Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Hetherington, I'll start with you.
It's certainly a very dire picture that you're painting of the situation, particularly in Toronto. I recall that you and I spoke in this committee last year, and the situation was dire then, but this sounds even worse.
In the policy suggestions you made, you didn't touch on the economy itself. We've been hearing testimony on that today. We know, for example, the senior deputy bank governor, Carolyn Rogers, said last week that Canada is in a productivity emergency and that “it's time to break the glass”. We've heard testimony that per capita GDP is now at 2018 levels. The OECD says that Canada is forecast to have the worst economic growth in the OECD until 2060.
Since 2015, the federal government has doubled the national debt from roughly $600 billion to $1.2 trillion, yet we have these terrible fiscal results. To me, that's tantamount to economic malpractice.
I'm just wondering if you lay any of the blame for this problem—seeing 300,000 people in February 2024 compared to just 65,000 people just before the pandemic—on the economic mismanagement by the Liberal government.