Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to start off with a couple of statements. There was an earlier comment about why we don't just deal with the demand side and slow down immigration. I want to make three comments on that.
Immigration, as we know, is key to Canada's economic growth. It always has been. It's key because we have huge demographic challenges, with a huge number of people retiring and a very low birth rate. Especially right now, we have a huge labour shortage issue across this country. We really do need to keep the demand side up. I want to make sure I address that.
There was a comment that was made about more targeted versus widespread support during this pandemic. Starting last summer—it wasn't at Bill C-2—we started targeting the support more specifically. We did it very deliberately. We have continued to target our support as we move along.
I want to point out that even after we introduced our fall economic statement, we continued to have our AAA credit rating internationally confirmed. To me, that shows some confidence in terms of how we're going about spending and how we're proposing to continue to support our economy coming out of this pandemic.
Mr. Perrault, I'm going to address my first question to you. The narrative here is that over the last two and a half years, the actions of the Trudeau government in trying to urgently address and support the Canadian economy have led to the housing problem, the housing crisis and the housing inflation that we have today.
Would you say that the housing inflation that we have now, and maybe the housing crisis that we have right now, has been a 30- to 40-year problem in the making? It's been a number of things, whether it's tax changes, lack of coordination or efforts along all three levels of government, or the different levels of government not supporting some sort of national housing strategy. Would you say that statement is true?