Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago, I had a round of questions in question period about Canada's housing affordability crisis hitting young people particularly hard. Normally, supply meets demand, which is just economics 101, but the current real estate market is in such a state of imbalance that the new homes that buyers want and can afford are just not being built. That was the basis of my question.
I noted that despite demand, CMHC was reporting a reduction in new housing starts over the next few years. The response I received was that we should just support the Liberals' housing plans, which are the ones that have been missing the mark and causing all the problems in the first place.
I was directed to Bill C-20, the Build Canada Homes act, which a couple of sitting days later I actually had the opportunity to speak to. I am not going to repeat that speech, but I will highlight a couple of quotes from Professor Friedrich Hayek, the 20th-century free market economist of the classical liberal tradition.
I noted, and will note again, that the current Liberal Party has abandoned classical liberal economics and replaced it with central planning socialism. This is why I quoted Friedrich Hayek, because he spent a good part of his academic life attacking central planning socialism and pointing out its weaknesses. He said, “The beauty of the market lies in its ability to coordinate actions without requiring omniscience.” He also said, “No single mind can comprehend the complexity of modern economic activity—only a decentralized process can manage it.”
The Liberals used to believe that, but they do not anymore. They have become central planning socialists. They think that they are, in the professor's words, the “omniscience” or the single mind that can comprehend the complexity of modern economic activity. They think that just one more little tweak or a little adjustment to our comprehensive plans, one new bureaucracy, and the problem will be solved and the market will start to behave the way they think it should behave.
The Liberals have failed so far, and they will continue to fail until they understand that the best thing they can do is to just get out of the way of the free market and let the market decide how it is going to be. The answer is not another bureaucracy and not an over-regulated economy. It is just to let the market behave the way it should. Do they agree with that?