Liberals do not want to build homes. Instead, they are obstructing builders with red tape, choking the market with taxes and shattering the dreams of young buyers. Even when the homes eventually get built under the Liberal bureaucracy, the government's own parliamentary budget watchdog, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the PBO, found that the Liberal bureaucracy will add just 5,000 homes a year. That is 1% of the 500,000 homes the Liberals promise. The Liberal housing minister himself admitted there are no top-line targets set for the number of homes to build. Really, no top-line targets? Imagine telling a 35-year-old, who feels like time is slipping away, that the government has no concrete goal.
The only thing bold about the government is the speed of its failure, and the transformation Canadians are witnessing is the transformation of hope into shattered dreams. This made-by-Liberal crisis is visible in every metric. CMHC itself says many households will delay buying homes and choose to rent longer as prices continue to rise over the next three years. Let us think about that. The government's own housing agency is effectively saying young Canadians have to wait longer, but pay more. For renters, the story is just as painful. Average two-bedroom rents rose another 5% last year after more than doubling under the last Liberal prime minister. In the GTA, someone earning an average income must spend 42% of their after-tax income just to afford a one-bedroom apartment and it is two-thirds of a minimum-wage paycheque just to rent a studio.
Canadians are suffocating in the Liberal housing hell. A report showed that more than half of first-time homebuyers who intend to purchase in the next five years believe home ownership is completely out of reach. We wonder why young Canadians are delaying marriage, delaying having children and moving back home. Many are leaving their communities and the country entirely.
We also need to be honest about what caused the Liberal housing crisis. Over the last decade, municipal development charges have increased by 700%. In Toronto, buyers now pay over $130,000 per apartment just in municipal taxes, and nearly $98,000 per condo in Mississauga. For single-family homes, Toronto and Markham charged over $180,000 per home, and $135,000 in Mississauga. Those are taxes before we even pour the foundation or lay a brick.
The Liberals promised during the election to cut these development charges by 50%, and as we can expect, they have broken that promise. Instead, they sent hundreds of millions of dollars to cities without strings attached, including nearly $400 million to Metro Vancouver, even as some regions now plan to triple development charges from 2024 levels. Developers warn that this will add tens of thousands of dollars to the price of a unit and slow down construction even further. Liberals are spending taxpayer money but delivering opposite results.
At the same time, the Liberal industrial carbon tax drives up the cost of cement, steel and glass. There are Liberal taxes on materials, taxes on permits, taxes on land and Liberal taxes on investment and reinvestment. Then, the Liberals think introducing a new federal agency will somehow solve the shortage those taxes and red tape helped create. When a country run by the Liberals makes it harder to build a home, it should not be a surprise when it becomes harder for Canadians to build a life.
It already takes the federal government nine years to dispose of surplus property, yet now the Liberals are considering acquiring private land, even as they cannot effectively build on the land they already own. The PBO found that under the Liberals' own affordability formula, a two-bedroom unit would cost $2,168 per month for the median household, which is nearly double the $1,100 national median market rent. Even their so-called affordable Liberal-made housing stretches affordability beyond reason and reality.
After 10 years of Liberal strategies, funds, accelerators and announcements, the Liberal housing crisis has become a Liberal housing catastrophe. Between 2011 and 2021, home ownership among young Canadians aged 30 to 34 fell from 60% to 52%. The decline is even steeper for younger cohorts. From 2019 to 2024, for every 100-person increase in the adult population, there were only 12 housing starts intended for home ownership, less than half the rate in earlier decades. Canadians see what is happening. A staggering 87% say they are concerned about the state of housing today, including 90% of gen Z and millennials.
The Liberal housing crisis is reshaping our communities, with 69% of Canadians saying that affordability is changing who can live in their neighbourhoods, and nearly half of young Canadians have considered leaving their city or province because housing costs are simply too high. This is not a market imbalance. It is a generational warning sign. Imagine doing everything right in life but not being able to build a life. That is what the Liberal government has done to the psychology of an entire generation.
Conservatives have sounded the alarm on the lack of housing supply for years. The Liberals have finally admitted that there is a problem, but they have not yet admitted that they are the problem. It has gotten so bad that 38% of builders report that they or their subcontractors have had to lay off workers because of market conditions. In 2020, 69% of housing starts were intended for the ownership market, with 31% for primary rentals. By 2025, five years later, the share for ownership had dropped to just 49%, a dramatic shift away from homes that families can actually buy.
Even more troubling is that 86% of builders now express concern about their business surviving the next 12 months, and 27% are extremely concerned, up sharply from 16% in late 2023. When the very people who build our homes are laying off workers and fearing for their survival, it is clear that this housing crisis is not just hurting buyers but is also crippling our workers and the economy as well.
Canadians do not need another Ottawa-based housing czar spewing Liberal rhetoric and propaganda. They need results and hope. That is why Conservatives have put forward a real plan. We will cut the GST on all new homes under $1.3 million, saving families up to $65,000 and unleashing new construction. We will tie federal infrastructure dollars to housing approvals. Municipalities must permit at least 15% more housing each year, and we will cut development charges by 50%. Finally, we will end capital gains tax on reinvestment in new housing to unlock billions in private investment.
Young Canadians are not asking for another agency. They are asking for a chance: a chance to save, a chance to buy and a chance to build a life. The Canadian promise used to mean something simple: Work hard, and one day one can own a home. Under the Liberals, that promise has been broken.
Let us stop building bureaucracy and start building homes. Let builders build so young Canadians can finally build a life. Hope has not faded for Canadians yet. It is just waiting to be rebuilt.
