Thank you, Mr. Chair.
When Justin Trudeau took power, a typical home cost $434,500. Now it's $811,700. That's over 85% inflation in six years. Last year alone home inflation hit 25%, which the Real Estate Association chief economist called the “biggest gain of all time”. That followed the $400 billion of newly created cash that the government pumped into financial markets, much of it lent out in risky variable mortgages at interest rates well below inflation. These negative rates literally paid people to borrow and bid up prices. Housing inflation is homegrown.
Bloomberg reports that Canada has the second most inflated housing bubble in the world. The average family must spend two-thirds of their gross income on monthly payments for the average home in Toronto or Vancouver, cities which Demographia calculates are respectively the world's fifth and second most unaffordable markets.
Banking rules, mortgage insurance, monetary policy, money laundering—these are all federal. So is housing inflation. Here now under this government, that's just inflation, so my question is this. For my home province, I'm fielding high volumes of calls about concerns with home prices. In the first 11 months of 2021, in Moncton, New Brunswick, the multiple listing service's home price index had gone up almost 60%. New Brunswick as a whole has outpaced the national average by over 1.5%. This is extremely concerning to me as I'm not seeing this reflected in your shelter inflation analysis.
Why isn't this represented in your shelter inflation analysis?