I'd like to start by thanking Heath MacDonald for his generosity on time. Mr. Ste-Marie also offered me some time. I will try to be very succinct. I thank my colleagues for their generosity.
Ms. Bowers, I'm going to ask you a question, but first I have a brief preamble to make that I hope will reassure my friend Mr. McLean.
I looked up the CMHC climate labs program with Generation Squeeze, because over time I've found Professor Kershaw and his research group to be extremely useful and rigorous. I know it was unintentional if there was any sort of slight toward Professor Kershaw, but I found that the project with climate labs with CMHC involved more than 60 experts from community, industry and academic backgrounds, including several from the University of Calgary. I was pleased to see that. I'm sure it was a well-used grant from CMHC.
My question for you, Ms. Bowers, prompted by the context of this whole discussion with the finance committee, is about the problem of the extremely unacceptable level of barriers to people owning their own homes or even finding places to rent. It's a real crisis across Canada, but it's all about supply, and I want to ask you a bit more about that.
Certainly as British Columbians, we're well aware that our housing prices began to take off in ways that were insane, with money laundering and criminal activity and offshore investors. We still have the problem of people buying homes to put them into Airbnbs, not as homes but as investments. How many of those factors are now still active in creating this disconnect between supply and demand?