All right. It's not so much whether I'm ready, but it's whether the microphone is ready.
It is clear by now that Canada is in a housing crisis. It is now a nationwide issue and no longer an issue that's localized in the expensive markets like in the GTA and Vancouver.
A lot happened in that. Essentially, a perfect storm occurred during the pandemic when you had housing needs that changed very quickly. The policy response to the health crisis provided tremendous firepower for lots of households to buy homes, at least in the initial part of it. The Bank of Canada cut interest rates.
All of this really started a fire for housing demand and caused home prices to spike. Home prices had increased more than 50% nationwide in the space of 24 months. Once inflation really flared up, the Bank of Canada hiked interest rates in a historic way. From a home ownership perspective, it now had this double whammy of higher prices and a higher interest rate that really hammered housing affordability.
Today, what we're dealing with is home ownership affordability that has now gotten away from many Canadians. Many of them now are pushed into the rental market. That's created tremendous pressure on rent, and vacancy rates have reached historical lows. We're dealing with a very broad-based issue that's very complicated, so we'll need a very concerted effort to address this issue from all levels of government.