Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank our witnesses for being here today.
We can start with Prosper.
Since 2015—since this current government came to power—housing prices in Canada have doubled and sometimes it's more than that in certain markets. Mortgage payments have doubled and sometimes more than doubled. Inflation got up to 8% at one point. Although it's coming down, the damage is done.
Everything is more expensive and it's really made basic necessities unaffordable. Interest rates went up faster than ever before, from basically almost 0% to 5%. There are homeless encampments all over the country—tent cities. I had the mayor of Guelph here last fall. He said that when he got elected in 2014, there were no homeless tent cities in Guelph. Today there are 20. We know that millions of Canadians are lining up at food banks. By some reports, it's two million Canadians.
The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada has reported that the usage by Canadians of payday loans has gone up by 237%, from 1.9% in 2019 to 4.5% in 2022. Do you think there's any correlation between the difficult times Canadians are going through and the increase in usage of payday loans?