Mr. Speaker, the kids are not all right. I believe that idiom originates from an older song, perhaps known by some of our older members, by a good rock band from the 1960s, The Who. It said, “the kids are alright”.
Over time, those lyrics were inverted, and they are as relevant today and as pointed today as they were when they were inverted. The kids are simply not all right when it comes to housing. That culminated in the lyrics of a rock band of my youth, The Offspring. I know that the Speaker is probably young enough to know The Offspring. They had a song, The Kids Aren't Alright. Part of the lyrics really hit me for this presentation on housing. The song says:
When we were young, the future was so bright...
The old neighborhood was so alive...
Now the neighborhood's cracked and torn...
The kids are grown up, but their lives are worn
That is true today. The next generation has grown up. Millennials are growing up. Gen Z is growing up, and they are worn out. They are tired. They have been working, but they cannot get ahead no matter how much they save, how much they scratch or how much they plan. They cannot get into the housing market. After 10 years of being priced out of the market, they are worn out, and we see it today.
The speakers on this side of the House have been millennials, constantly pushing the message of housing. I do not hear any of the younger members on the other side speaking in this debate. To me, their silence is telling.
Let me take us through some of the brass tacks in my part of the country, Durham Region, to show what has happened to housing and to incomes over the last 10 years. In January 2015, just shortly before the government was first elected, a single-family home in my region of Durham was $399,000. The most expensive was about $448,000. Just five years later, prepandemic, in January 2020, a single-family home in Durham Region was $631,000.
Fast-forward to today, January 2026, and a single-family home in Durham Region is almost $900,000. In 10 years, the price of a single-family home, a starter home, an average home, has more than doubled in my region.
Let us look at what happened to incomes at the same time. According to the 2016 census, with 2015 numbers, the median after-tax household income in my region of Durham was $77,000. Five years later, in the next census, after-tax household income was $93,000. My math is not so good sometimes, but that is not a doubling of after-tax income.
Let us look at what that means for the household price-to-income ratio. This is an important metric that I use when I am talking to people, to explain the difference that young people are facing today. I often hear, when we talk about housing, the response that we had a hard time too, that we had to save money and that we endured high interest rates. I am not taking away from that. My parents endured that too, as did others before them, but it is simply different. It is not apples to apples.
Here is the proof. In 2015, the price-to-income ratio in Durham Region was just about five times income. By 2020, it was 6.7 times income. As of 2026, it is nearly 10 times after-tax income, 10 times what one makes in a year, to qualify for an average home. That trend, in my neck of the woods in Toronto, is very on the mark for Toronto more generally, where, many studies have noted, the average price-to-income ratio is about 10 to 11 times income.
I have two more statistics to put this into perspective. First, mortgage payments as a percentage of income shows us how expensive mortgages have become. It shows how much of someone's paycheque their mortgage payment is eating up. According to the National Bank's housing affordability monitor for the fourth quarter of 2025, the most recent numbers, it is nearly 70% of income for a mortgage payment in Toronto. CMHC says that an affordable house is 30% of one's income in payments toward housing, so we are at more than double what the government's own housing agency says is appropriate.
The second statistic is that the average household income needed to afford a representative home in the Toronto area is now $253,000. That is according to the most recent numbers in the National Bank of Canada's housing affordability monitor for Q4 of 2025. If one earns $253,000, that puts them among the highest earners in the country. Most Canadians do not earn that much, which means most Canadians in Toronto cannot afford the representative house. I repeat that the kids are not all right.
Let me give members more statistics to prove my point that the housing crisis is hitting young Canadians the hardest. The lack of affordable housing in Canada is causing Canadians, particularly young Canadians, to feel less free and less happy. That is not just my argument. I have some numbers here.
The world happiness report, which is a joint report of Oxford University and the United Nations sustainable development office, reports on the happiness measures of countries. I will let members decide if this is correlation or causation with respect to the Liberals and our declining happiness. I know where I stand on the issue. In the 10 years of the Liberals being in power, Canada has fallen from fifth place, the fifth most happy nation in the world, to 15th place. That is a pretty poor result in and of itself, but the results are even more dismal for young Canadians. This is where it gets really bad. For those below the age of 30, we rank 58th out of 134 countries. The only countries that scored worse than us in this last rating were Jordan, Venezuela, Lebanon and Afghanistan.
I do not know about other members, but that is not a bunch of countries I want to be ranked with when it comes to happiness. That means increasing proportions of the population of young Canadians are feeling hopeless about their futures and are lacking a sense of connection with their community. It is a concerning trend for future population health and our economy. There are significant studies that correlate happiness with productivity, growth and wealth. We are seeing a divergence in the next generation, who are increasingly feeling despondent, despairing and out of luck when it comes to housing.
How does Bill C-20 fit in? It is the “building no more homes in Canada” act because it is not going to build any more homes, but it will build another Crown corporation. There is nothing particularly unique about the structure of the bill. It is quite a short bill. I have seen it many times before, in fact, to create Crown corporations. One question I have for the government is this: If we want to move at speeds not seen since the Second World War, why did it take nearly a year to introduce Bill C-20? If this was the most important thing, as the government says, why are we only debating this piece of legislation now?
Let us consider what has been accomplished in that year. The new CEO of Build Canada Homes was here in Parliament giving testimony. She said that nine homes have been constructed and are move-in ready. The Parliamentary Budget Officer looked at Build Canada Homes and said that it might build 5,200 homes a year. Lastly, the minister—
