Mr. Speaker, it is good to be here for an adjournment debate.
Some time ago, I asked the Minister of Housing about the terrible track record of his government, in that the cities that received significant funding from the so-called housing accelerator had collapsing housing starts. The response I had from the minister was quite astounding. In his answer, he said that they are at near-record housing starts, and he questioned the whole premise of my question that there was anything wrong with the situation for housing. It was quite astounding.
We have watched, over the last 10 years, as the government presided over the collapse and evaporation of the dream of home ownership for Canadians, where young people despair over whether they will ever become homeowners. We have seen, in this country, that we have descended and become a country with two kinds of families: those who already own real estate, wherein the parents can share the equity in their home one way or another, through mortgages, selling the home or flat out letting the kids live in the home; and families who do not own real estate. The gap between the two is getting larger, and the despair among young Canadians is growing. However, the answer I got from the minister was extraordinarily tone deaf.
On Monday, we had a finance committee meeting where we had experts testify. I would bring this to the minister's attention or to the parliamentary secretary who may debate me during this late show. We were told, so that Parliament now knows, that in the GTA and greater Golden Horseshoe areas, preconstruction condo sales are down 89% and ground-oriented home sales are down 70%. If buyers cannot afford homes, they will not be built. This is testimony from Mike Moffatt of the Missing Middle Initiative, which is hardly a Conservative voice or go-to Conservative witness. He outlined brutal statistics on housing starts. Now, this is on pre-sales, which are the housing starts two years from now. We also heard testimony from Richard Lyall of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, who corroborated this testimony: Housing pre-sales are down 90% in Toronto. This is a complete collapse of housing starts.
The alarm bells are ringing loud and clear. The minister and the government are completely out of touch with reality when they take credit for the current housing starts. Housing sales and housing starts are in collapse amid a crisis over access to home ownership and the affordability of rent.
I would invite the parliamentary secretary who is going to engage to familiarize himself with the testimony we heard at the finance committee if the Liberals are going to take credit for housing starts.