Mr. Speaker, I am not done, as the member for Winnipeg North is heckling me. I am not sure there are any started in Winnipeg, by the way, but just 2,000 have shovels in the ground getting started after 18 months of the minister and his failed new bureaucracy.
Even CMHC data shows that housing starts are projected to fall to 203,000 by 2028. That level is less than half of what we need to restore housing affordability to the levels and prices we had in 2019, despite millions and millions of dollars, press conferences and sod-turning ceremonies for projects that never actually go anywhere. This is the cost of Liberal inaction and broken promises: Canadians fall further and further behind.
Sadly, the affordability crisis does not end at housing. Families are struggling to put food on the table. The cost of everyday necessities is forcing Canadians to change how they spend. Parents are helping their adult children pay for groceries. Young families who should be saving for their first home are watching more of their paycheques disappear at the grocery store. In fact, a recent Telus Health survey found that almost 40% of working Canadians described themselves as food-insecure.
Ahead of Thanksgiving, the outlook from Dalhousie University's Agri-Food Analytics Lab is not encouraging. The cost of a family's Thanksgiving dinner is going up. A turkey dinner is $35 and a ham dinner is $36.
Rising diesel prices are now adding another cost to the food Canadians rely on. In southwestern Manitoba, farmers are facing an especially difficult harvest. Wet weather has made an already challenging season harder, and rising diesel prices are adding costs that they cannot control. Fuel and fertilizer are not luxuries in agriculture; they are essential inputs. Farmers cannot control the weather or the price at the pump, but the federal government does control how much it taxes the industries that create these products. We put forward a plan to remove these costs, and yesterday the Liberals voted it down.
When it comes to housing, Conservatives have answers. When it comes to affordable food, Conservatives have solutions. For the last 11 years, we have served in opposition, but we have also put forward measures designed to help struggling Canadians.
We proposed removing the GST on new homes up to $1.3 million, saving homebuyers $65,000. When it comes to putting food on the table, Conservatives have proposed practical measures to provide relief from rising diesel costs and strengthen Canadian domestic production. These are measures aimed at reducing costs for Canadians and making life easier for young families.
Families want to put food on the table, and they want to know that the work they put in today will allow them to build a better future tomorrow. These should not be unreasonable expectations in a country like Canada. The next generation deserves the same opportunity to build the life that previous generations worked toward.
It is time for a government that understands that responsibility and is prepared to act. It starts with the Liberals admitting that there is a crisis that they created. It is happening today. They need to get on board, vote in favour of this motion and then work to fix the problems they started.