Mr. Speaker, after a decade of Liberal promises, housing prices have doubled, down payments have doubled, and now CMHC is projecting that housing starts will decline through 2026, 2027 and 2028. CMHC says we need nearly 500,000 homes per year to end the housing crisis. Instead we are headed toward fewer than half that. The government says 800,000 homes may be permitted over a decade. That is not a housing plan. That is a housing backslide.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer says the new Build Canada Homes program will build just 5,000 homes per year. That is just 1% of what the Liberals promised Canadians. Private homebuilding itself is slowing as well. New home sales are down 45% in our major cities, the lowest level in 45 years. They are down 56% in Vancouver. Permit applications are down 26% compared to last spring. Why is that?
Government-imposed costs now account for 30% to 50% of the price of a new home. Development charges have exploded. When it costs more to get permission to build than it does to build, we do not have a market failure; we have a government failure. The Liberals will stand up and list the billions of dollars they have spent. The Liberal government has indeed created the most expensive housing program in history, but if those billions of dollars in announcements actually built homes, Canada would not be in a housing crisis.
The housing accelerator fund was supposed to remove gatekeepers. Instead, cities are raising development fees after receiving federal money, while communities like mine have submitted numerous applications for the accelerator fund and have had all their proposals rejected.
The Liberal government's housing failures are increasingly evident. Many Liberals stood on a promise in 2021 to end chronic homelessness by 2030. Can we find a single Liberal who thinks that they will keep that promise? It will not happen, when the PBO is reporting that the number of chronic homeless people has increased 38% and unsheltered homelessness increased by 300% between 2018 and 2024.
Residents in communities in my region do not need Ottawa to tell them this, though. Penticton and the regional district are buckling under the strain of homeless encampments and people living in their vehicles on forestry roads. I recently spoke with a senior in Castlegar, living across the street from a growing encampment that did not exist just a couple of years ago. Not surprisingly, she feels increasingly unsafe in her own neighbourhood amid rising crime and reports of fires.
Local services are overwhelmed, and the problem of homelessness is only increasing. That is why Conservatives are calling on the Liberals to stop making promises they cannot keep and start building homes. We asked them to cut the GST on all new homes under $1.3 million to save families up to $65,000 and make projects viable again, to tie federal infrastructure dollars to municipal results and reward communities that are building more, and to end capital gains tax on reinvestment in housing to unlock private capital.
The Liberals say their plan is working, so why are housing starts falling, sales collapsing, and young Canadians giving up on home ownership? Why are people living in tents?