Thanks very much, Mr. Chair. It's always a pleasure to be at the finance committee. Although it's been quite a long time since I've been here, it's always a pleasure to be able to address the issues of housing in my riding.
Right now, our definition of affordability is that 30% of a household's before-tax income is affordable. We all know that. But if you look at my riding, the median household income is about $72,000, which means that what's affordable is $1,800 per month by that definition, except that's below the average cost of a one-bedroom apartment. So not only is it a strange way of figuring out what's affordable, it doesn't even meet the average costs if you're paying an “affordable” amount of rent in my riding.
I'm going to ask my first question of Mr. Yan. How do we as a committee and a Parliament address the gap between this affordability definition and the actual prices people have to pay to get housing.