Housing starts are an important metric, but they are a lagging indicator. They recognize the strength of the economy and investment decisions made yesterday, not today. As Jennifer articulated in terms of the timelines in one of her projects, that investment decision to purchase a piece of land and go through the planning approvals and entitlements process occurs years before the start.
In the residential construction industry, we typically look at sales in terms of where the health of the market is currently. In the sales in the GTA and in Hamilton, those numbers are far worse than housing starts right now, and that would indicate that housing starts and the actual economic activity are likely to get worse in the months and years ahead.
It is an important metric, but my key message would be that it's a lagging indicator, and it does not represent the current health of the residential construction industry, be it in Hamilton, Ontario, or in Canada overall.