I'd say it's a little bit more complicated than that. It's kind of all of the above, but in general I think that the narrative in this country.... First of all, I think that we need to understand the fact that 95% of all housing, including much of the non-market portfolio of housing in our country, is delivered by the private sector, including private capital, and there's this general narrative that this is wrong or that developers are evil.
It demonstrates to me that there's a complete lack of understanding by our government, our policy-makers and our politicians as to how housing is delivered in Canada. We can have a separate conversation about how appropriate that is or not, but that's how it is today and we're in the midst of a housing crisis.
You ask why large Canadian home builders, in the midst of a housing crisis in our country, are building more housing in other countries or in the United States than they are in Canada. The answer is simple. They don't feel very invited here. The risk-reward conversation has completely flipped. We are not attracting capital. We are not an attractive place to do business. Building housing is one of the riskiest businesses on the planet, and the risk-reward has completely flipped.
I point you to the national housing council, a pretty important body. On their website, it says, “Shaping the future of housing in Canada through inclusion and participation”.
Among the members of the council, there's not one single private sector developer, notwithstanding that 95% of housing is built by the private sector. It says, “The strength of the Council comes from its members' diversity, experience, and expertise”, and this is the same council that put out a report that is titled “The Financialization of Purpose-Built Rental Housing”.
One of their key recommendations was that transactions involving the purchase or refinancing of existing purpose-built rental between private sector entities should not be eligible for federal funding, lending or support, which is entirely contradictory to what CMHC is doing right now with the RCFI and ACLP program, which has stimulated the most amount of purpose-built rental supply, including non-market, in the last several decades.
This demonstrates to me that nobody knows what's going on here.
Thank you. I'm sorry—