As Kevin said, it's a development tax, and it's a tax paid by consumers. It's regressive. It's not income tested, and the people who get hit the hardest the most by those taxes are the ones who can least afford housing. It is very un-Canadian, among other things. Also, they've been out of control. Apportioning blame on all of these issues is really pointless at this time. We have a systemic problem here in that we're not managing growth properly.
For example, when you look in the GTA area, you have DCs, development charges, that have gone up 900% in just over a decade, which is crazy. In fact, just this month, they've gone up again in Ontario.
Sales cratered last year, as we know. Housing starts are falling, because housing is unaffordable. The first-time homebuyer is extinct. We can't build new housing for the middle class. In fact, Habitat for Humanity's new client is the middle class. Who would ever have thought we'd get to that point? That's where we are.
DCs are completely wrong-headed, and it's a function of our not managing growth properly. Other countries don't have this problem. They are dealing with housing much more effectively than we are. They have much more affordable housing. If you compare us to the United States right now, we've diverged from the United States on many data points. Pick your data point, we're diverging from the U.S. Our productivity is dropping, and real incomes are dropping here. In the U.S. right now, rents are flat or dropping because they overbuilt rental housing, for example. Their housing market is starting to come back. Meanwhile, we are going in exactly the wrong direction, and we have to compete with them. Let's not forget that—