Madam Speaker, I was pleased to hear the parliamentary secretary say that he is prepared to take notes on this very important adjournment proceeding.
We have heard a lot about the housing affordability crisis in Canada. The cost of everything is ballooning. The cost for Canadians to afford a house is slipping out of their hands. That dream of home ownership is getting further and further away for young Canadians. Thirty-year-olds are living at home or stuck in the cycle of renting and are not able to save up for a down payment, as the price of a home has doubled while the Liberals have been in government.
However, it is not just the price of homes that has gone up. We know that the price of feeding our families will go up by an average of $1,000 per family this year. The list of individual items and how much they will cost with this increase is too great to go into, but it includes chicken, beef, dairy, fruits, vegetables, heating our homes and putting fuel in our cars so we can get to work and medical appointments. In rural ridings like mine, people do not have the option of taking public transit, for the most part.
We need a government that is committed to making life more affordable for Canadians, one that does not say inflation is a global problem while pointing to how our inflation stacks up against that of other places without doing anything to address the issue here. Telling Canadians that inflation is a global problem does not do anything to address the rising cost of everything for folks across this country. Folks are stuck in that cycle, stuck living in their parents' basement because they are trying to save up money to afford a down payment.
The price of the average home went from $435,000 when the Liberals took office to more than $800,000 today. That is over a six-year period. With $400 billion of printed cash pumped into our economy just last year, we know we are in a situation where too many dollars are chasing too few goods, and it is raising the price of everything.
I hear the Liberals on the other side heckling, “Why stop now?” Well, I will tell them why. It is because this out-of-control, undisciplined spending is putting us in a situation where the only people who will be able to afford a home are folks from overseas who are parking their cash in our housing market, waiting for homes to inflate in value and then flipping them to the next investor. There are empty homes owned by non-residents sitting vacant as an investment vehicle and Canadians cannot afford to get into our housing market.
My question for the parliamentary secretary is very simple. What is the government prepared to do right now to make housing more affordable for Canadians?