Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Welcome back and happy new year.
I, along with the Conservative members of the committee, joined with Monsieur Gabriel Ste-Marie in signing a letter to restart meetings early. I think it's time we got back to work.
We have an emergency in this country, and it is that our economy has become a gigantic, inflated balloon. The asset class in which we see this balloon most inflated is, of course, housing. Bloomberg rates Canada's housing bubble as the second worst on planet earth. Demographia says that Toronto and Vancouver are the fifth- and second-most unaffordable housing markets in the world. They are ahead of such places as Manhattan, Chicago, and London, England. Even tiny little Singapore, that little island out in the Pacific, has more affordable housing relative to local income.
When Mr. Trudeau took office, you could buy the average house in Canada for $450,000. I think most people are chuckling when they think of that. We now have to pay $720,000 for the average house across Canada. In Toronto and Vancouver, it's now over a million.
The year ending November 2021 saw the fastest housing inflation ever, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. Home prices are up 58% under this Prime Minister, including 20% in the last year alone, all while real wages have been flat. It is a real quandary how house prices have gone up by more than half when the underlying wages that are used to buy housing have stayed completely flat over that time period.
All of this raises the metaphysical question: Where is the money coming from? You know, we can all debate the cause of rising house prices. What we can't debate is that there are real dollars buying these houses. When the housing purchase happens, a real transaction occurs from buyer to seller, so this money is coming from somewhere.
In late 2021, the year over year increase in the volume of housing purchases was 80%, going from $250 billion to $450 billion in one year. An 80% increase is something we've never seen before.
The question the committee must answer is this: Where is the money coming from? It's not coming from a strong economy or growing wages, because we have neither, but it must be coming from somewhere because everything comes from somewhere and nothing comes from nowhere. Answering that question and solving that riddle will explain why this balloon is inflating so fast and abruptly, and it will allow us to halt the inflation before the balloon bursts altogether, with devastating consequences for families and our overall economy.
That is why I propose the following motion, and Mr. Chair, your clerk has had notice of this motion in both official languages. The clerk should have been able to circulate it.
It reads that the committee, pursuant to Standing Order 108, undertake a study of inflation in the current economy, including housing inflation, food inflation, repatriating supply chains for strategic goods, and any other issue that the committee deems pertinent to the question of inflation, and that the committee report back to the House no later than May 31, 2022; that hearings begin on Monday, January 17 and continue on Wednesday, January 19; Friday, January 21; Monday, January 24 and Friday, January 28 and that each of these meetings be three hours in length; that this study include the following witness testimony: the finance minister alone for three hours with a 10-minute opening statement; the Governor of the Bank of Canada alone for three hours with a 10-minute opening statement; Peter Routledge, the superintendent of financial institutions, and Romy Bowers, president and CEO of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, for three hours together; senior management at Sagen and Canada Guaranty for two hours; the chief statistician of Statistics Canada and any officials responsible for the consumer price index and taking housing costs, and any witnesses invited by committee members; that during hearings, the chair enforce the rule that a witness's response to a question take no longer than the time taken to ask the question; and that the study include 11 meetings.
I've since had some feedback from members via text message that some would prefer to have a 10-meeting study rather than a 12-meeting study. I'm okay with that. I'm open to adjusting any of the logistical aspects of this motion, if doing so would be my colleagues' wish.