Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.
Every decade, a new generation of young Canadians has grown up knowing what was expected of it. Over the last 11 years, however, these expectations have gone from standard practice to nearly unattainable or have come with significant strings attached. The deal that Canadians had has been broken. Now, families struggling with home ownership also have to contend with record grocery prices that have sent millions of Canadians to food banks.
Instead of stepping in to help, the Liberal government has tuned out the concerns of Canadians. It wants them to forget the past and pretend they have never had it so good. Those expectations are reinforced in the news we read, the media we consume and the footsteps of family members and peers around us.
Canadians go to school, get an education and gain work experience, all with the goal of finding a good-paying job so they can support themselves. They may not know exactly what they want to do, but they know the direction they are supposed to go in. After years of working, they buy a home and start a family, and thus the cycle begins again. Not everyone gets the same opportunities or follows the same path, but everyone has the opportunity to work towards this overarching goal, or at least they should.
However, since the election of Justin Trudeau, and of many of the Liberals who still sit on the other side of the aisle, by the way, the promise of home ownership for young Canadians has been pushed farther out of reach. Not only are Canadians farther away from home ownership, but millions are now struggling to afford even the basics. The housing and food affordability crisis has left many young Canadians and families feeling hopeless about their futures. To get out of this mess that the Liberals created, young Canadians need a marked departure from the policy practices of the last 11 years. They need a government that will work for them, not one that will tell them that they have never had it so good.
Young Canadians have every right to be frustrated by the hand the Liberal government has dealt them. A new survey by Remax found that the sacrifices Canadians are willing to make just to afford a home, and the numbers, tell an incredibly disappointing story. Sixty-five per cent of Canadians said they would have to make at least one compromise in order to afford a larger home or one that better suits the needs of their family.
Starting a family often requires more space. This is a simple truth, but the survey from Remax shows that to achieve that level of home ownership, Canadians are having to uproot their life and move away from the community and support structures they are part of, just to have their foot in the door. Others are taking a second job or turning to family for financial help in order to sacrifice savings down the road to get into the home that their family needs to get by.
These are difficult choices, and at a time when Canadians are forced to make these types of sacrifices, the Liberals continue to run massive inflationary deficits, piling onto our national debt and the billions of dollars spent every year going to bondholders to service it. This is not just abstract policy. It has consequences for the government's financial and fiscal ability to address the challenges that Canadians are facing.
While Canadians' picture of buying a home has gone from bad to worse, more and more are turning to their parents just to make ends meet. In a September survey by RBC, more than half of parents with adult children said that they had provided financial support to their kids in the last year. Among those providing support, more than half helped with groceries, while nearly a quarter helped with rent. Almost one-third of parents said that their adult children are not financially independent.
The vice-president of client segments at RBC, Lucianna Adragna, pointed to the rising cost of living and the affordability crisis as part of why we are seeing this trend. Her remarks sum up the situation perfectly: “Financial independence used to feel like a finish line where you graduate, get a job, move out and start paying your own bills. For many families, that path is no longer as linear.”
This is the reality that faces young Canadians. Even after finding employment, many are unable to afford a place to live. Those who do move out are increasingly coming back to their aging parents to help cover their bills. These are not people who are not working. These are people who are working one and sometimes two jobs, and they still cannot get ahead.
What is the Liberals' solution? They claimed they would build housing at speeds and scales not seen in generations, but over the last 18 months, what have they actually done? They have built another housing bureaucracy, which is step one in any Liberal problem-solving plan, and then they have recycled announcements that they were using going all the way back to Justin Trudeau's first term.
The Liberals claim to have 19,000 homes under way through this new agency, but the minister recently admitted that only 2,000 are actually under construction.