Thank you.
To build on what Mr. Brooks said about housing starts, it's probably tracking a number of measures. It's tracking sales. As he mentioned, it would have been quite visible over a year ago that sales and pre-sales of new housing are off 90-plus per cent in Toronto and Vancouver. Then it's tracking excavation start, the actual start of construction activity, as well. Would you see projects get cancelled or fall off the stats? Yes, maybe you would, but that's an important data indicator as well.
On incentives, the active conversation about GST right now is really important for new housing. I would suggest that while federal intervention in rental housing had incredible impacts, with the share of rental housing construction as a percentage of all new homes the highest it's been in probably the lifetimes of most people participating in this meeting, we lost track of for-sale and ownership housing. The GST thresholds have not been updated since 1991, and the price of homes sure has changed a lot since 1991.
Moving on to infrastructure, which has been a focus of this government, municipal taxes were never designed to handle this type of growth pressure on key urban centres. The metro Vancouver region and the GTA attract roughly 40% of the immigration into Canada on an annual basis at a minimum. Their tax structures were never designed to respond to that type of infrastructure demand, so they're using the tools they have, such as putting it on the back of new housing.