Mr. Speaker, in June I stood in the House and asked the Minister of Housing and Infrastructure about the housing market and the housing market's stall in the GTA. I noted at that time to the minister that housing sales in the GTA were 89% below their 10-year average. In response, the minister agreed with me in part; in fact he said, “We are seeing a stall in the market as people wait for that cut.” The cut the minister was referring to was the GST cut for first-time homebuyers, and then he invited me and my colleagues in the Conservative Party to support that proposal.
We kept our end of the bargain; we worked co-operatively with the government and supported the cut on the GST for first-time homebuyers. Unfortunately, the minister has not kept up his end of the bargain. The Building Industry and Land Development Association confirms that the market stall continues, despite the minister's promising to reverse it. BILD says that new home sales in August were down 81% below their 10-year average, and new condos were 90% below their 10-year average.
Another study released this week, by Missing Middle Initiative and the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, provides some stark numbers on the ongoing market stall. In the town of Georgina, in my neck of the woods, total housing starts in the first half of 2025 for singles, semis and row housing were just 42; that is nearly 60% below the previous four-year average. In the town of Stouffville, another town in my riding, the number was just 12. The numbers are equally troubling for the largest housing market in the country, Toronto, of course, where housing starts for singles, semis and row housing are down 40%.
The report goes on to say, “This is a clear indication that Ontario’s housing situation will get worse”. Young people need a house they can afford, not a Brookfield-built, government-approved shipping container.
Let me go over a bit of history for the parliamentary secretary. During the reign of Catherine II, former empress of Russia, it is alleged that during her tour of the Crimean region, her lover and minister, Grigory Potemkin, went before her to set up villages along the Nepa River so that as the empress came down the river to tour her empire, she and her foreign entourage would see thriving villages full of happy villagers. Of course the reality was quite different, because the villages were fake, and the villagers were just actors.
If we fast-forward to summer 2025, the Minister of Housing and Infrastructure presided over a modern-day Potemkin village, where the Prime Minister announced housing construction in front of a housing construction scene. The problem for the Prime Minister, just like it was for Catherine the Great at the time, is that it was just a scene. The cranes and construction buildings were just a scene, just like out of a Hollywood movie, because the Liberals are not building homes; they are building illusions.
My question to the parliamentary secretary is this: Will the minister agree that he has failed to reverse the market stall, change course and let Canadians buy homes?