As I've said, a better indicator for policy choices would be sales. They are much more current, as Brad mentioned on the virtual call, as well as relevant to what's happening in the market today; they do not focus on three years ago. When sales fall off a cliff as they did in the GTHA 12 to 18 months ago, we would know that. We would be able to say, “Hang on a second. Maybe we should jump to both GST rebates—as opposed to doing one, waiting for the screaming to subside and then doing the second one.”
I lost track at 30 receiverships in condo projects across Canada. There are probably 40 or 50, and there are a lot more we haven't heard about. A lot of labour has left. One of my major general contractors, whose name you would all know in Canada, said we used to be eighty-twenty, with 80% private sector business and 20% public sector business. Now we're ninety-ten. Ninety is public sector business, hospitals and that kind of stuff. It goes to show you how much construction activity has dropped and how much is left.
The second point is the incentives piece. When we did the national housing accord with Smart Prosperity and CAEH in 2023, we focused on the entire continuum.
I'm a big supporter of the need for government engagement in affordable housing. We need Reaching Home. We need a lot more money. We need to understand that there are trade-offs here. We have a deficit, and you have to decide where the next dollar is going. There are so many needed things, but we definitely need to spend more money on affordable housing. My colleague at TCHC has made really good points about how it has to be equity. It has to be unconditional funding.