Mr. Speaker, I am here to talk about public transit in Metro Vancouver. It is a follow-up to a question I asked a couple of weeks ago, which I do not think I got an adequate answer to.
I will provide a bit of background. Metro Vancouver is located in the Lower Mainland area of British Columbia, which is a relatively small piece of real estate compared to the province and the country, but it is huge when it comes to strategic importance. Vancouver is Canada's front door to the Pacific Rim and our gateway to global trade in that part of the world.
However, it is also a very complex piece of real estate. It is bound to the north and the east by mountains, to the south by the U.S. border and to the west by the sea. There is nowhere to go. There is some spare land, but it is protected by the agricultural land reserve and there is a strong community consensus in the Lower Mainland that it is untouchable. Take it from me that there is nowhere to go except up, and we do that very well.
For any new real estate development in that area, the first step is to take down what is already there and rebuild to a much higher density, whether it is residential, commercial or industrial. That is the way Vancouver operates.
On top of all of that complexity, two and a half million people live in that area and every year about 50,000 people are added. The population of a small town drops right into the middle of all of that complexity. The only way that development works or is sustainable is that we have a great public transit system. The SkyTrain, contrary to other transit systems in North America, has an ever-increasing transit ridership and that is because the focus is on transit-oriented development.
That brings me to my ask, and that is for a federal funding commitment to extend the eastern end of the SkyTrain, which is in downtown Surrey, all way to downtown Langley. There are federal, provincial and municipal funding commitments to build the first phase of that to the Fleetwood area of Surrey, but we are looking for another $550 million from the federal government to extend it all the way into Langley.
I also want to talk about the housing affordability crisis in my area. Even in this year of COVID, prices have been going steadily up. There are about 9% or 10% price increases in my area. Rather than trying to reduce demand, which goes completely contrary to what we are trying to do, I would say we should increase the supply of housing, and a great way to do that is to extend the SkyTrain into Langley and urge the provincial and municipal governments to continue developing in that area.
Hundreds of thousands of people in this area now live an elevator ride and about 400 steps from the nearest SkyTrain station. Flying into Vancouver on a clear day, people can see exactly where the SkyTrain route is from the cluster of high-rises that spring up in close proximity to the SkyTrain station. That is what we are looking for: a commitment of $550 million to complete the project all the way to Langley city.
I was talking to Mike Buda, who is the executive director of the Mayors' Council on Regional Transportation, and he said that it would be imprudent for us to put the shovels down at the end of phase one. We need to continue right into phase two. There are economies of scale, there will be savings to be able to do that and it is required. We are looking for a federal funding commitment of $550 million.