Minister, welcome to the finance committee. I hope we have some good debates here over the next little while.
For my first question, I'll go back to housing. I'm going to quote you in this meeting, where you talk about the net worth of Canadians being “up 22%” since COVID. You realize that the price of housing is up 24% in the last year alone, so of course if 72% of Canadians own houses, it's only going to be indicative that their net worth is going up, in that case. As well, about one-third of Canadians have stock portfolios that have gone up by 62% in the last year.
Inasmuch as it looks like Canadians' net worth is going up, it is purely inflation that is driving that up, and it is asset inflation. People with assets pre-COVID are actually doing very well on a relative basis, but people without those assets, and there are a lot of Canadians without those assets, are not doing nearly as well. You're creating a huge divide between the haves and the have-nots in society. I don't know if you've thought about this in your approach of continuing to flush money into the system, but it is causing a problem.
I'll let you respond to that and what you're going to do to address that. I know the big easy issue, the easy button, is just to push some more money into different programs in society, but that will actually create more inflation throughout society. What do see the endgame being here?