Thank you, Mr. Chair.
After nine years, we know that food costs families $700 more this year than it did in 2023. Millions of Canadians are having to line up outside of food banks just to survive. We've now seen record numbers of people going to food banks—two million people a month going to food banks.
As I mentioned earlier, food banks are running out of food and are making different policies around whom they're going to serve. We also saw a Statistics Canada report on food insecurity, which showed that nearly 15.6% of Canadians experienced food insecurity in 2022, which was up from 11.6% in 2018 and 9.6% in 2017. This means that the rate of food-insecure Canadians had increased by over 60% over the course of just two years. These are numbers from Statistics Canada. This isn't any kind of partisanship discussion. These are actually StatsCan numbers.
It became worse in 2024, and this was made clear through Food Banks Canada's 2024 poverty report card, showing that almost 50% of Canadians feel financially worse off compared to last year, while 25% of Canadians are experiencing food insecurity. Food insecurity means that people aren't able to have the food that they need in order to survive. We've also heard sad stories that scurvy is increasing in Canada. Again, it's just absolutely unbelievable.
Across the country, food banks “have seen a 50 per cent increase in visits since 2021”, and this is a direct consequence of the NDP-Liberal government's inflationary tax and spending agenda and its carbon tax. We know that the carbon tax makes the price of everything go up. Everything that is transported has the carbon tax tied to it. Therefore, when you're talking about the farmer who grows the food, or the food manufacturer, if that's the case, or the warehousers, transporters, retailers and then ultimately the consumers, all along the way, there's carbon tax being charged at every stage as you go.
No wonder food prices have increased as much as they have. You only have to go to a grocery store to see the increases in the food prices. We know that the carbon tax is slated to increase to 61 cents per litre, and that will be on every point of this value chain, or food chain, if you call it that, as you go. That will only increase prices more. Even as you see where inflation might be, food costs will go up. Ultimately, those get passed on to the consumer; that gets passed on to families.
Even for those businesses that are supporting families, like food banks, that means their costs go up as well. People do donate money. Not everyone donates food and cans. The food banks and other organizations really rely on financial donations, and they're not going as far. We hear that quite often. As costs keep increasing, their costs keep increasing. It's a really vicious cycle.
There are things that we need to do in order to.... I just took a sip of water. Hopefully that's allowed. Thank you very much.
This is another issue we're looking at. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released their housing data for September, which was just a month ago, showing that there are still not enough homes being built for Canada's population. As a result, housing affordability will continue to remain out of reach for Canadians. This CMHC report—which, again, isn't a partisan report, as this comes right from the government—shows that housing starts continue to trend lower while Canada's population has increased. In fact, the six-month trend reveals a 1.9% decrease, from 246,972 units in August to 243,759 units in September.
When comparing September 2024 to September 2023, the results are even worse. Across the country, housing starts were down 15% to 18,806 this September, compared to 22,194 in September 2023. In Nova Scotia, housing starts collapsed by 40% in the same period, while Ontario saw a drop of 37%.
Those numbers are staggering. We know there have to be a lot more housing starts happening in order to build the homes that we need, but also to bring back some type of affordability. I'll talk more about the Conservative announcement shortly.
Similarly, in Canada's most expensive cities, the government's housing plans and policies have really not done anything to build more homes. For example, in Toronto, when comparing September 2024 to September 2023, the number of housing starts declined by 64%, while Montreal and Halifax saw their housing starts decline by 59% and 61%, respectively. Those are huge numbers that show that starts are down.
We also know some of this. We've had different testimony here from witnesses who are builders, experts in their field, who have talked about the interest rates being one of the main reasons. We know that interest rates are slowly coming down. They're still very high.