Thank you.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, ministers and people experiencing homelessness in our communities.
I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Matthew Lubberts. I am the President and CEO of NOW Housing, which is a modular home builder in Ontario. We specialize in affordable housing solutions for all. We build transitional cabin communities for our homeless, as well as apartment buildings and homes for our housing rental market, which are very much needed. Our goal is to help alleviate the homelessness epidemic we are facing in this country.
First, let's list some of the facts. Canada is the second country in the world for living and quality of life, and I would like to thank our government for keeping that standard up in our country. Of the G7 countries, Canada is the second wealthiest and is heavily investing in infrastructure as well as tapping into our resources up north to provide us with a fantastic future.
Canada is the second-largest country in the world, and we can fit all of the countries from the European Union twice over in our land mass. Our population is about 10% of all the European countries at about 40 million; they are at about 440 million.
In other words, here in Canada we have the resources and the money to do a good or even better job than a lot of the European countries that have eliminated their housing issues or homelessness problems.
What are some of the problems we are facing? There are two that I'm going to touch on today: housing and taxes.
On housing, we have all heard of someone facing issues either finding a home or being able to keep their home. These are currently huge problems in our country. Down payments for housing in our country are anywhere from $100,000 to $200,000 for the average home. The cost of rent has soared to over $2,000 for any rental unit in most metropolitan areas. This is putting a lot of citizens of our country out of their homes and onto the streets, causing a lot of mental health and addiction issues and overwhelming many of the communities in every corner of our country.
With tax hikes such as the capital gains tax, we are pushing away investors and investment that are desperately needed for housing projects of all sizes, causing delays and cancelling them altogether, creating a much greater housing problem.
The CMHC reports that we are in need of 3.5 million homes by 2031, so what do we do? Here is a possible solution.
Let me ask you a question. What car do you drive, and how much do you pay for it? It's approximately $40,000 to $50,000. What would happen if you built that car in your driveway, with all of the specs and the quality control we see in a factory? It would cost you millions to produce it the same way, but this is exactly what we do with our homes. We take the materials, the tools and the labour, and we bring them—